The Kriegsmarine
The ambitious Plan Z to rebuild German naval power had only been partially realized in early 1941, but still posed a grave threat to the British.
The German heavy cruiser Blucher seen from the light cruiser Emden
The powerful fleet of the Kaiserliche Marine survived the crucible of the Great War largely intact, the bulk of it remaining in port for the greater portion of the conflict. The one large scale battle fought between the Germans and British at Jutland in 1916 had been inconclusive, but the same could not be said for the events in Kiel in 1918. The mutiny there spread into nationwide revolution, and a stain on the honor of the navy in the interwar period.
To make matters worse, a major aim of the Treaty of Versailles was to defang German sea power, and as a result the vaunted High Seas Fleet was ordered to the British base at Scapa Flow to turn over its dreadnaughts to their vanquishers. The fleet sailed to the harbor, but on the orders of Admiral von Reuter, commanding the interned fleet, it was scuttled on June 21, 1919, becoming a symbol of defiance to the hated Treaty.
The interwar Weimar Reichsmarine was placed under severe restrictions, including a blanket ban on submarine development as well as a strict limit and on the amount and size of battleships. The bulk of the remaining fleet was old, concentrated around six pre-dreadnaught battleships and an equal number of cruisers, with a total personnel limit of 15,000. New ships could only replace the older ones, a process which only began in earnest with the 1933 commissioning of the modern “pocket battleship” Deutschland, replacing the obsolete battleship Preussen.
With the ascension to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 the rearmament of Germany was accelerated significantly, even more so after President Hindenburg’s death allowed Hitler to consolidate total power over his new Third Reich. With this came a general disregard for the Treaty of Versailles.
In 1935 a treaty was signed with Britain to attempt to contain the new Kriegsmarine, limiting their fleet to 35% of the Royal Navy’s active fleet size, with a 35,000 ton limit on battleships. As more new, modern ships entered service, on the eve of war the Kriegsmarine embarked up on the ambitious Plan Z, intended to be able to challenge the Royal Navy in a new global war, which was to begin before the year was out, and with no major progress on putting the plan in motion.
The first shots of the Second World War were fired by the pre-dreadnaught Schleswig-Holstein on the Polish naval base at Westerplatte on September 1, 1939, and the Kriegsmarine found itself at war. The primary strategy of Grand Admiral Raeder was one of Cruiser Warfare, in which his fast, long ranged cruisers and pocket battleships would run rampant in the Atlantic, destroying enemy convoys before Allied escorts could react, supported by U-boats. This saw some early success with the pocket battleship Graf Spee, but she was defeated by the Royal Navy off Uruguay and scuttled.
The first major action undertaken was support for the invasion of Norway in 1940, which proved a massive success, although the Kriegsmarine suffered very high casualties. The Fall of France in June of 1940 the Germans gained access to the excellent French ports on the Atlantic coast, and the U-boats began to operate with near impunity. The surface fleet was not to be left out, and in early 1941 the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau commenced Operation Berlin, breaking out into the Atlantic to terrorize the shipping lanes, encountering some success before ending their journery in occupied French ports.
With the success of that operation, the Oberkommando des Marines (OKM) hoped for a repeat performance on an even larger scale, deploying the new battleship Bismarck, possibly in conjunction with Scharnhorst, Gniesenau or even her sister ship Tirpitz to raid the Atlantic and break the vital supply line to Britain.
The Leaders
Fuhrer Adolf Hitler
After being named Chancellor in 1933 Adolf Hitler had set about the large scale rearmament of Germany, including the massive expansion of the navy. He was the primary architecht of Plan Z, which intended to provide Germany with a fleet of four carriers, ten battleships, 15 pocket battleships and a large number of cruisers and submarines over a decade. This plan was to be frustrated, however, with his invasion of Poland mere months after ordering the naval plan. The Fuhrer had long been somewhat cautious of the navy, citing its nonperformance in the Great War and his own history as an infantryman as reasons for the primacy of the army over the navy. He also had concerns that surface raids could lead to confrontations with American ships, possible leading to US intervention in the war, something he did not consider timely.
Hitler inspected the Bismarck on May 5, 1941, where he was seen to be interested in the military technology aboard the new flagship, although he expressed some concern about the numerical advantage of the Royal Navy over the Kriegsmarine. He was, in general, skeptical of the cost involved with battleships, in particular their vulnerability to air power, as opposed to U-boats. Despite these reservations, the Fuhrer did not forbid future Atlantic surface operations, but he was kept in the dark about the planned Exercise Rhine.
Großadmiral Erich Raeder
Since 1928, the Reichsmarine and its successor the Kriegsmarine had been led by Erich Raeder, who had also become the first Grand Admiral since the fall of the German Empire in 1939. A protege of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, he had served as influential chief of staff to Admiral Franz von Hipper for much of the Great War, and had directly participated in several surface actions during the conflict. After spending the interwar period continuing to rise in the naval command, he found himself Oberbefehlshader der Kriegsmarine when war broke out again in 1939, and with the state of the German Navy at the time, his work was cut out for him.
Raeder beleived that the Kriegsmarine would not be ready for a major conflict for at least five years, but the opening of hostilities in Poland shattered his plans to fully resurect the might High Seas Fleet of 1914. Despite this, Raeder was greatly concerned about the Kriegsmarine seeming irrelevant during the mainly land-based conflict, especially after the stunning successes of the Heer and the Luftwaffe in Poland, and a subsequent cutting of naval prestige and funds. He lobbied in favor of Operation Weserubung (the Invasion of Norway) in early 1940, which although successful was costly to the small fleet available. A golden opportunity followed, however, as the Fal of France in 1940 opened up new and well equipped bases for his surface fleet, by now in fierce competition with Admiral Donitz’s U-boats, top operate on the open Atlantic, provided they could break out of the North Sea.
This led to the successful Atlantic raid of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in early 1941, where they moved to Brest after disrupting the British convoys, and the Grand Admiral saw both an opportunity and a need to follow that success with a greater one, particularly in light of the looming Operation Barbarossa, the Invasion of the Soviet Union in which his fleet would play little to no role. This new plan, dubbed Exercise Rhine, would involve the same fleet commander, Admiral Gunther Lutjens, commanding a force built around the brand-new and very powerful battleship Bismarck, attempting to repeat the success of Operation Berlin.
The Leaders
Admiral Gunther Lütjens
Admiral Gunter Lutjens was another career naval officer having originally graduated the Imperial Naval Academy at Mürwik in 1907. A veteran of the Great War, he had served on torpedo boats and ended it in command of a small flotilla of them based along the North Sea coast, and had received the Iron Cross Second Class. He remained in the drastically downsized Reichsmarine, rising slowly through the ranks of the Weimar fleet.
Following the transition into the Nazi Kriegsmarine, Lutjens was postes as commanding officer of the light cruiser Karlsruhe, and later was appointed head of the Naval Personnel Office and commander of the torpedo boat forces. With that posting came a promotion to Konteradmiral, although he mad eno effort to enforce the Nazi Nuremberg Laws in the Kriegsmarine, and even wrote a letter of protest to Grand Admiral Raeder regarding the treatment of Jews in the infamous Kristallnacht.
Once the war began Lutjens was placed in command of the squadron built around the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, commanding them during the invasion of Norway in April of 1940, and shortly after the end of the campaign he was named Fleet Commander and placed in overall control of the German surface fleet, and he was set to drawing up plans for the naval aspect of Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain.
This was not to be, and Lutjens would next find himself commanding the two battleships again for their sortie into the Atlantic in early 1941, successfully breaking through the Denmark Straight and into the open ocean, where he was able to cause significant disruption to British convoys before putting into port at Brest. The success of that operation led to Raeder selecting him to personally lead the even larger Exercise Rhine to repeat his earlier success. The Grand Admiral knew that the cold, efficient Lutjens, often called the “Man in the Iron Mask” by his subordinates, would allow nothing to deviate from his mission.
Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann
Bismarck’s captain was an experienced sailor, and considered an expert in naval gunnery. Inspired as a boy by his uncle to join the Navy, he did so soon after graduating school, and as the Great War began a year later he was serving as a junior officer aboard the battleship SMS Lothringen. He would end the war aboard the pride of the Kaiser’s fleet, the SMS Bayern, including participating in Operation Albion on the Baltic in 1917. He was one of the few to remain in the Reichsmarine after the Armistice of 1918, serving with an artillery unit, where he began to develop a reputation as a gunnery officer.
After the fall of the Weimar Republic Lindemann served as a lecturer on gunnery at the Naval Academy in Kiel, helping to train the new generation of Kriegsmarine officers. He would subsequently serve as a gunnery officer on the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, and after that as Commandant of the Naval Gunnery School in Kiel. Resigned to a career on the shore, he was surprised and honored when he was appointed commanding officer of the new flagship Bismarck in 1940.
Despite concerns about being able to get the new ship ready for action in time, Lindemann busied himself with preparations, and was on hand when the battleship was commissioned in August of 1940. He famously ordered that the Bismarck be referred to as a “he” rather than the tradition female term for ships, as he felt a ship so powerful should be referred to as such. He was well respected by the crew, and even went so far as to disagree with Hitler during a luncheon with the Fuhrer on the danger of American intervention in the war.
Kapitän zur See Helmuth Brinkmann
Helmuth Brinkmann was yet another veteran of the Great War, having served aboard battleships as well as torpedo boats during the conflict. After remaining in the service after the Armistice, he rose through the ranks, eventually receiving his first command, the Grille, which served as the personal yacht of Hitler. Following this he returned to his Weimar era desk job at OKM, where he remained as the Second World War began in 1939.
In August of 1940 Brinkmann was posted as commanding officer of the new heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, taking his post as the ship was commissioned. His first actions would be to supervise the war games and sea trials of the new ship, eventually joking in the exercises of Bismarck in the Baltic.
KMS Bismarck
The new flagship of the Kriegsmarine had its genesis in the need to build a counter for the powerful new French Richelieu Class battleships launched in 1935. Officially stated to be within the 35,000 ton displacement limit imposed by the London Naval Agreement, in reality Bismarck weighed in at a massive 50,300 tons, although by the time she was ready for action the Second World War had begun, leaving any such agreements irrelevant.
The main batteries of Bismarck consisted of eight 15’’ guns mounted in four dual superfiring turrets, to in the fore and two in the aft. These massive weapons could hurl a 1,800 pound projectile to ranges in excess of 20 miles, firing them at a rate of up to three rounds per minute. Secondary batteries of 5.9 inch guns in six twin turrets provided close range protection from light vessels, while she boasted an impressive 16 4.1 inch AAA guns, along with 16 37mm and 12 20mm AA guns.
Below decks, Bismarck was powered by three Blohm and Voss geared turbine engines, providing enough power through three screws to provide a maximum speed of 30 knots. Her boilers were fed with 3,200 tons of fuel oil, with a maximum range of about 8,500 nautical miles.
The Bismarck had a length of 823.5 feet in length, with a wide 118 foot beam providing a very stable firing platform. His four gun directors and excellent rangefinders mated well with this to allow for very accurate sustained fire. His complement of four Arado AR196 floatplanes also added to her long range lethality. A crew of 1,962 sailors and 103 officers was required to operate the mammoth warship.
KMS Prinz Eugen
The Admiral Hipper Class Cruiser Prinz Eugen was, like her “big brother” Bismarck, a brand new ship, having been commissioned in August of 1940. Displacing almost 20,000 tons, she was slightly faster than Bismarck, being capable of a maximum speed of 32 knots, but her range was shorter, with her bunkers only holding enough fuel oil for 6,800 nautical miles.
Her main battery consisted of eight 8 inch guns in a similar dual mounted superfiring turret layout to the battleship, supported by 12 4.1 inch AAA guns and 12 37mm and 8 20mm AA cannons. Two triple torpedo launchers rounded out her armament, and she was supported by three AR196 floatplanes.
It was intended that for Exercise Rhine the Prinz Eugen be the lightest of the ships sent on the raid, compared to the battleships Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and possibly Tirpitz, but when the time came in late spring of 1941 she was the only operational German warship to pair with the new battleship.
