Hitler's Battleships

This book looks at the German battleships of World War II.

The battleships of Hitler's navy challenged the enemy in the arctic blizzards of the Barents Sea and gave battle amongst the feeezing mists and ice-floes of the Denmark Strait.

They prowled the convoy routes of the North Atlantic and pushed beyond the Equator on raiding sorties that took them from the inshore waters of Brazil and Uruguay to the coastline of West Africa.

One, the "Admiral Scheer", even penetrated as far as the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

They sank the battlecruiser "Hood" and the carrier "Glorious".

They destroyed an impressive number of merchant ships after firstly ensuring that the passengers and crews were safe. And they humbled Britain's naval pride by breaking through the Dover Straits in broad daylight against all the odds.

Churchill considered them to be a greater danger to the Empire's seaborne trade than the lurking menace of the U-boats.

Yet despite their tactical victories, the strategic threat they posed to the Allies was never fully appreciated by the Nazi leadership. And it was the misfortune of their crews that they were led by a Fuehrer who once admitted: "On land I am a hero. At sea I am a coward". Indeed at one critical point in the conflict Hitler even demanded that the big ships should be demilitarized and scrapped.

The "Kriegsmarine's" battleships fought a long, hard, and chivalrous war.

The "Graf Spee" sailed for her combat station a full ten days before Hitler's tanks rolled into Poland. And the "Lutzow" was still firing her guns at the advancing Russian troops four days after the Nazi dictator committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.

Yet, not one of Germany's heavy ships was destined to survive the conflict.

Two were sent to the bottom by the guns and torpedoes of the Royal Navy.

Three fell victim to the bombs of the RAF, and two were scuttled.