Chapter Two - That Mighty Furnace

In a memoir written shortly after Hitler established the Third Reich, Niemöller counted himself among "those who . unconsciously found their true selves during the Great War and who, in that mighty furnace of God, reverted to the . basic truths of humanity which, after the end of the war, impelled them to seek a new life."1 For Niemöller, Dönitz, and so many of their friends and classmates, the First World War and its immediate aftermath-the defeat of Germany, a revolution sparked by a naval mutiny, and the abolition of the monarchy in a favor of a republic initially dominated by socialists-was the defining period of their lives. Indeed, for those fortunate enough to also survive the next great cataclysm and live into old age, it remained much more significant than the Second World War.

In an August 1914 letter to his parents, Niemöller gave full vent to his hatred of the British, who had emerged as the primary enemy of the German navy. "The world is too small for both peoples. One must disappear, and it will not be the Germans!"2 Such assertions, typical of the overheated nationalism of wartime Germany, became common in his diary entries as well as in correspondence with family members. Amid the venom, God reappeared, after being largely absent since he had left home for the Naval School, but it was very much the God of his father and of the household in which he grew up, where Protestantism and German nationalism were deeply intertwined. He was critical of the tone of navy chaplains in their Sunday sermons, which included too much "fear not" and "trust God" for his taste, at a time when he felt themes of self-sacrifice and fidelity to the death were more warranted.3

In a subsequent letter to his parents, Niemöller revisited his hatred of Germany's enemies, throwing in, for good measure, future enemies that were still neutral at the time, and pondering the consequences for his soul: "If people other than the Germans and their allies are included in the biblical definition of 'neighbor,' then I will not make it to heaven. I hate them all: English, American, and Italian,"4 Such sentiments, of course, were far from unique. For so many Germans, the prewar international rivalries quickly hardened into wartime hatred of the enemy, while on the home front, political and ideological differences likewise eventually became simplified into hatred and distrust. The First World War taught many Germans how to hate, indeed, to hate to an unprecedented extent, and Martin Niemöller was no exception. The conflict of 1914?-?18 served as a definite bump in the road in his long journey to God.

But amid such burning passions, the enthusiasm prevailing in Wilhelmshaven during the war's first days quickly died down, replaced by growing frustration as the High Sea Fleet remained at anchor, under a distant blockade by the numerically superior British Grand Fleet. For Niemöller, life aboard the Thüringen became no more eventful than it had been in peacetime. He soon envied his peers in the army, who were actually fighting the enemy in the opening campaigns against France and Russia. The big ships of the fleet were not involved in the First Battle of Helgoland Bight (28 August 1914), an encounter of smaller vessels in which British battle cruisers intervened to sink three German light cruisers. The dead included two members of Crew 10.

This stinging defeat left the Germans "burning to avenge the slap in the face we had received," as future fleet commander Reinhard Scheer later recalled,5 but another two months passed before the first major sortie by the German fleet. In the meantime, in October, Niemöller reported to his parents that from his perspective in Wilhelmshaven, "if it weren't in the newspapers, one would not believe there was a war at all."6 He felt the inaction of the navy already had caused "irreparable" harm to the honor of its officer corps vis-à-vis their peers in the army. He gave his younger brother Wilhelm, then 16 years old, a piece of advice he would have considered unthinkable at any time before 1914: to join the army rather than the navy, if he wanted to see action. By the following summer Martin was jealous of Wilhelm, who volunteered for an artillery unit shortly after turning seventeen and went to the Western front in France, where there was no shortage of action.7 He longed to be actively engaged in the war, to take the fight to the enemy, and it appeared increasingly unlikely that he would ever do so while serving aboard a battleship like the Thüringen.

I

The initial frustrations of Niemöller-and most of the rest of Crew 10, likewise idled aboard the ships of the High Sea Fleet-stood in sharp contrast to the ongoing adventures of Dönitz and five other classmates who experienced the first dramatic development of the naval war: the successful escape of the Goeben and Breslau to Constantinople, where the presence of the two ships proved instrumental in bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. They had left Messina on 2 August, after Italy's declaration of neutrality scuttled prewar plans for joint Triple Alliance naval action against the French fleet in the western Mediterranean. Rear Admiral Souchon first steamed for the coast of Algeria, hoping to disrupt troop transports from North Africa to France. At 05:30 on the morning of 4 August, the Breslau became the first German warship to fire a shot in the First World War when it shelled the port of Bône (Annaba). Thus Dönitz and fellow Crew 10 member Franz Wodrig, also aboard the Breslau, became the first of their class to engage the enemy, three and a half weeks before the initial clash of warships in the North Sea, in the First Battle of Helgoland Bight.

Souchon then acted on orders received earlier to proceed to the Dardanelles. En route eastward, he attempted to top off his coal stocks at Messina on 5 August, but the Goeben and Breslau were now treated as belligerent warships calling at a neutral port, subject to a 24-hour limit that did not allow them time to load enough coal to make it all the way to Constantinople. This made Dönitz's earlier work at Brindisi (to secure a collier in Greek waters, for the contingency of the ships steaming in that direction) all the more crucial to their mission. On the evening of 6 August they left Messina and made a feint toward the mouth of the Adriatic before steaming for Cape Matapan, the Goeben unmolested, the Breslau after exchanging fire in an encounter with the British light cruiser Gloucester. On 9 August they refueled in the Aegean Sea from the collier arranged by Dönitz, and the following evening entered the Dardanelles.8

The Ottoman Empire's alliance with Germany, concluded on 2 August, prompted Britain to seize three dreadnoughts then under construction for the Turkish navy in British shipyards, two of which were nearly completed. In a gesture toward making good this loss-and to resolve international legal issues raised by the presence of the Goeben and Breslau in Turkish waters, at a time when the Ottoman Empire had not yet entered the war-the Germans on 15 August sold the two ships to the Turks for 80 million Marks. Under Ottoman flags, the Goeben became the Yavuz Sultan Selim and the Breslau the Midilli. Command and control issues were not resolved until 18 September, in a memorandum guaranteeing the Germans authority over the two ships, making them Turkish in name only. Their crews, some 1,400 men, likewise remained personnel of the German navy, though for the sake of appearances Souchon and his officers, including Dönitz, eventually wore the Turkish naval fez corresponding to their rank rather than German naval headwear.9

The ships remained idle while Germany and the Ottoman Empire continued to work out the details of their alliance, including a substantial loan, in gold, shipped by rail from Berlin to Constantinople. Only then did Turkish authorities allow Souchon to launch a surprise attack on Russia's Black Sea ports, prior to a formal declaration of war. On 29 October the Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli, with an escort of destroyers and torpedo gunboats, shelled and mined the ports of Odessa, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, and Feodosia, in the process sinking a Russian gunboat, a minelayer, and a half-dozen merchantmen. Aboard the Midilli, Dönitz experienced the attack on Novorossiysk, then, before returning to Constantinople on 1 November, the added adventure of a failed attempt to cut the undersea cable linking the main Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol with Varna, Bulgaria.10 The following week, Dönitz was among several German participants in the surprise attacks to be awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.

After an exchange of declarations of war, the Ottoman and Russian armies established a front in the Caucasus, which both sides found easier to supply by sea. This made convoy duty, and attacking enemy convoys, the normal routine for naval forces in the Black Sea, along with periodic raids on port cities. Dönitz later credited this "cat-and-mouse" warfare with shaping his long-term tactical outlook.11

While no members of Crew...