Karl Dönitz (16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral during World War II. He commanded the Kriegsmarine's U-Boat force and later became Grand Admiral of the whole German navy. At the end of the war, Adolf Hitler named him as his successor as President of the Reich and he was the one who surrendered to the Allies.
Dönitz was born in Imperial Germany and joined the Navy in 1910. As World War I erupted, he served on the SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean. In 1916, he requested a transfer to the U-Boats. Throughout the war, Germany used her submarines to devastating effect on British shipping, transforming a primitive vessel into a formidable weapon of war. In October 1918, he was captured by the British and was in a POW camp when the war ended.
When the Nazis came to power, who he passionately supported, Dönitz became captain of the training ship Emden. He clashed with the new naval supreme commander Erich Raeder, who believed that surface ships should be given priority. Dönitz believed that modern U-Boats were unsuitable for a war due to their slow speeds. He pushed for new designs and tactics, including the "wolf pack." Back in the Great War, the British eventually grouped their ships into convoys and this led to improved survivability for merchant ships. Dönitz would instead converge on a convoy with a large group of U-Boats to decimate the ships. With the development of the Enigma code machine, radio communications would be secured.
While the U-Boats met with success during the early months of World War II, a major flaw quickly emerged. The Poles managed to smuggle an Enigma machine to England, where British intelligence would spend years to ultimately crack its code. Until then, though, the U-Boats managed to target British shipping to great effect. With the fall of France in June 1940, the U-Boats relocated to the French Atlantic ports, giving them free and open access to the ocean.
On December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States, ostensibly to allow his U-Boats to begin targeting American ships which were bringing critical supplies to England. Dönitz dispatched five boats to the Eastern Seaboard, where they targeting American shipping to devastating effect as part of Operation Drumbeat. However, their downfall soon began in earnest. The factories and laboratories of the United States were well out of range of German attacks and sabotage. America worked on new technologies to allow them to hunt U-Boats.
Dönitz's use of radio would prove to be one of the factors in the force's downfall. America developed high-frequency direction finding, allowing them to zero in on a U-Boat every time it used its radio. With improved anti-submarine weaponry, casualties quickly took hold. May 1943 became known as "Black May," when Allied destroyers sank 41 German U-Boats, a quarter of the operational submarine fleet. He also refused to believe input from his commanders that the Enigma code may have been compromised, claiming that to do so was impossible.
Dönitz attempted to respond with new technologies. This included the Schnörkel, a mast which could allow U-Boats to replenish their air while submerged. The Type XXI boat was developed: a true submarine that was designed entirely to fight underwater. However, these came far too late to help. In June 1944, the Allies returned to France with Operation Overlord and the Soviets smashed the backbone of the German Army on the Eastern Front with Operation Bagration. Dönitz went on to supervise the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia, West Prussia and Pomerania from mid-January to May 1945 as the Red Army advanced (some of the ships such as the Wilhelm Gustloff and SS Cap Arcona were loaded with up to 9000 people and some were sunk by Soviet submarines, the largest losses of life in ship sinkings in history). This was the largest evacuation by sea in history, significantly outnumbering Dunkirk from 1940.
In April 1945, Hitler was hiding in his bunker in Berlin while the Red Army closed in. Hermann Göring sent a telegram asking to assume command of the crumbling Third Reich. Not long afterwards, Hitler learned that Heinrich Himmler had attempted to negotiate with the Allies behind his back. He responded by expelling both men from their positions. Meanwhile, Dönitz was directing operations in Flensburg, Northern Germany. Hitler decided to split his function of Führer back to the President-Chancellor duo, named Dönitz as President in his last will and testament along with supreme commander of the armed forces, and Joseph Goebbels was made Chancellor. Hitler and Goebbels subsequently committed suicide shortly thereafter, leaving Dönitz in command of Germany. Within a week, he surrendered.
For his actions in waging unrestricted submarine warfare, Dönitz was tried at the Nuremberg Trials. He received a relatively light sentence of ten years at Spandau.note He died in 1980.
Documentaries:
- German channel ZDF had an episode of Terra X about Dönitz.
- The NOVA episode "Hitler's Lost Sub" prominently features Dönitz while discussing the history of the German U-Boat, along with his role in the force's downfall.
Depictions in fiction:
Film:
- His portrait is prominently featured in Das Boot.
Literature:
- Third Reich Victorious Alternate History series: In "The Little Admiral," Hitler, Erich Raeder, and Karl Dönitz form a triumvirate that reestablishes German naval power, with Hitler being the political head, Raeder the military head, and Dönitz the diplomatic head.
Live-Action Television:
- Played by Raymond Cloutier in Nuremberg. He's the guy who calls Julius Streicher a pig.
- Played by Thomas Kretschmann in the docudrama The Sinking of the Laconia.
- Played by Peter Rühring in Speer Und Er.
- Played by David Mitchell in a skit on That Mitchell and Webb Look. He's portrayed as completely oblivious to Germany's situation and has to be bluntly told that the Germans just need him to give the go-ahead for surrender.
