The Deed Is All

(See Cover)

As American troops last week landed in Northern Ireland, German U-boats were grimly at work sinking American ships off the Atlantic Coast. The two facts suggested a reasonable connection: the Germans had set out to attack the U.S. convoy but it had slipped through their net, and having missed their first objective the Germans chose their second best.

The Battle of the Atlantic was awesomely close to the U.S. coast, and between the first and second waves of coastal sinkings the U.S. Navy indicated that the German Navy might pay a first-rate price for its second-choice attack. Reassuringly tough and sufficiently broad to keep the enemy guessing was the Navy's announcement:

"Some of the recent visitors to our territorial waters will never enjoy the return portion of their voyage. Furthermore, the percentage of one-way traffic is increasing while that of two-way traffic is satisfactorily on the decline. But there will be no information given out about the fate of the enemy submarine excursionists who don't get home, until that information is no longer of aid and comfort to the enemy. . . .

"The Nazis think themselves pretty clever in the field of psychological warfare. Secrecy surrounding the fate of their submarines is a counterblow the American people can give them which may serve to shake some of their superconfidence. ... All the people can make the same contribution. Even if you have seen a submarine captured or destroyed, keep it to yourself. . . ."

The Guesser most interested in the fate of German subs in Yankee waters is thin-lipped, seam-faced, British-hating Vice Admiral Karl Doenitz, creator and Commander of Germany's U-boat fleet.

Win or lose his end of the war, Karl Doenitz will never lose the dubious historical honor of being the man who could--and did--lay the groundwork for the greatest submarine fleet in history, in utter defiance of the Versailles Treaty and under the very noses of Allied investigating missions.

At 50 he has devoted half his life to submarines. He is a master of every phase of his subject. Just as he is convinced that continuance of unrestricted U-boat warfare in the last war would have produced a German victory by 1920, he believes that his own persistence may win this one.

Until the Nazis made him a commander of the first submarine flotilla in 1936 (he shunned formal affiliation with the Weimar regime, worked and was financed under cover), he had no official status. But years before the Nazis came to power he began preparing to rebuild Germany's U-boat Navy. There was not a single major step in the process that he did not dominate:

>He perfected a liaison system between plane and submarine.

>His improvements on supersensitive hydrophones, according to boasts of the Nazi press, is protection against Britain's deadly, effective submarine detector, the "ASDIC,"* allegedly so potent that it can spot a submerged submarine at rest with engines silent.

>His training of submarine crews emphasized democratic relationships between officers and men to avoid the difficulty with mutinous officer-bullied crews which helped break down the German U-boat service in World War I.

>He supervised every detail of submarine construction, and was responsible for the dispersal of factories throughout occupied Europe to escape British bombings.

>He originated a spare-parts system of submarine manufacture, which gave Germany a U-boat fleet, packed away in crates and waiting assembly, long before the Versailles restrictions were overtly junked; which now makes possible overland transport of unassembled submarines.

The Wolf Pack. Two years ago this week Karl Doenitz declared that "it makes no difference to the present-day German U-boat fleet' whether British ships sail alone or are convoyed. . . . The truth is that the danger increases for neutral ships when they are members of a British convoy." But as U.S. strength showed up in British convoys, Karl Doenitz changed his mind, shrewdly withdrew a large part of his U-boat fleet into his native Baltic, emerged with a new, radical offensive technique known to the Germans as the Rudelsystem, to the Allies as the "wolf pack": a number of submarines attack the center of a convoy, preferably at night, loose torpedoes in every direction, slip away at top surface speed. (In a wolf-pack attack the Reuben James was sunk.)

Another favorite Doenitz variation on this theme: the wolf-pack leader singles out one ship in a convoy, draws the escort's attention to the single encounter while the rest of the pack, often operating on the surface in the dark, move in on the unprotected merchant units.

The Bacon. At his desk in Kiel, hardworking Karl Doenitz can, by twisting his close-cropped head, ponder a wall portrait of prong-bearded old Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, World War I evangelist of unrestricted U-boat warfare. Inscribed on the portrait he could read the U-boat credo: Die Tat ist alles--The deed is all. In other words: the only thing that matters in U-boating is the bacon you bring home.

In the first year of the war Admiral Doenitz found operations in close-in British waters so costly* that he virtually ceased operations there, giving over the areas to his and the Luftwaffe's mines. Since U.S. warships joined British in convoying, his attacks on transatlantic convoys have also become more costly. The entrance of the U.S. into the war gave him a new field of operations, the Atlantic Coast. There he has another chance, perhaps his last, to prove that U-boats can bring home the bacon.

The transatlantic mission is not ideal for U-boats. The voyage to the U.S. coast requires long-range U-boats which are more difficult to build in quantity. Operating from European bases, his subs may normally count on ten to twelve days in U.S. waters after allowances for a possibly unprofitable 7,000-mile round trip. They may be able to extend the stay two or three months if they can afford the luxury of a wandering supply ship. And off the U.S. coast his submarines will have to operate within the range of land-based planes and blimps, and small Navy and Coast Guard patrol boats, not to mention mine fields and submarine nets close to ports.

Despite these difficulties, Karl Doenitz succeeded in making his first transatlantic raid yield several rashers of bacon. By comparison the Japs lone hit-&-run, shoot-&-miss submarine appearance off the Pacific Coast (which sank only two ships out of a score of attacks) was totally ineffective. By the end of last week the U.S. Navy had admitted the loss of seven ships totaling 49,350 tons in the Atlantic. From Karl Doenitz' office came a counterclaim of 18 merchantmen totaling 125,000 tons, including "three tankers in the immediate vicinity of New York harbor."

Some, though by no means all, of Germany's sub commanders in the last war were dashing, romantic figures, ruthless in their destruction of merchant tonnage but usually solicitous over welfare of survivors. But Doenitz has not trained his men for gallantry. His victories are in Davy Jones's locker.

The crew of the Norness (torpedoed off Long Island) asserted they were strafed by machine guns as they tossed in lifeboats. U-boats that sank ships frequently stood by and watched helpless sailors drowning in the water. Doenitz' U-boat campaign is fought for keeps and one of its objects is to put terror into the sailors of the U.S. Merchant Marine. The reactions of American seamen should give few signs that this policy would be successful. Survivors of the sunken City of Atlanta, struggling in the water, shouted threats and curses at the U-boat playing its searchlight on them. Boatswain Rolf Claussen of the tanker Allan Jackson, telling how his men launched a lifeboat in roiling water said: "We were strong, with the strength of knowing certain death if we failed." Chief Engineer Thomas B. Hutchins, injured, looked glumly at his lifeboat's hardtack supply--he'd left his false teeth aboard.

But most survivors wanted to ship out again as soon as possible. Rudolph Musts, radio operator of the sunk Latvian freighter Ciltvaira, expressed the view of the overwhelming majority when he said: "We couldn't fight back this time, but probably our next ship will be armed. It will be different then. You will see what we can do when the devils attack."

Under-Seaman. The German master of undersea warfare came from a family of landholders and shipowners in Mecklenburg Province on the Baltic. It was almost out of the question for him to consider any career save the Navy.

In 1913 at 21, an ensign, he was assigned to the light cruiser Breslau with the Mediterranean Fleet. At the outbreak of World War I he took part in the dramatic escape of the Breslau and the battleship Goeben to Constantinople, where they were turned over to the Turks. Doenitz saw action in the Black Sea during the German efforts to incite Turkey to war on Russia. Opportunities for sunbathing were not sufficiently attractive and he chafed at the lazy life on the surface, and in 1916 obtained transfer to the risky submarine service.

Raised to Oberleutnant, he commanded first the U-25, then the UB-68 in the Mediterranean. In October 1918, he attacked a convoy off Malta, was engaged by a British sloop trawler and steamer. Brought to the surface by depth charges and attacked by gunfire, he calmly scuttled his boat, was packed off with his crew for brief internment in a British prison camp.

Returning to post-war Germany, he was persuaded by Grand Admiral (then Captain) Erich Raeder to stick with the Navy--the crumb of a fleet left the Reich by the Versailles Treaty. He finally cast his lot with the Nazi Party solely because of his conviction that the upstart Brown Shirts would break down Versailles restrictions against recreation of his fleet. He gained powerful supporters in the German Inner Circle: Admiral Otto Schniewind, former director of naval education, now Chief of Staff of the German Navy High Command, is his close friend. The Luftwaffe's Hermann Goering supports Doenitz' frequent demands for materials and money, though he is often said to oppose similar demands from Admiral Raeder. Gossip is that the porcine Marshal likes Doenitz because of quick-witted sympathy expressed one day when Herr Goering got his fat stomach caught in the hatch of a U-boat he was about to inspect.

But gimpy little Paul Joseph Goebbels, though he publicly blamed the Athenia disaster on Britain, reportedly assailed Doenitz in a Cabinet meeting for "the ruthless sinking of the Athenia which has prejudiced neutrals." Propaganda Minister Goebbels is said to be coldly suspicious of the U-boat Admiral's close friendship for the daring onetime U-boat commander Pastor Martin Niemoeller, whose services in Berlin Karl Doenitz attended right up to the time when Pastor Niemoeller was jailed for preaching against the Nazis.

Because he spends so much time in personal investigation, Karl Doenitz' followers call him Chief Mussel Sniffer. One day two years before the war, dissatisfied with British Admiralty official reports on currents around the Portland naval base, he boarded U-37 and went to see for himself. The destroyer Wolfhound spotted the strange sub, dropped a couple of practice detonators, scared the German visitor to the surface. While Doenitz fumed in the torpedo room, the U-boat commander made proper apologies. Then the U-boat went home. Doenitz reportedly confided to a fellow officer that, on hearing the depth charges, he thought the "raving idiot in Berlin" had started shooting without notifying his Naval High Command.

But for his Nazi master Doenitz gladly practices the thing his life has been devoted to: ruthlessness at sea. In the last war there was not enough of it to suit him. In the campaign off the U.S. coast he will have a chance to find whether it pays--or whether he has been wrong all his life.

*Named for Britain's Anti-Submarine Defense Investigation Committee.

*British unofficial estimates: "Several thousand" U-boat prisoners, a "minimum of 250" German and Italian submarines sunk.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.