Soldaten полностью

During World War II, the German navy leadership cultivated the cult of fighting to the last bullet in special ways. In late March 1945, to Dönitz’s satisfaction, Hitler ordered that fortifications in Western Europe should be placed under the command of navy officers. “Many fortresses have been surrendered without fighting to the bitter end,” Hitler noted, “but never a [German] ship.”⁶³³ In his political testament, Hitler even wrote that the navy had completely lived up to his idea of honor for German officers, that “the surrender of territory or a city is intolerable and above all troop commanders are responsible for leading by example and sacrificing their own lives to do their duty.”⁶³⁴

Naturally, we should ask here how much such statements actually reflected reality, and how much wishful thinking. In spring 1944, German naval forces in the North Atlantic were barraged with orders and warnings that stressed the importance of repelling the coming invasion and getting sailors to sacrifice their lives. Dönitz even ordered submarines to surface and ram enemy ships if necessary.⁶³⁵ But that command remained just words. In practice, Dönitz was careful about deploying his resources, for instance only sending submarines into the English Channel if there was a good chance they could carry out their missions successfully. He never again spoke of them ramming enemy ships, and the only sailors sent on what amounted to suicide missions were small close-combat units, who used hastily improvised weapons like human torpedoes, boats packed with explosives, and, as of 1945, tiny, two-man submarines. Losses among pilots of one-man torpedoes were horrendous and in no way justified by military results. Yet news of the willingness with which young German sailors sacrificed their lives got around, making its way even to Imperial Japan’s ambassador, who compared their bravery to that of the kamikaze pilots.⁶³⁶

A closer look reveals that what actually happened at sea was considerably more ambivalent than navy captains made it seem in their final radio messages. For example, on May 27, 1941, when the battleship Bismarck was sunk, Admiral Günther Lütjens radioed: “We’re fighting to the final shell. Long live the Führer.” Yet that was an exaggeration. In reality the Bismarck kept battling until the heavy artillery on board was disabled. One hundred fifteen men from a crew of 2,200 survived. In this respect, Lütjens behaved in much the same way as Rear Admiral Heinrich Ruhfus in Toulon. Both knew how their respective lopsided battles would end, yet neither wanted to give up without a fight. Ruhfus tried to gain time in order to destroy the port, while Lütjens seized the opportunity to inflict damage on British ships. But when his artillery was put out of commission after a short exchange of fire, the crew of the Bismarck began preparing to abandon ship. Many died as British navy men subjected the defenseless vessel to a barrage of gun and artillery fire. Before they sank their own ship, around a thousand Bismarck crew members escaped overboard. But high seas and fear that German submarines might be lurking prevented British sailors from launching an efficient rescue operation.

German navy men lived in a world of military commands in which orders to sacrifice their lives and battle “fanatically” played a particularly central role. And the rhetoric used by the navy leadership definitely had an effect on ordinary sailors. In conversations among navy POWs, concepts of discipline, pride, and honor occur much more frequently than in the chatter between army soldiers: