Dönitz: The Last Führer (52 page)

The following day the convoy was located by hydrophone bearings of the propeller noises, but air cover was continuous and although the group attempted to close again any boats surfacing to gain position were attacked at once from low cloud. By midday it was perceived at headquarters that the situation was hopeless and Dönitz called the operation off. The war diary summary noted:

This comment is extraordinary in view of the number of reports of just such surprise attacks over the past months. The summary went on to state that ‘several boats also reported an efficient co-operation between
aircraft and surface escort’. As to the casualties: ‘The loss of U 954 in the vicinity of the convoy is taken as certain as this boat reported making contact when up to the convoy, possibly lost in underwater attacks.’
⁵³

Dönitz showed no emotion when he learned of his son’s death. How he broke the news to Ingeborg cannot be known, but perhaps he left an avenue of hope that there might possibly have been survivors, for she refused to accept the loss as certain; in 1945 she searched lists of prisoners of war held in Canada and the United States in case he had been rescued.

Neither the failure in this battle, nor the disastrous result in numbers of boats lost and severely damaged, nor the confirmation of all the previous evidence that air cover and radar location made it virtually impossible for U-boats to close, let alone attack convoys, altered Dönitz’s determination. When the next day
B-Dienst
supplied him with the route of another eastbound convoy, he directed the survivors of the battle to intercept, together with fresh boats, and sent the Commanders an extraordinary message:

Arriving in the vicinity of the convoy the boats found conditions hopeless: there were two carriers with a support group in addition to the escort and continuous air cover made it impossible for a boat to surface without being attacked. Five more were destroyed before the operation was called off at 11 o’clock on that first morning, May 23rd. The war diary noted: ‘The operation showed again clearly that at present with existing weapons it is not possible to fight a convoy under strong air escort …’
⁵⁵

Dönitz at last bowed to the inevitable:

It was thought that 31 boats had been sunk so far in the month; the true figure, including two lost in collision was 34. This ‘intolerable’ number and ‘the lack of success in operations against the latest convoys’, Dönitz continued, ‘forced a temporary shift to areas less endangered by aircraft’. To keep the enemy in ignorance of this for as long as possible some boats were to be left in the North Atlantic; however they would be ordered to attack ‘only under particularly favourable conditions, i.e. in the new moon period’. This lunatic reference, quite irrelevant in view of radar, must be a measure of the difficulty Dönitz found in admitting defeat. The withdrawal was being squeezed out of him as blood from steel, and he comforted himself with the idea it was a temporary deviation only:

The first step was to arm the boats with quadruple A.A. guns, and he expected that directly this was done, ‘i.e. from the autumn, the battle in the North Atlantic can be resumed in full measure’. He ended his summary on a necessary but typically egotistical note:

He took the first step that day in a message addressed to all U-boat officers. He started by emphasizing the seriousness of the present position: although the Army and Air Force were fighting off heavy enemy attacks successfully on all fronts, this only represented defence against an enemy stronger in men and materials; it would not bring victory.

Most of the developments with which Dönitz hoped to overcome his ‘temporary’ setback in the Battle of the Atlantic had been under way for some time. The crisis of the previous summer and his despairing messages to Berlin had provided the first real spur. At a conference called by Raeder at the end of September 1942 to decide how to respond to the increasing effectiveness of allied counter-measures, Dönitz had called for the development of a large Walter U-boat suitable for the Atlantic without waiting for trials of the small prototypes then under construction; the first was not due before the end of 1942. He had also stated a requirement for higher
surface
speed for the existing Type VII since it was the best sea boat in Atlantic conditions, and had particularly stressed
the need to develop a weapon with which the U-boat could deal with its pursuer, the destroyer.
⁵⁸

By March 1943, when aircraft were recognized as the U-boat’s chief enemy, he had turned his energies to the procurement of anti-aircraft guns and—again vainly—the co-operation of the
Luftwaffe
for the ‘tonnage war’. At the same time Professor Walter had come up with the idea of giving U-boats extending masts through which they could suck in fresh air while travelling submerged at periscope depth. ‘The increasing danger for U-boats from the air gave me this idea,’ he told Dönitz, ‘which is certainly not a new one …’
⁵⁹
Development of this concept was to result later in the ‘Snorchel’ or ‘Snort’.

In May, as it had become apparent that the real cause of the crisis in the U-boat war was the new enemy location device, Dönitz had concentrated all naval scientists on finding an antidote, relieving the Communications Experimental Department of all production tasks, and widening the search for a solution by tossing the problem to ‘a select circle of research scientists, physicists and representatives of industry’.
⁶⁰

Meanwhile he had been working on a new building programme for the service as a whole to rectify the disastrous position inherited from Raeder, who had been unable to get sufficient steel or shipyard workers for any of his schedules. U-boats were of course at the heart of this plan, and as the individual boats’ ‘potential’ had dropped and losses had increased so the numbers projected had been increased to make up for it. Now they stood at 40 a month, virtually double Raeder’s best achievements during 1942. Since the plan was to run for five years the total number envisaged was 2,400! The programme was in fact an extension of the ‘alternative’ fleet plan he had proposed to Raeder in 1939, enlarged for the new scale of the war on commerce and the Navy’s greatly increased defensive responsibilities, and was as far from the ‘Z’ Plan and the subsequent post-war ‘balanced fleet’ programmes dreamed up by Raeder’s teams in the euphoria of 1940 as Dönitz’s grasp of immediate essentials was from Raeder’s Utopian approach. In its concentration on a single strategy it was in the tradition of the original ‘Tirpitz Plan’ for a battlefleet, although at the opposite pole: there was nothing in it larger than a destroyer, and few enough of those. It is most interesting perhaps as a mirror of Dönitz’s own great strengths and fatal weaknesses. It was positive, practical in its concentration on small craft which could be built quickly and comparatively cheaply—and aimed at a clearly defined goal, yet it achieved its inner logic by cutting out or minimizing outside forces,
in this case the enemy’s proven ability to concentrate overall naval, air and technological superiority into effective anti-submarine defence.

There was also the question of Germany’s own armaments and manpower capacity, for the plan, the largest ever seriously conceived by the German Navy, called for 50,000 tons of steel per month more than the existing quota, and made prodigious demands on manpower for the shipyards and crews which were quite as fantastic as Raeder’s various essays—especially in view of the desperate needs of the other two services. It is significant that this point was raised at a conference of all construction and weapon department chiefs which Dönitz chaired on May 24th, the very day he was forced to withdraw from the North Atlantic. Would it not be better, since the enemy’s air superiority was clearly ‘the pivot of the present crisis’, to renounce parts of the naval construction programme to release materials for building fighter aircraft?
⁶¹
The Navy had no business to be debating this question; it is a measure of the total lack of co-ordination at the top of the
Reich
that it was felt to be necessary. Dönitz’s response was predictable: such a renunciation would mean either a reduction of the U-boat programme ‘which did not come into question’ or a reduction of the programmes of light forces, which would mean that one day the Navy would be unable to perform its escort and defensive duties. He would, however, reserve his decision pending further investigation.

Given his absolute commitment to U-boats as the sole offensive arm left to Germany and his habit of taking decisions on the basis of his goals without much regard for difficulties, the issue of the ‘investigation’ can hardly have been in doubt. He met Speer a few days later, who encouraged him in his demands, and at the end of the month he went to see Hitler at the
Berghof
, determined to press for the whole programme.

It was a remarkable meeting: Dönitz, who brought only failure, adopted his usual confident line and made radical demands; Hitler, who only three weeks earlier had been telling the Gauleiters of the great hopes he placed in the U-boat arm, took it all without a sign of reproach, fully agreed with all Dönitz had to say, and allowed him his vast programme without hesitation, let alone consultation with Speer or the other service chiefs. It was a perfect illustration of his trust in Dönitz and his eagerness to accept optimistic opinions, an epitome of how in the Führer system delusion fed naturally on itself, and how Dönitz’s naturally positive approach, deployed skilfully for his own ends, had become one of the chief props for the ailing Führer.

Dönitz’s great talent, which stemmed from his infinite capacity for self-delusion in pursuit of his own goals, was his ability to present plain and factual reports apparently concealing nothing, then to draw as it were from under this professional cover wholly optimistic conclusions. This technique was evident in the interview of May 31st. He started with an objective assessment of the failure of the U-boat campaign, the increase in the enemy’s Air Force and—‘the determining factor’—the new location device which had led to losses of 36 or even 37 boats in the month.
⁶²

‘These losses are too high. We must conserve our forces now, otherwise we will only do the enemy’s business for him.’

Therefore, he went on, he had withdrawn from the North Atlantic to an area west of the Azores, where he hoped to catch Gibraltar-bound convoys; as new U-boats became available he would send them to more distant areas in the hope that the aircraft there ‘would not be equipped to the same extent with the new location device’. However, assuming U-boats would have ‘protective weapons’ by July, he intended to attack in the North Atlantic in the new moon period. The implications here were not defeat so much as a crisis forcing temporary redisposition. It is significant that the only statistical analysis he presented concerned where and how the boats had been lost—so far as that could be ascertained—not how much enemy tonnage it was necessary to sink, nor how much he expected to sink, nor how many boats would be necessary.