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The Kriegsmarine (or "War Navy") was the name of the German Navy between 1935 and 1945, during the Nazi regime, superseding the Reichsmarine.

History

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was only allowed a minimal navy. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hitler soon began to ignore many of the Treaty restrictions and to accelerate German rearmament. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935 then allowed Germany to build a navy equivalent to 35% of British surface ship tonnage and 45% of British submarine tonnage; battleships were to be limited to no more than 35,000 tons. Following the 1938 crisis of German demands on Czechoslovakia, Germany abandoned all pretensions of adherence to treaty limitations on its navy.

The so-called Plan Z, the blueprint for the German naval construction program finalized in 1938, envisaged building a navy of about 800 ships over the next eight years (1939-1947), including 10 battleships and battlecruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 15 armored ships (Panzerschiffe), 5 heavy cruisers, 44 light cruisers, 158 destroyers and torpedo boats, and 249 submarines, along with numerous smaller craft. Personnel strength was planned to rise to over 200,000.

Since the simultaneous and rapid build-up of the German army and airforce demanded substantial effort and resources, the planned naval program was not very far advanced by the time World War II began. Indeed, implementation only began in January 1939 when two H-class battleships were laid down. On 1 September 1939, the navy still had a total personnel strength of only 78,000, and it was not at all ready for a major role in the war. With expectations in Germany of a quick victory by land, Plan Z was essentially shelved and the resources initially targeted for its realization were largely redirected to the construction of U-boats.

The first action of the Kriegsmarine came during the Spanish Civil War, when German ships - along with British, French and Italian naval forces - patrolled the coasts of Spain in order to enforce the international arms embargo. The German ships patrolled a section of the Mediterranean coast between Almería and Valencia. In reality, though, the German presence was used to provide support for Franco's Nationalists. In retaliation, the pocket battleship Deutschland was bombed and damaged on 29 May 1937 by Spanish Loyalist forces at Ibiza.

The major events for the Kriegsmarine during the first year of the war were the Battle of the River Plate and the sinking of the HMS Royal Oak. The Battle of the Atlantic started this year, although the German submarine fleet was hampered by the lack of good ports from which to attack Allied shipping.

In April 1940, the main action the navy was involved in was the invasion of Norway, where it suffered quite heavy losses, including the heavy cruiser Blücher sunk at Oslo and ten destroyers. The Kriegsmarine did however sink a number of British ships, including the carrier HMS Glorious.

The losses in the Norway campaign meant that only a handful of heavy ships were ready for action for the planned, but never executed, invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion) in the summer of 1940. After the fall of France and the conquest of Norway, the German submarine fleet was brought much closer to the British shipping lanes in the Atlantic. At first, the British merchant convoys lacked radar equipped escorts; as such, the submarines were very hard to detect during their nighttime surface attacks. This year was for these reasons one of the most successful, as measured in terms of merchant shipping sunk compared to submarines lost.

Italy entered the war in June 1940, and the Battle of the Mediterranean began: from September 1941 to May 1944 some 62 German submarines were transferred there, sneaking past the British naval base at Gibraltar. The Mediterranean submarines sunk 24 major Allied warships (including 12 destroyers, 4 cruisers, 2 aircraft carriers and 1 battleship) and 94 merchant ships (449,206 tons of shipping). None of the Mediterranean submarines made it back to their home bases as they were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their crews at the end of the war.

In 1941 one of the two modern German battleships, the Bismarck sunk HMS Hood while breaking out into the Atlantic for commerce raiding. However, the Bismarck was in turn hunted down by much superior forces and scuttled.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against the USA in December 1941 led to another phase of the Battle of the Atlantic. A large number of Allied merchant ships were sunk by submarines off the American coast as the Americans had had little time to prepare for submarine warfare (Second happy time). The vast American ship building capabilities and naval forces were now brought into the war and soon more than offset any losses inflicted by the German submariners. In 1942, the submarine warfare continued on all fronts, and when German forces in the Soviet Union reached the Black Sea, a few submarines were eventually transferred there.

The Battle of the Barents Sea was an attempt by a German naval force to attack an Allied Arctic convoy. However, the advantage was not pressed home and they returned to base. There were serious implications: this failure infuriated Hitler, who nearly enforced a decision to scrap the surface fleet. Instead, resources were diverted to the U-boats, and, with the exception of the battleship Tirpitz, the surface fleet ceased to a significant threat.

After 1943 when the Scharnhorst had been sunk in the Battle of North Cape, most of the German surface ships were pent up in or close to their ports as a fleet in being, for fear of losing them in action and to tie up British naval forces. The largest ship of these ships, the battleship Tirpitz, was stationed in Norway as a threat to Allied shipping and also as a defense against a potential Allied invasion. When she was sunk by British bombers in late 1944 (Operation Catechism), several British capital ships could be moved to the Pacific.

From late 1944 until the end of the war, the surface fleet of Kriegsmarine was heavily engaged in providing artillery support to the retreating German land forces along the Baltic coast and in ferrying refugees to the western parts of Germany. It was during this activity that the catastrophic sinking of several large passenger ships occurred: the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Goya was sunk by Soviet submarines, while the SS Cap Arcona was sunk by British bombers, each sinking claiming thousands of civilian lives.

During 1943 and 1944, due to Allied anti-submarine tactics and better equipment the U-boat fleet started to suffer heavy losses. Radar, air cover, improved tactics and new weapons all contributed. German technical developments, such as the schnorkel, attempted to counter these. New U-boat types, the Elektroboote, were in development and, had these become operational in sufficient numbers, the Allied advantage would have been eroded.

Between 1943 and 1945 a group of U-boats (the "Monsun boats" or Monsun Gruppe) operated in the Indian Ocean from Japanese bases in occupied Indonesia. As the Allied merchant convoys had not been organized in those waters the initial sinkings were plentiful but that was soon remedied however . During the later war years, U-boats were also used as a means of exchanging vital war supplies with Japan.

After the war, the German surface ships that remained afloat (only two large warships were operational) were divided among the victors. Some (like the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin) were used for target practice, while others (mostly destroyers and torpedo boats) were put into the service of Allied navies that lacked surface ships after the war. The French and Soviet navies received the destroyers, and some torpedo boats went to the Danish and Norwegian navies. The destroyers were all retired by the end of the 1950s, but some of the torpedo boats were returned to the new West German navy in the 1960s.

In 1956, with West Germany's accession to NATO, a new navy was established and was referred to as the Bundesmarine (Federal Navy). Some Kriegsmarine commanders like Erich Topp and Otto Kretschmer went on to serve in the Bundesmarine. In East Germany the Volksmarine (People's Navy) was established some time after the war. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, it was decided to simply use the name Deutsche Marine (German Navy).

Kriegsmarine wartime operations

• Nordseetour (1940) — first Atlantic operation of Admiral Hipper
• Weserübung ("Weser Exercise") (1940) — invasion of Denmark and Norway
• Juno (1940) — operation to disrupt Allied supplies to Norway
• Wikinger (1940) — foray by destroyers into the North Sea
• Berlin (1941) — Atlantic cruise of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
• Rheinübung ("Exercise Rhine") (1941) — breakout by Bismarck and Prinz Eugen
• Doppelschlag ("Double blow") (1942) — anti-shipping operation off Novaya Zemlya by Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper
• Sportpalast (1942) — aborted operation (including Tirpitz) to attack Arctic convoys
• Rösselsprung ("Knights Move") (1942) — operation (including Tirpitz) to attack Arctic convoy PQ-17
• Wunderland (1942) — anti-shipping operation in Kara Sea by Admiral Scheer
• Drumbeat ("Paukenschlag" ("Beat of the Kettle Drum")); "Second Happy Time") (1942) — U-boat campaign off the United States east coast
• Regenbogen ("Rainbow") (1942) — failed attack on Arctic convoy JW-51B, by Admiral Hipper and Lützow
• Cerberus (1942) — movement of capital ships from Brest to home ports in Germany (Channel Dash)
• Ostfront (1943) — final operation of Scharnhorst, to intercept convoy JW-55B
• Domino (1943) — second aborted Arctic sortie by Scharnhorst, Prinz Eugen and destroyers
• Sizilien (1943) — raid upon Allied occupied Spitzbergen (Svalbard)
• Deadlight (1945) — postwar scuttling of U-boats

Ships

By the start of World War II, much of the Kriegsmarine were modern ships: fast, well-armed and well-armoured. This had been achieved by concealment but also by deliberately flouting World War I peace terms and those of various naval treaties. Although a major re-armament of the navy (Plan Z) was planned, and initially begun, the start of the war in 1939 meant that the vast amounts of material required for the project were diverted to other areas.

Germany added to their fleet with a number captured from occupied countries.

Some ship types do not fit clearly into the commonly used ship classifications. Where there is argument, this has been noted.

Surface ships

The main combat ships (not U-boats) available to the Kriegsmarine:

Battleships

Bismarck and Tirpitz

Battlecruisers

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The classification of these ships is problematic. The "battlecruiser" designation is largely a British and Royal Naval usage (arguing that 11" armament would not be adequate) while the Germans in particular describe them as "battleships" or "Schlachtschiff".

Pocket battleships (Panzerschiff)

Deutschland/Lützow, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. Modern commentators favour classifying these as "heavy cruisers" and indeed the Kriegsmarine itself reclassified these ships as such (Schwerer Kreuzer) in 1940.

Heavy cruisers

Admiral Hipper, Blücher, and Prinz Eugen

Light cruisers

Emden, Königsberg, Karlsruhe, Köln, Leipzig and Nürnberg

Destroyers

Although the German destroyer (Zerstörer) fleet was modern and the ships were larger than conventional destroyers of other navies, they had problems. Early classes were unstable, were too wet in heavy weather, suffered from engine problems and had short range. Some problems were solved with the evolution of later designs, but further developments were curtailed by the war and, ultimately, by Germany's defeat.

In the first year of World War II, they were used to sow offensive minefields in shipping lanes close to the British coast.

Torpedo boats

These vessels evolved through the 1930s from small vessels, relying almost entirely on torpedoes, to what were effectively small destroyers with mines, torpedoes and guns. Two classes of fleet torpedo boats were planned but not built in the 1940s.

Miscellaneous

Minelayers, Minesweepers, Gunboats, E-boats and Watchboats.

World War I pre-dreadnought battleships

Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein were used mainly as training ships. Hessen was converted into a radio-guided target ship in 1930.

Aircraft carrier

Construction of the Graf Zeppelin was started in 1936, but the ship was never completed.

Auxiliary cruisers

During the war, nine merchant ships were converted into auxiliary cruisers and used as commerce raiders, particularly in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Submarines (U-boat)

At the outbreak of war, the Kriegsmarine had a relatively small fleet of submarines - 57. This was increased, particularly after Hitler lost patience with the large surface ships. It is arguable that, had more resources been put more into U-boats earlier, then Britain would not have been able to defend its convoys quickly enough to avoid defeat. In fact after a year of war, production of new ships had only kept up with losses.

The principal types were the Type IX, a long range type used in the western and southern Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans; and the Type VII, the most numerous type, used principally in the north Atlantic. Type X was a small class of mine-layers and Type XIV was a specialised type used to support distant U-boat operations - the "Milchkuh" (Milkcow).

Types XXI and XXIII, the "Elektroboot", would have negated much of the Allied anti-submarine tactics and technology, but they were never deployed in sufficient numbers. Post-war, they became the prototypes for modern submarines, in particular, the Soviet W-class.

During World War II, about 60% of all U-boats commissioned were lost in action; 28,000 of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen were killed during the war and 8,000 were captured. The remaining U-boats were either surrendered to the Allies or scuttled by their own crews at the end of the war.

Capital ships sunk by the Kriegsmarine

source:

source:

Comparative Ranks (during WWII)

See also

• Erich Raeder
• Karl Dönitz
• List of ships of the German navies

External links

• Detailed descriptions of Kriegsmarine ships and classes
• Battle of the Atlantic
• Kriegsmarine History
• WWII U-Boat History
• About the large surface ships

• German Navy
• Nazi Germany
• Military ranks of Germany
• Military history of Germany during World War II