Alternatives to Raeder

[RF]

Do you think that the KM would have fared better under a different leader than Raeder in the years leading up to and at the start of WW2?

If so who would you suggest?

[tommy303]

I would say that Admiral Wolfgang Wegener would possibly have been a superior leader of the navy. He felt, that given Germany's central position in Europe and limited coastline, that a world class battle fleet was a waste of national resources and that Germany would be better served by a smaller fleet capable of defending home waters and carrying cruiser warfare to the enemy's trade routes. Geography was against the Germans in so far as the sea approaches to Germany were limited and easily controlled by France or Britain, either of which could establish a distant blockade not easily broken even by a powerful German fleet. For the Germans, the most important single force would always be the army and the build up of the navy should never come into conflict with the land forces which might have to fight on two fronts and therefore needed to be as powerful as possible. Thus the navy in WW1 and Raeder's plans for a balanced fleet in the 1930s and 40s technically went against the national interests in that money for the army instead went to navy whose role was uncertain and whose planning demanded the enemy do everything wrong in order for it to succeed.

[Laurenz]

the Germans calculated the start of WWII in 1944.
Kind regards,
L.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Admiral Marschall?

[tommy303]

the Germans calculated the start of WWII in 1944.
Kind regards,
L.

As far as the military planners went, the 1944 date was the soonest war might come, however the reality of the situation was far different.
Raeder and others were not told that the continued military expansion and public works programs, which were aiding the economic recovery of Germany, would bankrupt the state Reichsbank by 1941 at the latest unless either military spending was curtailed or taxes raised accordingly. Neither of these options were considered viable by the government for political reason (obviously, raising taxes would turn a great many people against the NSDAP) This made it imperative to the Nazi leadership to begin a war of conquest against its neighbors and absorb their gross national products in order to maintain both military and civil budgets without seriously affecting the living standards of the German people.

[RF]

I can agree with tommy303 with one caveat. Germany's coastline is extensive and allows Germany to dominate the Baltic. The strategic problem for Germany is the North Sea and the entrances to the Atlantic.

A larger fleet could be justified if the emphasis was on aircraft carriers and Luftwaffe co-operation, to support cruiser warfare in the Atlantic. The main problem in conducting such warfare was the short range of the surface ships and the need for Atlantic or other overseas bases.

But if Germany has to fight maritime powers - Britain, USA and to a lesser extent France, then a powerful fleet is needed, as U-boats on their own won't be enough, particulary against the USA. To an extent Hitler was aware of this more than Raeder, but Hitler was more focussed on a large surface fleet as a prestige object, rather like the Kaiser with the High Seas Fleet.

I think the Germans made a mistake with the Z Plan. What they should have done after the Anglo-German Naval Agreement started in 1934 was to have gradually built to 35% of the British Fleet as agreed, with a scaled down Z Plan starting in say 1936/37, with a focus on six panzerschiffe (dispensing completely with the Hipper class cruisers), better constructed light cruisers (and more of them), the two aircraft carriers, long range destroyers and specially constructed hilfskreuzer.
The battleships would be more of a problem. I would have gone for a different design than the Scharnhorsts and Bismarcks, possibly a triple 15 inch gun arrangement and diesel propulsion, with up to three ships, possibly four.
The other thing that could have been done would have been priority in the submarine arm of a fast underwater craft, like the Electro-boot.

[tommy303]

Hi RF,

Germany could control the Baltic with a relatively small fleet, particularly if it received adequate cooperation from the Luftwaffe. As for breaking a distant blockade by the French, the best way was to insure that was to make certain the ground and air forces of the Wehrmacht were powerful enough to over run France and force a surrender. Had more of the military budget gone to the army in the four years prior to WW1, it is quite possible that the Germans might have won the battle of the Marne and reached Paris. As Germany proved in WW1, it was not dependent on overseas trade for survival and could sustain itself for several years of conflict with what could be produced domestically.

The main problem, prior to WW1 was the failure of German diplomacy. Bismarck had advised Wilhelm II to keep Austria-Hungary friendly, but not to sign a formal alliance; Austria had its fingers in just about every Balkan pie on the table and any conflict starting there would almost surely bring the Russian empire into conflict as the Czar considered himself the advocate of all slavic peoples. Bismarck also cautioned against building up a large fleet which might alienate Germany's traditional friend and ally, the British. Keep the British friendly and don't threaten their interests or give them cause to fear for their survival.

The failure of German diplomacy in the five years leading up to WW2 was, well............it didn't exist at all. There was a good start with the Anglo-German naval agreement, but did not follow through and court the British.

[RF]

Hi RF,

Had more of the military budget gone to the army in the four years prior to WW1, it is quite possible that the Germans might have won the battle of the Marne and reached Paris.

I'm not too sure about this - Moltke screwed up the execution of the Schlieffen Plan which allowed the Marne counter-attack.

Had the Germans used some intelligence, scrapped the Schlieffen Plan and concentrated on Russia first, they could have bled the French Army to defeat by remaining on the defensive in Alsace-Lorraine and without having to fight the British or the Belgians....

All this on the same Army budget as well.

[RF]

Hi RF,

As Germany proved in WW1, it was not dependent on overseas trade for survival and could sustain itself for several years of conflict with what could be produced domestically.

I think this needs to be heavily qualified, as the British blockade slowly strangled the German economy and led to famine and virtual revolution. It did more than anything else to finish the war in 1918.

On paper Germany can feed itself, it shouldn't need food imports.

But the 1914 mobilisation was based on fighting a short war, one of the consequences of that mobilisation was that virtually the entire agricultural labour force (predominantly male) was conscripted. German food production went down and Germany had to import from Denmark, the Neherlands and Roumania. However this was only a short-term solution, and Roumania in any case entered the war against Germany. The food situation was made worse by severe winters and crop failures. There were cumulative effects of shortages of strategic materials Germany had to import (such as copper, tin, zinc, rubber, nitrates, oil) for which import substitution was a poor second best.

In WW2 Germany avoided a lot of these problems by importing from the Soviet Union (prior to Barbarossa) and by looting the occupied countries and also by using improved technologies in import substitution.

[Karl Heidenreich]

The Marne was not a battle in the sense of the Battle of Kursk or Somme. John Mosier´s stands with the following:
The French and the British, not knowing what to do with the German advance can only withdraw trying, helpless, to produce a Napoleonic Anhilitation Battle. The Germans hoped, also, that their enemies stand and fight in order to destroy them. But that didn´t happened and the German lines extended too much and their flanks became exposed. The Germans, then, after reach the Marne then began to stop and being dangerously exposed so they re deployed in order to use another strategy, which was ill called the "run to the sea".
As Gallieni, the French hero at Marne later said: "Was there a battle of the Marne?".

Best regards

[tommy303]

Hi RF

I think this needs to be heavily qualified, as the British blockade slowly strangled the German economy and led to famine and virtual revolution. It did more than anything else to finish the war in 1918.

I believe I did qualify that by stating "for several years" although my implication was to mean two years only. You are right, that the plan was to win the war within six to eight months, and you are correct that the Schlieffen plan was no longer what the old chief of staff had envisaged. Moltke the Younger had of course modified it and parred away parts of it, particlularly the recommendation to brush the channel ports with your right sleeve (ie sieze the channel ports to prevent troops from being landed on your flank).

Had naval expenditures been after 1911, in favor of the Army, or if they had been controlled and a modest navy built from 1898 on, it is probable that the Germans would have had the manpower and materiel to put Schlieffen's plan into operation and had sufficient fresh reserves going into the Marne offensive to reach Paris without leaving the vital right flank exposed. For Germany at least, the question of fighting the Russians was an unfortunate necessity for which Wilhelm's poorly thought out diplomacy was largely to blame. The Russians though, at that time, were the largest, but probably at the same time the least dangerous enemy Germany had to deal with.

As far as nitrate importation goes, Germany was able to meet all its needs by 1915/16 due to the work of Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch. The former discovered a viable means of extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere, while the latter made it industrially possible on a large scale. By mid war the Germans were producing all the nitrates they needed for military and agricultural use.

[iankw]

Hi tommy

It's a long time since I read anything on WW1 military stuff, so correct me if I am wrong, but I understood that manpower wasn't a problem for Germany in 1914. In fact they were ahead of the game by using reserve formations that the Allies hadn't expected to see. So I don't see additional funds affecting the manpower angle, material definitely though.

Ian

[RF]

I agree with Ian, the Germans mobilised five million men for the Schlieffen Plan strike through Belgium.

[Laurenz]

In WWI the Germans changed already peace production into war production in 1915. This caused the the situation in 1917/18, that people were not satisfied with their living standard.
This was the biggest fear of Hitler. Most german social welfare laws remain on the Third Reich and are reduced now.
The dutch still use some Nazi ideas in the housing sector, which work quite well in the Netherlands.
In WWII the government changed peace production into war production much too late in 1943 when Göbbels spoke at Reichssportpalast and Speer was established as a minister.
Germany was never really prepared for WWII. Still in 1938 the German miitary budget was lower than that of France.
The war was aleady lost when Abwehr informed Hitler that Stalin has cheated him by the Hitler-Stalin-Pact.
Till the stop of Seelöwe all worked well for Stalin plans.
So the time for the Germans to get a chance to win the war was very short and sea-actions were to careful.
The allies did not remarked the sovjet danger, so the British did always regret every German peace offer.
So the result was very simple. The British were the main losers of WWII and caused no meaning of a big fleet.
So the political incompetence of all european leaderships made all waractions in that area senseless, if we watch the results.
Kind regards,
L.

[tommy303]

A smaller navy would probably have given the army an extra army corps, which admittedly is not a huge amount of manpower, but perhaps enough to keep to the old Schlieffen plan and protect the flanks. More importantly, the emmense amount of money spent on the dreadnought building race could have been redirected to a greatly expanded Army artillery reserve manned by men who might otherwise have been part of the navy and greater ammunition stockpiles. As Ian said, the major effect, and perhaps the most decisive would have been on materiel, particularly in corps and group level artillery.