TOO SOON FOR NAZIS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 28, 14 May 1947, Page 5

TOO SOON FOR NAZIS

OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II • *. \ . This would have been the third year of World War ll—if Nazi cal- \ culations had gone right. . According to “top secret” documents by German naval chiefs Raeder and Doenitz, made public by ; the Admiralty, war broke out five years before Germany’s plan to construct a Navy big enough to tackle British communications was com- - pleted. Footnote to that “error,” supplied by Raeder’s successor, Admiral Doenitz, reads: “The war was in one sense lost before it began, because we were never prepared for a naval war against England.” Doenitz, now serving a ten-year sentence passed on him by the Nuremberg court, confessed that Britain’s declaration of war was such, a shock to him, that he took • 24 hours to pull himself together. His dosier goes on: “In another sense the war might still have been won. It was expected that the new type of U-boat (capable of high underwater speeds, ranging 22,000 miles and, aided by the Schnorkel breathing tube, able to remain sub-? merged for 10 weeks at a stretch) would radically alter the course of the war. “They would have been ready by: the autumn of 1944 but for the Allied bombing, which can be said tohave won the war for the Allies. “From the end of 1944 to the end: of the war more U-boats already in commission yvere lost by bombing: than at sea.” *. | Doenitz complains: “Priority was always given to the German Army and Air Force, and the German..: Navy did not have a fleet air arm.*'