Dönitz: The Last Führer by Peter Padfield Read Free Book Online Page A

physical work and the good feeling that they had passed through a stern apprenticeship and become sailors. They had also had many corners knocked off; in Dönitz’s words, ‘the egocentricity [
Ichsucht
] of each, the human tendency to regard oneself as the most important, was dampened through the necessity in a community to show consideration for others’. 41 This is an interesting observation from Dönitz, since his later career showed that if the flames of his ego really had been dampened, they were by no means extinguished.
    Leave and promotion to
Fähnrich zur See
(midshipman) followed the completion of the training ship voyage. Dönitz went to stay with Hugo von Lamezan in Munich and when they returned after their leave they shared the same four-berth room in the Navy School at Flensburg-Mürwik on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein which was to be their home for the next year. Here the training was almost entirely theoretical, the main subjects navigation and seamanship, which included naval regulations; they also learned engineering, gunnery, mining, hydraulics, mathematics, shipbuilding, ship recognition and had an hour a week of English and French. Dönitz and von Lamezan sat next to each other in all the classes.
    It was once again a strict regime, drinking, smoking and making music banned inside the grounds, and outside drinking only permitted at inns used by the officer corps. The same went for the choice of seats at theatres and concerts. They had acquired their sea legs and their introduction to the officer class; now they were at their finishing school. In order to ensure they lacked none of the requisite accomplishments, they were given instruction in fencing, horse-riding and dancing. Dönitz did not mention any of these activities, nor duelling, which was officially approved despite many questions in the
Reichstag
, but records that he and von Lamezan bought a ‘National Jolly’ dinghy between them and sailed it at weekends.
    He did not enjoy the Navy School as much as the
Hertha
since, he wrote, the instruction was so theoretical, and in the final exams at the end of the year came 39th, a disappointing position which he put down to his insufficient knowledge of the service rules and regulations; they were in the service handbooks and he had thought it unnecessary to learn them.
    From the school in the early summer of 1912 the midshipmen passed on to specialized courses in gunnery, torpedo work and infantry exercises,in which he did rather better. It was during this period on June 23rd 1912, that his father died, apparently in Jena. Dönitz’s elder brother was training for the naval reserve at this time and the two young men arranged for their father’s funeral on the island of Baltrum which he had loved. Whether this was his wish or a touching act of sentiment by the brothers is not clear. They followed the coffin borne by fishermen through the lonely cemetery past the plain wooden crosses marked with the names of the island families. ‘Today,’ he wrote late in life, ‘my father’s grave and my most wonderful youthful memories are joined.’ 42
    For the final year of their training the midshipmen served aboard sea-going ships of the fleet. Dönitz was appointed to the modern light cruiser,
Breslau
—a disappointment since his appetite for travel had been whetted and she belonged to the Home Fleet. Waiting on the pier at Kiel to join her, and no doubt gazing out across the harbour to the low, four-funnelled silhouette, he found von Loewenfeld beside him, and learned that he was the cruiser’s First Officer.
    ‘Are you glad,’ the great man asked, using the familiar and for a midshipman most flattering ‘
du
’, ‘to have been posted to me in the
Breslau
? I applied for you.’
    ‘No,
Herr Kapitänleutnant,
’ Dönitz replied. ‘I wanted to go to the Far East in the cruiser squadron.’
    ‘Ungrateful toad!’ 43
    So began a posting which was of great importance for Dönitz in a number of