Bab 143: Hurry up living or hurry up dying. Volume Two by jeandebueil
Link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/hurry-up-living-or-hurry-up-dying-volume-two.539733/
29th October 1940. Berlin
Sitting in a vast office of the Shell-Haus -the modernist headquarters of the Kriegsmarine- General Admiral Conrad Albrecht was contemplating the darkening treetop of the Tiergarten. It had been decided, signed and conveyed: the first combat sortie of the Admiral Scheer would not happen. Instead of trying to break into the open Atlantic, the heavy cruiser would remain in the Baltic Sea for training duties.
The sixty year old German soldier sighed. Deep down, he had hoped that perhaps this move would have caused outrage and vigorous demands for more bravery and daring. But no… Almost everyone, from his subordinates to the Führer himself, had agreed that caution and patience constituted the best course of action. Simply put, they couldn't run the risk of losing another ship with one thousand qualified sailors on board. Right now, they had to wait.
Both the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had been commissioned in August but would not be fully operational until February 1941. Waiting for the Tirpitz, Graf Zeppelin and Seidlitz would require another five months.
So… by September 1941… and if anything went according to plan, the Kriegsmarine would number two battleships, one aircraft carrier, three heavy cruisers and ten destroyers.
If anything went according to plan… Albrecht grizzled at this thought… Recently, the Graf Zeppelin had become Hermann Goering's personal nemesis, with the Reichsmarschall stubbornly refusing to put the ship's planes under the operational command of the Navy. This meant that the carrier would need the Luftwaffe's consent if it wanted to sail with its wing. Such an ordeal and hurdle for 36 fighters!
And besides this petty infighting, three heavy cruisers and ten destroyers was just a petty number. It would merely take a hiccup from the British and this hiccup would splutter twice as many ships to keep the German fleet-in-being in check. And this was without taking the bloody Free French into account! A couple weeks ago, the BBC had touted about the formal commissioning of the Richelieu while promising that the Jean Bart would join her sistership before the end of 1941. Pure propaganda of course, but the facts were still there. The Germans would have two battleships, the British and the French twenty-one. And if the Allies decided to aim this colossal amount of steel at the Italians, there was nothing Albrecht could do to assist them…
To wait… Wait, hope and restore the Kriegsmarine's worth. This was the General Admiral's goal. And right now, the means to achieve it were meagre. He had five auxiliary cruisers, good ships with a long range and brave crews. But there was a limit to what five ships could do.
Next were Dönitz's U-boats. Since May, Albrecht had developed a decent working relationship with the Vice-Admiral, a meticulous man with the remarkable ability to strike a delicate balance between the pursuit of results and the well-being of his men. And so, Albrecht had allowed a significant expansion of the submarine force.
As of today, Dönitz could rely on 37 coastal vessels alongside 26 sea-going and 16 ocean-going ones. With the coastal models soon to be relegated to training duties, this left them with 42 submersibles. After intense negotiations, Albrecht had agreed that this force of 42 submarines would turn into a 150 one… In June 1942.
Upon hearing this, Dönitz had laid a report on Albrecht's table. It depicted Britain's food imports, the tonnage of merchant shipping available to them, their most important sea lanes, the estimated number of torpedoes required to actually close them… Everything. The General Admiral had been courteous enough to read the report's highlighted passages in front of his subordinate. After doing so, he had raised his head and looked directly into Dönitz's eyes.
"One hundred and fifty U-Boats will never be enough," the Vice-Admiral had concluded.
To which Albrecht had answered:
"I know."
But what else could he do? It wasn't as if he could ask the Führer and the OKW to double or triple that number! And even if he could, there simply wasn't enough steel and men to build and crew these submarines.
Month after month, he had realized one thing : the Slaughter of the Norwegian Sea was like a tree. An hideous, gory one with its roots running deep. And there wasn't a week where the General Admiral wouldn't dig up a new, twisted ramification out of this disaster. The Kriegsmarine had been bled dry, his ranks thoroughly depleted, his ability to rebuild and grow pruned for years to come. And every new loss, even a minor one, was like another gash inflicted on a maimed man. If you want this man to heal, you do not expose one of his limbs to his enemy's blade.
Caution. Caution and Patience. For the second time in five minutes, Albrecht sighed and turned his gaze on the serene mass of the Tiergarten. It was a quiet night: the Brits hadn't bombed the city since early September. Out there, amid the trees, something complained but no one replied. What was it? A strangled trumpetist? No… No… Probably an elephant from the zoo. "Such a majestic creature," he thought. Powerful and placid. Not giving a damn about the war, the Admiral Scheer and the Norwegian Sea.
And just like that, bit by bit, the vision of the peaceful pachyderm chewing straw soothed the man's febrile mind. Tomorrow, if he could, he would pay them a visit.
Status Power Mingguan
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-- Power
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