Surface Ships: The Kriegsmarine’s Downfall During the Second World War

Authors

Calen J. Crumpton, Indiana University - EastFollow

Abstract

This manuscript details the German naval plan against the UK, and explores the statistics as well as leadership in the Kriegsmarine that prove why the German naval strategy during the Second World War was majorly flawed. Germany was a surprisingly powerful nation in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As a nation under National Socialism, Germany had defeated and occupied large swaths of mainland Europe. Germany had taken control of France, Poland, Austria, and a majority of Scandinavia, as well as advancing allied interests in the area through Spain and Italy. The only problem that Germany had was the United Kingdom. As it is an island, the Germans could not employ their usual Blitzkrieg tactics, but instead made an attempt to reverse the British World War 1 strategy of starving the nation out of the war by eliminating any incoming trade. This was an even larger challenge for the Germans than it was for the British in the previous war, as the Germans had to eliminate the UK before the United States joined the war.

First Page

61

Last Page

77

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Crumpton, Calen J. (2020) "Surface Ships: The Kriegsmarine’s Downfall During the Second World War," Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History: Vol. 10: Iss. 2, Article 5.
DOI: 10.20429/aujh.2020.100205
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/aujh/vol10/iss2/5