Erich Raeder - World War II - 1941: Going To War With America

1941: Going To War With America

In January 1941, Raeder launched the successful Operation Berlin, where the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were sent out on a raid into the North Atlantic that lasted until March 1941. On 4 February 1941, Raeder sent Hitler a memo suggesting that the continual neutrality of the United States was not the in the best interests of the Reich, and suggested that having the United States as an enemy might even be "advantageous for the German war effort" if that would bring in Japan into the war against Britain and the United States. Hitler rejected that advice, saying that it was better at present to keep the U.S. neutral, since as long as the Americans were neutral, they were limited in how far they could support the British. On 18 March 1941, Raeder asked Hitler to end the rules that U-boats could not fire on American warships unless fired upon first, and instead demanded a policy that would allow the Kriegsmarine to sink all American warships on sight. Raeder also warned Hitler that Germany needed to take over the French colonies in West Africa, and warned that it would "most dangerous" if the United States should gain influence in French Africa. Hitler said he needed more time to think about what Raeder had suggested. During the same meeting on 18 March 1941, Raeder said he wanted Japan to enter the war as soon as possible, stating that a Japanese attack on the British base at Singapore would force the Royal Navy to deploy most of its strength to the Far East, and thereby allow the Kriegsmarine to win the Battle of the Atlantic. Raeder further added that now was the best time for Japan to enter the war because with "the whole English fleet contained, the unpreparedness of the USA for war with Japan and the inferiority of the U.S. fleet compared to the Japanese". Raeder added that the fall of Singapore would "solve all the other Asiatic questions regarding the USA and England". The only problem with bringing about this scenario Raeder mentioned was that the Japanese had informed him that they would attack Singapore only "if Germany proceeds to land in England". The British historian Ian Kershaw described Raeder as having "trigger-happy" attitude to the United States in 1941, always pressing Hitler to take the most extreme measures with the Americans, whom Raeder hated almost as much as he detested the British. On 22 May 1941, Hitler asked if was possible if the Kriegsmarine could take the Azores, which Hitler wanted to use as a base for launching long-distance bombers that would destroy the cities of the eastern United States. Raeder was forced to report with regret that Kriegsmarine "must reject the idea of occupying the Azores" under the account of the heavy losses endured in Westeruebung the previous year meant that the ships needed to undertake that operation were not there.

In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up the success of Operation Berlin with Operation Rheinübung, where the Gneisenau, the Bismarck, the Admiral Hipper and the Prinz Eugen would be sent out on an extended raid into the North Atlantic under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens. On the night of 10–11 April 1941 the Gneisenau was badly damaged by a British bombing attack that put her out of commission for months. At that point, Admiral Lütjens advised cancelling the operation as having one battleship with only one heavy cruiser in support operating alone in the Atlantic was too risky, but was overruled by Raeder who insisted on going ahead. Raeder's principal reason for going ahead with Rheinübung was his knowledge of the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, where the Kriegsmarine could only play a very small part, and his desire to score a major success before Barbarossa that might impress upon Hitler the need not to cut the budget for capital ships. Lütjens wanted Rheinübung put off until the Scharnhorst was finished refitting in July 1941, but since Barbarossa was due to start on 22 June 1941, Raeder insisted that the operation go ahead in May 1941. Though Rheinübung saw the Bismarck sink the battlecruiser HMS Hood, it ended with the sinking of the Bismarck. The loss of a modern battleship more than outweighed the loss of an old battlecruiser, and that debacle almost put an end to Raeder's strategy of using capital ships to destroy the British Merchant Marine. Murray and Millet wrote that after the loss of the Bismarck that "Raeder's strategy of surface raiders had largely failed". After the Bismarck was disabled by a British torpedo hit on the rudder on 26 May 1941, Raeder sent a series of radio messages to Lütjens reminding him of his "fight to the last round" order of December 1939, a order that Lütjens faithfully obeyed. The German historian Werner Rahn argued in Germany and the Second World War, the official history of the Wehrmacht that Raeder's orders to "fight to the finish" doomed most of the crew of the Bismarck to a watery grave; had Lütjens being given the option of scuttling or surrendering the Bismarck rather engaging in a hopeless battle, the lives of 2, 200 German officers and sailors could have been saved instead of the 110 who were saved. Raeder himself was personally pleased by the sinking of the Bismarck, feeling this had won the Kriegsmarine some much needed glory on the high seas and was consistent with his goal of "full engagement" where the Kriegsmarine capital ships were to sent into action until they all were sunk to win his service glory, but Hitler was more than annoyed at the loss of the Bismarck. The deaths of most of the crew of the Bismarck did not trouble Hitler, but he complained to Raeder that building the Bismarck had cost millions of Reichmarks, and it seemed like a poor investment given that the ship was lost on its first voyage. Moreover, Hitler told Raeder that he believed that once the Soviet Union was defeated later in the summer of 1941, that it was quite possible that Britain would simply "collapse" as a result of that German triumph, and he wanted the German fleet to be ready to take advantage of the expected "collapse", not at the bottom of the Atlantic. After the loss of the Bismarck, Hitler started to curtail Raeder's freedom to plan and launch operations on the high seas involving capital ships. Raeder's last attempt at using a capital ship as a raider occurred in June 1941, when he ordered the pocket battleship Lützow into the North Atlantic; she was badly damaged by an attack from British torpedo planes on 13 June 1941 that put her out of commission for six months.

At this time, some naval officers expressed the concern that the British were reading at least some of the naval codes as the Royal Navy seemed to have a suspicious ability to know where German ships were, but Raeder dismissed these concerns. This was especially the case because in early 1941, the Royal Navy used intelligence from Ultra to sink all of the Dithmarschen ships and other supply ships that the Kriegsmarine used to supply U-boats and surface raiders on the high seas. The British had intended to leave two supply ships at sea to disguise the fact that they had broken the naval codes, but the remaining two supply ships were captured after chance encounters in the Atlantic. In response to protests from other senior officers that something was amiss as proven by the loss of the entire supply ship network in early 1941, in the middle of 1941 and again in the middle of 1942, Raeder ordered investigations into the security of German codes, but in both cases, it was concluded that the British were not reading German codes because the Enigma machine was considered to be unbreakable.

Despite Rheinübung and the damaging attack on the Lützow, in July 1941 Raeder began planning for what he called "the battle of the Atlantic", a plan to send every single warship in the Kriegsmarine into the Atlantic to take on the Royal Navy in one colossal battle that almost certainly result in the destruction of the German force, but would hopefully make the British victory a Pyrrhic one. The planning for this operation only stopped in late 1941 when Hitler heard of it, and vetoed the operation under the grounds that even a British Pyrrhic victory was not worth losing every single German warship.

On 20 June 1941, Raeder used an incident where an U-boat had almost fired on an American battleship the USS Texas the day before to argue that the Kriegsmarine should be given the right to fire on sight whenever American warships were encountered. Raeder told Hitler that "where the United States is concerned firm measures are always more effective than apparent yielding". Hitler gave Raeder strict orders for no "incidents" with the United States until the war with the Soviet Union was over. In July 1941, when the U.S Marines took over the occupation of Iceland, Raeder advised Hitler that Germany should declare war on the United States as a reply. On 9 July 1941, during a meeting with Hitler, Raeder said he had enough of the Americans, and after this latest act of American "aggression" as he called the occupation of Iceland, demanded that Germany declare war on the United States. Though Hitler rejected Raeder's advice, Raeder spent the entire second half of 1941 persistently pressing for Germany to go to war with the United States. Hitler was sympathic to Raeder's anti-American fulminations, but said that the war with the Soviet Union would have to finished before taking on the United States. In September 1941, Raeder and the U-boat commander Karl Dönitz presented Hitler with plans for all-out U-boat offensive intended to destroy both the United States Navy and Merchant Marine. Raeder took the view that because of the increasing number of naval "incidents" in the second half of 1941 between U-boats and US ships guarding convoys to Britain, that the best thing to do was to declare war on America in order to end all of the restrictions on fighting the U.S. Navy. Murray and Millet wrote that Raeder's views on the desirability of starting a war with the United States were "astonishing" because neither he nor anybody else in the Seekriegsleitung saw fit during the period July–December 1941 to commission studies on what would be the strategic consequences of war with the United States. On 17 September 1941, Raeder told Hitler that he believed that it was only American support that allowed Britain to continue the war and that the Kriegsmarine could defeat the United States Navy if only Hitler would just give the necessary shoot-on-sight orders. Once the Kriegsmarine had control over the Atlantic then Britain would collapse. Hitler replied that he wanted no "incidents" with the Americans, but he expected the war with the Soviet Union would be over by the end of September, and at the middle of October he would decide whatever to give permission to the Kriegsmarine to sink American warships-a step equivalent to declaring war on the United States.

Until the war with the Soviet Union was finished, Hitler was reluctant to have a war with the United States, and insisted upon avoiding "incidents" with the U.S. Navy as much as possible, whereas Raeder was all for a war with the United States. Hitler had cancelled the Z Plan again in late 1940, only to order it restarted in the middle of 1941 when it seemed that the war against the Soviet Union would soon be over and again cancelled the Z Plan in late 1941. When Hitler cancelled the Z Plan for the final time, Raeder forgot to cancel a contact he had placed with engineering firms for the engines of the first four of the planned H-class super battleships. As a result of that oversight, in June 1944 the Kriegsmarine had to accept and pay for four gigantic engines that were meant to power battleships that did not exist. From Hitler's viewpoint, it was better to wait until the Z Plan was complete before going to war with the United States. Raeder by contrast thought only of the "immediate operational advantages" that would accrue to Germany if the Reich went to war with the United States. On 11 December 1941, Germany declared war on the United States, which was at least in part due to the pressure of Raeder, who was very pleased with going to war with America. Even before the declaration of war on 11 December, Hitler had given orders to Raeder on 8 December 1941 that the Kriegsmarine could now sink on sight American warships and warships of all the Latin American republics except Argentina as well. Raeder gave orders that Kriegsmarine was now to begin Operation Drumbeat, the plan to defeat the United States by sending a "wolf-packs" of submarines off the Atlantic coast of the United States to destroy all American shipping. On 12 December 1941 Raeder told Hitler that prospects for victory over the United States were good and that "The situation in the Atlantic will be eased by Japan's successful intervention". Continuing his analysis of the naval situation, Raeder told Hitler:

"Reports have already been received of the transfer of some battleships from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is certain that light forces, especially destroyers will be required in increased numbers in the Pacific. The need for transport ships will be very great, so that a withdrawal of American merchant ships from the Atlantic can be expected. The strain on British merchant shipping will increase...The U.S will have to concentrate all her strength in the Pacific during the next few months. Britain will not to run any risks after her severe losses of big ships . It is hardly likely that transport tonnage is available for such occupation tasks or bringing up supplies...It is improbable that the enemy will give up East Asia even temporarily; by so doing Britain will endanger India very seriously, and the U.S. cannot withdraw her fleet from the Pacific as long as the Japanese fleet has the upper hand".

Much to Raeder's annoyance, Hitler followed up declaring war on the U.S by sending 23 U-boats to the Mediterranean to attack British shipping and another 16 to Norway to guard against a phantom British invasion instead of focusing the U-boat fleet off the eastern United States. Because the United States Navy under the leadership of Admiral Ernest King was not ready for anti-submarine warfare, U-boat operations off the east coast of America in the first half of 1942 were very successful, and only the diversion of the U-boat fleet to the Mediterranean and Norway kept them from being more successful. The entry of the United States into the war meant the ulimate defeat of the Kriegsmarine as the tremendous productive capacity of American industry meant that the Allies could replace every ship sunk by the U-boats, and then build some more. In 1943, American shipyards turned out enough ships to almost equal the number of all the ships sunk by U-boats between 1939-42. Murray and Millet accused Raeder and the rest of the Seekriegsleitung of wanting war with America because the United States was an "easy target" and of "taking the easiest tactical and operational path without the slightest thought to the strategic or long-range consequences".