In the early months and years of World War II, it was Germany's
cruisers and battleships that most ravaged the Atlantic Convoys. This is
the history of those raids, and how the success of 1941's Operation
Berlin led directly to the Kriegsmarine sending into the Atlantic its
greatest battleship - the mighty, ill-fated Bismarck.
At the outbreak of World War II the German Kriegsmarine still had a
relatively small U-boat arm. To reach Britain's convoy routes in the
North Atlantic, these boats had to pass around the top of the British
Isles - a long and dangerous voyage to their hunting grounds. Germany's
larger surface warships were much better suited to this kind of
long-range operation. So, during late 1939 the armored cruiser
Deutschland, and later the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau were used as commerce raiders, to strike at Allied convoys
in the North Atlantic. These sorties met with mixed results, but for
Germany's naval high command they showed that this kind of operation had
potential. Then, the fall of France, Denmark and Norway in early 1940
dramatically altered the strategic situation. The Atlantic was now far
easier to reach, and to escape from.
During 1940, further moderately successful sorties were made by the
cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper. By the end of the year,
with British mercantile losses mounting to surface raiders and U-Boats,
plans were developed for a much larger raid, first using both cruisers,
and then the two battlecruisers. The climax of this was Operation
Berlin, the Kriegsmarine's largest and most wide-ranging North Atlantic
sortie so far. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau remained at sea for two
months, destroying 22 Allied merchant ships, and severely disrupting
Britain's lifeline convoys. So, when the operation ended, the German
commander, Admiral Lütjens was ordered to repeat his success - this time
with the brand new battleship Bismarck. The rest, as they say, is
history. These earlier Atlantic raids demonstrated that German surface
ships could be highly effective commerce raiders. For those willing to
see though, they also demonstrated just how risky this strategy could
be. Covering a fascinating and detailed analysis of the Kriegsmarine's
Atlantic raids between 1939 and 1941, this book will appeal to readers
interested in World War II and in particular in Germany's naval
operations.
