148 Wilhelmshaven, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
//-->WILHELMSHAVENTHE LIVERPOOL BLITZBANNER OF VICTORY OVER THE REICHSTAG97703061541034 8£4.25Number 148NUMBER 148© CopyrightAfter the Battle2010Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite:www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battleis published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for theAfter the Battlerange:Motorbooks, 13/15 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4ANTelephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: info@renniks.com. Website:www.renniks.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd., PO Box 2131,1 Northrup Crescent, St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7S2Telephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136E-mail: sales@vanwell.comNew Zealand Distribution:Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486,Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New ZealandTelephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817E-mail: milrchiv@mist.co.nzUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 880 Canal St., Stamford, CT 06902Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106E-mail: info@rzm.com Website:www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 ParmaTelephone: ++390521 29 27 33. Fax: ++390521 29 03 87E-mail: info@tuttostoria.it Website:www.tuttostoria.itDutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,6860 AD OosterbeekTelephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nlHORUMERSIELCONTENTSWILHELMSHAVENUNITED KINGDOMThe Liverpool BlitzIT HAPPENED HEREBanner of Victoryover the Reichstag24248SENGWARDENJEVERFront Cover:One of the most famous shipsconstructed at Wilhelmshaven was thebattleshipTirpitz.She was launched onSaturday, April 1, 1939 and destroyed bythe RAF using 12,000lb Tallboy bombs onNovember 12, 1944. When she wasscrapped in 1948, this 15cm gun, one of hersecondary armaments, was salvaged andset up at Wilhelmshaven. (Karel Margry)Centre Pages:After the war the Royal Navydrew up several alternative plans to destroythe Kriegsmarine facilities at Wilhelmshaven.Plan No. 15 envisaged four large dams toclose off basins and the sinking ofblockships at locks and other places, but itwas rejected because of the expense of dikebuilding.Back Cover:The Soviet War Memorial inBerlin photographed in March 2010. (GailParker)Acknowledgements:For their invaluablehelp with the Wilhelmshaven story, theEditor would like to thank city Director ofCulture Dr Jens Graul for arranging all theaccess permits; Markus Titsch for his expertguidance and free use of his extensivephoto collection, and Herr Krüger of theMarinearsenal. He also thanks MauriceLaarman and Hans Houterman.Photo Credits:BA — Bundesarchiv; IWM —Imperial War Museum; NAC — NationalArchives of Canada; NIOD — NederlandsInstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Am-sterdam; USNA — US National Archives.Wilhelmshaven is situated 24 miles up the Jade river on the wide North Sea inlet ofJade-Busen. When drawing his designs for the new port in the 1850s, Hafenbaudirektor(chief of port construction) Wilhelm Göker had followed local dialect and speltWilhelmshaven with a Lower German ‘v’ instead of with the High German ‘f’. However,Berlin bureaucrats, thinking that this was an error, subsequently changed the ‘v’ to ‘f’.When Göker discovered this on the day King Wilhelm I officially opened the new port, heimmediately informed General Albert von Roon, the Minister of War, who referred thematter to the King. Wilhelm I confirmed the ‘v’, saying: ‘Indeed, that’s how I pronouncedit, dear Roon’. Subsequent new ports such as Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven followed theprecedent. We have marked some of the other towns that feature in our story.2Wilhelmshaven, the German port city on the North Sea, wascreated by Prussia in the 19th century with the express purpose ofbecoming the principal base and shipbuilding facility of the newPrussian/German Navy. Officially opened in 1869 and alreadyenlarged in the run-up to the First World War, it was again greatlyWilhelmshaven is a German coastal townon the North Sea, about midway betweenHamburg and the Dutch border. Situatedsome 35 kilometres up the Jade river on thewide inlet of the Jade-Busen bay, it was cre-ated in the 19th century for the sole purposeof serving as a principal dockyard and basefor the German Navy, and served in thiscapacity during two world wars.It was Prussian Prince Adalbert whoselected Wilhelmshaven as a site for a navalbase. He had been appointed leader of thefederal technical commission to identify thebest way of countering naval threats fromDenmark against the north German coasts.In 1848 he wrote aDenkschrift über die Bil-dung einer deutschen Flotte(Memorandumon the Formation of a German Fleet) inwhich he identified a three-stage approach tobuilding a navy; he proposed firstly a coastaldefence force which would prevent blockadeand invasion; this would later develop anoffensive capability to protect trade; andfinally there would be a navy that couldapply force at a distance in support of foreignpolicy. Following on from this, in 1849 herecommended the construction of two baseson the Baltic and North Sea coasts linked bya canal. The former would become Kiel (thesite for it was acquired from Austria in 1865),the latter would become Wilhelmshaven.In 1853 Prussia secretly bought the villageof Heppens on the mouth of the Jade riverand adjoining lands from the Grand Duchyof Oldenburg. Construction started in 1854of a fortified shipyard two kilometres fromtidewater and accessed through a ship canaland lock gates protected by fortified batter-ies. Construction by shovel and wheelbarrowwas performed by an army of labourers whosuffered severely from ice, floods, malariaand a shortage of drinking water.The facility that became operational in 1870consisted of a shipyard with two slipways andthree docks alongside a 400-metre square har-bour (Bau-Hafen), a harbour canal (Hafen-Kanal) and a ten-metre-wide entrance througha lock built on land reclaimed from the sea.Workshops, forges and general metalworkingfacilities were constructed with engineersrecruited from Saxony and the Ruhr industrialarea. Prussia had no shipbuilding tradition ofits own, but copied and improved on the tech-extended during the Nazi era to become the largest state-ownednaval dockyard in the world, Hitler labelling it the ‘Kriegshafen desGrossdeutschen Reiches’ (War Port of the Greater German Reich).This artist’s impression shows Wilhelmshaven with its threeentrance locks as it looked after the First World War.WILHELMSHAVENnology of the world-leader Britain, installing itin modern, purpose-built, state-of-the-art andstate-owned facilities in Wilhelmshaven, Kieland Danzig. (The Germany Navy were alsoable to place orders in the private yards ofBlohm & Voss at Hamburg, AGVulkan/Weser at Bremen and Schichau atElbing.) Large areas for anchoring — knownas the Wilhelmshaven Roads and the SchilligRoads — were available in the Jade estuary.The new naval base (town and harbour)was officially opened by King Wilhelm I onJune 17, 1869, and the name of the townchanged from Heppens to Wilhelmshaven.The Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard)opened in 1871 after Wilhelm I had becomeKaiser. The first ship to be constructed fromthe keel up in the new dockyard was the6,700-tonGrosser Kurfürst,begun that year.Emphasis soon shifted towards building adefensive coastal battle fleet, confirmed by alaw of 1873. The shipyard and harbour wereextended with an Ausrüstungs-Hafen (fit-ting-out harbour) and Neuer Hafen (laterduring the Third Reich called the Torpedo-boots-Hafen); the Ems-Jade Canal built toensure secure barge access from the Ruhrindustrial area, and a second entrance, 24metres wide and 114 metres long, opened in1886. (Although the second to be con-structed, it was named Entrance I, the origi-nal, smaller lock becoming Entrance II.)The two new naval bases — Wil-helmshaven on the North Sea and Kiel onthe Baltic — had initially been linked by thenarrow Eider Canal for mutual support andcombined operations. As ships grew larger anew Kiel Canal was begun in 1887 and com-pleted in 1895.The fleet laws of Admiral Alfred von Tir-pitz, passed in 1898 and 1900, challengedBritish supremacy in the North Sea andrequired further expansion of shipbuildingcapacity and harbour facilities. A ThirdEntrance, 40 metres wide and 250 metresBy Tony Colvinlong, later called the Tirpitz-Schleuse, wasbegun in 1900 and finished in 1909, while aBetriebs-Hafen (commercial harbour, latercalled the Nord-Hafen) and three new har-bours — the Grosser Hafen (later Hipper-Hafen), Zwischen-Hafen (Scheer-Hafen)and West-Hafen (Tirpitz-Hafen) — wereexcavated along the south end of the town.Docks Nos. 4 to 6 were constructed in theNorth Quay and a 40,000-ton floating dockbuilt. In 1907, harbour expansion requiredthe new Kaiser Wilhelm Swing Bridge whichcame to symbolise Wilhelmshaven.During the First World War, Wilhelmshavenplayed a major role both as dockyard and navalbase. Main projects carried out by the Kaiser-liche Werft included the completion of theheavy cruiserHindenburg,launched in 1915and commissioned in 1917, and the conversionof seven blockade-breaking merchant sub-marines into Imperial Navy U-boat cruisers in1917. The workforce employed in the dockyardgrew from 11,500 in 1914 to 21,000 in 1918.Throughout the war, the Hochseeflotte (HighSeas Fleet) — a large force of 99 ships underAdmiral Reinhard Scheer — was based in Wil-helmshaven. From there they sailed to thewar’s big sea battles at Heligoland in August1914, Dogger Bank in January 1915 and Jut-land (Skagerrak) in May 1916.In 1913 a cabinet decision of Kaiser Wil-helm II established a seaplane base in Wil-helmshaven. As a result, in 1914 the 2.Seeflieger-Abteilung built a Seeflug-StationNordsee (Naval Aviation Station North Sea)on the south side of the Grosser Hafen onwhat became Wilhelmshaven’s ‘Fliegerdeich’(airmen’s dike). During the war it becameone of the largest seaplane facilities com-plete with hangars, cranes, an apron for air-craft and associated buildings. Seaplaneswere built here by the Kaiserliche Werft.3ATBLeft:Hitler leaving Wilhelmshaven’s Marinegedächtnis-Kirche(Naval Memorial Church) in May 1931 at the time of thenational elections. Built in 1869-72 and originally named theElisabeth-Kirche, the church was developed into (althoughnever officially named) a Naval Memorial Church in 1918 inmemory of the many losses suffered by the Kaiserliche Marinein the First World War. This picture by Heinrich Hoffmann,Hitler’s official photographer, of a humble Hitler crowned by acrucifix became a true vote-catcher. Thousands of copies wereIn November 1918, a mutiny began onships of the fleet anchored in the Jade andSchillig Roads and spread into the townwhere dock workers seized power over thenaval base and proclaimed Wilhelmshavenand the surrounding area a Socialist Repub-lic. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg abdicatedand the Free State of Oldenburg wasdeclared. The subsequent elections led to aCommunist coup in January 1919, which wassuppressed with force by regular troops ofthe naval garrison.The post-war years were difficult times forWilhelmshaven. Building of trawlers andpassenger steamers kept the dockyard facili-ties — now re-named Reichsmarine-Werft(State Naval Dockyard) — operating untilthe first cruiser ordered by the WeimarRepublic government,Emden,was laiddown in December 1921. Orders followed fortorpedo boats; another cruiser,Königsberg,in 1925, and the pocket battleshipsAdmiralsold, treated as icons and achieved the purpose of persuadingreligious Germans that the Führer was a god-fearing person.Centre and right:The church and its portal survive unchanged.As the nearby Christus-Kirche was destroyed during the warand not rebuilt, so the surviving Marinegedächtnis-Kirche, nolonger with a garrison to serve, became the parish church andwas renamed the Christus-Kirche. With the founding of theBundesmarine in 1955, the church became the Christus- undGarnison-Kirche in 1959.from May 11 to 13, speaking at a rally inJever on May 12.During the June 1932 provincial elections,having lost the presidential election to Hin-denburg on April 10, Hitler set up base inHorumersiel for a week, from May 21 to 27,going off to speak in six places; Oldenburg,Wilhelmshaven, Rodenkirchen, Delmen-horst, Cloppenburg, and Bad Zwischenahn.His work bore fruit when the Nazi candidate,Carl Röver, was voted Minister-President ofFree State Oldenburg on June 16. Oldenburgwas one of five Länder where the Nazis wereelected (the others were Anhalt, Brunswick,Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Thuringia). InWilhelmshaven the NSDAP received 40.4per cent of the votes while the Social Democ-rats polled only 24.4 per cent. However, inlarger Rüstringen (where most of the dock-workers lived) the Nazis polled only 26.4 percent against the Social Democrats 47.2 percent.Scheerin 1931 andAdmiral Graf Speein1932. However, attempts to establish Wil-helmshaven as a fishing port and seasideresort failed and unemployment in the arearemained high.The Nazis had strong support in Olden-burg and during the 1931 and 1932 electionsHitler campaigned actively in the Wil-helmshaven area, on each occasion setting uphis headquarters in the Strand-Hotel ZurSchönen Aussicht in Horumersiel-Schillig,one of the most popular holiday resorts inGermany, 24 kilometres north of Wil-helmshaven in Friesian Wangerland.The 1931 campaign began with 1,500 SAmen marching in Wilhelmshaven on April29. This was followed on May 5 by a packedrally in Wilhelmshaven’s Zentralhalleaddressed by Prince August Wilhelm ofPrussia, the Kaiser’s fourth son who hadjoined the Nazis in 1930 and raised theirsocial profile. Hitler himself was in the areaTITSCHThe Strand-Hotel Zür Schönen Aussicht in Horumersiel, theholiday resort 24 kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven (see themap on page 2), was Hitler’s regional campaign headquartersduring the 1931 and 1932 elections. Hitler set up base here inMay 1931, in May 1932 and again for one night in October ofthat year. Here a large crowd greets Hitler during his last, briefvisit on June 11, 1936.4Horumersiel was untouched by the war but afterwardschanged out of recognition when the harbour was movedseveral hundred metres to the south. As a result, the Strand-Hotel is no longer on the seafront. A new extension has alsoaltered its frontal appearance. Hitler’s room was in the dormerfacing the sea but a request by us to see it was refused withoutexplanation.ATBATBEHRENFRIEDHOFFLAK HQ BUNKERSURRENDER CROSSROADSMÜHLENWEG BARRACKSRATHAUSTIRPITZLAUNCHRAEDER-SCHLEUSEDESTROYERBASETIRPITZ-SCHLEUSEU-BOATBASELUFTWAFFEBARRACKSSEAPLANEBASEMap of Wilhelmshaven as it was during the war. We have marked the main locations that feature in our story.BUILDING HITLER’S FLEETWith Hitler coming to power in January1933, and soon assuming an aggressive for-eign policy, Wilhelmshaven and its Reichs-marine-Werft shipbuilding yards gained newimpetus.The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had limiteda defeated Germany to warships of no morethan 10,000 tons displacement. The govern-ment of the Weimar Republic, by makingclever use of technical innovations to createa lighter hull that allowed for heavier guns, in1929 had ordered construction of three10,000-ton heavy cruisers, or pocket battle-ships, theDeutschland, Admiral ScheerandAdmiral Graf Spee.All three were laid downbefore Hitler came to power but they werecompleted during the Nazi period. Two ofthem, theAdmiral ScheerandGraf Speewere built at Wilhelmshaven, the formerbeing launched on April 1, 1933 in the pres-ence of Admiral Erich Raeder, the comman-der-in-chief of the Reichsmarine, and the lat-ter on June 30, 1934. (TheDeutschlandwasbuilt by the Deutsche Werke yard at Kiel.)In 1935 Hitler traded on British feelings ofangst, guilt and appeasement to push for anAnglo-German Naval Treaty permittingGermany to build the equivalent of up toone-third of Britain’s total tonnage, and tobuild 35,000-ton battleships as permittedunder the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty.Hitler ordered the construction of two32,100-ton battleships, which were really bat-tle cruisers: theScharnhorstandGneisenau,with nine 28cm (11-inch) guns. Of the twinships, theScharnhorstwas built at Wil-helmshaven. Laid down on June 15, 1935, shewas launched on October 3, 1936 and com-missioned on January 7, 1939. (TheGneise-nauwas built by the Deutsche Werke atKiel.)TITSCHLeft:Hitler greeting his enthusiastic followers in front of theStrand-Hotel. It was also at Horumersiel in 1932 that Hitler firstmet Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film director who laterproduced the classic Nazi propaganda filmsTriumph des Wil-lens(1934) andOlympia(1938). She had heard Hitler speak atthe Berlin Sportpalast and on May 18 had written to theNSDAP headquarters in Munich asking for a meeting. Threedays later she got a phone call from Wilhelm Brückner, Hitler’sadjutant, telling her that Hitler had just been saying that themost beautiful thing he had ever seen in a film was Riefen-stahl’s dance on the sea inDer heilige Berg,and inviting her toHorumersiel the next day. She travelled to Wilhelmshaven bytrain, being met by Brückner, Sepp Dietrich and Dr. Otto Diet-rich in a Mercedes, and an hour later Hitler greeted her atHorumersiel. They walked together on the coastal path wherehe pointed out various ships that he could see through binocu-lars. He also praised her filmDas blaue Licht.They walkedagain after dinner. Riefenstahl was invited to stay overnight atthe hotel, and to accommodate her Julius Schaub, Hitler’s aidehad to vacate his room. The following morning, May 23, afterbreakfast, Hitler ordered an aircraft to fly her to Hamburg,where she boarded a ship for Greenland and the filming of hernext movie,SOS Eisberg.Right:The hotel is one of a fewsurviving venues where Hitler stayed.5ATB
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]