Hitler's Commanders (60 page)

4. Suchenwirth,
Command
.

5. August-Albert Ploch (1894–1967) was forced into retirement by Milch in late 1942.

6. Gablenz was born in Erfurt, Thuringia, in 1893. He served as an aerial observer, bomber pilot, and instructor pilot in World War I. After the war, he joined the Freikorps and worked for Junkers and Lufthansa as an aviation executive and technical consultant. He was commander of the 172nd Bomber Wing when the war began, and directed the Luftwaffe’s Instrument Flying School from late 1939 until the spring of 1941. Chief of the Air Force Equipment Office at the time of Udet’s suicide, he later became chief of the Generalluftzeugmeister’s planning office. He was killed in an airplaine crash near Muehlberg/Elbe on August 21, 1942 (Absolon,
Rangliste
, p. 79).

7. Suchenwirth,
Command
; Werner Baumbach,
The Life and Death of the Luftwaffe
, Frederick Holt, trans. (New York: Coward-McCann, 1960; reprint ed., New York: Ballantine Books, 1967), p. 17.

8. Overburdened by his responsibilities, political infighting, and the bullying of Hermann Goering, Jeschonnek committed suicide on August 19, 1943.

9. Trevor J. Constable and Raymond Toliver,
Horrido! Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe
(London: Arthur Barker, 1968), p. 262 (hereafter cited as Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
).

10. Major Wick, who had 55 kills, was the leading German ace when he crashed into the English Channel on November 28, 1940. (Werner Moelders had 54 and Adolf Galland had 52 on that date.) Wick’s body was never found. Captain Karl-Heinz Greisert was acting wing commander until Balthasar assumed command on February 16, 1941.

11. Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
, p. 221.

12. Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
, p. 222. Trautloff (1912–1995) shot down 58 aircraft during the war. He later became a lieutenant general (under the new rank structure) in the West German Air Force.

13. Nowotny was killed in action on November 8, 1944, while trying to get his damaged jet away from several American fighters. He was buried in a grave of honor in the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) in Vienna. His honor status was revoked by an initiative led by the Austrian Green Party in 2003, on the incredibly thin grounds that Nowotny had fought for Germany, not for Austria. He was 23 years old at the time of his death.

14. Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
, p. 222.

15. Colonel Helmut Lent (commander of the 3rd Night Fighter Wing) shot down 110 enemy airplanes (102 of them at night) before being fatally injured in an air accident on October 5, 1944. Colonel Werner Streib (1911–1986) had 65 night kills and one day victory. The last commander of NJG 1, he survived the war and retired from the West German Air Force as a
Brigadegeneral
in 1966.

16. Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
, p. 104.

17. Constable and Toliver,
Horrido
, p. 93. Macki Steinhoff (1913–1994) shot down 176 enemy aircraft in World War II and was shot down 12 times himself. He was severely burned in the last days of the war. Steinhoff became a full general and chief of staff of the Luftwaffe after the war. He was President Ronald Reagan’s escort officer during the Bitburg cemetery controversy of 1985. The German 73rd Fighter Wing “Steinhoff” is named in his honor.

18. Heinz Joachim Nowarra,
Marseille: Star of Africa
(Sun Valley, Calif.: John W. Caler Publications, 1968), n.p.

19.
www.powcamp.fsnet.co.uk/Generalmajor%20Kurt%20Abderseb%20(Luftwaffe).htm
(accessed 2011). This is the Island Farm (Special Camp 11) website, which is one of the best World War II websites on the Internet.

Chapter 7: The Naval Officers

1. Dr. Raeder and his wife, Gertraudt Hartmann Raeder, both died in 1932.

2. Erich Raeder,
My Life
, Henry W. Drexel, trans. (New York: Arno Press, 1980), pp. 3–5 (hereafter cited as Raeder,
My Life
). Until that time, young Raeder had planned to study medicine. His father nevertheless fully supported his son’s decision and wrote to the Oberkommando der Marine on his behalf.

3. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 198.

4. Charles S. Thomas,
The German Navy in the Nazi Era
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 21–22 (hereafter cited as Thomas,
German Navy
). Also see Keith W. Bird,
Weimar the German Naval Officer Corps and the Rise of National Socialism
(Amsterdam: B. R. Gruener, 1977).

5. Snyder,
Encyclopedia
, p. 280.

6. W. E. Hart,
Hitler’s Generals
, p. 200. Kapp (1858–1922) was an East Prussian right-wing civil servant and political activist and an associate of Admiral Alfred von Tripitz. Along with General Walter von Luettwitz (commander of Group Command 1) and the Freikorps’ Ehrhardt Brigade, he attempted to overthrow the government but was foiled by a general strike. He died of cancer shortly after returning to Germany in 1922.

7. “Erich Raeder” in Maxine Block, ed.,
Current Biography 1941
(New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1941), p. 695.

8. Thomas,
German Navy
, p. 54.

9. See Thomas,
German Navy
, pp. 68–69.

10. Raeder,
My Life
, p. 241.

11. For the best description of Navy-Nazi relations in both the Raeder and Doenitz eras, see Thomas,
German Navy
.

12. Heinz Hoehne,
Canaris
, I. Maxwell Brownjohn, trans. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), p. 162. The father of this young woman was reportedly a close friend of Raeder’s (Thomas,
German Navy
, p.92).

13. Deposition by Rear Admiral Karl Kuehlenthal, a.D., reprinted in Raeder,
My Life
, pp. 416–17.

14. Raeder,
My Life
, pp. 262–63.

15. Cajus Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974; reprint ed., New York: Zebra Books, 1977), p. 34 (hereafter cited as Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
). Both Vice Admiral Guenther Guse and Captain Hellmuth Heye of the Naval High Command (OKM) warned Raeder of the dangers inherent in Hitler’s policy but could not convince the Grand Admiral. See Manfred Messerschmidt, “German Military Effectiveness between 1919 and 1939,” in Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds.,
Military Effectiveness
, volume 2,
The Interwar Period
(Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1988), p. 234.

16. The previous four were Hans von Koester (appointed in 1905), Prince Heinrich of Prussia (1909), Alfred von Tirpitz (1911), and Henning von Holtzendorff (1918). See Hans H. Hildebrand and Ernest Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale, 1849–1945
(Osnabrueck: Biblio Verlag, 1988–1990), volume 2, p. xxiv (hereafter cited as Hildebrand and Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale
).

17. David Irving,
The War Path: Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1939
(New York: Viking Press, 1979), pp. 213–14.

18. Hildebrand and Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale
, volume l, pp. 126–27.

19. Hildebrand and Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale
, volume 2, pp. 434–36.

20. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 53.

21. A small, Type II U-boat,
U-56
was considered a coastal submarine of the type not normally used in the Atlantic. It fired only three torpedoes on October 30 because it had only three tubes.

22. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 138. Vice Admiral Goetting (who was born in Berlin in 1886) was forced into retirement by Admiral Doenitz in 1943 and died in Soviet captivity in 1946. Admiral Wehr (1886–1968) was held in fortress detention at Germersheim for a time. He was serving as an adviser to the Luftwaffe at the end of the war.

23. Earl F. Ziemke, “The German Northern Theater of Operations, 1940–1945,” United States Department of the Army Pamphlet # 20–271 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of the Army, 1959), pp. 104–5.

24. Hildebrand and Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale
, volume 2, p. 435.

25. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, pp. 235–36.

26. G. M. Gilbert,
Nuremberg Diary
(New York: Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, 1947; reprint ed., New York: Signet Books, 1961), pp. 308–9 (hereafter cited as Gilbert,
Nuremberg Diary
).

27. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 219.

28. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 219.

29. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 227.

30. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, pp. 224–25.

31. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 164.

32. Hildebrand and Henriot,
Deutschland’s Admirale
, volume 2, pp. 434–36.

33. Peter Padfield,
Doenitz: The Last Fuehrer
(New York: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 23 (hereafter cited as Padfield,
Doenitz
). Padfield cites Doenitz,
Mein Wechselvolles
, p. 24.

34. Lieutenant Klaus Doenitz was born on May 14, 1920, and was killed on his 24th birthday when the reconnaissance boat
S-141
was sunk off the coast of Cherbourg. Ensign Peter Doenitz, who was born on March 20, 1923, was lost with
U-954
in the North Atlantic on May 19, 1943. Doenitz also had a daughter, Ursula, who was born on April 3, 1917. Apparently she was his favorite child. In November 1937, she married Guenther Hessler, a U-boat captain who distinguished himself by sinking 14 vessels (86,699 tons) during a cruise to South America in the summer of 1941. This record for a single cruise was never equaled. Doenitz then made Hessler his first staff officer, and he remained on Doenitz’s staff until the end of the war. Hessler (1909–1968), who fathered Doenitz’s two grandchildren, later helped the grand admiral assemble materials for his memoirs. After the war, he worked as a historian for the Royal Navy.

35. Walter Forstmann (1883–1973) conducted 47 patrols and sank 146 ships, for a total of 384,304 tons, making him the second leading submarine ace in history. He became a captain during World War II.

36. Wolfgang Frank,
The Sea Wolves
, R. O. B. Long, trans. (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1955; reprint ed., New York: Ballantine Books, 1958), p. 13.

37. Lieutenant Commander Herbert Schultze (1909–1987) later won the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. At the end of the war, he ranked sixth highest on the “ace” list with 171,122 tons (26 ships) sunk. He was deeply respected by the British because of his practice of broadcasting his sinkings to them, so that they could rescue their stranded crews.

38. At the turn of the year (1941–1942), the U-boat arm had 91 operational boats. After deducting those employed in the Mediterranean, off Gibraltar, and in Norwegian waters, 55 remained for the tonnage war in the North Atlantic. Of these, 60 percent were undergoing lengthy repairs. Half of the remaining 22 were on their way to or from the battle area. See Peter Cremer,
U-Boat Commander
(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984), p. 52 (hereafter cited as Cremer,
U-Boat Commander
).

39. Generaladmiral Rolf Carls was born in Rostock on May 29, 1885, and joined the navy as a sea cadet in 1903. He spent his early career on battleships and heavy cruisers, but commanded a U-boat in 1918. He held a number of important assignments from the 1920s until 1943, including chief of the training department (1928–1930), chief of staff of the Naval Command (1930–1932), commander of the battleship
Hessen
(1932–1933), chief of staff of the High Seas Fleet (1933–1934), commander of battleships (1934–1936), fleet commander (1936–1938), commander-in-chief of Naval Group Baltic (1938–1940), and commander-in-chief of Naval Group North (1940–1943). Officially retired on May 31, 1943, he was never reemployed. He was killed in an Allied air raid on Bad Oldesloe, Schleswig-Holstein, on April 24, 1945. He was promoted to Generaladmiral on July 19, 1940.

40. Cremer,
U-Boat Commander
, p. 185.

41. Gilbert,
Nuremberg Diary
, p. 300.

42. See
IMT
, volume 13, for Doenitz’s testimony.

43. Padfield,
Doenitz
, p. 484, citing the London
Sunday Times
, January 25, 1959.

44. Wolfgang Frank,
Enemy Submarine
(London: William Kimber, 1954), pp. 21–22 (hereafter cited as Frank,
Enemy Submarine
). Frank, a lieutenant in a naval propaganda company and a classmate of Prien’s brother, wrote this book mainly from Prien’s diaries and is the main source for this part of
Hitler’s Commanders
.

45. Frank,
Enemy Submarine
, p. 25.

46. Frank,
Enemy Submarine
, p. 78.

47. Eddy Bauer,
Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia
, Peter Young, ed. (Westport, Conn.: H. S. Stuttmann, Publishers, 1978), volume 3, p. 298.

48. Barrie Pitt and the editors of Time-Life Books,
The Battle of the Atlantic
(Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1980), p. 67.

49. Frank,
Enemy Submarine
, pp. 189, 198.

50. John R. Angolia,
On the Field of Honor: A History of the Knights Cross Bearers
(San Jose, Calif.: R. James Bender Publishing, 1979), volume 1, p. 69 (hereafter cited as Angolia,
Field of Honor
).

51. Bekker,
Hitler’s Naval War
, p. 380; Angolia,
Field of Honor
, volume 2, pp. 30–31.

52. Admiral von Pohl (born 1855) became commander of the High Seas Fleet after the Battle of Dogger Bank. He almost immediately authorized unrestricted submarine warfare (February 1915). He died of illness in early 1916.

Chapter 8: The Waffen-SS

1. Charles W. Syndor, Jr.
Soldiers of Destruction
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 3 (hereafter cited as Syndor,
Destruction
).