BLANCO COUNTY WW2 MUSEUM

 

The German Navy, the Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmament in the 1930s (the Treaty of Versailles had limited the size of the German navy previously). In January 1939 Plan Z was ordered, calling for the construction of many naval vessels.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine (as for all branches of armed forces during the period of absolute Nazi power) was Adolf Hitler, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine.

The Kriegsmarine's most famous ships were the Untersee Boot, the U-boats, most of which were constructed after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II.Wolfpacks were rapidly assembled groups of submarines which attacked British convoys during the first half of the Battle of the Atlantic but this tactic was largely abandoned in the second half of the war. Along with the U-boats, surface commerce raiders (including auxiliary cruisers) were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the early years of the war, the most famous of these being the heavy cruisers Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the battleship Bismarck. However, the adoption of convoy escorts, especially in the Atlantic, greatly reduced the effectiveness of commerce raiders against convoys.

The smaller German S-Boots were a constant threat particularly in coastal waters where their agility and speed offered a deadly attack capability. One instance of the S-Boots lethality was when they wreaked havoc in a practice D-Day run off the coast of England.  The magnitude of that disaster was concealed from the public to minimize the negative effect on morale.  

After the end of the Second World War, the Kriegsmarine's remaining ships were divided up amongst the Allies and were used for various purposes such as mine sweeping.  

Probably the most unheralded achievement of the Kriegsmarine was the evacuation of over a million soldiers and refugees from the Baltic states at the end of the war.  

By early 1945 the Russian advance cut off parts of East Prussia and the Baltic States from the rest of the Reich. In the last major action of the war the Kriegsmarine surface fleet provided heavy fire support for ground forces while evacuating over 1.1 million soldiers and refugees from the pocket.  

 

 

                U Boots

At the outbreak of war, the Kriegsmarine had a relatively small fleet of 57 submarines (U-boats) This was increased steadily until mid-1943, when losses from Allied counter-measures matched the new vessels launched.^]

The principal types were the Type IX, a long range type used in the western and southern Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans; and theType VII, the most numerous type, used principally in the north Atlantic. Type X was a small class of minelayers and Type XIV was a specialized type used to support distant U-boat operations – the "Milchkuh" (Milkcow).

Types XXI and XXIII, the "Elektroboot", would have negated much of the Allied anti-submarine tactics and technology, but only a few of this new type of U-boat became ready for combat at the end of the war. Post-war, they became the prototypes for modern submarines, in particular, the Soviet Whiskey class.

During World War II, about 60% of all U-boats commissioned were lost in action; 28,000 of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen were killed during the war and 8,000 were captured. The remaining U-boats were either surrendered to the Allies or scuttled by their own crews at the end of the war. 

 

No study of the U Boots would be complete without including the 1981 epic film "Das Boot" which chronicled life inthe U-boot service with all of its harsh reality: 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082096/