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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Yes, the one mans vision(Hilter) was not the vision of all. Didn't the U-boat arm claim to be no part of Nazi Gemany?
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IIRC that they made a special effort to keep the Kriegsmarine, or at least the U-bootwaffe as one of the least politicized arms of the the German armed forces. I know Doenitz never joined the Nazi party. Don't know much about Raeder, though.
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Originally Posted by melnibonian
In the Iron Coffins and a few other books of the period they do claim that U-Boat crews had nothing to do with the Nazis. That's of course not true. They had as much to do with the Nazi party as any other part of the German Army or the German people (with the exeption of the SS obviously). Some of them (like Luth) were die-hard Nazis were others did not support them. In general though they did tolerate them and up to a point agreed with them. Obviously after Germany entered the war all this became accademic. Their country was at war so there was no question about not doing their bst for the final victory or fight until the bitter end. Thet of course doesn't make them criminals but they share the same level of responsibility like the rest of the German people for what happen in 1939-1945.
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True. I would imagine that any branch of the German armed forces at the time had a percentage of true Nazi's in it that mirrored the overall percentage of true Nazis in the German population as a whole. But I think the point of it is that the Nazi doctrine was not ingrained as an integral part of the command structure of the Kriegsmarine. At least not to the degree of other branches of the German military, anyways.
Not trying to make excuses for them, of course.