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Background

T he post-World War I German Navy was limited by the Versailles Treaty to no more

than six battleships of 10,000 tons each, six cruisers of no more than 6,000 tons each, 12 destroyers of no more than 800 tons each, eight light cruisers and 32 torpedo boats. Fifteen thousand men would be allowed to crew those vessels, and no submarines were to be allowed at all.

After the conclusion of the war, pub-lic opinion in Germany ran against the navy. It was seen as having contributed to the long duration of the war while itself having turned out to have been nothing more than a waste of resources during it and, ultimately—in regard to its overall nonperformance—it was also seen as one of the causes

of the war’s loss. Finally, while it had been relegated to a small size by the Versailles Treaty, the navy was then further reduced by the still smaller budgets allocated to it by the Weimar Republic, which precluded it from even reaching the limitations imposed on it.

In the run up to the First World War, the navy had been developed in accordance with the views of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz. He advocated a strategy in which the navy was to be made large enough to threaten British domination of the seas and, more particularly, it was to be able to break any British blockade of Germany by forcing (and winning) a decisive battle in the North Sea. When the British subsequently established just such a blockade at the English Channel and between Scotland and Bergen, Norway, Tirpitz’s plan fell apart. The

British were able to maintain that blockade against the Germans.

The navy of the new Third Reich was therefore immediately confronted with three major problems: 1) a small num-ber of ships; 2) inherent strategic limits due to the geographic relationship between Germany and her Allied oppo-nents; and 3) a still limited budget that had to be shared with the two other ser-vice branches, the army and air force.

At the same time, three inescapable tasks would face the navy on the outbreak of a new war: 1) protecting Germany’s coasts from invasion; 2) protecting German shipping within the nation’s coastal waters; and 3) attacking enemy ships and oceanic lines of communication in some signifi cant, or even decisive, way. Further, given the budgetary situation, those missions

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Theory Into Practice: German Surface Raider Strategy By David March

Dramatis Personae

Vice Adm. Wolfgang Wegener (1875-1956)

Wegener was born in Stettin, the son of a doctor. He joined the navy in 1894, where he became a gunnery offi cer. During World War I he fi rst served as the chief of staff of 1st Battle Squadron, leaving that post to become captain of the light cruiser Regensburg, followed by a stint as commander of the battleship Nurnberg. After the war he stayed on in the much diminished service, attaining the rank of vice admiral in 1926.

He was the author of a series of essays that in totality became known as the “Wegener Thesis.” Those writings were a matter of controversy in Germany, and also had some impact outside that country. The thesis was published in the Soviet Union, where com-mentators praised it for recognizing the strategic importance of the Scandinavian peninsula. British commentators took a different view, maintaining any navy that couldn’t go where it pleased when it pleased was really no navy at all. They maintained – not surpris-ingly, given Britain’s naval preeminence in Europe at the time – that geography was never as important as having the brute battle line strength needed for outright sea control.

Adm. Erich Johann Albert Raeder (1876-1960)

Raeder was born to a middle-class family in Schleswig-Holstein, the son of a schoolmaster. He also joined the navy in 1894, and rose rapidly in the ranks. During World War I he fought at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1914 and at Jutland in 1916. In 1920 he participated in the Kapp Putsch, a far-right coup attempt against the Weimar Republic aimed at preventing the new regime’s disbanding of the Freikorps. He was thereafter marginalized for his role in the Putsch and, as punishment, was transferred to the naval archives section, where, with nothing else to do, he threw himself into an intensive study of naval strategy and history, eventually receiving a doctorate from the University of Kiel.

Through sheer persistence he hung on, surviving his internal exile and eventually rising to overall command of the navy in 1928, which was at that time rife with internal dissension as well as material problems. The navy was popularly blamed for fi rst prolonging and then losing the First World War. Its loyalty was also questioned due to the fact the general mutiny within it in the autumn of 1918 had turned out to be the fi rst step in the fall of the imperial government. In order to speedily reunify the service, Raeder set in place a culture of uniformity in which dissenting opinions simply weren’t tolerated. That approach led to Wegener’s forced retirement.

The opening of World War II saw Raeder win operational successes, including the invasion of Norway, the prosecution of a U-Boat campaign, and convoy raids around the world. After growing reversals of fortune, including the loss of the Bismarck and the failure of Battle of the Barents Sea, Hitler in turn forced his resignation in January 1943.

After the war Raeder was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in plotting and fi ghting a war of aggression. The sentence was later reduced and, due to deteriorating health, he was granted early release in 1955.

Adm. Raoul Castex (1878-1968)

Castex was a French naval theorist whose writings had a profound effect on Raeder and the development of the German navy between the wars. Castex joined the French Navy in 1896 and eventually became an instructor at the Ecole de Guerre Navale. After World War I he became a rear admiral, and in 1936 he established the Institute for Higher National Defense Studies.

Between 1929 and 1939 he wrote a series of papers titled “Theories Strategiques,” in which he discussed the links between land and naval warfare, concentrating on what nations that were primarily land powers should do in regard to naval strategy. His think-ing included the idea of relocating France’s armaments industry and capital to Algeria, as that locale could be more easily defended in case of a new outbreak of war.

His strategy formed an important part of Raeder’s thought. The German was particularly impressed by the Frenchman’s idea that opportunities for decisive naval battles were rare, and that attempts to create them were futile. He emphasized tactics that encouraged the development of what he called force organisée (organized forces). Such naval groupings would be task-organized and sent to sea temporarily, as needed, to fi ght limited offensives. He also stressed the need for commerce raiding, blockade, mines and amphibious warfare. ★

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The Bismarck unleashing a salvo against HMS Hood.

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were fundamentally at odds with each other. For example, coastal defense called for different types of vessels than those best suited for attacking enemy ships and disrupting his far-fl ung lines of communication.

The navy high command sought to develop ways to effectively carry out that three-pronged strategy, and two theses came into being. One was supported by Adm. Wolfgang Wegener and the other by Adm. Erich Raeder.

Wegener’s Idea

The fi rst theoretical papers by Wegener were published within the navy in 1915. At that time the service was just beginning to face increasing criticism for its failures in the ongoing World War. It had been built at great expense, mostly during the previous 15 years, and the growing belief, both by the citizenry and the army, that it was useless, was seemingly borne out by the fact its ships stayed in port, unable to break the British blockade. Adm. Tirpitz was enraged by the papers,

but was unable to prevent them from being circulated within the service.

Wegner’s premise was that Tirpitz’s strategy wasn’t workable for Germany in that it didn’t threaten the one British vulnerability: oceanic trade. That the British economy was dependent on the sea trade had been known since the turn of the previous century. The German Navy was therefore play-ing a weak hand by attempting to match the Royal Navy’s battle line.

Having identifi ed what he saw as the British weakness, Wegner suggested there was an inescapable need for the German Navy to acquire new bases from which it could threaten that British trade. He advocated an offensive, either military or diplomatic, to acquire such bases in Norway, which would allow German ships to simply sidestep the Norway-Scotland portion of the blockade. It would also allow German ships to attack convoys headed toward Russia. Once those bases were acquired, the British would be forced to deal with the German battle line under operational and tactical situations that would no longer be under their control.

After the war Wegner published his ideas in an inclusive book, The Naval Strategy of the World War. In it he further expanded on his Norway scheme by calling for the acquisition of bases on the French Atlantic coast. He also argued that, in order to fully overturn British global naval superiority, a strategic alliance with another partner would be necessary.

Raeder’s View The man who would become the

commander of the Kriegsmarine, and then force Wegener out of the service, had other views. Adm. Erich Raeder rightly pointed out the major fl aw of Wegener’s thesis: the post-World War I German Navy simply couldn’t pull off his plans as he envisioned them. A direct confrontation with the British battle line would still see the Germans defeated, no matter the altered geo-strategic relation-ship between the two navies.

Raeder was initially moved to his more pragmatic approach due to the German situation on land close to home. That is, until Hitler’s rise to power, the Weimar Republic’s navy had concentrated on what seemed the most likely confl ict it would have to face: a war with Poland over East

Prussia and the likely intervention of France against Germany in that war via naval power. The naval raiders of the Deutschland-class, known as “pocket battleships,” were originally intended to fi ght that war. Their high endurance and heavy armament were intended to enable them to hit and run French convoys headed toward Poland via the North Sea, while also breaking any attempted blockade of German ports by French combatant ships.

There was one point on which Raeder and Wegener agreed, but for different reasons. That is, Raeder also advocated securing Norway in order to protect the economically vital coastal transshipments of Swedish iron ore through that fi rst country’s coastal waters. He therefore sought an invasion of Norway as an ultimately defensive measure to secure German trade, where Wegener had wanted it as a geo-strategic steppingstone from which to strike against the British battle line in a decisive engagement. Wegener believed that once such a decisive battle had been fought, the trade route the Germans needed for ore transit would be secure simply as its byproduct.

Raeder was also a pupil of Adm. Franz von Hipper, who during World War I had advocated sending battlecruisers as a raiding force into the Atlantic to attack British convoys. Hipper had hoped doing that would force the British to send decisively large numbers of their best ships to chase the cruisers, thus setting up the remaining blockade force to be defeated by the main part of the German fl eet. Hipper thus sought results through what had earlier been the classic French naval strategy of guerre de course (commerce war), by which an inferior fl eet fi rst concentrates on commerce raiding.

Raeder’s thought was also infl uenced by that of contemporary French Adm. Raoul Castex, who advocated what he called the “middle strategy.” Castex wrote that for a nation that was primarily a land power to defeat one that was primarily a naval power, an all-out fl eet action wasn’t necessary or desirable. Instead, a series of limited tactical victories by the land power could eventually overturn the larger overall balance of naval power. He argued that winning secondary battles in secondary theaters could eventually achieve results against a primary navy power.

Raeder’s amalgamation of all that came to rest on three main points: 1)

all naval theaters are ultimately of the same global signifi cance; 2) cruiser operations in theaters distant from the homeland are therefore just as important to overall naval strategy as the main battle line’s role in home waters; and 3) successful attacks in dis-tant areas would lead to enemy forces having to be diverted to them, thereby creating more favorable circumstances in home waters. Instead of only caring about one piece of the global ocean, Raeder saw the whole watery portion of the planet as his battlefi eld.

Hitler & Plan Z

With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the Versailles Treaty was put aside and the navy was given a new construction plan and greater funding. The navy was to be built up to 13 battleships, four

aircraft carriers, 15 pocket battleships, 23 heavy cruisers and 22 destroyers. The ships were to be built with large diesel fuel bunkers to allow them to participate in extended operations globally. For home waters, two battlegroups would be formed, each around a core of battleships and one aircraft carrier, screened by destroyers that would then be used exclusively to attain and maintain control of the Baltic and North Seas. To supplement those forces the navy was to coordinate major efforts in mine and submarine warfare while also working closely with the Luftwaffe’s land-based aircraft.

The home waters formations also had multiple operational roles beyond local sea control. They were to convoy the Scandinavian iron ore shipments, facilitate the movement of raiders

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Kriegsmarine war badge for commerce raiding. Kriegsmarine war badge for service on the high seas.

Kriegsmarine war badge for blockade running.

A British propaganda poster from the era of the German surface raiders

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Key Voyages

The H MS Jervis Bay was the sole escort for a convoy of 37 ships departing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on their way to Great Britain in November 1940. She had originally been a cruise ship, hastily converted into a convoy escort at the beginning of World War II. She mounted 6-inch guns of World War I vintage. On 5 November she moved to head off a lone ship that was spotted approaching the convoy on an intercept course. The attacking vessel turned out to be the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer; so the Jervis Bay’s captain gave the order for the convoy to scatter while his vessel tried to fi ght her off. He managed to delay the battleship long enough to deny all but fi ve ships as prizes to the Germans. The Scheer damaged three other ships while sending Jervis Bay to the bottom. The “auxiliary cruiser” was hopelessly outmatched by the purpose-designed raider’s 11-inch guns; her commander received the Victoria Cross posthumously for his effort.

That was only the start of one of the most successful raider sorties by the Kriegsmarine in all of World War II. Not only were two British convoys ordered back to Halifax, but the Admiralty also made the crucial decision no convoy would move without at least one battleship in escort.

Admiral Scheer was a Deutschland-class armored cruiser (a.k.a. “pocket battleship”), which had been built as a result of the treaty restrictions on German naval development. Within those restrictions, all ships had to be kept under a 10,000-ton limit. In order to comply, German builders used the latest

welding techniques and triple-gun turrets to save weight, and diesel engines to cut down on coal. Though the resultant vessels couldn’t stand up to full-fl edged Allied battleships, the German ships’ primary purpose was to operate as commerce raiders. The maximum speed of the class was 28.5 knots, which was slower than the most advanced vessels of 1939 but was still fast enough to be competitive at the start of the war, and they had the impressive operational range of 18,650 miles.

Fully loaded, Scheer weighed 16,000 tons, and even unloaded she barely made the revised treaty limit of 12,600. She was 613.75 feet long with a 71.25-foot beam, and had four diesel engines producing 56,800 horsepower for her two propeller shafts. She had six 11-inch guns in two triple-turrets, and eight 5.9-inch

secondaries. Her fl ak batteries consisted of six 4.1-inch and eight 37mm and 20mm guns. Eight 21-inch aft torpedo tubes were complemented by two fl oatplanes that could be launched from a single catapult. Her crew of 1,150 was commanded by Capt. T heodore Krancke.

The Scheer’s wartime career started inaus-piciously when the Bristol Blenheim bombers of the Royal Air Force’s 107 Squadron attacked her berth at Wilhelmshaven on 4 September 1939. She was hit by four bombs, which did enough damage to send her into overhaul. She spent the next several months in repairs, while others of her sister ships gained fame—as did the Admiral Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate—or ignominy—as did the Deutschland when she returned home from a cruise after having accomplished absolutely nothing.

Admiral Scheer completed repairs just as France fell, and conducted sea trials during the Battle of Britain. By October, Raeder managed to convince an increasingly reluctant Hitler to allow her a convoy-raiding cruise in the Atlantic. Assisting her in the mission was the supply ship Nordmark, a vessel whose participation proved invaluable.

On 1 November 1940, Scheer passed through the Denmark Strait undetected and was free in the Atlantic. On the 5th one of her fl oatplanes discovered the convoy that led to the action described above. In six hours Scheer sank Jervis Bay and 53,000 tons of other shipping.

The British reacted by recalling two convoys to Halifax and sending the battleships Nelson and Rodney, along with the battlecruisers Hood, Renown and Repulse, in pursuit of the German

armored cruiser. Krancke—alerted by B-Dienst, the German Navy’s interception effort against British naval transmissions—was told of those deployments and so moved south, deeper into the Atlantic and away from his pursuers.

Over the next month Scheer had a number of encounters. On 12 November she and Nordmark helped to refi t the German freighter Eurofi eld, which had been hiding out in T enerife (in Spain’s Canary Islands), and resupplied the Thor, a “Q Ship” (a raider disguised as a merchantman), which was already operating in the Atlantic.

On the 24th Scheer encountered the 7,500-ton Port Hobart and sank her. In early December she sank the 6,200-ton Tribesmen off the coast of Gambia. Shortly after that the Scheer developed engine trouble, and Krancke ordered only one would operate at

a time, except during battle, thus reducing the ship to a maximum speed of 22 knots. On the 14th she again met with Nordmark, which took on the 150 prisoners Scheer was carrying by then and transferred supplies.

The most fortunate capture for the Scheer came in December, when she took the 8,500-ton refrigeration ship Duquesa. She was loaded with eggs, tinned food, beef, mutton and bacon. That cargo was used not only to restock both Nordmark and Scheer, but also two other German ships, the Eurofi eld and Thor, who joined them on Christmas Day. The ships spent the holidays in the South Atlantic, where they refueled three Italian subs while the Scheer’s engines were also repaired.

During that time Krancke met with Thor’s skipper, Otto Kahler. They agreed it would be best to continue to operate separately, as the Scheer was likely to be immediately recognized as a German warship and Thor couldn’t keep up with her combat speed.

On 8 January 1941 the Scheer began to hunt again, heading toward Freetown, hoping to fi nd a convoy that had eluded Admiral Hipper several weeks earlier. Though Scheer didn’t fi nd those ships, she did capture Sandfjord, a Norwegian oiler, sending her and her 11,000-ton cargo back to Bordeaux with a prize crew.

Three days later the Scheer encountered two other ships, and by pretending to be a British vessel, captured both. One was the 5,500-ton Dutch Barneveld, and the other the 5,100-ton British Stanpark. The latter was a

a time, except during battle, thus reducing for a convoy of 37 ships departing from Halifax,

On 5 November she moved to head off a lone ship that was spotted approaching the convoy

turned out to be the German pocket battleship

gave the order for the convoy to scatter while his vessel tried to fi ght her off. He managed to delay the battleship long enough to deny all but

Scheer

The Scheer’s Capt. Krancke.

The Admiral Scheer as laid down in 1934.

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Buy Now! The Admiral Scheer as laid down in 1934.The Admiral Scheer as laid down in 1934.

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