the bridgehead to capture Portsmouth, then drove on to Bristol, isolating British forces in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Dorset. The two divisions of the SS, strengthened by an armored and a motorized division, struck north to surround and isolate metropolitan London. Three days later the SS “Wiking” Division staged a successful amphibious assault on the mouth of the Thames estuary, isolating London from the sea. Taking advantage of the confusion attending Wiking’s landings, German forces of the SS corps completed the encirclement of the city on October 8.
By the third week of October the British government was still refusing to surrender, despite the occupation of most of England by German forces. Hitler therefore ordered his army to reduce London. For a week, the city witnessed heavy fighting. Only when Churchill, the stub of a cigar clutched in his lips, died defending a barricade near Buckingham Palace, did British resistance finally cease.
A puppet government, formed by Hitler, signed the formal surrender on November 11, 1940, on the deck of the cruiser Wiesbaden in Scapa Flow. Reduced to a third-rate power under permanent German garrison, Britain was not even allowed to join the Danzig Pact. Though scattered fighting continued in former British protectorates around the Mediterranean basin for several months (and a resistance movement would plague Germany for many years), the opening episodes of World War II in Europe had ended.
The Kriegsmarine continued to grow through 1945, earning additional glory while supporting the seizure of the Azores and the occupation of South Africa in 1941. Germany remained neutral after the Japanese surprise attack on the United States in December of that year, its relations with the United States souring only after Germany seized British Honduras in early 1942. In June 1943, amid growing concern at the threat of militant communism, Hitler invaded a prepared Russia. Though the navy’s carriers and U-boats contributed little to the campaign (other than escorting the troop ships of the SS, which fought bravely wherever committed, but notably at Murmansk, Leningrad, and Sevastopol), its Research and Development Section effectively ended World War II.
In December 1939 a German scientist, Albert Einstein, had penned a note to Grand Admiral Raeder (Einstein’s niece was engaged to Raeder’s grandson) asking if the navy would be interested in a new explosive device based on “heavy water” research. Fascinated by the potential, Raeder spoke with Hitler, who immediately saw the possibility of combining the new explosive device with rockets then under development. 25 In August 1945, as Americans struggled ashore on the Japanese home islands, Hitler obliterated Moscow (along with Josef Stalin and most of the members of his government) with two nuclear weapons mounted on V-3 guided missiles. Russian resistance collapsed as quickly as what little remained of its national government. World communism died overnight, an unsuccessful experiment never to be resurrected. The small states formed from the carcass of the USSR joined the Danzig Pact nations now firmly under Germany’s hegemony.
Today, the Kriegsmarine lives on, though Hitler died in 1947, victim of diehard British assassin Ian Fleming. Karl Dönitz, as Hitler had specified, took his place as dictator of the Reich. Though Americans will remember his time as Führer in connection with the Cold War, the Honduras Missile Crisis, and the guerrilla war in Afghanistan, no German will ever forget that Dönitz’s first official act was to lead his nation in a month of mourning for the Little Admiral who had lifted the German people from the misery of Versailles to the glory of the Atomic Age.
The Reality
Hitler lost World War II in part because he never understood naval power. Thus, he allowed the Royal Navy to survive and the Kriegsmarine to wither. The lessons of history are as clear today as they were
By the third week of October the British government was still refusing to surrender, despite the occupation of most of England by German forces. Hitler therefore ordered his army to reduce London. For a week, the city witnessed heavy fighting. Only when Churchill, the stub of a cigar clutched in his lips, died defending a barricade near Buckingham Palace, did British resistance finally cease.
A puppet government, formed by Hitler, signed the formal surrender on November 11, 1940, on the deck of the cruiser Wiesbaden in Scapa Flow. Reduced to a third-rate power under permanent German garrison, Britain was not even allowed to join the Danzig Pact. Though scattered fighting continued in former British protectorates around the Mediterranean basin for several months (and a resistance movement would plague Germany for many years), the opening episodes of World War II in Europe had ended.
The Kriegsmarine continued to grow through 1945, earning additional glory while supporting the seizure of the Azores and the occupation of South Africa in 1941. Germany remained neutral after the Japanese surprise attack on the United States in December of that year, its relations with the United States souring only after Germany seized British Honduras in early 1942. In June 1943, amid growing concern at the threat of militant communism, Hitler invaded a prepared Russia. Though the navy’s carriers and U-boats contributed little to the campaign (other than escorting the troop ships of the SS, which fought bravely wherever committed, but notably at Murmansk, Leningrad, and Sevastopol), its Research and Development Section effectively ended World War II.
In December 1939 a German scientist, Albert Einstein, had penned a note to Grand Admiral Raeder (Einstein’s niece was engaged to Raeder’s grandson) asking if the navy would be interested in a new explosive device based on “heavy water” research. Fascinated by the potential, Raeder spoke with Hitler, who immediately saw the possibility of combining the new explosive device with rockets then under development. 25 In August 1945, as Americans struggled ashore on the Japanese home islands, Hitler obliterated Moscow (along with Josef Stalin and most of the members of his government) with two nuclear weapons mounted on V-3 guided missiles. Russian resistance collapsed as quickly as what little remained of its national government. World communism died overnight, an unsuccessful experiment never to be resurrected. The small states formed from the carcass of the USSR joined the Danzig Pact nations now firmly under Germany’s hegemony.
Today, the Kriegsmarine lives on, though Hitler died in 1947, victim of diehard British assassin Ian Fleming. Karl Dönitz, as Hitler had specified, took his place as dictator of the Reich. Though Americans will remember his time as Führer in connection with the Cold War, the Honduras Missile Crisis, and the guerrilla war in Afghanistan, no German will ever forget that Dönitz’s first official act was to lead his nation in a month of mourning for the Little Admiral who had lifted the German people from the misery of Versailles to the glory of the Atomic Age.
The Reality
Hitler lost World War II in part because he never understood naval power. Thus, he allowed the Royal Navy to survive and the Kriegsmarine to wither. The lessons of history are as clear today as they were
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