Theory Into Practice

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Dramatis Personae
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Vice Adm. Wolfgang Wegener (1875-1956)
Wegener was born in Stettin, the son of a doctor. He joined the navy in 1894, where
he became a gunnery officer. During World War I he first served as the chief of staff of
1st Battle Squadron, leaving that post to become captain of the light cruiser Regensburg,
followed by a stint as commander of the battleship Nurnberg. After the war he stayed
on in the much diminished service, attaining the rank of vice admiral in 1926.
He was the author of a series of essays that in totality became known as the “Wegener
Thesis.” Those writings were a matter of controversy in Germany, and also had some
impact outside that country. The thesis was published in the Soviet Union, where commentators praised it for recognizing the strategic importance of the Scandinavian peninsula.
British commentators took a different view, maintaining any navy that couldn’t go where
it pleased when it pleased was really no navy at all. They maintained – not surprisingly, given Britain’s naval preeminence in Europe at the time – that geography was never
as important as having the brute battle line strength needed for outright sea control.
Adm. Erich Johann Albert Raeder (1876-1960)
The Bismarck unleashing a salvo against HMS Hood.
Theory Into Practice:
German Surface Raider Strategy
Background
T
he post-World War I German
Navy was limited by the
Versailles Treaty to no more
than six battleships of 10,000 tons
each, six cruisers of no more than
6,000 tons each, 12 destroyers of
no more than 800 tons each, eight
light cruisers and 32 torpedo boats.
Fifteen thousand men would be
allowed to crew those vessels, and no
submarines were to be allowed at all.
After the conclusion of the war, public opinion in Germany ran against the
navy. It was seen as having contributed
to the long duration of the war while
itself having turned out to have been
nothing more than a waste of resources
during it and, ultimately—in regard
to its overall nonperformance—it
was also seen as one of the causes
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of the war’s loss. Finally, while it had
been relegated to a small size by the
Versailles Treaty, the navy was then
further reduced by the still smaller
budgets allocated to it by the Weimar
Republic, which precluded it from even
reaching the limitations imposed on it.
In the run up to the First World
War, the navy had been developed in
accordance with the views of Grand
Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz. He advocated
a strategy in which the navy was to be
made large enough to threaten British
domination of the seas and, more
particularly, it was to be able to break
any British blockade of Germany by
forcing (and winning) a decisive battle
in the North Sea. When the British
subsequently established just such
a blockade at the English Channel
and between Scotland and Bergen,
Norway, Tirpitz’s plan fell apart. The
World at War 26 | oCT–NoV 2012
By David March
British were able to maintain that
blockade against the Germans.
The navy of the new Third Reich was
therefore immediately confronted with
three major problems: 1) a small number of ships; 2) inherent strategic limits
due to the geographic relationship
between Germany and her Allied opponents; and 3) a still limited budget that
had to be shared with the two other service branches, the army and air force.
At the same time, three inescapable
tasks would face the navy on the
outbreak of a new war: 1) protecting
Germany’s coasts from invasion; 2)
protecting German shipping within the
nation’s coastal waters; and 3) attacking
enemy ships and oceanic lines of
communication in some significant, or
even decisive, way. Further, given the
budgetary situation, those missions
continued on page 42 »
Raeder was born to a middle-class family in Schleswig-Holstein, the son of a
schoolmaster. He also joined the navy in 1894, and rose rapidly in the ranks. During World
War I he fought at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1914 and at Jutland in 1916. In 1920 he
participated in the Kapp Putsch, a far-right coup attempt against the Weimar Republic
aimed at preventing the new regime’s disbanding of the Freikorps. He was thereafter
marginalized for his role in the Putsch and, as punishment, was transferred to the naval
archives section, where, with nothing else to do, he threw himself into an intensive study of
naval strategy and history, eventually receiving a doctorate from the University of Kiel.
Through sheer persistence he hung on, surviving his internal exile and eventually rising to
overall command of the navy in 1928, which was at that time rife with internal dissension as
well as material problems. The navy was popularly blamed for first prolonging and then losing
the First World War. Its loyalty was also questioned due to the fact the general mutiny within it
in the autumn of 1918 had turned out to be the first step in the fall of the imperial government.
In order to speedily reunify the service, Raeder set in place a culture of uniformity in which
dissenting opinions simply weren’t tolerated. That approach led to Wegener’s forced retirement.
The opening of World War II saw Raeder win operational successes, including the
invasion of Norway, the prosecution of a U-Boat campaign, and convoy raids around the
world. After growing reversals of fortune, including the loss of the Bismarck and the failure
of Battle of the Barents Sea, Hitler in turn forced his resignation in January 1943.
After the war Raeder was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for his
part in plotting and fighting a war of aggression. The sentence was later reduced
and, due to deteriorating health, he was granted early release in 1955.
Adm. Raoul Castex (1878-1968)
Castex was a French naval theorist whose writings had a profound effect on Raeder and the
development of the German navy between the wars. Castex joined the French Navy in 1896 and
eventually became an instructor at the Ecole de Guerre Navale. After World War I he became
a rear admiral, and in 1936 he established the Institute for Higher National Defense Studies.
Between 1929 and 1939 he wrote a series of papers titled “Theories Strategiques,”
in which he discussed the links between land and naval warfare, concentrating on what
nations that were primarily land powers should do in regard to naval strategy. His thinking included the idea of relocating France’s armaments industry and capital to Algeria,
as that locale could be more easily defended in case of a new outbreak of war.
His strategy formed an important part of Raeder’s thought. The German was particularly
impressed by the Frenchman’s idea that opportunities for decisive naval battles were rare,
and that attempts to create them were futile. He emphasized tactics that encouraged the
development of what he called force organisée (organized forces). Such naval groupings would
be task-organized and sent to sea temporarily, as needed, to fight limited offensives. He also
stressed the need for commerce raiding, blockade, mines and amphibious warfare. ★
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Kriegsmarine war badge for commerce raiding.
Kriegsmarine war badge for
service on the high seas.
but was unable to prevent them from
being circulated within the service.
Wegner’s premise was that Tirpitz’s
strategy wasn’t workable for Germany
in that it didn’t threaten the one British
vulnerability: oceanic trade. That the
British economy was dependent on
the sea trade had been known since
the turn of the previous century. The
German Navy was therefore playing a weak hand by attempting to
match the Royal Navy’s battle line.
Having identified what he saw as
the British weakness, Wegner suggested
there was an inescapable need for
the German Navy to acquire new
bases from which it could threaten
that British trade. He advocated an
offensive, either military or diplomatic,
to acquire such bases in Norway, which
would allow German ships to simply
sidestep the Norway-Scotland portion
of the blockade. It would also allow
German ships to attack convoys headed
toward Russia. Once those bases were
acquired, the British would be forced to
deal with the German battle line under
operational and tactical situations that
would no longer be under their control.
After the war Wegner published
his ideas in an inclusive book, The
Naval Strategy of the World War. In it
he further expanded on his Norway
scheme by calling for the acquisition
of bases on the French Atlantic
coast. He also argued that, in order
to fully overturn British global naval
superiority, a strategic alliance with
another partner would be necessary.
Raeder’s View
Kriegsmarine war badge for blockade running.
» continued from page 40
Wegener’s Idea
were fundamentally at odds with each
other. For example, coastal defense
called for different types of vessels
than those best suited for attacking
enemy ships and disrupting his
far-flung lines of communication.
The navy high command sought
to develop ways to effectively carry
out that three-pronged strategy, and
two theses came into being. One was
supported by Adm. Wolfgang Wegener
and the other by Adm. Erich Raeder.
The first theoretical papers by
Wegener were published within the
navy in 1915. At that time the service
was just beginning to face increasing
criticism for its failures in the ongoing
World War. It had been built at great
expense, mostly during the previous 15
years, and the growing belief, both by
the citizenry and the army, that it was
useless, was seemingly borne out by
the fact its ships stayed in port, unable
to break the British blockade. Adm.
Tirpitz was enraged by the papers,
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The man who would become the
commander of the Kriegsmarine, and
then force Wegener out of the service,
had other views. Adm. Erich Raeder
rightly pointed out the major flaw
of Wegener’s thesis: the post-World
War I German Navy simply couldn’t
pull off his plans as he envisioned
them. A direct confrontation with
the British battle line would still see
the Germans defeated, no matter
the altered geo-strategic relationship between the two navies.
Raeder was initially moved to his
more pragmatic approach due to
the German situation on land close
to home. That is, until Hitler’s rise to
power, the Weimar Republic’s navy
had concentrated on what seemed
the most likely conflict it would have
to face: a war with Poland over East
Prussia and the likely intervention of
France against Germany in that war via
naval power. The naval raiders of the
Deutschland-class, known as “pocket
battleships,” were originally intended
to fight that war. Their high endurance
and heavy armament were intended
to enable them to hit and run French
convoys headed toward Poland via
the North Sea, while also breaking
any attempted blockade of German
ports by French combatant ships.
There was one point on which
Raeder and Wegener agreed, but for
different reasons. That is, Raeder also
advocated securing Norway in order
to protect the economically vital
coastal transshipments of Swedish
iron ore through that first country’s
coastal waters. He therefore sought an
invasion of Norway as an ultimately
defensive measure to secure German
trade, where Wegener had wanted it
as a geo-strategic steppingstone from
which to strike against the British battle
line in a decisive engagement. Wegener
believed that once such a decisive battle
had been fought, the trade route the
Germans needed for ore transit would
be secure simply as its byproduct.
Raeder was also a pupil of Adm.
Franz von Hipper, who during
World War I had advocated sending
battlecruisers as a raiding force into
the Atlantic to attack British convoys.
Hipper had hoped doing that would
force the British to send decisively large
numbers of their best ships to chase the
cruisers, thus setting up the remaining
blockade force to be defeated by the
main part of the German fleet. Hipper
thus sought results through what had
earlier been the classic French naval
strategy of guerre de course (commerce
war), by which an inferior fleet first
concentrates on commerce raiding.
Raeder’s thought was also
influenced by that of contemporary
French Adm. Raoul Castex, who
advocated what he called the “middle
strategy.” Castex wrote that for a nation
that was primarily a land power to
defeat one that was primarily a naval
power, an all-out fleet action wasn’t
necessary or desirable. Instead, a
series of limited tactical victories
by the land power could eventually
overturn the larger overall balance of
naval power. He argued that winning
secondary battles in secondary
theaters could eventually achieve
results against a primary navy power.
Raeder’s amalgamation of all that
came to rest on three main points: 1)
A British propaganda poster from the era of the German surface raiders
all naval theaters are ultimately of the
same global significance; 2) cruiser
operations in theaters distant from
the homeland are therefore just as
important to overall naval strategy
as the main battle line’s role in home
waters; and 3) successful attacks in distant areas would lead to enemy forces
having to be diverted to them, thereby
creating more favorable circumstances
in home waters. Instead of only caring
about one piece of the global ocean,
Raeder saw the whole watery portion
of the planet as his battlefield.
Hitler & Plan Z
With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis,
the Versailles Treaty was put aside and
the navy was given a new construction
plan and greater funding. The navy was
to be built up to 13 battleships, four
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aircraft carriers, 15 pocket battleships,
23 heavy cruisers and 22 destroyers.
The ships were to be built with large
diesel fuel bunkers to allow them to
participate in extended operations
globally. For home waters, two
battlegroups would be formed, each
around a core of battleships and one
aircraft carrier, screened by destroyers
that would then be used exclusively
to attain and maintain control of the
Baltic and North Seas. To supplement
those forces the navy was to coordinate
major efforts in mine and submarine
warfare while also working closely with
the Luftwaffe’s land-based aircraft.
The home waters formations also
had multiple operational roles beyond
local sea control. They were to convoy
the Scandinavian iron ore shipments,
facilitate the movement of raiders
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The Admiral Scheer as laid down in 1934.
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The Scheer’s Capt. Krancke.
Key Voyages
The HMS Jervis Bay was the sole escort
for a convoy of 37 ships departing from Halifax,
Nova Scotia, on their way to Great Britain in
November 1940. She had originally been a
cruise ship, hastily converted into a convoy
escort at the beginning of World War II. She
mounted 6-inch guns of World War I vintage.
On 5 November she moved to head off a lone
ship that was spotted approaching the convoy
on an intercept course. The attacking vessel
turned out to be the German pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer; so the Jervis Bay’s captain
gave the order for the convoy to scatter while
his vessel tried to fight her off. He managed to
delay the battleship long enough to deny all but
five ships as prizes to the Germans. The Scheer
damaged three other ships while sending Jervis
Bay to the bottom. The “auxiliary cruiser” was
hopelessly outmatched by the purpose-designed
raider’s 11-inch guns; her commander received
the Victoria Cross posthumously for his effort.
That was only the start of one of
the most successful raider sorties by the
Kriegsmarine in all of World War II. Not
only were two British convoys ordered back
to Halifax, but the Admiralty also made
the crucial decision no convoy would move
without at least one battleship in escort.
Admiral Scheer was a Deutschland-class
armored cruiser (a.k.a. “pocket battleship”),
which had been built as a result of the treaty
restrictions on German naval development.
Within those restrictions, all ships had to
be kept under a 10,000-ton limit. In order
to comply, German builders used the latest
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welding techniques and triple-gun turrets to
save weight, and diesel engines to cut down
on coal. Though the resultant vessels couldn’t
stand up to full-fledged Allied battleships,
the German ships’ primary purpose was to
operate as commerce raiders. The maximum
speed of the class was 28.5 knots, which was
slower than the most advanced vessels of 1939
but was still fast enough to be competitive
at the start of the war, and they had the
impressive operational range of 18,650 miles.
Fully loaded, Scheer weighed 16,000 tons,
and even unloaded she barely made the revised
treaty limit of 12,600. She was 613.75 feet long
with a 71.25-foot beam, and had four diesel
engines producing 56,800 horsepower for
her two propeller shafts. She had six 11-inch
guns in two triple-turrets, and eight 5.9-inch
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secondaries. Her flak batteries consisted of six
4.1-inch and eight 37mm and 20mm guns. Eight
21-inch aft torpedo tubes were complemented
by two floatplanes that could be launched
from a single catapult. Her crew of 1,150 was
commanded by Capt. Theodore Krancke.
The Scheer’s wartime career started inauspiciously when the Bristol Blenheim bombers
of the Royal Air Force’s 107 Squadron attacked
her berth at Wilhelmshaven on 4 September
1939. She was hit by four bombs, which did
enough damage to send her into overhaul. She
spent the next several months in repairs, while
others of her sister ships gained fame—as did
the Admiral Graf Spee at the Battle of the River
Plate—or ignominy—as did the Deutschland
when she returned home from a cruise after
having accomplished absolutely nothing.
Admiral Scheer completed repairs just
as France fell, and conducted sea trials
during the Battle of Britain. By October, Raeder
managed to convince an increasingly reluctant
Hitler to allow her a convoy-raiding cruise
in the Atlantic. Assisting her in the mission
was the supply ship Nordmark, a vessel
whose participation proved invaluable.
On 1 November 1940, Scheer passed
through the Denmark Strait undetected and
was free in the Atlantic. On the 5th one of her
floatplanes discovered the convoy that led to the
action described above. In six hours Scheer sank
Jervis Bay and 53,000 tons of other shipping.
The British reacted by recalling two convoys
to Halifax and sending the battleships Nelson
and Rodney, along with the battlecruisers Hood,
Renown and Repulse, in pursuit of the German
armored cruiser. Krancke—alerted by B-Dienst,
the German Navy’s interception effort against
British naval transmissions—was told of those
deployments and so moved south, deeper into
the Atlantic and away from his pursuers.
Over the next month Scheer had a number of
encounters. On 12 November she and Nordmark
helped to refit the German freighter Eurofield,
which had been hiding out in Tenerife (in Spain’s
Canary Islands), and resupplied the Thor, a “Q
Ship” (a raider disguised as a merchantman),
which was already operating in the Atlantic.
On the 24th Scheer encountered the
7,500-ton Port Hobart and sank her. In early
December she sank the 6,200-ton Tribesmen
off the coast of Gambia. Shortly after that
the Scheer developed engine trouble, and
Krancke ordered only one would operate at
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a time, except during battle, thus reducing
the ship to a maximum speed of 22 knots.
On the 14th she again met with Nordmark,
which took on the 150 prisoners Scheer was
carrying by then and transferred supplies.
The most fortunate capture for the
Scheer came in December, when she took the
8,500-ton refrigeration ship Duquesa. She was
loaded with eggs, tinned food, beef, mutton
and bacon. That cargo was used not only to
restock both Nordmark and Scheer, but also
two other German ships, the Eurofield and
Thor, who joined them on Christmas Day. The
ships spent the holidays in the South Atlantic,
where they refueled three Italian subs while
the Scheer’s engines were also repaired.
During that time Krancke met with Thor’s
skipper, Otto Kahler. They agreed it would
be best to continue to operate separately,
as the Scheer was likely to be immediately
recognized as a German warship and Thor
couldn’t keep up with her combat speed.
On 8 January 1941 the Scheer began to
hunt again, heading toward Freetown, hoping
to find a convoy that had eluded Admiral Hipper
several weeks earlier. Though Scheer didn’t
find those ships, she did capture Sandfjord, a
Norwegian oiler, sending her and her 11,000-ton
cargo back to Bordeaux with a prize crew.
Three days later the Scheer encountered
two other ships, and by pretending to be a
British vessel, captured both. One was the
5,500-ton Dutch Barneveld, and the other the
5,100-ton British Stanpark. The latter was a
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