Was This Desperate Strategy Germany’s Only Naval Option?

My Uncle Ray was on a ship that was sunk during WWII. He almost didn't make it. an explosion from his sinking ship broke the vacuum that was pulling him down with the ship. He never spoke about it. He never went very far into the ocean when We visited him.

This guy is lying or just plain stupid!

He missed the point that 1939 was about 5 years too early according to German plans. So all of this stuff (except the carriers, the Germans didn't need carriers) was caught in the middle and scrambling to make do.
He also misses the point that the US was acting illegally under FDR by escorting Brit convoys, ultimately almost into the UK's territorial waters. It did save the Brits from actually being starved into submission.

Notice no USA. Well guess we are on our own again.

Germany only have 3 ship yards capable of building large Battle Ships or Carriers. They finished the 2 battle ships and never completed the carrier. Even then one battle ship had been sunk before the other was ready to go to sea. The rolled steel armor was required for tanks etc. Not ships.

Short answer to the question posed on the video is - yes.

I find many people like him look back at navies in the 1930s with the knowledge of post WW2. They gloss over the debates of carrier vs battleship of the 20s and 30s.

Not so bright then, those Nazis were…!!!

U-boats were a much better investment for Germany than either battleships or aircraft carriers, especially carriers.
The battleships they built were either sunk without accomplishing much or spent the war hiding out or being repaired, or being bombed relentlessly. It would have been the same for aircraft carriers.
As was amply demonstrated by two wars, Germany has great difficulty getting surface ships out into the open sea where they can attack Britains supply routes. But, U-boats were very successful at doing just that. For the cost of the useless capital ships they built, Germany could have built hundreds of U-boats.
Britain's industrial center was within range of land-based planes Germany had or should have had. Aircraft carriers would have been less successful due to their smaller planes' smaller bomb loads.

Churchill ubootes only scare during ET ww2

so, everyone who keeps saying 'oh Carriers were the best thing ever' I keep having to say 'the situation is different in each nation'

did Russia need Carriers? no. but this guy would be advocating for them. I give him a lot of credit on other points, but up until America joined the War, the U-boat plan did a lot of work. Britain was on the edge A LOT because Germany raided their commerce. and when your enemies are right at your doorstep, you don't need a carrier.

Norway showed that the Germans didn't need carriers to fend off the RAF. and it didn't need carriers to raid the British during the Battle of Britain. saying Carriers are the be all and end all just ignores major facts. for instance, with U-boats, the Germans were able to keep the RN on the back foot and keep guessing where they'd strike.

CVs also took time to get off the ground. they needed to develop planes for them, they needed a strike team for them, that needed training and planes built. if your battle is close to the ground, and not out in the middle of the Ocean, WHY DO YOU NEED CARRIERS!?

-The Anglo German Naval Treaty forced the Germans to have a fleet 33% the size of the British but also to match the British tonage pro rata in ship categories other words the Germans had to build battleships instead of cruisers and destroyers because the treaty required them to allocate the same proportion of tonage to battleships as the British.
-Germany was restricted from building effective naval forced by the treaty of Versailles which severely restricted the size of their ships and fleet. Realising that the new regime of AH was going to repudiate the Versailles treaty the British were extremely keen for the Germans to sign the Anglo German naval Treaty. This restricted the German Navy to 33% of the British Navy. The treaty also link the Germans into the Washington and London Naval treaties on battleship to edge and gun size. Both these treaties were irrelevant because of the elevator clauses that kicked in after Japan started building giant battleships with 18 inch guns.
-The Germany Z plan was to have a balanced force in 1948 including aircraft carriers. They had one aircraft carrier on the slipways called the Graf Zepplin. It would’ve been okay but certainly had problems. However subsequent aircraft carriers would no don’t have corrected these

Submarines were a suprise attack weapon system...the U boats had to strike as soon as they saw a target and they couldn't take any time to confirm the nationality of the vessel.
This pretty much guaranteed the the Germans were going to sink lots of American ships and kill hundreds if not thousands of American sailors.
Unrestricted U boat attacks meant war with the USA was only a few months away.

The biggest problem with the German Carrier plan was the ego of Göring. NO way he would cooperate or give any plane to the kriegsmarine. So it was delayed and delayed and delayed.

Smart guy - but overrated as a historian.

Hansen never seems to talk about how popular Hitler was with the right-wing of American politics.
US banks loaned millions to Germany.
Hitler was strongly anti left anti socialist anti union

That guy talks lot of shit in limited time. C ant be taken seriously. Guess cant read a single german sentence.

Germany was a continental power. So big surface ships was only a distraction to them.

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The Allies developed "Hunter Killer" squads towards the end of the war! The Germans were cooked!

Germany would have been better served by building U-boats to start with I guess they didn't learn the lessons of WW-1.

Germanys arrogance, overconfidence , in high places cost them plenty, example, the enigma, believing there coded messages could not be compromised !

Bismark warned Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany was a land power. Germany could never compete on the sea and an arms naval race with Britain would only sour relations while diverting vital resources away from the Army. Germany had no use for an Aircraft Carrier. They had no escorts adequate to get such a ship past the British home fleet, and there was no part of England the Luftwaffe couldn't bomb from France or Norway. The Italians on the other hand could have traded one or two of their battleships for a carrier.

Aircraft carriers was not a big sell in Germany, just look at the map. Not even England was thinking Carriers and they are an island and the naval power of the last 3 centuries. The USA was the oddity here. Only the Pacific Ocean made them realize this, same as Japan.

Battleships were an absolute waste of resources for Germany. Submarines and aircraft carriers compliment each other very well.

The U boats came very close to starving out Britain. The food rations in Britain were very meager and many people suffered from malnutrition (including a family friend who was a child and had physical developmental problems as a result.)

Can't stand this hack. Go listen to Sarah Paine.

And it almost worked. If Germany had had 200 U-Boats at sea in Sept '39 and the building replacement program to back that up and keep expanding, the war may well have been lost for the UK before they could crack Enigma.

Imagine if they had taken all that time and energy to create 1000s of seaplanes instead. Probably would have starved Britain

I would have invested mostly in u-boats. And night-time only bombardments of the UK. That would do it. But they didn’t. Also declaring war against America was a big, HUGE mistake. They never had the industrial capacity to fight the US. And attacking Russia was also another mistake. Germany never had the population to win.

A carrier wouldn’t help Germany
Didn’t have the fleet to support or bases

British empire yet he mentions the countries not in the empire at the time

Germany made huge mistakes. They would delay they may taken over the world

Germany's WWII aircraft carrier was the Graf Zeppelin. It was started but not completed. It was claimed by the Soviet Union as a prize of war. The Soviets sank it to determine what they needed to do to sink an aircraft carrier. It's completion by the Nazis was stopped because the had yet to develop aircraft to fly off it.

The U-Boat fleet was something like 48 to 55 boats at the start of the war, too few to be fully successful and far less than the 300 Admiral Dönitz said he needed to control the oceans. This low number was due to Hitler ordering the invasion of Poland about 18 months ahead of what he had ordered his armaments builders was the start date for the war, the Spring of 1941.

The Little Corporal was the greatest General the allies had.

They never had anywhere close to enough U-boats in operation to do what Donitz wanted. Hitler's decision to go to war in 1939 instead of around 1945 (as he promised his military leadership) meant that Germany was never really prepared to win a prolonged war.

England's Submission was Germany's aim?
Then why did Germany let BEF go home at Dunkirk?

Hitler had planned to invade the UK. He didn't for two reasons. One was the RAF who defended the island from the Luftwaffe. The other was the Royal Navy that they couldnt destroy either. The Wehrmacht coukd have taken the UK but you have to get them there and Hitler couldnt

If Battleships are so useless why did the US keep dragging them out of mothballs every time they had to send troops ashore on a beach somewhere

I would like to challenge the assertion of investing to heavily in battleships by Germany preventing the Nazis producing aircraft carriers. Germany built two battleships and two battlecruisers, so that is a total of 4 ships. If Germany had built four or more carriers during this same period, I'm not sure how that would have made a difference in the end. The Germans were limited in their ability in producing capital ships. I believe Germany only had 4 slipways capable of building battleships, cruisers or aircraft carriers. Even if they could construct only aircraft carriers, the total number would have been limited. Germany did not have the capacity to build a contemporary fleet in such a short period of time.

ok

The German strategic error was building battleships instead of submarines. 1 battleship used tge same resources such as steel, crew, finanse as 40 to 50 U-boats. The shortage of the latter in 1939-1942 made it lose the Battle of the Atlantic at a time when the US remained neutral.