Background

Karl Dönitz was born on September 16, 1891, in Grünau, Brandenburg, Prussia, German Empire (now Grünau, Berlin, Germany). He was the son of Eduard Carl Emil Dönitz and Wilhelmine Emilie Anna (Beyer) Dönitz. Dönitz also had a brother, Friedrich Dönitz.

Education

Karl Dönitz attended a preparatory school outside Halensee, when he was six. However, he remained there for only six months. Later, he attended the Realschule, a public school in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimer.

Dönitz also attended a naval school at Flensburg-Mürwik.

Career

Karl Dönitz started his military career in April 1910 when he enrolled in the Imperial Navy. Three years later, he was commissioned as Acting Sub-Lieutenant and served on a Magdeburg-class cruiser called SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. Dönitz was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant on March 22, 1916, and then served temporarily as airfield commander at the Dardanelles before his request for transfer to the submarine forces was granted in October that year. On September 5, 1918, he was appointed commander of UB-68. The U-boat faced technical problems on October 4 that year and as it surfaced, it was sunk by the British forces amidst gunfire, and Dönitz was taken into custody as a war prisoner.

After his release in 1919, Dönitz joined the German Navy, becoming an inspector of torpedo boats. He remained in the German Navy for the next 16 years. From 1934 to 1935, he served as commander of Emden cruiser. Karl became Naval Commander on September 1, 1933, and on September 1, 1935, he was appointed Naval Captain. Later that year, the Reichsmarine was renamed Kriegsmarine and Dönitz was appointed by General Admiral Raeder to raise and command the U-Boat Arm of the Navy. On January 1, 1936, he was named the Fuhrer der Unterseeboote.

When the war started in 1939, Dönitz had recently been promoted to Commodore and Commander of Submarines. On September 1, 1940, he became Vice-Admiral. Dönitz played an instrumental role during the war with his submarine tactics causing huge damage to Allied forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. The U-Boat fleets under his leadership emerged as the most effective weapons for Germans that witnessed the sinking of over 15 million tons of Allied shipping. His coordination of reconnaissance aircraft, re-supply vessels, and wolf packs allowed his U-Boats to strike where they would inflict the greatest damage. By 1943, he commanded 212 operative U-Boats. Dönitz became Grand Admiral and Supreme Commander of the Navy on January 30, 1943. His war concept of the "wolf pack" remained successful until the invention of microwave radar, which allowed the Allies to find and wreak havoc on the U-Boat wolf packs. Hitler and Dönitz consulted continuously, conferring on naval questions 120 times throughout the course of the war.

According to the last will and testament of Hitler dated April 29, 1945, Dönitz succeeded him as Head of State or Staatsoberhaupt, on April 30, 1945, with the titles of President of the German Reich and Minister of War. He set up his government in Flensburg-Murwik on the northern German border with Denmark. On May 8, 1945, the German Armed Forces capitulated thereby leading the Flensburg Government to lose all military, territorial and civil jurisdictions. Dönitz was arrested by the RAF Regiment task force and the Flensburg Government was dissolved on May 23.

Karl Dönitz was brought to trial at Nuremberg at the close of World War II and charged with war crimes. He succeeded in convincing his prosecutors that he had no knowledge of the atrocities directed by Hitler and that, in his role as grand general, he was only following orders. On October 1, 1946, Dönitz was found guilty of "planning aggressive war" and sentenced to ten years in Berlin's Spandau prison. After his release on October 1, 1956, Dönitz moved to Aumühle, a small village in the northernmost state of Germany, Schleswig-Holstein. He lived there in seclusion for the rest of his life. He also wrote memories that were published in 1958. Dönitz passed away on December 24, 1980, at his home near Hamburg.

Achievements

• Karl Dönitz was a German naval officer who was known as the commander of the Kriegsmarine during World War II. He created a new military tactic that later became known as the wolfpack tactic. Dönitz's tactics and maneuvers continue to be imitated to this day. He also briefly served as Reich's President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.
  
  Karl Dönitz received numerous awards, including the General Honor Decoration, the Iron Cross, the Sudetenland Medal, and the Military Order of Savoy, among many others.
  
  Karl Dönitz was portrayed by Thomas Kretschmann in a two-part television film The Sinking of the Laconia.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days

    (These celebrated memoirs are the story of WWII, as told f...)

    1958
  • The Conduct of the War of Sea

    (Admiral Dönitz' essay on the Conduct of the War at Sea is...)

    1946

Religion

Karl Doenitz had no strong religious convictions, but his children were raised in the Protestant faith.

Politics

Karl Dönitz admired Adolph Hitler and was a strong supporter of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He contributed to the spread of Nazism within the Kriegsmarine. Dönitz joined the Nazi Party on February 1, 1944.

After Hitler's suicide Karl Dönitz succeeded him as Head of State. Dönitz devoted most of his efforts to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German troops would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets. He hoped that a separate surrender to the British and Americans might allow the Reich to rescue something from the Soviets in the east. However, the Dönitz government was not recognized by the Allies and was for some days more or less ignored.

Later Dönitz acknowledged that the war was lost. The only conclusion to which he, as Head of the State, could come was that the war must be brought to an end as quickly as possible, in order to prevent further bloodshed. Soon Dönitz authorized the Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies.

Views

Karl Dönitz was an anti-Marxist and antisemite, who believed that Germany needed to fight the "poison of Jewry." In 1944, he said that he would rather eat dirt than see his grandchildren grow up in the filthy, poisonous atmosphere of Jewry. However, at the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed the statement about the "poison of Jewry" was regarding the power to endure, of the people, as it was composed, could be better preserved than if there were Jewish elements in the nation. He also claimed to know nothing about the extermination of Jews.

Quotations: "I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward and of the entire navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front - it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh."

"For the lessons one fails to learn during peacetime, one pays a high price in war."

"The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis."

"Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler."

Personality

Those who knew Karl Dönitz said that he was a brave and dedicated man. Many considered him a natural-born leader. Dönitz was also very intelligent and consistent. He applied sound logic and lateral thinking when evaluating Allied strengths and vulnerabilities. He had the rare ability to convert military theory gained from recent experience into viable tactics for use by his U-boats.

Physical Characteristics: Dönitz died of a heart attack.

Quotes from others about the person

• Sir Winston Churchill: "The only thing I truly feared during the war was Dönitz and his U-boats."
  
  C. L. Sulzberger: "In command of the whole Nazi U-boat offensive was tough, brilliant Admiral Karl Dönitz, who would one day succeed Hitler as head of the Third Reich."
  
  Sir George E. Greasy: "As a submarine Admiral whom I knew to be held in the deepest admiration and respect by Officers and Men of the U-Boat Fleet, I held Admiral Dönitz in respect myself, and there is no doubt that he handled his U-Boat arm with masterly skill and efficiency. In return, he was served with great loyalty."

Connections

Karl Dönitz married Ingeborg Ilse Meta Wilhelmine Weber on May 27, 1916. The marriage produced two sons and a daughter.

Father:

Eduard Carl Emil Dönitz

(October 21, 1857 – June 23, 1912)

Mother:

Wilhelmine Emilie Anna (Beyer) Dönitz

(October 22, 1862 – March 6, 1895)

colleague:

Hermann Göring

Brother:

Friedrich Dönitz

late wife:

Ingeborg Ilse Meta Wilhelmine (Weber) Dönitz

(December 10, 1893 – May 2, 1962)

Son:

Peter Dönitz

(March 20, 1922 – May 19, 1943)

Son:

Klaus Dönitz

(May 13, 1920 – May 13, 1944)

Daughter:

Ursula (Dönitz) Kessler

(1917–1990)

colleague:

Adolf Hitler

colleague:

Erich Raeder

Erich Johann Albert Raeder (April 24, 1876 – November 6, 1960) was a German admiral.

References

• Donitz: The Last Fuhrer The biography of Germany's Naval Commander Karl Donitz includes information from reports by his superiors, accounts by U-Boat survivors, and details of the testing of the U-Boat wolf-pack tactics from 1937 to 1939.
  1984
• Dönitz: A Defense In this work, Zabecki proves conclusively that Dönitz was innocent of the charges leveled against him at Nuremberg by the Allies. Whether you agree or disagree with Zabecki's conclusions, this book provides a very concise and readable account that covers Dönitz's background, with background on the International Military Tribunal, and details the two counts that Dönitz was eventually convicted of - crimes against peace and war crimes - and why Zabecki believes he should not have been found guilty of either.
  1997
• Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich An even-handed portrait of Nazi Germany's last leader and a compellingly readable account of the culmination of the war in Europe, Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich gives a fascinating new perspective on a complex man at the heart of this crucial period in history.
  2015
• Donitz's Last Gamble: The Inshore U-Boat Campaign 1944-45 A book by Lawrence Paterson.
  2008
• Dönitz and the Wolf Packs This book faithfully records the progress of the Battle of the Atlantic, which began within hours of the declaration of war on September 3, 1939, and continued without let-up until the last torpedo was fired on the night of May 7, 1945, just one hour before Germany surrendered. The story is told from both sides of the periscope.
  1996