Karl Dönitz

Karl Dönitz was a German naval officer who became commander of the U-boat force before taking overall command of the Kriegsmarine in 1943. He advocated concentrated submarine attacks on Allied convoys and directed the Atlantic campaign that sought to sever Britain’s maritime supply lines.

In April 1945 Adolf Hitler named Dönitz as his successor as head of state. Dönitz headed the short-lived Flensburg government until Germany’s surrender and was later convicted at the Nuremberg trials of war crimes and crimes against peace, serving ten years in prison.

David Boyle’s Operation Primrose explains how the intelligence windfall fitted into the wider cryptographic struggle between the Royal Navy, Bletchley Park and Karl Dönitz’s U-boat command, and why naval Enigma had been especially difficult to penetrate. Sir Max Hastings’ Plunder continues through the last special-forces operations, German surrender negotiations and the short-lived government of Karl Dönitz. Hastings combines commanders such as Montgomery, Eisenhower and Patton with soldiers, prisoners, displaced civilians and victims of Nazi rule. Jonathan Dimbleby’s The Battle of the Atlantic connects decisions made by Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler and Admiral Karl Dönitz with the experience of merchant seamen and naval crews who fought through years of attrition.