Originally posted by Ron Saueracker
Do you actually think that building 300 U boats would not have provoked a building boom by the allies? Just building the small navy Germany had at the start of WW2 instigated new construction by the French, US, Britain, all of which were completed or nearing completion. When one starts pondering what ifs, one has to keep an open mind.
Hi
As noted above in an earlier post, most of Germany's initial 65 U-boats were built in secret. Most submariners were trained in secret.
300 U-boats (at least many of them, would also have been built in secret). The problem was not material or opportunity, but Hitler's lack of strategic vision, and his desire to start the war sooner, rather than later. . .
One must also not forget, that building 300 U-boats would have meant an expanded submarine building program. So it is highly likely that instead of 1,000 subs being built throughout the course of the war, it could easliy have been many times that number. . .
Even so, the USA had had the opportunity to observe the German U-boat from Sept 1939 until Jan 1942 (more than two years of actual war), and yet still had almost no defense against them when they struck along the eastern seaboard on Jan 13, 1942 (despite warnings from British intelligence), and sank ship after ship for another 6 months. . .
A bit of information:
WWI and WWII
In World War I, the "primitive Imperial Navy U-boat force had come very close to imposing a war-winning maritime blockade aginst Great Britain. Had Germany built large numbers of U-boats rather than big ships for the High Seas Fleet, and had the Kaiser authorized unrestricted U-boat warfare in the first year of the war, [Admiral Karl] Donitz concluded, Germany could have achieved an early and decisive naval victory over the Allies. With proper organization and planning and modern submarines and new tactics, he believed victory could be realized in the war he saw coming" (Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War: the Hunters 1939-1942, Random House, NY, 1996, p.37).
In addition to World War One, had Hitler put more resources into building and utilizing U-boats in the Second World War, the German Navy "might well have defeated England (and thus denied the United States that island base from which to mount a joint American-British invasion of German-occupied Europe). . ." (Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat Harper & Row, New York, NY, 1990, p.xix). Admiral Donitz "easily imagined the crippling blow he could have delivered with a three-hundred-boat fleet in that first year before British defenses stiffened" (Ibid., p.75).
With regard to North America, Donitz originally wanted to send one hundred submarines to attack the United States, but he only had twelve U-boats "to strike simultaneously against offshore North America from Halifax in the north to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in the south" (Ibid., p.74). This large number of submarines would have caused untold devastation.
Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat): the War Against America
With the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on Dec 7, 1941 Hitler was bound by a promise to Japan to also declare war on the US. He did so promptly on December 11 and after that all restrictions on German U-boats not to attack American shipping were removed. This opened up a whole new field for Dönitz who immediately drew up plans for a devastatingly swift blow on the US eastern seaboard. "When the Fuhrer declared war on the United States. . . Donitz would be poised to strike a blow against the United States as sudden and as jarring as a beat on a kettledrum. And that, he decided, was what he would call it: Operation Paukenschlag ("Operation Drumbeat")" (Gannon, Operation Drumbeat, p.xvii).
On January 13, 1942 six German U-boats initiated a surprise attack along the east coast of the United States that resulted in America's Atlantic Pearl Harbour. Just two months after suffering the crippling Japanese attack at Hawaii, the Americans were once again taken by surprise (despite being warned by British intelligence). On that first day German U-boats sank 25 ships. Over the course of six months, wave after wave of U-boats attacked shipping off the American and Canadian coasts. The result? "The United States had virtually no defense against the U-boats and, in the first six months of 1942, lost 585 ships totaling over 3,081,000 tons" (Hawkins, Vincent B., "Doentiz, Karl", in Brassey's Encyclopedia of Military History and Biography, Ed. by Franklin D. Margiotta, Brassey's, Washington: 2000, p.276).
"The ships sunk in the campaign in the Americas in this period constitute about one-quarter of all Allied shipping sunk by German U-boats in World War II. Thus, the campaign was the single most important of the war in terms of sinkings achieved in a relatively brief time period for effort expended - the high-water mark of the U-boat war" (Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War: the Hunters 1939-1942, Random House, NY, 1996, p.694).
Admiral Donitz had been right - the United States was defenseless against his U-boats - they had proven to be the perfect silent killers.
Cheers!
