Date of Award

1980

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Alfred D. Low

Abstract

My purpose is to demonstrate that the Kriegsmarine was without a coherent and developed naval strategy throughout World War Two, particularly in regards to the surface elements of the fleet. I hope to show that the surface elements of the fleet were used according to four central strategic ideas, but that only one of these ideas was sound enough militarily to constitute the core of a potential strategy. The first of these ideas was the Z-Plan Theory. The second was the Commerce Raiding Theory. The third was the Fleet-in-Being Theory. The final, and only militarily sound idea, was the Limited Support Theory.

I will not deal with the area of U-boat warfare in this paper. That is an area so vast and complicated as to demand separate treatment entirely. I will deal with the question of U-boat operations in the broadest possible way only, and only when these operations had a direct impact on surface warfare developments. In order to fully understand the operations of the Kriegsmarine it is necessary to go back to the closing days of World War One. It is here, amid the chaos of defeat, that the Kriegsmarine was born.

In early November of 1918, while a wounded Adolf Hitler lay recovering from a gas attack in a field hospital, the sailors of the Imperial High Seas Fleet mutinied at the base of Kiel. The mutiny, which had started as a result of inhuman treatment and living conditions aboard the ships, soon took on political overtones.

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