Yes, but at least they were achieving an objective. The u-boats achieved relatively nothing.

Nemo

:rotfl:

I don't agree with this to be honest. Nazi or not Donitz was also a professional soldier (and a really good one as well) so all his decisions were primarily based on sound strategic arguments. I agree there was a level of policy making as well, since Hitler was always intervening and altering the decisions of his Generals, but that doesn't mean Donitz was a yes man. Kaitel yes he was one. Donitz not. I feel that almost all Germans (especially the ones in High ranks that had access to loads of information) knew from 1942 onwards that the war was basically lost. Because they were Germans though and had the Prussian mentality of Honour-Country-Duty they were keen to stand and fight or die. The same applied with the U-Boat crews and their high command.

Difficult to judge. In my opinion if Dönitz had been a dedicated Nazi and a yes man, there would have been some things differently.
First of all Dönitz always tried to stay away from Berlin as much as possible, since he saw himself more as a soldier than a politician, and thus saw his duty to stay close to his men and do his job.
Second. You normally try not to say "NO" to a man like Hitler too often, because it may get you killed. In my opinion he often tried to walk a thin line to improve his men's conditions and equipment. This obviously included giving his consent to things he didn't support. Nevertheless he opposed Hitler in several occasions when it came to military issues. With little effect though. In contrast his sparring partner Göring was just filling his own pockets, creeping up Adolf's ass and was inebt at commanding the Luftwaffe and even jealous and uncooperative if he had to support either the Wehrmacht or the Kriegsmarine.
Third: By Mid 1944 it didn't matter on what front you were fighting if you were German. The Allies had air superiority, were advancing on the South from Italy, West from France and East from Russia towards Germany, and the supply of raw materials was at an all-time low. It's remarkable, that there were enough resources left to even put boats to sea at all. Some Luftwaffe squadrons couldn't even lift off for lack of fuel.
Fourth: He was practically the only high-ranking officer who had the men following him dedicatedly till his death in 1982.
Fifth: Dönitz was made FdU by Admiral Raeder, after serving as a cruiser captain and having served on uboats in WWI. What made him ideal for the job was the fact that he had a concept for building up a uboat force and a tactic to defeat the convoy system. Most other high ranking officers including Raeder and Göring were politically active with the NSDAP long berfore Hitler came to power.

If you see Dönitz as a dedicated Nazi you also have to see every major military leader as Nazi.

A little known fact concerning this story is that in 1978 an attempt was made to make a movie out of Bernard Dummkopf's book. Several u-boat replicas were built, but every single one sank under mysterious circumstances. All of the production crew and half the actors came down with food poisoning; something to do with herr Dummkopf advising the catering crew. In fact, things started going so badly that the producers finally pulled the plug on the whole project, bought up all the footage and burned it, swore the actors to silence and said that if any word of this leaked out they would "sue everybody and everything in sight".

I only know this because my second cousin's sister-in-law's uncle told me the story while drunk. Of course I can't prove any of this.

Sending soldier to death is I suppose the duty of any officer.
Sending them to sure death? well... why not. The only question was "does it worth it on the stategic point?"
As long as german had u-boat at seas, allied spent a lot of resource to deal with them. Life against resource. That was the deal... nothing else than a diversion.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I think that sending his men back out on patrol iwith broken, antiquated weapons and defenses was a choice made out of necessity and not one he took any pride in. Once D-Day got underway however, not only did he send a handful of subs to try and disrupt the attack/disembarcation (most without schnorkels - therefore sitting ducks), but he ordered them to sacrifice themselves by ramming once they were out of torpedos, and that is something I could never agree with.
Strategy calls for falling back or retreating when outnumbered/overpowered, and at some point you have to recognize that you have either lost the battle/war and that it is pointless/counter-productive to keep oredering your men to a certain death.

just my opinion...

hahahahahaha:rotfl: :rotfl:

In last months of WW2 allied air bombing were devastating to germans cities. As we know aircraft was the biggest u-boat enemy. So - if Donitz would stop sending his u-boats "to certain death", high number of bombers used against uboats would be used against german cities. Besides, since mid 1943 (or even since 1942) u-boats were de facto only weapon that could "hurt" allies. Donitz certainly knew that battle of atlantic is lost, but germans submarines couldn't just leave Atlantic. Why? Because of strategic goals - tiding up of enemy forces, especially aircraft. Yes, hundreds of u-boats crews for thousends of civilians in german cities...



About Donitz as "dedicated nazi". I think it wasnt so black and white. When i was less educated (many years ago :) ) i was wondering how it was possible that entire nation become nazi. Now i know about Germanys political and economy situation after first world war which helped Hitler gain power. There were also communists. Germans had choice: nazis or reds. For people like Donitz it was no choice: only Hitler. Try to imagine yourselfs and your country in that situation...i'm no pro-nazi or something, but if i were living in Germany in 20's/30's i would be a nazi. Back then being a "nazi" wasnt something nagative: some english officer who wasnt satisfied with his government politics, told Donitz (in 1930's): "Give us Hitler!". Europe was not only scared, but also amazed of what Hitler done in Germany.


About Laconia incident and Nuremburg trials: in 1960's some american general (cant remember name) said that he ordered to attack uboats which were helping survivors from Laconia and he said something like: "we didnt know there were any British, but even if we knew it wouldnt matter to us, as it was war...". No comment...
Also Grosadmiral was sentenced for no reason. It was just vengeance.



PS. Could you, please, tell me how to make this funny german "s" on my keyboard (like in "groSadmiral)? Thanks :)
PS2: Sorry if i made some mistakes (grammar etc.) - english isnt my native language.

A very good post Falke, if one wants to understand WW2, start with WW1.

Travelling with my lap top right now so no time to research my books at home but is it not the case that at the Nuremburg war trials Doenitz ran the risk of receiving the death penalty for giving the order for 'unrestricted submarine warfare' :hmm:
However an American Admiral, Nimitz or some other testified in his defence stating that he gave a similar order to the US subs against the Japanese....therefore helping Doenitz from such a penalty :hmm:

Yes, they did know. As mentioned earlier, the book 'Iron Coffins' shows this clearly. I also read Donitz's book 'Ten Years and Ten Days', and it's interesting to note that they kept going out because they were trying to save as many civilians and ground troops as possible. According to the Admiral, the allies refused to enter into a seperate peace with the west, and the Germans knew the Russians would kill many soldiers and civilians as the moved west. The Germans had folks streaming from east to the western zones, and by keeping the pressure on with U-Boats, they felt thet could divert allied resources from the front, therefore allowing more time to keep the escape lanes open.