Not Official German Policy
Edward Von der Porten
Alan Rems’ December article “Götterdämmerung: German Admirals on Trial” (pp. 38–45) is a well-balanced view of a still-debated event in the aftermath of World War II. However, there are a few nuances that were not covered, possibly for lack of space, which may be of interest to your readers. In general, at the start of the war in September 1939, German submariners followed the established rules of war: visit, search, and provision for the safety of passengers and crew. Very quickly, the realities of submarine warfare—notably the arming of merchantmen, their use of radio to call in British antisubmarine forces, and their attempts to ram the submarines—made it difficult to keep the rules. Most of the restrictions on the submarines were removed by the end of 1939 by Adolf Hitler’s orders. Whether the German navy leadership desired to wage unrestricted submarine warfare from the start is a different issue.
By the time the United States entered the war more than two years later, the prewar understanding about the rules of submarine warfare had been irretrievably altered in the minds of naval leaders worldwide. The German decisions and the American decision leading to unrestricted submarine warfare were based on different circumstances.
The Heinz-Wilhelm Eck case is the only documented instance of the deliberate shooting of survivors by German submarine crews. That fact argues persuasively that while German navy leadership and Hitler saw the losses of Allied crewmen to be a desirable outcome so there would be fewer experienced merchant mariners to man mass-produced new ships, there was no policy of murdering survivors.
While Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz undoubtedly was a convinced Nazi, his direct exposure to Hitler and the higher Nazi leadership was extremely limited until he became commander-in-chief of the Navy in January 1943. He had practically no ability to influence high-level policy until then.
Mr. Rems responds:
I very much appreciate Mr. Von der Porten’s accurate observations about the changes in sea warfare that motivated Germany’s adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare, and America’s acting much the same way after entering the war. He is also entirely correct that Dönitz had little influence over naval policy up to January 1943, a principal reason why I disagreed with his conviction under Count 2 of the Nuremberg indictment.
My only disagreement relates to the policy regarding the survival of ship crews. More compelling than the Eck case was the testimony of Karl-Heinz Moehle, a senior commander who was instructed about the unwritten policy by higher level staff, and the testimony of Peter Heisig, who was present when Dönitz addressed officers in training encouraging the killing of ship crews. There is every reason to believe that, like much else in the Nazi state, Hitler’s ruthless designs were carried out regardless of legality. His particular interest in killing ship crews was demonstrated by his remarks to the Japanese ambassador, and he logically would have communicated his desires to Dönitz, among the Führer’s most faithful adherents. With oral emphasis by Dönitz, as heard by Heisig, the ambiguously worded Laconia decree was entirely sufficient to achieve Hitler’s purpose. This issue remained unresolved during the trial, and would best be considered a still open question.
Medal of Honor Recipient at Rest
John T. Peef
I enjoyed Robert Cressman’s October column on the USS Saginaw (“Historic Fleets: Calculated to Do Good Service,” pp. 64–65), particularly the part describing her wrecking and the dramatic rescue of her crew. Six months ago I was wandering through the overgrown, weed-choked, and abandoned Mare Island Navy Yard cemetery in Vallejo, California, and noticed one marker larger than the rest. Cleaning it off revealed that it was the resting place of Coxswain William Halford, a Medal of Honor recipient who was part of the Saginaw’s crew. He, along with several other sailors, volunteered to sail a small boat from the Saginaw 1,000 miles to the Sandwich Islands after she ran aground. They arrived on the island of Kauai on 19 December 1870—a journey of 31 days—but his shipmates drowned in the surf. The lone survivor, he ultimately was successful in sending help to the rest of the crew on the Saginaw, and received the Medal of Honor for these actions.
Friends from the Mayrant
Rear Admiral E. K. Walker Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
I was pleased to see Ensign Richard W. Belt Jr.’s journal excerpts from when he was on board the Augusta (“On Board the ‘Augie’ at Casablanca,” October, pp. 32–37). I was surprised to see the photo of the USS Mayrant (DD-402) on page 35. It shows the ship dodging large-caliber shells, probably from the Jean Bart, but they could also have been from one of the large-caliber shore batteries that took her under fire at various times during the day. My father, Rear Admiral Edward K. Walker, was her commanding officer during the North African and Sicilian campaigns. The executive officer was a Naval Reserve lieutenant by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. My father and “Frank” had more than two years together in the Mayrant and remained close friends for the rest of their lives.
When Politics Shade History
Robert Stern
In my many years as a reader, I have come to expect a level of professional “detachment” of the naval side from the political background in the stories being told. Thus it came as a serious disappointment to encounter Adam Nettina’s February article on the naval aspects of the Spanish Civil War (“The Generalissimo’s Naval War,” pp. 50–55). It was like taking a time machine back to the 1930s and finding oneself in the midst of a very partisan debate about the merits of Francisco Franco’s rebellion against the elected Spanish government, with Mr. Nettina taking a hard “rightist” line defending the rebellion as a necessary move to preserve order in Spain.
How else can one explain his description of the crews of the naval ships that did not rebel against their legal government as “mutinous” and the writings of acknowledged 20th-century literary giants such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell as “fundamentally biased”? This is particularly curious, given that in the same sentence he calls the work of conservative historian Stanley G. Payne “more balanced,” a judgment with which many people would disagree. Most curious is his failure to mention perhaps the most important events of the naval war off Spain: the bombing of the German “pocket battleship” Deutschland at Ibiza on 29 May 1937 by Republican bombers and the retaliatory shelling of the Spanish port of Almería by the cruiser Admiral Scheer two days later. All in all, I got the impression that Mr. Nettina was more interested in writing about the politics of the Spanish Civil War than about its naval history.
Mr. Nettina responds:
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Stern has come away with the impression that I am “more interested in writing about the politics of the Spanish Civil War than about its naval history.” This was not my intent, but to understand the victorious side’s methods, one must examine Franco, who is generally criticized for being an unimaginative and mediocre strategist. My story in no way condones the wartime death sentences carried out by the Nationalists, nor does it excuse the pre-1944 association of Franco’s regime with both national socialism and Italian fascism.
Ernest Hemingway was well connected with the Soviet NKVD while in Spain, so I don’t think that calling him biased is a partisan statement. As for Professor Payne: Calling him “conservative” is merely to identify him as someone who has mapped the complexity of the conflict beyond a label of fascism against democracy. Those who have studied prewar Spain know that the legality of the Second Republic was on shaky footing to begin with, especially since its means of representation denied most conservative parties a stake in the democratic process. And that does not even take into account our current understanding of voter fraud, intimidation, and violence during the 1936 elections. The situation in Spain was hardly one in which traditional democracy was struggling against fascism, and making a handful of references to the political and social background of the war should not detract from the fascinating aspects of its military history and naval strategy to which my article drew attention.