Did the Germans ever possess the ability to build enough U-Boats to win the Atlantic war?

sculptingman said:

Doentiz was in Hitlers inner command circle. He knew full well that taking france was on the agenda.

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sculptingman said:

On what planet do you think anyone said Uboats ALONE could have done the trick?

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sculptingman said:

Doenitz was NOT arguing for having 400 early U-Boats by 39. He was arguing to DELAY the war until they had 400- this was when the more advanced U-Boats were already under development and beginning to be built... If Doenitz had been listened to, Germany would not have invaded Poland until 41. Which means they would have mostly been the more advanced designs.

His rationale was that as long as there was no actual war, Britain was NOT going to be arming. So better to catch them unprepared with 400 u-boats in service than with only 94 older models.
But Hitler literally said he would rather start the war at age 50 than at age 55. Really. That was his reasoning on starting the war. No wonder the ..... lost.

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sculptingman said:

On what planet do you think anyone said Uboats ALONE could have done the trick?

Doenitz never claimed uBoats alone could do it. He claimed that WITHOUT 400 uboats- the entire rest of the german army could NOT accomplish it.

Britain Not being able to fuel its fighters is exactly the same as Germany having MORE Bombers.


Britain's great strength thru history has been that other nations could not simply March their army over their borders.
That they have coastline All the way around thru which they can take in and ship out materiel.

Doenitz understood that without interdicting 90-95% of British sea trade, Britain could, as it always had, hold out forever.

He wasn't, like Goering, saying "leave it all to the Uboats" - He was trying to make Hitler understand Britain's strategic advantage that had to be overcome to have any hope of defeating them using the REST of the German forces.

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sculptingman said:

Doentiz was in Hitlers inner command circle. He knew full well that taking france was on the agenda.

And he fully understood the effect of aircraft- but also fully understood that NO nation, at that time, had aircraft capable of patrolling the mid atlantic. There were no effective anti-submarine tactics.
His entire point was that Germany, once on the march, would have a VERY LIMITED period of time to effect the capitulation of Britain.
And that would ONLY happen if Britain were Isolated and genuinely cut off from re-supply.

He fully understood that, once the war started, and their opponents saw what uboats COULD do- ( given the resources Britain HAD at war's start) that they would rapidly improve their aircraft, destroyers, and tactics to try and thwart the Uboats.

He gave Germany 18 months to win- or it would never win.
His advice was that the only weapon they had that could blockade Britain was the Uboat and without shipping Britain would run out of food and war materiel within 8 months.

He warned, correctly, that starting the war with less than 400 boats would mean Britain could hold out indefinitely and maintain weapons development and improvement.

So- not sure what you mean by his crystal ball being on the fritz... he said Germany could not defeat Britain without at least 400 uboats at war's start. Hitler went ahead with less than 100. Britain held out And continued weapons development apace, Germany did not defeat Britain.

Doenitz was right on every count.


He might Not have been right about being able to defeat Britain with 400 boats... but we'll never know how it would have played out if Hitler had deferred the war till he had more boats.
( given that he would also have had More tanks, planes, guns, operational V weapons, and perhaps jet aircraft, as well.)


Personally- I think that if Hitler had deferred, and continued his arms buildup, that Britain and maybe even France would have started to ramp up their own pace of development...

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AlpinLuke said:

Italy hadn't that problem and in fact we produced great destroyers and battleships [but not carriers! Why? I don't know ...].

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pikeshot1600 said:

Carriers were not a priority for the R.M. due to geography. Much - although not all - of the operational area of the Med was within range of Italian controlled, and perhaps 'friendly,' territory. From Italy/Sicily a good deal of the central Med was reachable, further west, although pretty undeveloped, Sardinia could provide additional range. In the eastern Med the Dodecanese Islands and of course the Libyan coast extended the potential reach of Italian aircraft.

I have not seen anything concerning whether Italy had access to Spanish territory for aircraft (or submarine) operations. That would have added even more range, as well as Vichy controlled areas. Theoretically, this made sense as a strategic model. Operationally, it was dependent on better coordination between the air force (a hotbed of fascist machismo) and the R.M. which was somewhat tied to the more traditional view of military service, and also tied to the monarchy. That co-op was lacking much of the time.

You comment on Italian ships is well taken. The great majority of ships were modern, well designed and fast, and there were plenty of them for the closed theater of the Med. The officers and crew were well trained, and skilled at gunnery and torpedo tactics. The navy was pretty good at what it was supposed to do, but sometimes the operational decision making was questionable. (And of course, AFAIK there was a lack of operational radar. Maybe later in the war, but by 1943 it was too late.)

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sparky said:

the Italian aeronavale was gutsy and quite a threat to the RN

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ColumbusMark said:

The trouble was that Hitler didn't seriously even envision having to fight the British until mid-to-late 1939. Remember how he made fun of Neville Chamberlain waving his little sheet of paper after the Munich Agreement? He thought that the British were just a wimpy, paper tiger that wouldn't fight him anyway. Earlier in his political career, Hitler even thought of having something approaching an alliance with Britain (being as they were Anglos, they were -- racially -- reasonably close to German Aryans).

So...Hitler's true ideological focus was on fighting a land war to conquer continental Europe. So...that's the direction where all the money and material went.

When Britain said that they would go to war if Poland was invaded, he thought the British were just bluffing. Clearly, he was wrong. And by then it was too late to build a proper U-Boat force, especially when limited money and material had to go toward his main focus: land and air arms to conquer continental Europe.

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Even when military strategy suggested that he should have thrown everything into the Battle of Britain to knock Britain out of the war, he still turned east instead -- to Russia.
He just plain ol' considered it to be a bigger prize.

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redcoat said:

I agree.

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The problem for Hitler was his armed forces were incapable of defeating Britain in the short term no matter what he did, and his opportunity to invade the Soviet Union before they rebuilt and expanded their forces after the purges, or he ran out of enough oil due to the British blockade, was getting less each day. By 1942 in his mind it would be too late

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