The Suicide Spirit

HITLER AND His ADMIRALS (275 pp.)--Anthony K. Martienssen--Dutton ($4).

At 10 p.m. on Oct. 12, 1939, the submarine U-47, commanded by Lieut. Gunther Prien, surfaced off the Orkneys. Prien noted in the log: "The English are kind enough to switch on all the coastal lights, so I can obtain the most exact fix . . ." At dawn the next morning the submarine lay submerged at a depth of 270 feet outside Scapa Flow. At 7:15 that night it surfaced and the crew ate a warm supper.

On land "everything is dark, high in the sky are the flickering Northern Lights, so that the bay, surrounded by highish mountains, is directly lit up from above. The blockships lie in the sound, ghostly as the wings of a theatre." Prien had studied the chart until he knew it by heart. "I am now repaid . . ."

About an hour after midnight the U-47 was within 3,200 yards of two battleships at anchor. The submarine was only 650 feet offshore; it was "disgustingly light." The torpedoes were fired, the submarine swung about and a torpedo fired from the stern tubes. After three minutes there was a loud explosion, followed by thundering columns of water and then by columns of fire. The harbor sprang into life. The destroyers in the anchorage were lit up. Cars sped along the highway. Directly opposite the submarine, a car stopped, turned around, and raced back toward town. Thinking the driver had seen him, Prien withdrew at full speed.

Hitlerian Promises. That night's daring work--the sinking of the Royal Oak--was one of the most clear-cut successes that the German navy achieved in World War II. Winston Churchill admiringly called it an "incredible . . . feat of arms." This book is a selection of the papers from some 60,000 files of German naval archives, containing practically all the official ships' logs, diaries and memoranda relating to the German navy up to April 1945. Hitler and His Admirals, unlike Liddell Hart's The German Generals Talk, contains no postwar interviews with German officers. Nor does it primarily concentrate on their differences with Hitler or their opinions of the Fuehrer's strategy. It consequently lacks the provocative, meaty, unexpected characterizations and anecdotes of Liddell Hart's book, but it is a far more orderly account of events. Hitler had promised that there would be no war with England until 1944 or 1945, and by that time the German navy's building program called for some 13 battleships and 16 cruisers.

When the war began, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder* wrote: "As far as the Navy is concerned, obviously it is in no way adequately equipped for the great struggle with Great Britain . . . it has built up a well-trained, suitably organized submarine arm, of which at the moment about 26 boats are capable of operations in the Atlantic; the submarine arm is still much too weak, however, to have any decisive effect on the war. The surface forces, moreover, are so inferior in number and strength that they can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly."

Hitler at Sea. Through the battle of the Atlantic, the invasion of Norway, the preparations for the invasion of Britain, this mood persisted. Hitler told Raeder: "On land I am a hero, but at sea I am a coward." He consequently gave the admirals a freedom of action that the generals never had. Author Martienssen (a South African, who is assistant foreign editor of the Economist) believes that Raeder made the most of it, used his small forces effectively, and was individually superior to the run of German officers.

Hitler and His Admirals is a compact and interesting book. It is particularly valuable for its underlining of German attitudes quite apart from the naval war: Hitler's fury at Italy's untimely invasion of Greece, his fear of U.S. opinion, the lack of understanding in Germany of what was happening in other countries.

It seems clear that Hitler had no consistent program for the navy and that he had a far less coherent plan for the war than he is generally credited with. The most striking revelation of his weakness is in the figures on U-boat losses. When the U.S. entered the war, nearly 250 U-boats were available; in the single month of June 1942, the Germans sank 145 ships. But in the months to come, the tide turned, as anti-submarine measures became effective. In the last four months of the war, with Doenitz running the navy (after Raeder's resignation in 1943), the Germans lost 120 U-boats while sinking 49 ships.

Gallantry. Says Martienssen: "Although . . . Doenitz's last campaign was both stupid and suicidal, one cannot but admire the gallantry of the U-boat crews, who, in spite of the overpowering weight of Allied naval forces, continued to fight in remote areas with undiminished spirit . . . The damage they did was negligible; the losses they suffered were enormous; and yet, alone of all Germany's armed forces, they fought on to the very last day of the war. Their record at sea during the whole war, too, was not as bad as it has been painted. Whatever they might have condoned or even applauded on shore, in all the evidence assembled at Nuernberg, there were only five cases of criminal conduct by U-boats at sea."

* Now serving the sentence of life imprisonment imposed at Nuernberg.

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