Hitler's gamble - An alternative German Strategy

Joachim spent the first week of October on a commission in the Wilhelmshaven branch of the Deutsche Werke as an observer on the construction of five München-class Light Cruisers. The ships were launched in September and all recieved their names: KMS München, KMS Mannheim, KMS Magdeburg, KMS Münster and KMS Mainz. The nameing convention was somewhat similar to that of the Royal Navy, giving names of large cities to the new ships, starting with the letter M, which was the class' name before the first ship recieved her own, thus naming the entire class.

The old, Emden- and the not so old Königsberg-class cruisers were starting to show their age. They were still very much sea worthy, and they were capable of holding their own, but the strongest navy they had to face was that of Sweden, and let's be honest, eventhough they were a match to the Kriegsmarine in the sorry state it was during the first few months of the War, Sweden was the least of the worries of the Reich. The Royal Navy and the La Royale were still huge obstacles on the way to victory, and they couldn't be underestimated. Against such foes, more modern ships were needed.


And that is where the new class came into the picture. The ships' designe parameters were quite impressive with 150 mm main armaments, 51mm main armour belt, and a 68,200-PS-Turbinen engine. They also had eight deck-mounted torpedo tubes and about 60 naval mines. The total displacement was designed to be 9,300 tons, the length of the ships wes about 180 meters. The use of 88mm Anti-Aircraft guns was considered, but was dropped in favour of the 20mm Flakvierling 38, but the gun enplacements were fit to be rearmed later on, if heavier equipment becomes readily available.


Joachim and the clerk who escorted him around the facility arrived at a large crane.

- And this is the apparatus we will use to move the main armaments into their place once they are finished.

- Marvelous! You have some truly magnificant equipment here. - Joachim never actually visited a shipyard before. His job at the company was strictily logistical, he worked in an office in the Berlin headquarters. The only reference he had was the machines used in the steel factory in Frankfurt am Main, and those were dwarfed by this colossus. - I hope we won't need to go up to the top of one of these, I'm afraid of heights...

- No. Only authorized personnel may go up there, so you couldn't, even if you wanted to.

- That's a relief - sighed Joachim. His business was mainly directed towards the accounts of the branch, covering their resource management. They worked on that for three hours straight, and after their lunch-break, Joachim asked if they could take a tour of the shipyard. The only place they didn't go yet was the docks, where the Submarine fleets of the Reich were based. He was very excited about that. - Will we go to the docks now?

- I'm afraid not. That area is restricted, and only the repair crews are allowed in.

- That's understandable, I guess. - he was disappointed, but he could understand the necessity of the security measures. - Okay... Back to work.

"Gee, I feel a little guilty now..." thought the clerck as they returned to the office.



Martin was locked into his office without breakfast again. (Hans could smuggle in a cheese sandwich, but unfortunately Martin hated cheese...) The occasion this time was an Allied landing attempt at Wilhelmshaven. The most likely goal of the attack was to damage or destroy the Submarines based out of the docks there.


This attack wasn't any more threatening than the last one at Kiel a month earlier, of course. But this time, the invasion fleet was much smaller: only one troop transport flotilla and two old Spanish Battleships. In comparision, the earlier fleet had multiple Carriers, some other capital ships and plenty of screening vessels as well. Grand Admiral Raeder decided that this will be the perfect proving ground for the aerial arm of the Kriegsmarine, and he ordered the Carrier Air Groups (waiting for the Carriers themselves to be finished) to intercept the Spainsh fleet. Their success was almost complete: the transport ships were all sunk, although the two Battleships managed to escape and the bombers gave up on chasing them because they were running low on fuel. The few Spanish troops that already managed to land quickly surrendered.

After hearing the news, Hitler was pleased. It was obvious that the torpedo bombers were pretty effective in their role, even if based off of traditional airfields. Still, it was also obvious that the two Battleships with no escort, close to the German coast were not a real challenge. Further tests will be necessary to prove that this new kind of warfare gives a chance for the Kriegsmarine against the Royal Navy, as Raeder and Air Marshal Grauert have claimed.

And that was the dilemma. The victory was an important proof of the effectiveness of torpedo bombers and thus it had to be communicated to the people accordingly, but this victory lacked the epic drama of the earlier successes. Martin had a serious writer's block, and Hans tried to cheer him up.

- It can't be that bad! I mean you are the best at this kind of stuff. You can even turn a defeat into the most epic victory!

- Of course I can! But this is not a defeat. Do you understand why this is so important?

- No, not really...

- See? That's the problem. This was a very important victory, but you, the average German citizen can't see why.

- Then tell me!

- Argh... Alright, let's start at the begining. Way back, before the Great War, the German Empire had a nice, big navy. Not on par with the Royal Navy of the British, but still, it was a competent naval force. A force to reckon with. For obvious reasons, after the end of the war, most of it was dismantled, sold for scrap metal, sunk as a shooting target, or simply transfered to other countries. And the rest is obsolete by now anyway. Our Führer knew that we couldn't rebuild the once great fleet, learning from the mistakes of the last Kaiser.

- What mistakes?

- I'm glad you asked. - Actually, Martin wasn't glad. He was hungry. - You see, when Kaiser Wilhelm II started to build up the navy, the United Kingdom also started to build up their own navy in response. An arms race started between the two nations, which the German Empire couldn't win. The British simply had more experience in the area.

- I see.

- At first, our Führer tried to be friendly with the West, even brokering a naval agreement, lifting most of the restrictions put in place by the Versailles Treaty. That was all nice and well, but even then, it was obvious that matching the Royal Navy's might would be impossible with conventional methods: a new arms race would commence, ruining our hardly stabilized economy. So, instead of focusing on the Navy, which was never the strong point of our nation, he decided to focus on the Luftwaffe instead.

- Bombing ships with airplanes? That sounds logical.

- Because it is. Hitting a soldier or a tank can be difficult with a bomb. Even hitting a bunker can be pretty hard, despite its size, and usually a whole lot of bombs are dropped over a large area to hit one bunker, which will only suffer some minor damage in the end.

- Really? Didn't know that...

- It's true. But a warship is huge! And the more important a ship is, the bigger target it will be! And it can be even more efficient to launch torpedos against ships than using bombs. Although bombs can be very effective against a lightly armoured deck...

- A lightly armoured what? - Hans didn't know much about ships. He was very confused by now.

- Nevermind. The point is that such aircraft need to be highly maneuverable in order to deliver the intended payload. So, they must be relatively small airplanes, and can't bring too much fuel with them. So, if they were based on airfields, they would have a very limited range. Only a few miles from the coast at most.

- That doesn't sound too much.

- No, it doesn't. So, the idea is to bring the airfield to the enemy. An airfield, floating on the sea, able to launch aircraft and project our airforce to very far away lands!

- Amazing! But how can an airfield float?

- Don't want me to go into details. Ask Joachim once, he may tell you all the boring little secrets of how it works. Anyway, the point is that such floating airfields are called Aircraft Carriers, and five of them are being built in Kiel at the moment. They are almost done, too. And they will carry the same aircraft that just destroyed an entire flotilla of passenger ships and heavily damaged two Battleships off the coast at Wilhelmshaven.

- I see. Then I believe you should write down this in your article.

- You know, what? You are not as stupid as you sometimes pretend to be!

- Why, thank you! Wait...



- Good evening, honey! - Anna greeted Hans at the door. Working hours at the post office were much shorter and it was closer to their home too, so she was usually at home much earlier. She even had time to prepare dinner before he arrived.

- Good evening! What's this wonderful scent?

- Roasted sausage with mashed potatoes.

- My favourite!

- You say it's your favourite regardless of what I make...

- Because anything you cook is my favourite! I'm hungry as a wolf! - they sat down to the dining table and started to eat. - And how was your day? - asked Hans with his mouth full of sausage.

- Oh, just the usual, nothing interesting ever happens at a post office!

- It can't be that boring...

- Well, now that you mention it, there was this man. He wanted to send a package. Small box, normal fee, nothing special. But he looked really suspicious, always looking back over his shoulder, like someone was after him.

- Like in the movies?

- He wasn't acting that obvious of course, but I can spot things like this! I've read all about it when I was a little girl!

- You should have been reading girlish books, not gangster stories!

- Maybe so, but I wasn't really interested in those. I always borrowed the books of my brother, Johan. Anyway, he payed for his package, addressed to Magdeburg, then left.

- Your imagination is a bit too active, darling.

- If you say so! - said Anna resentfully. - And how was your day? - she was mimicking Hans' style of speech.

- My day was rather interesting and eventful. It all started with another stupid assay of Martin's about life in the Wehrmacht, but then sometime in the afternoon, Erwin, the secretary of Martin came in with a new war report.

- War report? Another invasion?

- No, after the disasterous attempt at Wilhelmshaven last week, the enemy didn't try anything that dumb.

- Then the Führer must have started a new war...

- I thought the same thing at first, but no, that was not the case either. It was about a series of aerial engagements betwen the Royal Airforce and the Luftwaffe.


- You know about their repeated attempts to bomb our factories. - continued Hans - This time, they met some serious resistance. The interceptor screen set up by Air Marshal Ulrich Grauert is very impressive! According to the reports, almost an entire air wing of British bombers were shot down! During the day, about a hundred and fifty bombers entered German airspace, but only some ninty or so returned to the British Isles, and they couldn't even drop their payload!

- That's wonderful news!

- It definitely is! Martin said that we won't see those bombers for at least a month!



Wilhelm was driving a Kübelwagen with First Seargent Hermann Benz back to the village. They were running an errand for the Colonel in charge of the Training Camp. He had some relatives in Memel and they were supposed to send him a letter every now and then. The lieutenant working as his aide was on leave for three days (visiting his sick aunt in Hamburg), and that sorry excuse for an officer was not able to carry out such a trivial task on his own. He had to send a Captain. As Wilhelm had worked as a General's aide earlier, it seemed logical to the Colonel that he should be sent.

- I really can't believe he had to choose you as his errand boy. - First Seargent Benz was even more pissed about this assignment.

- Do you question the orders you get from your superiors often, or is this a special case? - asked Wilhelm.

- No, Sir. I apologize, Sir. - It was rare that First Seargent Benz was annoyed by something, but it happened sometimes. But now he suddenly found it necessary to stir the discussion towards another topic. - Do you have any relatives? If I may ask, Sir.

- Yes, you may. And yes, I do. I'm the second son of a baron in Lower Saxony. My brother serves in the Kriegsmarine, but my parents died when I was young.

- I'm sorry, Sir.

- Don't be. It was a long time ago. How about you? Do you have a family?

- Oh, Sir, I have four sisters and five brothers. Most of them younger than me. A result of the Great War, or so I was told. I always thought that my parents were simply busy with eachother.

- That must be one big happy family. - Wilhelm ignored that comment.

- Yes, Sir! For the most part... My mother is like a true angel, but my father can get grumpy sometimes. Don't get me wrong, Sir, he has done everything in his power for our family all his life, and I respect him for that. Still, he can get on my nerves...

- Raising ten kids must be very tireing I imagine.

- And he had to work very hard, too, with the great depression and all. The country was in ruins, not like it is now! He could feed us even in the worst years. He is a great man with a very strong will. But he doesn't have the vision necessary to build a future.

- A true conservative.

- Exactly. And he had brothers too. I had six uncles from his side alone, although four of them were lost during the Great War. They were much less lucky with children though. One of the surviving two moved to Romania in the early twenties and died there eight years ago. His only son sends me letters quite frequently. He is the only more distant relative I keep in contact with. We were playing all the time when we were very young, like four or five years old. Just after the War.

- And what's the news from Romania? - Wilhelm wasn't really interested, but politeness dictated that he keeps on asking, and it was a boring ride back to the village anyway.

- Nikolaus, my nephew, works for the Partidul German din România or German Party of Romania. He says they are going to win the elections! National Socialism is spreading, Sir!

- A German Party in Romania?

- Yes, Sir. It represents the Volksdeutsche there.

- I never realized that so many Germans lived in Romania.

- There are some sizeable communities, mostly in large cities, which helps with gathering political support. The Party got quite strong recently, thanks to the success of the Reich. And I guess the financial support doesn't hurt either.


- That's good news. From what I've heared, there is a huge oil field in Romania. Buying some crude oil from them would definitely help our tanks keep rolling. And we might be needing it very soon with that naval blockade...


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