Yes Barry,
From what I have read Hitler did not see the significance of his navy in the overall picture. He was very much an army tactician and saw the navy as a poor relation.
When you think of the ships he had at his disposal such as the Gneisenau, the Sharnhorst, the Bismark, the Tirpitz and the Prinz Eugen and the other ships in that class, it was amazing that he did not do considerably more damage with them than he did.
It actually took a lot of persuation from Donitz to be allowed to increase the U-boat fleet at the beginning of the war after Hitler had a row with Raeder over the fact that he did not see the U-boat as a particularly significant weapon. When that is compared with Churchill's comment that the thing he feared most of all was the U-boat it shows how far Hitler got the war at sea wrong.
If, as Raeder wanted, the war had been delayed until the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were finished and these ships had been used in conjunction with the Sharnhorst and Gneisenau it would have given the Royal Navy a much more formidable opponent than they ever encountered.
I am a firm believer that there are good and bad people on both sides in any conflict as well as courageous and any other characteristic we care to mention.
Did you see the movie "The Pianist"? A very powerfull movie showing all the atrocities of the Warsaw ghetto's yet it also included a senior German officer in the final stages of the conflict who showed compassion to the Jewish pianist.
To maintain the balanced outlook we must also remember the fact that the British invented concentration camps and some of the things that were done in the name of the "Empire" are best remembered only in the context of preventing it happening again.
I do find the naval side of the Second World War very interesting from all sides and read as many personal accounts as I can. |