a serious warning for the United States. . . .” The Pact was more than a warning to America; it was also a confession of German weakness, an admission that Britain could not be defeated in the foreseeable future and that a grim war of long duration was in the offing. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Japan’s dubious help. As the Fuehrer admitted in mid-September to Benito Mussolini, “circumstances do not allow us to foresee when hostilities will cease. . . .” But the Pact portended little real trust or collaboration between Germany and Japan because of distance, Anglo-American sea power, and mutual suspicion bred by different objectives in different oceans; the Fuehrer was ever alert for “Japanese treason.”a Thereafter, German diplomacy was paralyzed between alternative terrors: the Japanese might use the Pact as a pawn to bargain for American concessions in the Pacific, thus leaving Germany isolated in mortal conflict with the world’s major powers; or they might strike hard in the Pacific, thus bringing about, instead of deterring, American intervention.1
Early in the war, German planning was largely tactical, shaped for speedy, decisive victories; now, sharp defeat and the prospect of protracted war forced the Germans to undertake systematic, long-range strategic planning. The Naval Staff came to understand that, although Britain could not be successfully invaded, she might be strangled.
At first, their small numbers and orthodox tactics hampered the U-boats. The maximum tonnage sunk early in the war was 170,000 tons in February 1940, but in some months less than half that amount was sent to the bottom. In April and May of 1940, the U-boats sank only twenty ships in the Atlantic; yet the Germans realized that, in order to win the war, they needed to sink British shipping at a rate of 750,000 tons per month for a sustained period. The submarines operated near the British Isles, where it was easiest to find targets; but these areas were the best defended.
Then in the summer of 1940, use of captured French Atlantic ports gave the submarines 22 percent greater endurance. They were then able to hunt more daringly in mid-ocean where the absence of enemy air cover permitted them to patrol at high surface speeds more frequently. Doenitz moved to coordinate the search and attack tactics of his U-boats by making great use of radio communications, risking intercepted transmissions in light of the Allies’ weak ASW technology. These improvements helped the U-boats to locate convoys far out at sea, and made the submarine an ocean-wide, rather than a largely coastal, menace for the first time. Then, the German skippers experimented with new tactics, maneuvering their small submarines on the surface like oceangoing motor torpedo boats in nighttime attacks. Invisible on the dark, night sea, they struck unseen at massed herds of convoy ships and wrought flaming destruction and terror. The Royal Navy’s random collection of escorts, lacking in training and technology, were powerless to cope with the changed circumstances. In this “Golden Age,” or “Happy Time,” between June and October 1940, the U-boats sank 274 merchant ships, 1,392,298 tons; mine warfare, raids by surface ships, and air attack added a grim 45 percent to this toll. Yet the appalling rate of execution was maintained by a U-boat arm limited to some 20 to 25 boats operational each month, only about 6 to 8 of which were on patrol stations at a given time.2
Raeder advocated to the Fuehrer a comprehensive war on British lines of supply and communication “before the U.S.A. steps in”; he pressed Hitler to cut the size of the Army and allot more resources to expansion of the U-boat fleet and the Luftwaffe. He urged a Siege of Britain—land, sea, and air. The Army would be used in North Africa to gain control of the Mediterranean, jamming the “strategic pivot” of Britain’s world position by preventing her ready contact with the Empire; the U-boats would strike at the convoys in decisive numbers; and the Luftwaffe would attack shipping and devastate seaports, shipyards, and other strategic naval targets. All three services would unite in a common plan and share a single strategy, the destruction of the sea communications which sustained the obdurate British.b3 But such a strategy would require ample bases and much time.
Meanwhile, Hitler feared that the Anglo-American sea powers would strike at the periphery of his distended empire. He talked of an occupation of Iceland to shield the vulnerable Norwegian coast; he ordered plans drawn up for the capture of the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Azores to screen southern Europe and northwest Africa. He thought, too, that the Azores would be useful as bases from which German long-range bombers might reach the United States; it would be good to keep the meddlesome Americans tending to their own weak defenses instead of sending material to Britain. Goering encouraged him to strike at Iceland, the Azores, and the Canaries “so that the United States could not use them for naval and air operations.” But Raeder and the Luftwaffe’s better minds convinced Hitler that, because of his enemies’ power at sea,4 the Atlantic islands could not be held, even if taken by some imaginative, lightning, sea-air stroke, such as the one that succeeded against Norway.
Thus, both Raeder’s plans for a grand strategic offensive and his own concern for a defensive strategy in the West while he contemplated a thrust to the East turned the Fuehrer’s thoughts toward the Atlantic isles and Africa, thence to Spain and France.
North Africa was vital in Raeder’s strategy, but as British sea power made it difficult to sustain large numbers of German troops and tanks there, and the Fuehrer feared to deploy his Army over water, the Germans needed a secure land bridge to Africa—Gibraltar. Hence, the Fuehrer began to press the Spanish for a joint attack on Gibraltar, urging upon General Francisco Franco the necessity of a continental alliance of land powers against the Anglo-American sea powers. As he put it, “The European countries could maintain themselves against the American Continent only if they too conducted a European continental policy and in so doing made Africa an absolutely integral part of the Eastern Hemisphere.”5
But Franco was no Mussolini. A dictator in the Spanish authoritarian tradition more than an ideologue of Fascism, he did not make the fatal mistake of attempting to superimpose an essentially alien cast of thought upon his people, whose temperament and institutions were ill adapted to its stern requirements. His hints of alliance with Germany were attempts to gain favor because, in the event of a Nazi victory, Spain would want to detach certain of the French African colonies. The Germans offered gasoline, grains, modern arms and technicians, even dive bombers to keep British ships from Spain’s naked coasts, but the Spaniards found new excuses for delay whenever the Germans offset reasons based on material scarcity with promises of aid.c American economic and diplomatic pressure on Spain was relentless; the British Navy would take Spain’s overseas possessions. Finally, in December 1940, Franco admitted that Spain could not enter the war until Britain was “about ready to collapse.”6 Thus, Spanish caution made it impossible to win the swift, cheap victory in the Mediterranean that the Fuehrer, with Russia on his mind, needed.
Meanwhile, the Germans sought to extort bases in West Africa from the Vichy government. At Montoire, Marshal Henri Pétain vaguely agreed to “co-operate” with the Nazis, leaving the details to future discussion. As Pétain noted privately: “It will take six months to discuss this program and another six months to forget it.” Hitler, disillusioned by Spain’s vacillation and preoccupied with his secret planning of the Russian campaign, did not press the French hard.7
Raeder prodded the Fuehrer to expand the submarine war zone westward and sanction operations off Halifax; he contended that the American Neutrality Patrol allowed the British to remove valuable warships from the western Altantic and use them against German naval forces elsewhere. Hitler invariably listened politely, then refused to take action which would yield but small battle returns and increase the chances of American intervention.8
Yet even while German planners worked to prepare for the southern operations—code named Felix—the Fuehrer decided to reject the Navy’s strategy and attack Russia. Raeder’s strategy was not feasible—there were too few U-boats—and it would take too much time to achieve decisive results; perhaps, the Army estimated, another two years, time enough for Russia to get stronger and for a rearmed America to be ready to intervene. Germany’s need for Russian oil and grain grew more acute as the prospect of a protracted war grew more likely. And, of Hitler’s
