Dönitz: The Last Führer (51 page)

Hitler knew there was dissatisfaction amongst the military; arrests had been made at the
Abwehr
, the secret headquarters of resistance presided over by Admiral Canaris, and Himmler’s agents were following a web of suspected treason leading to the highest levels of the Army. ‘His opinion of all the generals is devastating,’ Goebbels noted in his diary after a conversation with the Führer at this time; ‘…all generals are disloyal, all generals are opposed to National Socialism, all generals are reactionaries …’
⁴¹
The Navy was not implicated in treachery; Dönitz’s single-minded devotion to the cause gave Hitler confidence it never
would be; moreover, his consistently positive outlook and ardour to take on any and all responsibility in any field, combined with his unquestioning acceptance of the Führer’s genius, demanded that Hitler in his turn play up to the role expected. With Dönitz he acted the wise elder statesman dextrously juggling world political and military complexities beyond the ken of mere military professionals; at the same time he drew strength from Dönitz’s fire. Thus without the clash of argument each reinforced the other’s cosmic delusions and, as von Puttkamer recorded, the two came in ever closer touch and were ‘frequently together under four eyes’.
⁴²

This was already apparent by the time of the crisis over Tunisia; as allied troops entered Rommel’s last major supply ports, Tunis and Bizerta, on May 7th, Dönitz was attending a Führer conference in Berlin. His determination to carry on the struggle to get supplies through by U-boat and small craft so long as a single soldier remained fighting was unshaken by the calamitous news of the day. Afterwards he caused a note to be entered in the naval staff war diary account of the conference—‘The Führer was highly appreciative of the clear policy followed by the Navy’
⁴³
—one of many such asides throughout the war diary that reveal his sense of importance at being at the centre of events and close confidant of the Führer, for instance: ‘the example of Africa represents for him [the Führer] the most striking practical example of the correctness of the exposition by the C-in-C Navy’.
⁴⁴

Hitler’s anxiety was not simply that Tunisia was about to be lost and the way opened for the allies to redeploy their forces in an assault anywhere along the southern flank of the continent, but that Italy itself was about to default and go over to the allies. He had faith in Mussolini, but smelled treachery among the Italian senior officers and civil servants. Similar reports were arriving on Dönitz’s desk from his staff in Italy; they told of rampant defeatism among the population and the spread of mistrust of Germans. It was in these circumstances that Hitler sent him to Italy for a second time.

He took off from Berlin early on May 12th, arriving in Rome at 1 p.m. He was met by Ruge with the German naval attaché and the Commander of German naval forces in Italy, and over lunch in the Hotel Excelsior they briefed him on the ineffectiveness of the dual German-Italian staff system. So serious was the position, Ruge believed the only solution to be a transfer of the entire German naval operations staff in Italy to the Supamarina.

In the afternoon he met Admiral Riccardi and his staff and heard their plans for dealing with the allied assault they expected on Sardinia, then Sicily as stepping stones to the Italian mainland. Afterwards he gave them his ideas; the Axis was too weak to fight the invasion at sea and the whole problem came down to a successful defence on land; the Navy’s task was to make the land battle possible by safeguarding the sea supply routes; the situation in North Africa where the troops had been defeated simply for want of supplies must not recur, and all available craft had to be pressed into service immediately to get as much material on to the threatened islands as possible—cruisers, small craft, even U-boats would have to be used.

‘As transports?’ Riccardi interrupted.

‘Yes, because U-boats are not decisive in battle.’

Discussing the weakness in the air and the fact that it was now too late for many operations, Dönitz let slip a remark to the effect that it might have helped if the Italian fleet had been sacrificed earlier! Relations between the two sides were cool already; it was not a tactful observation and the translator apparently turned it into an attack on the honour of the Italian Navy. Riccardi flared up; Dönitz bristled in return and the meeting ended in a tense atmosphere which persisted throughout his stay in Rome.
⁴⁵

The following day he met the Italian military chief, General Ambrosio, repeating his rather surprising ideas for the employment of naval forces, and later in the morning expressed the same convictions in an audience with Mussolini: ‘When the importance of transport is compared with fighting tasks the former takes precedence.’
⁴⁶
The
Duce
showed more sympathy with the view than his senior Commanders. On the thorny question of co-operation between the Supamarina and the German naval staff in Italy, Mussolini agreed to a merger of the German operations staff with the small German liaison staff under Ruge.

The final act in the North African campaign was being played out that day as over 250,000 battle-hardened German and Italian troops surrendered to the allies, yet the Dictator impressed Dönitz with his amiability, confidence and calm. He even found comfort in allied bombing raids on the Italian mainland as he believed they would teach the Italian people to hate the British. If there was one Italian who hated the British, he said, it was himself.

‘I am happy my people are now also learning to hate.’
⁴⁷

That afternoon Dönitz was driven to the Nemi Lake to see the old
Roman ships discovered there, then after returning and dining with the German Ambassador, von Mackensen, he had an evening conference with Kesselring. The Field Marshal believed Sicily a more likely target for the allied invasion than Sardinia, yet, he said, defensive preparations there were far from complete and the Italian naval forces too weak to play anything but a reconnaissance role. The desperate need was for more aircraft, but he believed the best way to relieve the situation was an offensive against the Iberian peninsula! This was an idea that Dönitz had been playing with for some time in order to gain bases for his U-boats outside the dangerous waters of Biscay. What he said to Kesselring about it is not recorded, but practical and positive as always he stressed, as he had to the Italian High Command, that the crux of the problem was supply: sufficient stores had to be transported to the endangered islands before the invasion if the battle which could not be won at sea was not to be lost on land. The problem of course, he added, was the leisurely manner in which the Italians were accustomed to working.

The following morning, May 14th, he had an early audience with the King of Italy, then flew from Rome to the
Wolfschanze
, to which Hitler had returned. After listening to his report of the conversations, Hitler asked him the key question: did he think the
Duce
was determined to carry on to the end? Dönitz replied that he certainly believed so, but of course he could not be sure, whereupon Hitler, who also believed so, launched into an exposition of his misgivings about the Italian upper classes. ‘A man like Ambrosio would be happy if Italy could become a British Dominion today!’
⁴⁸

In an attempt to steer the talk into more practical areas which his conversation with Kesselring had reopened, Dönitz said he had been thinking over the plans to defend the Italian islands and had come to the conclusion that they would result in a costly and purely defensive operation which would not do anything to get the Axis out of its overall defensive posture. Furthermore the Anglo-Saxons, by clearing the Mediterranean—so regaining the direct route via Suez to and from the east—had in effect gained two million tons of shipping space.

‘Which our trusty U-boats will have to sink,’ Hitler interjected.

Dönitz had to reply that they were facing the gravest crisis in U-boat warfare. ‘The enemy’s new location devices are, for the first time, making U-boat warfare impossible and causing heavy losses—fifteen to seventeen boats a month—’

‘These losses are too high,’ Hitler cut in. ‘It can’t go on.’

Dönitz seized his opportunity, or perhaps he wished to sidetrack talk of losses for he had not been frank: they were running now at double the figure he quoted.

‘At present,’ he said, ‘the only exit for U-boats is through Biscay, a narrow lane of the greatest difficulty for the boats, whose transit takes ten days. In view of this, the best strategic solution appears to be the occupation of Spain, including Gibraltar. This would constitute a flank attack against the direction of the Anglo-Saxon offensive, regaining the initiative for us, radically altering the situation in the Mediterranean and giving the U-boat campaign a broader base.’

The subject of Spain and Gibraltar had been thrashed out at Führer headquarters many times recently, and Canaris had travelled to Madrid twice to sound out Franco about the possibility of joining the Axis; he had been rebuffed, and Hitler had been forced to the reluctant conclusion that nothing could be done.

‘We are not capable of such an operation,’ he told Dönitz, ‘because it would require first-class divisions. Occupation against the will of the Spaniards is not on. They are the only tough Latin people and would carry on a guerrilla war in our rear.’

Dönitz left the
Wolfschanze
immediately after the interview to return to Berlin; his plane touched down at the Tempelhof aerodrome at a quarter to eleven that night. Whether he then visited U-boat headquarters to check on the latest situation in the operations room is not recorded; probably he went straight home for there can be little doubt that his remarks to Hitler about the enemy location devices making U-boat warfare impossible were based on the latest information from Godt, probably acquired by telephone at Führer headquarters before presenting his report.

This revealed that in the most recent battle against a slow eastbound convoy one boat had been able to launch an underwater attack on the first day and sink two merchantmen, but all subsequent attempts by twelve boats out of 25 directed to the convoy had been beaten off by the escorts without further success and one boat had been destroyed; in fact two were destroyed in this battle, bringing the total number of boats lost in the half month to nineteen.

The explanation for the failure in the U-boat Command war diary was ‘the numerical strength of the escort together with good conditions for location gear …’ The enemy must have detected all the boats around the convoy and ‘Since such a rapid detection of the boats has not
previously occurred on such a scale it is not impossible that the enemy is working with a new type of efficient location gear.’
⁴⁹

The next day Dönitz, evidently deducing a decline in fighting spirit from the lack of success in recent battles, sent a message to all boats:

No doubt he had convinced himself that effective weapons were on the way, but there was no basis in recent experience for the preceding sentence with its stinging implication that Commanders had not been showing determination. Read in conjunction with recent war diary entries it appears as a grotesque and inexcusable misjudgement, showing clearly once again that emotional commitment, or ‘fanaticism’, was overriding rational calculation.

Two days later
B-Dienst
deciphered routing instructions for an eastbound convoy, and an allied U-boat report diverting it south of the groups indicated in the report. From this it was deduced that the next convoy would be similarly routed and the groups
Donau
1 and 2, a total of seventeen boats including Peter Dönitz’s U 954, were ordered southwards to form a patrol line across its probable track; new boats just
entering the operational area were directed to form another group
Oder
extending the line further south.

Shortly after midnight on the following day, thus in the early hours of May 19th the expected slow convoy, SC 130, ran into the line and was sighted by U 304, which reported and held touch. U 954 was close and by dawn she and another five boats had also found the convoy and were working into position for submerged attacks from ahead. The convoy made a 90-degree turn to the south, however, leaving them all trailing. They surfaced in order to make their way ahead on the new course out of range of the escort just as a Liberator of Coastal Command joined to provide air cover. U 954 was detected at once and attacked out of low cloud; the bombs dropped close either side of her, their explosion opening her hull and she sank, taking all hands with her.

The Liberator swept on, diving at another five boats, forcing them under, and calling surface escorts to the scene; these destroyed one boat by depth-charge attack, and damaged another. Through the morning more boats homed in to the convoy, but an escort group and three more aircraft were on the way and in sudden, fierce encounters during the early afternoon another three boats were destroyed, three were damaged so severely they had to drop out of the action and all the others were forced under so that when the convoy made the usual dusk alteration touch was lost. One boat reported sinking a 6,500-ton ship and damaging another; in fact no ships were hit.