Kriegsmarine

That one admiral who was killed of Uruguay draped himself in the naval flag of the Kaiserliche Marines when he decided to stay on his sinking ship

I would put the Kriegsmarine above all as a whole

Remember that the Heer after the invasion of France was fully National Socialist up until 1942

Even during Barbarrosa, the Heer success made senior officer believe in Hitler and follow him.

>Heer was fully nazi up until 1942
>Even during Barbarrosa, the Heer success made senior officer believe in Hitler and follow him.
Heinz Guderian was in the heer nigga and he was anything but loyal to the general staff

Guderian might had disagree was he was with Hitler.

You might say it was the land in poland or being afraid of being framed for a "stab in the back" myth but during the 20 july plot he sided with Hitler by sending the tanks from the school to Berlin and follow the orders in the wolf lair

The Kriegsmarine was certainly "cleaner" in the sense that they were never expected to carry out massacres of civilians in occupied territories or such things which have come to be heavily associated with the Third Reich. The Navy was Hitler's least favorite branch from a budgetary perspective. When it come time to hand out funding for the year, the Wehrmacht was first in line, and the Luftwaffe second, with the Kriegsmarine getting whatever scraps were left over. The Kreigsmarine was also the branch which was most apprehensive about Barbarossa, with Erich Raeder saying that it was madness to try and invade the USSR while Britain remained in play, whereas Hitler believed that the war against Britain had already been won. Hitler was so convinced that Britain would no longer be a threat that he had the unfinished H-39 battleships in scrapped, which couldn't have made the Kriegsmarine happy.

General Staff was weird p much all the Generals in the Heer knew about the July 20th before it happened but they largely pretended they were unaware of it.

As far as the soldiers and officer corps themselves, a lot of them knew about and agreed with Nazi policies, but I'd argue it was more on a divisional basis, esp in the Panzerarmee and the Fallschirmjaeger were esp prone to Nazism. But that's a given in any officer centric unit (see the Luftwaffe). But even in the infantry Heer you still had plenty of Nazis.

A lot of post war revisionism however claims they were clean and that their crimes were just normal war crimes that always happen.

Eh, you also have to realize Donitz was Hitler's successor (though only because he felt Goring was useless by late war, and Himmler was intending to betray him). The SKL was p Nazi.

While the KMF was in general not very Nazi infested that's more because the isolated nature of German naval strategy and being away from home for months and years at a time, and thus they being alienated from their countries success and failures. But even then not entirely falling in line with party doctrine is still very different from not being influenced at all.

Which part of the Heer was most "traditional"?

East Prussian Junker class offices. They were extremely mistrusting of the National Socialists, and derided a lot of Nazi pointed Heer officers.

The Prussian General Staff

Aka the section that was racist towards other races but were totally uninvolved in setting aside resources for Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS massacres but albeit were totally ok and some sponsored the July 20th plot.

P much any German with von in their name was apart of it.

Reread my post I say totally uninvolved as sarcastically as I can.

As they definitely knew about the shit Das Reich and other Waffen-SS units did but they would ignore it even if they were in command of them through attachments.

Wait, why was the uboat fleet more nazified than the surface fleet?

And was the Heer really that nazified by mid-late war when large percentage of them where either career officers from before the Third Reich and conscripted citizens that weren't necessarily members or direct supporters of the NatSoc Party?

The Kriegsmarine did have a good few of the old guard in it or rotated out like Wilhelm Canaris, who spent most of the war feeding false information and/or generally fucking over the Nazis as head of the Abwehr. That guy was kind of badass, and IIRC he only got caught because he got cracked down on for someone else's July 20 plot instead of his actual sneakiness.

Same with the Abwehr. Very little nazi elements in there because Canaris wouldn't allow it, and it had been brought up in the Weimar era.

Theres a part in the book where the Captain takes some shots at the proganda on the radio.
"user fell in battle did he? I suppose he tripped over his shoe laces. We really should start watching where we walk or we'll slip all over the place" or something to that effect.

>he had the unfinished H-39 battleships in scrapped, which couldn't have made the Kriegsmarine happy.

Battleships are a meme, anyway.

Naval mutinies have always been the most common, granted it's usually more of an "I don't want to die and I'll throw in my lot with anything that will prevent that" than sincere revolutionary theory

Did the Kriegsmarine surface fleet even really do anything?

surface raiding, keyrole in the Norway invasion

... so no, not very much.

>General Staff was weird p much all the Generals in the Heer knew about the July 20th before it happened but they largely pretended they were unaware of it.

>tfw your head of the military intelligence knew and was part of the plot

Not really much you can do when you're fighting the Royal Navys big fuck off Home and Mediterranean fleets.
Plus most Nazi targets could be reached by land so naval power projection is not needed en masse (few exceptions are Norway, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa).

>Literally securing the waters so that the Swedes could export Iron to Germany with little hassle wasn't much

That time those absolute madmen on the Scharnhorst sisters dashed through the channel, something any enemy of Britain hadn't done in centuries

>Did the Kriegsmarine surface fleet even really do anything?

Most surface Kriegsmarine action took place in and around the Baltic Sea. This was a very important area for Germany because the submarine fleet needed the Baltic Sea to remain relatively safe so that it could used as a training ground for new submarine crews. The primary task of the Kriegsmarine surface fleet was to keep this area safe and secure. Vast minefields were laid in the Danish straits in order to keep the Royal Navy out of the Baltic Sea, and Kreigsmarine surface combatants were used to keep British minesweepers away. Kriegsmarine forces in the Baltic also supported Operation Barbarossa, particularly during the siege of Leningrad.

Besides that, the surface fleet also participated in anti-commerce raids against British shipping during 1939-1940. Although the Battle of Britain is remembered primarily as an air war, it had a naval component as well. German battleships and cruisers ventured into the North Atlantic, destroying any merchant vessels that they could find in hopes of starving Britain into submission. Sorties into the Atlantic were ended immediately after the Bismark was sunk, as Hitler was no longer willing to risk the Kriegsmarine's few remaining heavy surface combatants.

We will ever find out what happened to the HAMS Sydney fighting the the auxiliary cruiser?

Komoran played Emu calls over the loudspeaker, and the Sydney freaked out, killed the Komoran and then mishandled the gunpowder charges and blew themselves up.

didnt they recently discover the wreck?

How does the Kriegsmarine's success and activity level compare to that of the Kaiserliche Marine of the lat 19th century and through WWI?

They made it out into open ocean, in significant numbers without already being deployed overseas when the war began, so pretty good.

>They made it out into open ocean

Yes.

>in significant numbers

No.

Will we ever see another major ship-to-ship sea battle that isn't just carriers launching planes to bomb enemy cruisers and destroyers? I know the age of the battleship is long dead, but is the age of cruisers or destroyers fighting within visual range completely dead now too?

If WW3 breaks out, most of the US surface fleet will probably be at the bottom of the ocean within days when China/Russia spams us with supersonic cruise missiles. Only submarines will remain active in the long-term, the cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and carriers will all either be sunk or holed up in protected ports.

During the spanish civil war, the Navy was the most conservative branch of the spanish armed forces, and the majority of their members deflected to the nationalist side.

But the Air force was the most liberal or democratic branch, and they stayed loyal to the Republic.

>Russia being anything but a nuclear threat
>China being anything but a zergling army
As soon as any large war breaks out, China's economy will tank. No exports = low production = mass lay-offs = less cash influx. It's already built on a poor foundation.

Worse. Far, far worse. While the Kaiserliche Marine was bottled up for the most part, it still was able to tangle in gigantic fleet engagements with the RN at its absolute peak performance and survive.

They also gave an extremely impressive performance in the Baltic against the Imperial Russian Navy, shore bombardments, and amphibious operations.

In terms of U-boats and commerce raiders they performed roughly equally. The 1917 submarine campaign coming very close to completely crippling British imports before the introduction of the convoy system.

The surface Kriegsmarine was just to small and to undervalued to make much of a difference. The U-boat fleet was excellent, but again far too small to outpace Allied shipbuilding. It didn't help that their god-tier submarine only arrived in late 1944.

Would the war have turned out differently if Germany would have held back invading Poland for another year or two and built up its navy to more equally compete with the British and also not attempting the disastrous Battle of Britain and using it's air power more intelligently in general including building heavier bombers for the eastern front?

Basically I'm wondering if there's any circumstance in which the surface fleet of the Kriegsmarine would have actually been as useful or as it's British counterpart (or close) or at least nearly as valuable as its uboat contingent.

Doesn't the US currently have like a 100% success rate in shooting down missles like this?

Even if they did survive message barrages, I don't think we would ever see surface battles within visual range again though. I could be wrong here though. If someone knows more about modern warship technology, correct me.

The Kaiserliche Marine was an unironic negative for the Germans in WW1. They would have been better off if their entire battleship fleet was never built, and all their navy accomplished of note was bringing the Americans into the war. Sure, tactically they were much better, but I'd argue, cringing a bit because the Nazis tend to be so overrated, that the Germans got a lot more out effect of the Kriegsmarine marine for the amount of effort they put into it than they got out of than the Kaiserliche Marine.

No. The British were building more ships too, and at a faster rate. So were the French. The gap probably doesn't narrow at all, or if it does, it still leaves a huge gap between the Germans and the Allies. More importantly the Polish military was expanding faster relatively than the German one, so any invasion of Poland would be harder a year later. Even more importantly than that, the British and the French were not standing still and in the air. Both were hugely expanding their armies and air forces, at a rate much faster than the Germans. A lot of the worst French generals would be fired a year later too.
And finally, Germany was running into catastrophic financial problems from their arms build up. They had used up their foreign currency reserves, their currency was heavily overvalued, and they were running huge deficits. They'll either have to cut back hugely, or face a major depression : actually they'll face both, since they'll have to devalue a lot internally to be able to export again to sustain their economy.
Germany going to a war a year later just means they have a harder and longer war in Poland, maybe enough for the French to invade from the West, and that they definitely fail to invade France, much less getting anywhere close to the British or the Soviets.

>Only the chinese economy will tank
>Burgerland will never be affected by anything.

>The least Nazified was the surface force.
manlet here, what does "the surface force" mean?

>you'll probably be safer as a kamikaze pilot than a u-boat crew

He was refering to part of Kriegsmarine what wasn't Uboats

Is this actually true? I mean I'm sure more uboat crewmen died in total, but surely being a kamikaze has a higher percentage of death when averaged out.

im pulling it out my ass but it could probably be true
Kamikaze could pussy out,pass out,get shot down etc
while U-Boats have a casualty rate of 75%
probably the only thing matching that is of penal battalion

>tfw Admiral Hipper sank my Granduncles Minesweeper

>Are there examples of notable uboat commanders or Luftwaffe aces that weren't nazis
Hans Joachim Marseille notoriously didn't give a shit.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Joachim_Marseille#Marseille_and_Nazism

The more you were dealing with special forces and/or high tech weaponry the more nazism was required.

No. All of this "hurr they werent all nazis! that would be like saying everyone in the army is a democrat!" shit is so retarded. Yeah, the probability of there being people in the Wehrmacht not being nazis is there, but the fact is many of them obviously were and are just distancing themselves from it after they lost. They knew full well what Hitlers intentions were and they loved him.

Also, Donitz is just another nazi apologist and used slave labour in shipyards, but he totally knew nothing about the camps guys.

See The US already has a lot of the problems China has such as rural neglect, ethnic tension, unemployment, and decaying infrastructure (albeit less severe). It's like Austro-Hungary and the Russian Empire in WW1, both are suffering from societal/economic stagnation and a slow breakdown in political discourse. If both sides don't destroy each other in a nuclear exchange, they'll tear themselves apart instead.

>Doesn't the US currently have like a 100% success rate in shooting down missles like this?

Not with hypersonic cruise missiles no. The Phalanx CIWS is rated to engage targets flying as fast as Mach 2, the Soviet-era SS-N-22 Sunburn can do Mach 3 and the newer Kh-90 can do Mach 15, making it nearly impossible to shoot down with conventional ordinance.

If most or all the Kriegsmarine surface fleet saw action outside of their ports then they broke out in significant numbers, you fucking britboo autist.,

The Kreigsmarine surface fleet wasn't big enough to be significant outside the Baltic Sea and the Danish straits. The fact that they didn't have any operational aircraft carriers at the beginning of the war prevented them from being effective in the Atlantic. The Graf Zeppelin doesn't count because it arrived too late and never actually did anything.

Kek, not him but in the case of the Russian Navy it could be said that they got swept up politics because they weren't out that much.

>lose
>y-yeah i hated hitler too

"The Russian Revolution" by Sean McMeekin explicitly says that the Russian Navy was the branch that was most prone to radicalism. The explanation that he gives is that naval personnel were generally literate whereas most army soldiers were not at this point in time. You'd want your naval personnel to be literate because it allows them to read instruction manuals, which is important considering the increasingly technical nature of naval warfare during the period. However, it also means that they can read propagandizing pamplets from whatever radical group is popular these days. Russian naval personnel were the first to turn against the Czar during the February revolution.

Keep in mind that this only applies to the lower-level personnel. The officers did indeed to be more conservative, and naval captains in general have always had a reputation for being particularly aristocratic. Stalin's purges hit the Soviet Navy particularly hard because it had the highest proportion of officers who were holdouts from the Tsarist era.

That's not the argument. If the majority of the fleet was able to operate outside of German territorial waters, then it was in significant numbers size of the German navy in 1939.

Supposedly. I'll believe the flailing Russians have better military weapons than the US to the point they can obliterate the whole surface fleet of the largest, most advanced navy in history when it haooens.

A bit off-topic, but naval related: How the fuck did the Netherlands allow their navy to get overshadowed by the British? The Dutch Republic was the best naval power for a time and then the British Empire somehow just became better? What happened to the Dutch, man...

Dude you said open ocean, if you consider the Danish straits and the Baltic Sea open ocean, then your definition of ocean is not very practical.

The term "open ocean" is the issue. The Kriegsmarine was very effective inside the Baltic Sea and the Danish straits, but it wasn't effective in the Atlantic Ocean. They didn't have enough "big hitters" by which I mean battleships and/or aircraft carriers, but especially the latter since the rapidly increasing striking power of aircraft had diminished the usefulness of battleships. The Royal Navy began the war with 7 aircraft carriers. The Kriegsmarine began the war with 0. In the Baltic Sea, and the Danish Straits, that didn't make a big difference because the Luftwaffe could provide air support with land-based aircraft. The Atlantic was a different story. The Kreigsmarine's crippling lack of aircraft carriers prevented them from ever having a significant presence in the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Well I apologize for the misconstruing. You are right, but for what it is worth, the Kriegsmarine kept the RN from blockading Germany through early victories and made life a misery for anyone trying to run guns to the Soviets. Their actions should not be minimized, doing so insults all those who died on both sides. For a small surface navy, they did what they could and it was enough to keep the The Royal Home fleet focused on them and not transferred to the pacific once the Japanese joined the war.

I've been listening to an audiobook called "The Naval War in the Baltic: 1939 - 1945" lately. It has given me a greater appreciation for the military and economic importance of the Baltic Sea. Within that area, the Kriegsmarine was very effective. The Soviet Navy couldn't compete.

Russian navy always gets btfo.

t. Russo-Japanese War

It's not really a matter of rumor dude. Crunch the numbers. Do the math. Check the records and see how many Nazi Party members were in each branch, then do a compare and contrast. This is a Veeky Forumstory forum is it not? How about some actual research guys lol

>marseille
could be why

>implying I'm American
>implying I'm implying that 'Murikkka is bulletproof

Dutch were also merchants and middlemen, but they didn't have the ability (continental base = lots of threats, e.g. Napoleon) to secure supply lines, and generally they didn't care whose ships their goods were travelling on. They were like UPS or FedEx, rather than Amazon.