Plan Z

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Plan Z was the name given to the planned re-equipment and expansion of the Kriegsmarine (German navy) ordered by Adolf Hitler in early 1939. The fleet was meant to challenge the naval power of the United Kingdom, and was to be completed by 1948. Development of the plan began in 1938, but it reflected the evolution of the strategic thinking of the Oberkommando der Marine (Naval High Command) over the two decades following World War I. The plan called for a fleet centered on ten battleships and four aircraft carriers which were intended to battle the Royal Navy. This force would be supplemented with numerous long-range cruisers that would attack British shipping. A relatively small force of U-boats was also stipulated.

When World War II broke out in September 1939, almost no work had been done on the new ships ordered under Plan Z. The need to shift manufacturing capacity to more pressing requirements forced the Kriegsmarine to abandon the construction program, and only a handful of major ships—all of which had been ordered before Plan Z—were completed during the war. Nevertheless, the plan still had a significant effect on the course of World War II, in that only a few dozen U-boats had been completed by the outbreak of war. Admiral Karl Dönitz's U-boat fleet did not reach the 300 U-boats he deemed necessary to win a commerce war against Britain until 1943, by which time his forces had been decisively defeated.

Naval construction under the Versailles Treaty

Emden, the first major warship built after World War I

Following the end of

Type II U-boat.[5]

The Treaty also stipulated that Germany could replace its pre-dreadnought battleships after they reached twenty years of age, but new vessels could

panzerschiff (armored ship)—that outclassed the new heavy cruisers built by Britain and France. While British and French heavy cruiser designs were bound by the Washington Naval Treaty (and subsequent London Naval Treaty) to a caliber of 20.3 cm (8.0 in) on a displacement of 10,000 tons, the Germans chose to arm Deutschland with six 28 cm (11 in) guns. The Germans hoped that by building a ship significantly more powerful than the Allies had, they could force the Allies to admit Germany to the Washington treaty system in exchange for cancelling Deutschland, thereby abrogating the naval limitations imposed by Versailles. The French vehemently opposed any concessions to Germany, and therefore, Deutschland and two further units—Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee—were built.[7]

In 1932, the Reichsmarine secured the passage of the Schiffbauersatzplan ("Replacement ship construction program") through the

D class, to be ordered. These ships were cancelled and reordered as the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau,[9] which were 32,000-long-ton (33,000 t) ships armed with nine 28 cm guns and much greater armor protection than their predecessors.[10] In 1935, Hitler signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which permitted Germany to build up to 35 percent of the strength of the Royal Navy in all warship categories.[11] The initial designs for two follow-on ships—the Bismarck class—initially called for a displacement of 35,000 long tons (36,000 t) with 13 in (330 mm) guns, but to counter the two new, French Richelieu-class battleships, the new ships were significantly enlarged, to a displacement of over 41,000 long tons (42,000 t) and 15 in (380 mm) guns.[12]

Operational philosophies and development

Erich Raeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine until 1943

The postwar German navy was conflicted over what direction future construction should take. In September 1920,

U-boat arm.[15] Dönitz advocated a return to unrestricted submarine warfare and the adoption of wolfpack tactics to overwhelm convoy defenses.[16]

In the 1920s, the question arose over what to do with the cruisers that would presumably be abroad on training cruises when a war would break out. The high command decided that they should operate as independent commerce raiders. When

Munich crisis of September 1938. The path toward a major fleet expansion was paved shortly thereafter, on 14 October, when Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Hermann Göring announced a colossal armament program to dramatically increase the size and power of the German armed forces. The plan was to be completed by 1942, by which time Hitler planned to go to war against the Anglo-French alliance.[17] He nevertheless assured Raeder that war would not come until 1948.[11]

Hitler ordered that completion of

reichsmarks spent over the span of nine years.[17] Further revisions to the numbers of cruisers and other craft were approved on 1 March. Raeder nevertheless retained his operation philosophy of using the battleships and aircraft carriers in task forces to support the panzerschiffe and light cruisers attacking British merchant traffic, rather than directly attacking the Royal Navy in a pitched battle.[11]

The plan

Graf Zeppelin at her launching

The plan, approved by Hitler on 27 January 1939,[19] called for a surface fleet composed of the following vessels, which included all new ships built in the 1920s and 1930s:[11]

Type Projected Completed
Battleships 10 4
Battlecruisers 3 0
Aircraft carriers 4 0
Panzerschiffe 15 3
Heavy cruisers 5 3
Light cruisers 13 6
Scout cruisers 22 0
Destroyers 68 30
Torpedo boats 90 36
Total 230 82

These figures included the four Scharnhorst- and Bismarck-class battleships already built or building, the three Deutschland-class panzerschiffe and the six light cruisers already in service.[11] To complete the core of the Plan Z fleet, six H-class battleships, three O-class battlecruisers, twelve P-class panzerschiffe, and two Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers with two more of a new design, were to be built.[20][21] The five ships of the Admiral Hipper class fulfilled the mandate for heavy cruisers, while the M class of light cruisers would fulfill the requirement for light cruisers.[22] The Spähkreuzer 1938 design would form the basis for the fleet scouts ordered in the program.[23] The plan also called for extensive upgrades to Germany's naval infrastructure to accommodate the new fleet; larger dry docks were to be built at Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg, and much of the island of Rügen was to be removed to provide a large harbor in the Baltic. Plan Z was given the highest priority of all industrial projects.[24] On 27 July 1939, Raeder revised the plan to cancel all twelve of the P-class panzerschiffe.[21]

In the short time from the introduction of Plan Z to the beginning of war with the United Kingdom on 3 September only two of the plan's large ships, a pair of H class battleships, were

laid down; material for the other four ships had started to be assembled in preparation to begin construction but no work had been done.[25] At the time components of the three battlecruisers were in production, but their keels had not yet been laid down.[26] Two of the M-class cruisers had been laid down, but they were also cancelled in late September.[27] Work on Graf Zeppelin was cancelled definitively in 1943 when Hitler finally abandoned the surface fleet after the Battle of the Barents Sea debacle.[28]

Impact on World War II

Type VII
U-boat

Since the plan was cancelled less than a year after it was approved, the positive effects on German naval construction were minimal. All of the ships authorized by the plan were cancelled after the outbreak of war, with only a few major surface vessels that predated the plan completed during the conflict. These included Bismarck and Tirpitz, along with the heavy cruisers Blücher and Prinz Eugen. Without the six H-class battleships or the four aircraft carriers, the Kriegsmarine was once again unable to meet the Royal Navy on equal terms.[29]

Most of the heavy ships of the Kriegsmarine were used as commerce raiders in the early years of the war. Two of the panzerschiffe, Deutschland and Graf Spee, were already at sea at the outbreak of war; the former found little success and the latter was ultimately trapped and forced to scuttle after the

herself sunk three days later.[36][37] The loss of Bismarck led Hitler to prohibit further sorties into the Atlantic; the remaining capital ships were concentrated in Norway for use as a fleet in being and to threaten convoys to the Soviet Union on the Murmansk Run.[11]

Despite the fact that Plan Z produced no new warships in time for World War II, the plan represented the strategic thinking of the

Type VII U-boats.[39] The shift to the submarine war was not definitively made until 1943, by which time the campaign had already been lost.[40][41]

The feasibility of the plan had never been considered by Raeder and Kriegsmarine planners; construction of the ships themselves was not a concern, assuming sufficient time had been available. But securing the fuel oil necessary to operate the fleet likely was an insurmountable problem. Fuel consumption would have more than quadrupled between 1936 and the completion of the program in 1948, from 1.4 million tons to approximately 6 million tons. And the navy would have to construct some 9.6 million tons worth of storage facilities for enough fuel reserves to allow for just a year of wartime operations; longer conflicts would of course necessitate an even larger stockpile. Compared to the combined fuel requirements of the Kriegsmarine, Heer (Army), Luftwaffe (Air Force), and the civilian economy, the projected domestic production by 1948 of less than 2 million tons of oil and 1.34 million tons of diesel fuel is absurdly low.[42]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 218.
  2. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 229–231.
  3. ^ Rössler, p. 88.
  4. ^ Treaty of Versailles, Part V, Section II, Article 191
  5. ^ Rössler, pp. 98–99.
  6. ^ Paloczi-Horvath, p. 64.
  7. ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 73.
  8. ^ a b Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 219.
  9. ^ Gröner Vol. 1, p. 63.
  10. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 225.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 220.
  12. ^ Garzke & Dulin, pp. 203–209.
  13. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 218–219.
  14. ^ Herwig, p. 237.
  15. ^ Rössler, p. 103.
  16. ^ Blair, pp. 37–38.
  17. ^ a b Tooze, p. 288.
  18. ^ a b Showell, p. 15.
  19. ^ Tooze, p. 289.
  20. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 224–226.
  21. ^ a b Gröner Vol. 1, p. 64.
  22. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 228–232.
  23. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 235.
  24. ^ Tooze, pp. 288–289.
  25. ^ Gröner Vol. 1, p. 37.
  26. ^ Garzke & Dulin, p. 354.
  27. ^ Gröner Vol. 1, p. 125.
  28. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 227.
  29. ^ Gardiner & Chesneau, pp. 224–232.
  30. ^ Williamson, p. 15.
  31. ^ Bidlingmaier, pp. 91–93.
  32. ^ Williamson, p. 33.
  33. ^ Rohwer, p. 65.
  34. ^ Hümmelchen, p. 101.
  35. ^ Garzke & Dulin, p. 140.
  36. ^ Bercuson & Herwig, pp. 155–156.
  37. ^ Garzke & Dulin, p. 256.
  38. ^ Gröner Vol. 1, pp. 31–35.
  39. ^ Gröner Vol. 2, p. 44.
  40. ^ Showell, pp. 15–16.
  41. ^ Syrett, p. 2.
  42. ^ Tooze, pp. 294–295.

References

Further reading

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