Books
Poor little sausage
Max Hastings
Donitz: The Last Fiihrer Peter Padfield (Gollancz £12.95)
The German U-boat campaign in the Second World War possessed much in common with the Allied strategic bomber offensive. Both were attempts to achieve victory by economic strangulation, directed by men with an almost messianic belief in the weapons under their command. Both demanded sacrificial heroism from the crews responsible for carrying them out. And while both inflicted enormous damage upon the enemy, each was later seen to have added immeasurably to the horrors of total war.
It would be unjust to carry the com- parison any further and consider Bomber Command's Sir Arthur Harris alongside the German U-boat Command's Karl DOnitz. Both were men of exceptional single- mindedness, but Harris was merely a dedicated professional airman, while Donitz was a Nazi fanatic of the most detestable kind. Post-war attempts to repre- sent him, if not as a good German, at least as not a bad one, seem grotesque when con- sidered alongside his recorded tributes to Hitler.
`The huge force which the Ftihrer radiates', he wrote fervently in August 1943, 'his unshakable confidence, his far- sighted judgement of the situation in Italy have made it plain during these days what very poor little sausages we all are in com- parison with the Fuhrer, and that our knowledge, our version of things outside our limited sphere is fragmentary. Anyone who believes he can do better than the Ftihrer is foolish.'
DOnitz was born the son of a professional engineer in 1891. He joined the Kaiser's navy as a cadet and rose steadily through the ranks to command a U-boat in World War I before being captured by the British. Marked by his ruthless professionalism for high command from an early age, he was closely associated with the creation of the new secret Nazi U-boat arm, and became its commander in October 1936.
Like the bomber enthusiasts among the airmen, DOnitz was passionately convinced of the war-winning powers of his own force even when this was nowhere near large enough to implement his pack tactics effec- tively. While he paid lip service to the laws of war against unarmed merchant ships, after September 1939 he quickly made it clear that he believed only a ruthless, unrestricted campaign against British trade could be successful. With 300 U-boats, he believed, his command alone could bring Britain to her knees. Yet he entered the war with only 22 boats available for the vital theatre, the Atlantic. Alongside his struggle against the Royal Navy in the next six years, he was waging an equally desperate cam- paign within the Nazi war machine for allocations of steel, skilled labour, and high quality crews.
The early chapters of Peter Padfield's biography can politely be called pedestrian. The book begins to come into its own with his narrative of the battle of the Atlantic, which can be seen today in a new perspec- tive with the knowledge of British code- breaking revealed in Patrick Beesly's brilliant study, Very Special Intelligence. At sea as in the air, in the beginning the Ger- mans profited immensely from the profi- ciency of their prewar services, so much more deadly than their British counter- parts.
But as the war progressed, so the Allied genius in exploiting the talents of civilians and scientists began to tell against the enemy. The Germans found no place in their highest councils of war for such men as R. V. Jones and Pat Blackett. As the U-boat war intensified, there is a striking contrast between the growing skill and in- genuity of the Allies, their outstanding command organisation, against the ab- solute lack of imagination displayed by DOnitz and his cohorts. As Padfield points out, the German sought to direct one of the most critical campaigns of the war with the aid of only a handful of staff officers. He never accepted the possibility that the fallibility of the U-boat ciphers might be responsible for the mounting submarine losses. As the tide of battle turned against Germany, the gaunt admiral with the bright, porcine little eyes sought refuge in growing ruthlessness.
`Rescue no one and take no one with you', directed Donitz in a fleet order. 'Have no care for ships' boats. Weather condi-
tions and the proximity of land are of n° account. Care only for your own boat and strive to achieve the next success as soon as possible! We must be hard in this war. The enemy started the war in order to destroy us, therefore nothing else matters.' Donitz had the papers of time-expired crewmen who declined to return to sea stamped with the words 'Left The Fatherland in the hour of need'. He lavish- ed Knights' Crosses upon successful corn- manders, and heaped privileges upon their men which included a free issue of second- hand watches shipped in crates from the concentration camps where their owlets had no more need of them. When he wok over from Raeder as C-in-C of the navy °It 30 January 1943, the war at sea had effec- tively become the U-boat war. To the verY end, Donitz preached that greater deter" mination by the submarine fleet could still yield victory. And as late as 19 April, 1945' he wrote: 'In a prisoner-of-war camp for the men of the auxiliary cruiser Comoran in Australia, a petty officer as camp senior, systematically and unsuspected by the guards, did away with Communists who came to his attention amongst the ereviii• This petty officer is certain of rnY recognition for his resolve and his execu- tion. I shall promote him with all means on his return because he has proved he 15 suitable as a leader.' Like so many other Nazi leaders, Dlinit2 had become demented. He inhabited a tasy world which persisted during his bile!' ludicrous days as FOhrer after Hitler s suicide. On 20 May 1945, he proteste. d vigorously to the Allied Control Comfills- sion about the campaign to eliminate Nat- ional Socialism, and warned that its conti- nuance would destroy the sympathy of the German people for the British, and cause them to turn to the Russians. It is difficult today to determine the justice of Donitz's ten-year sentence a; Nuremburg, because it will remain one 0t, the unanswerables of history how mat? Nazis had to die to purge their society s crime against humanity. Donitz unques- tionably gave orders which caused tne, deaths of thousands of Allied merchant seamen, hundreds of women and children among ships' passengers. But what then Qf the directors of the Allied bomber offers sive? Donitz authorised the execution oi Royal Navy torpedo-boat crew uncle_ Hitler's Commando Order. He was u. doubtedly aware of the concentration camps. He was one of Hitler's key In struments of war. It is far more difficult _ find an ounce of excuse for the profession service officers who supported Nazism for those such as Goebbels and Him who were merely gigantic gangsters. di By surviving in peaceful retirement nn t 1980, DOnitz achieved the kind of resPec., that is granted to the very old age of eve:, very evil men. But as Padfield concludes day, if Goering, Keitel, RibbentroP ano Jodl deserved to die on the scaffold, s° 1°d, did Hitler's unyielding, unlovely Grand miral.
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