Lawrence Paterson, Kriegsmarine Atlantic Command 1939-42 (Osprey, 2025)
Pity the merchant navy ships crossing the Atlantic in the early years of World War II. They feared the U-boats, but arguably worse was spotting a ship on the horizon and identifying it as one of Germany’s battleships on a raiding mission. There was little chance of escaping those big guns. The battleships belonged to the Kriegsmarine Atlantic Command, and in this new Fleet series book from Osprey, Lawrence Paterson surveys Germany’s surface menace.
Paterson begins with the surprise of World War II’s opening shots for a navy that was not ready. Then he works back to the Treaty of Versailles and subsequent efforts to skirt its restrictions, most notably by building ‘pocket’ battleships. However, Grossadmiral Raeder was wedded to surface fleet power, which limited submarine and air power development, though U-boats would soon be on the rapid building list just before the war. Lack of building capacity curtailed fleet development, leading to the concept of merchant raiders to strike and run on convoys before the Royal Navy could react. Paterson surveys the fleet available to Raeder as the war commenced, beginning with the battleships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Tirpitz, and Bismarck then the pocket battleships Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. Then came the heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper, Prinz Eugen, and Blücher, followed by the lighter vessels, including the destroyer and torpedo boat flotillas and minesweepers. Gunnery was, of course, important to surface vessels, and Paterson considers those next before moving on to the kriegsmarine’s constantly evolving command structure and all the internal friction that entailed. Paterson follows the fleet’s move to the French coast after the fall of France in June 1940, placing them on the Atlantic coast. That is a convenient transition to discuss operational doctrine.
The kriegsmarine adopted the Kampfgruppe concept, assembling battle groups to pursue singular objectives. This helped target Allied convoys but proved somewhat impractical with the adopted risk-averse approach to combat and potentially losing ships. Paterson also reviews naval intelligence and the roles of logistics and facilities, particularly those on the French coast. Paterson’s analysis of combat operations is conducted chronologically, including the demise of the Graf Spee, destroyer actions launched from Brest, the 1940 anti-convoy operations of Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper, and a series of successful anti-convoy actions in 1941 by Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, though these would be the last conducted by capital ships. Then RAF raids took their toll, putting Gneisenau out of action, followed by the Bismarck sinking and myriad mechanical problems with the other capital ships that limited operational effectiveness. In the wake of Bismarck’s loss, Hitler shut down operations other than the defence of Norway while he prepared for the invasion of Russia. Finally, the capital ships dashed through the English Channel from beleaguered Brest, in February 1942, and escaped to Germany. They never re-emerged, effectively ending German surface naval operations in the Atlantic. In his analysis, Paterson notes Hitler’s interference as the main reason for the failure of the Atlantic fleet, though the capital ships had demonstrated what they could do when unleashed.
Lawrence Paterson has written a succinct but engrossing account of the Kriegsmarine Atlantic Command. Many casual readers of the German navy’s exploits will be familiar with singular events, such as the sinking of the Bismarck or the hunting of the Graf Spee, but Paterson ties those events into the broader picture of naval operations. That brings out the destructive potential of the raiding strategy but also illustrates its shortcomings and outright failures. In the end, Paterson’s survey highlights the recklessness of Germany’s premature decision for war in 1939, when the Navy was clearly unprepared, but also what might have been if they had waited; that is a counterfactual worth thinking about.
