Kriegsmarine.

 Kriegsmarine.

The Kriegsmarine (War Navy)  was founded in 1935 from the Reichsmarine, the same year of the signing of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June, 1935. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.

It was formed after the passing of the "Law for the Reconstruction of the National Defense Forces". This law brough back into existance a free standing German army, navy and airforce, something that had been essentially banned after the end of World War I.

           With the end of World War I and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Weimar Republic - the successor to Imperial Germany - was allowed only a small defensive military force known as the Reichswehr. The Reichswehr's size and composition was strictly controlled by the Allies in the hope that by restricting its constitution they could prevent future German military aggression. The Reichswehr consisted of 100,000 men divided between a small standing army, the Reichsheer, and a small defensive navy, the Reichsmarine.

           In 1933 the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) came to power and the infamous Third Reich was born. Two years later in 1935 the Treaty of Versailles was renounced and the Reichswehr became the Wehrmacht. The newly formed Wehrmacht would still consist of an army and a navy - the renamed Heer and Kriegsmarine, but a new airforce was born as well - the Luftwaffe.

           The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmaments under Plan Z, a large-scale plan calling for the construction of multiple naval vessels. The ships of the Kriegsmarine, some of which (mostly battlecruisers) were made under Plan Z, fought during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine was Adolf Hitler, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine.

           The Kriegsmarine's most famous ships were the U-boat wolf packs, constructed after Plan Z was abandoned on the eve of World War. They were submarine groups which seriously harassed Allied convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic. Both the U-boats and pocket battleships were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the earlier years of the war. However, the adoption of convoy escorts later in the war greatly reduced the effectiveness of naval strikes on convoys. At the end of the Second World War, the Kriegsmarine's remaining ships were divided up amongst the Allied powers and were used for minesweeping.

           The Kriegsmarine was involved in World War II from its outset and participated in the Battle of Westerplatte and the Battle of the Danzig Bay during the Invasion of Poland. In 1939, major events for the Kriegsmarine were the loss of the Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate, the sinking of the British battleship HMS Royal Oak and the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous. Submarine attacks on Britain's vital maritime supply routes (Battle of the Atlantic) started immediately at the outbreak of war, although hampered by the lack of well placed ports from which to operate.

           In April 1940, the German Navy was heavily involved in the invasion of Norway, where it suffered significant losses, including the heavy cruiser Blücher sunk by torpedoes from Oscarsborg Fortress in Oslofjord, ten destroyers lost in the Battles of Narvik (half of German destroyer strength at the time) and two light cruisers lost elsewhere during the campaign. The Kriegsmarine did however sink some British warships during this campaign, including the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious.

           The losses in the Norwegian Campaign left only a handful of undamaged heavy ships available for the planned, but never executed, invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion) in the summer of 1940. There were serious doubts that the invasion sea routes could have been protected against British naval interference. The fall of France and the conquest of Norway gave German submarines greatly improved access to British shipping routes in the Atlantic. At first, British convoys lacked escorts that were adequate either in numbers or equipment and, as a result, the submarines had much success for few losses (this period was dubbed the "First Happy Time").

           Italy entered the war in June 1940, and the Battle of the Mediterranean began: from September 1941 to May 1944 some 62 German submarines were transferred there, sneaking past the British naval base at Gibraltar. The Mediterranean submarines sunk 24 major Allied warships (including 12 destroyers, 4 cruisers, 2 aircraft carriers and 1 battleship) and 94 merchant ships (449,206 tons of shipping). None of the Mediterranean submarines made it back to their home bases as they were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their crews at the end of the war.

           In 1941 one of the four modern German battleships, the Bismarck sank HMS Hood while breaking out into the Atlantic for commerce raiding. The Bismarck was in turn hunted down by much superior British forces after being crippled by an airborne torpedo. She was subsequently scuttled after being rendered defenceless by two British battleships.

           Throughout the war the Kriegsmarine was responsible for coastal artillery protecting major ports and important coastal areas. It also operated anti-aircraft batteries to protect major port.

           During 1941, the Kriegsmarine and the United States Navy became de facto belligerents, although war was not formally declared, leading to the sinking of the USS Reuben James. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against the United States in December 1941 led to another phase of the Battle of the Atlantic. In Operation Drumbeat and subsequent operations until August 1942, a large number of Allied merchant ships were sunk by submarines off the American coast as the Americans had not prepared for submarine warfare, despite clear warnings (this was the so-called Second happy time for the German navy). The situation became so serious that military leaders feared for the whole allied strategy.The vast American ship building capabilities and naval forces were however now brought into the war and soon more than offset any losses inflicted by the German submariners. In 1942, the submarine warfare continued on all fronts, and when German forces in the Soviet Union reached the Black Sea, a few submarines were eventually transferred there.

           The Battle of the Barents Sea was an attempt by a German naval force to attack an Allied Arctic convoy. However, the advantage was not pressed home and they returned to base. There were serious implications: this failure infuriated Hitler, who nearly enforced a decision to scrap the surface fleet. Instead, resources were diverted to new U-boats, and the surface fleet became a lesser threat to the Allies.

           After 1943 when the Scharnhorst had been sunk in the Battle of North Cape by HMS Duke of York, most German surface ships were blockaded in, or close to, their ports as a fleet in being, for fear of losing them in action and to tie up British naval forces. The largest ship of these ships, the battleship Tirpitz, was stationed in Norway as a threat to Allied shipping and also as a defence against a potential Allied invasion. When she was sunk, after several attempts, by British bombers in late 1944 (Operation Catechism), several British capital ships could be moved to the Far East.

           From late 1944 until the end of the war, the surface fleet of Kriegsmarine was heavily engaged in providing artillery support to the retreating German land forces along the Baltic coast and in ferrying civilian refugees to the western parts of Germany (Lübeck, Hamburg) in large rescue operations. Large parts of the population of eastern Germany fled the approaching Red Army out of fear for Soviet retaliation and mass rapes and killings. The Kriegsmarine evacuated large numbers of civilians in the evacuation of East Prussia and Danzig in January 1945. It was during this activity that the catastrophic sinking of several large passenger ships occurred: the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Goya was sunk by Soviet submarines, while the SS Cap Arcona was sunk by British bombers, each sinking claiming thousands of civilian lives. The Kriegsmarine also provided important assistance in the evacuation of the fleeing German civilians of Pomerania and Stettin in March and April 1945. In the last stage of the war, the Kriegsmarine also organized a number of divisions of infantry from its personnel (submarine crews and so on).

           During 1943 and 1944, due to Allied anti-submarine tactics and better equipment the U-boat fleet started to suffer heavy losses. Radar, longer range air cover, Sonar, improved tactics and new weapons all contributed. German technical developments, such as the Schnorchel, attempted to counter these. New U-boat types, the Elektroboote, were in development and, had these become operational in sufficient numbers, the Allied advantage would have been eroded. Between 1943 and 1945, a group of U-boats known as the "Monsun Boats" (Monsun Gruppe) operated in the Indian Ocean from Japanese bases in the occupied Dutch East Indies and Malaya. Allied convoys had not yet been organized in those waters, so the initial sinkings were plentiful. However, this situation was soon remedied. During the later war years, the "Monsun Boats" were also used as a means of exchanging vital war supplies with Japan.

           The Kriegsmarine can be said to have consisted of three main components between 1935 and 1945, individual naval vessels, naval formations consisting of specific types of ships and a wide variety of ground based units. From these three main components the Kriegsmarine fielded thousands of ships and hundreds of naval formations and ground units. Between 1939 and 1945 over 1.5 million served in the Kriegsmarine. Over 65,000 were killed, over 105,000 went missing and over 21,000 were wounded. Of the 7361 men awarded the initial grade of the highest German combat honor of Second World War, the Knights Cross, 318 were from the Kriegsmarine making up 4% of the total awarded.

           Of all the branches of the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine was the most under-appreciated. It fought against superior numbers on almost every front with a force greatly limited by a lack of effective coordination and a harsh misunderstanding from within the German High Comand (OKW). Although Allied air and naval power largely destroyed the entire German High Seas Fleet and Uboot force, the smaller and auxiliary vessels of the Kriegsmarine continued to serve effectively until the last hours of WWII. These vessels saw service along thousands of miles of coast in every theater of war and provided an important link in the backbone of the Wehrmacht.

           German naval ground units also provided a critical service during World War II, manning massive guns along the Atlantic Wall in the west and naval flak and artillery units all across Western and Eastern Europe. There were also countless naval infantry, engineer and communications units as well. In the last months of Second World War most all of the naval ground units were involved directly in fighting of some form or another, some naval units even took part in the Battle for Berlin in 1945.

           The Kriegsmarine was offically disbanded in August of 1946 by the Allied Control Commission, although many smaller Kriegsmarine ships survived on active service, now under Allied control, as a part of the German contingent to clear the oceans and seas of mines sown by Axis and Allies alike.