Plan Z, or How Not to Prepare for The Battle of the Atlantic
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- Опубліковано 23 чер 2019
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Sources:
Jonathan Dimbleby, The Battle of the Atlantic
Jak P. Mallmann Showell, German Navy Handbook 1939-45
Empire of the Deep, Ben Wilson
Philips Payson O’Brien, How the War was Won
Corelli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely
The Encyclopedia of Sea Warfare
Music:
Crypto, Incompetech incompetech.com
Stormfront, Incompetech incompetech.com - Розваги
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As far as your sponcers War Thunder, I am not the type of person they want. I have no money to pay them to be competitive. Rich people this is the perfect game for you. You can buy your wins and feel so superior to everyone else. If you ain't winning then your not spending enough money. But I do recommend this game to you. It was fun until my 3 days of premium was up. Now my question to you. Why didn't the U-boats go after the military ships first and then put a strangle hold on Britain?
Oi Historiograph if i may know where do you get the pictures for your thumbnail? Or do you just make em?
Do the Battle of Westerplatte and the Polish September Campaign of 1939.
You are comopletely correct. The Graf Spee should have been a serious warning to how Germany s capital ships had no chance, and priority should go to U Boats.
And if not Graf Spee, after the Bismarck debacle not one single german capital ship should have consumed one more ounce of resources.
Hi Mr Historiograph, I'm trying to reach out to you to propose a business agreement: I would love to dub your videos to Italian and then re-upload them onto an italian Historiograph channel. I reckon there is a potential untapped market for italian-speaking wartime history videos. Your videos are shockingly well made and would face very little same-language competition. The revenue from those videos would then be split at some rate to be decided between the two of us. Let me know what you think, I belive this can be a profitable endevour.
German Army Doctrine: Static defense is obsolete, let's experiment. Mobile warfare is the future!
German Air Doctrine: Let's try something new, let's utilize planes as close air support to devastate the enemy!
German Naval Doctrine: We used to have the second largest navy in the world and it did nothing but get sunk or sit in port all war. Our submarines however were very effective. Obviously, LETS BUILD MORE CAPITAL SHIPS!
I mean the Wehrmacht didn't think like that and their defenses were very static and obsolete. They were actually fully expecting to fight another trench war like WWI.
@@hedgehog3180 To be fair, that's what everyone was expecting.
In fairness, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were decent... and the Kriegsmarine really should've stopped at those two.
@@addisonwelsh To some degree, Britain had conducted many exercises where they had kinda hit upon what modern war would be like and the USSR definitely had the right idea however geopolitics meant that they couldn't apply these ideas.
@@hedgehog3180 Yeah, Germany and the Soviets definitely had a better idea on modern war then most of the other nations. Everyone figured it out in the end, some just faced a harsher learning curve then the others.
U-boats arent good they said they wont help they said
'Alfred von Tirpitz several decades earlier' - Let's build up massive fleet of battleships, it's not like British can respond to that (British see that and respond by outproducing Germans).
'Karl Dönitz in alternate timeline' - Let's build up massive Uboot fleet, it's not like British can spot and respond to that (British spot that and respond by building up escort fleet already in late 30's).
@@ReichLife 1. The british were outproducing the germans since before naval rearmament.
2. The british still would have thought battleships were superior
German U-boats were really good in ww1 but the royal navy didnt give a fuck after the war
Eh. Germany doesn't build extra Battleships, then neither does the UK or France since they don't need them. All of a sudden you get 30 something destroyers or ~50 escorts for every battleship saved. Germany still loses either way.
John Hartin at scapa flow by U47
John Hartin to be fair, they were very ineffective due to their torpedoes failing about 75% of the time (or higher). U47 making it through scapa flow was a miracle.
Erich Raeder: "It's evil, its diabolical, it's... LEMON SCENTED."
"THIS PLAN Z COULDN'T POSSIBLY FAIL!"
Plan Z, I love Plan Z...
Theres a plan z?
Admiral Dontiz would say that
Check out Plan X or Plan Y...they might be much more interesting for a what if scenario.
Lemon scented? I thought it always been lager scented
If I have learnt anything from hoi4 recently it is that all you need to do is spam submarine 3's to win the navel war.
Navel
fulcrum 29 navel
naval
@ur mom lol good job mom.
Navel
Hindsight is 20/20. One of the 'lessons' of the First World War appeared to be that the combination of convoys with sensor technology had rendered commerce raiding by submarines obsolete, and so when by the 1930s sensor technology had become more advanced than anything available in the First World War, combined with the advent of the aircraft carrier, both the Royal Navy and Kreigsmarine had reason to be sceptical that submarines would make a comeback at the outset of the Second. Furthermore, as MHV always likes to say, naval strategy is build strategy: convoy escorts can be quickly and cheaply mass produced, while large fleet units take years to build. Therefore, if your resources are limited, it is far better to be unprepared for a submarine war than it is to be unprepared for a surface war, because a weakness in convoy escorts can be remedied quickly, whereas if you go to war with a weakness in surface units, you may have lost by the time you've caught up, especially if the enemy is able to exploit your weakness to score a decisive victory which depletes your numbers further.
Building destroyers are much easier than capital ships, look at the destroyer numbers during the Atlantic campaign compared to capital ships
Even if the kriegsmarine chose to disregard plan z, don't expect the allies to not do anything in respond
More to the point the U boat campaign was a total failure in both world wars
Actually, building a counter to a large submarine force is extremely difficult. Because while you can build DDs and DEs at a faster rate and in more shipyards than CAs and BBs, you're also having to build civilian cargo ships in those same yards.
Britain was HIGHLY constrained in it's ability to pump out the necessary escorts to fight the Uboats. The only reason they could produce even close to enough was that they effectively farmed out their ENTIRE merchant shipbuilding to the USA. Britain alone (or even in conjunction with the French, if they'd not been conquered) didn't have anywhere near the shipbuilding capability to both produce escorts AND replace merchant shipping losses.
Literally, the only way the UK survived 1940 was they paid the US for 50 DDs. Which was almost 40% of their total DD force in 1940. Thinking that the UK could simply build more escorts quickly is completely at odds with reality. Moreover, you CANNOT simply switch a shipyard from building heavier units to light ones. It takes a couple of years to do so. There's a reason that the UK wasn't able to start producing large numbers of escorts until 1941, TWO FULL YEARS after the start of the war.
Worse, for someone like the UK or France, who depend on imports for critical materials, if you don't have sufficient defense forces to start with (i.e. enough merchant marine stock and escorts), there's a very good chance that your opponent can choke you off BEFORE you can even ramp up production.
As to technology - anyone paying attention to submarine tech knows that 1930s subs were light years ahead of 1918 ones, and the advances in tech in sensor and spotting weren't even close to making up that gap. Worse, there literally WERE no CVs for escort duty. It's really not hard to see the capabilities gap in 1938, if you're not fixated on capital ships.
The reality is the exact opposite of what you postulate: given the big tech advantage of subs vs ASW, and the fact that surface fleets were, frankly, pretty useless when trying to fight a commerce raider war, it's the epitome of stupid to focus your scarce resources in the 20s and 30s on something that simply has little chance of being effective, let alone decisive - ie. capital ships. In fact, focusing on capital ships ignores the lessons from WW1 completely, where literally billions of pounds/marks in ships sat around and did virtually nothing useful the entire war.
@@Kias1dad *If Germany ever gained an edge in capital ships, the UK was doomed.*
Here is the problem, the UK would always be aware of what Germany builds and react to it. In reality Germany's surface fleed never could have outmatch the british. If necessary the british would abandon other theaters and pull more forces to the nord sea.
Yes, countering a capital ship is not easy, but neither is countering a submarine fleet. The problem is that the capital ships are just one large target, take it out and you lose years of building and a large part of your naval strength. Also the nazi's spend huge efforts and funds on thos capital ships, not just to build them, but also to maintain them. Just keeping them safe in harbour was extremely costly, since they often would have been a target of not just naval assets, but also air attacks.
The fact that the little submarines they had, did a lot more than their entire surface fleet already shows the where the real strength is in their situation. If Germany had nearly 10-15 times the subs they had (could have been possible with proper focus on submarine warfare), they would wreak havoc on british shipping early in the war, possibly even strongly hindering the UK's attempt to try and counter it. Moreover had they put more emphasize on subs, they might have brought out their newer improved model much earlier, instead of just at the end of the war.
Funnily, even hindsight almost always ignores the upgrades And stagnation that's taken place in the decades between actions
The problem with Raeder getting 300 U-Boats would have been that the RN would've been much more prepared to meet them. They weren't completely blind to the German naval rearmament, and since the Kriegsmarine was focusing on capital ships, the Royal Navy didn't see a point to invest much into anti-submarine warfare, however this would have been different had the Kriegsmarine went for mainly submarines.
Yeah, but just remember that British destroyers were taking out much larger German ships. German surface ships never had a chance
Remember a lie? Not a single Kriegsmarine Cruiser, Panzerschiffe or Battleship were ever taken out by British destroyer.
The thing is, the Germans weren't the only ones on the seas, the british also had to account for the Japanese and even the French and American fleets (because you never know) and all these fleets did focus on surface fleets, and thus so had the Royal marine.
@@MDP1702 yes but by the time that WW2 started becoming the most likely war to be fought in the near future, the US and france were likely to be ally's or at least neutral and japan would have to split it's focus between the USN and the royal navy.
The buildup of a large german sub fleet would certainly be countered immediatly by the RN with a large escort building effort and a focus on ASW that would have renderd it much less effective than most people assume.
Naval strategy is build strategy
"We couldn't match the British surface fleet in WW1 and we're starting even farther behind now. However, our submarine fleet was devastating against the Allies in WW1 and our subs are even better now. What should we do?"
"BUILD ALL THE CAPITAL SHIPS, OBVIOUSLY!!!"
I daresay invading the Soviet Union in June 1941 was a smart decision by comparison.
Just imagine if they had put all of their Naval Budget into those U-boats from the start. They might've had things like good acoustic torpedoes and Type XXIs in active service by the time the Brits got their act together in 1943.
Even the U-boats were only good until 1942; sonar/radar was getting better and better, and the US was building ships faster than the Kriegsmarine could sink them. What the Nazis really needed was to *NOT* declare war on America and Russia at the same time.
@@HowlingWolf518 The type XXI was much better then older submarines. They could to to 1945 anti-sub defences what the older types did in 1940. And if Germany had put priority on subs, they could be in service in 1943, maybe even sooner.
It was the only wonder weapon that could had been made in time and with the resources that Germany actualy had.
In the long run it whill not make a diference but the Normandy landings will be impossible in 1944.
@@samuelgordino Sure, but the earliest the Type XXI can be introduced is late '42, and by then the "happy time" is almost over and Allied ASW too good. Even the U-Boats weren't much more than an inconvenience.
@@majorborngusfluunduch8694 Things don't happen in a vacuum. If Germany doesn't build capital ships then the allies don't need to build their huge fleets of them either. Which means the allies can double down on ASW and slaughter German subs.
It's every admiral's wet dream to recreate the battle of Tsushima, which is pretty much why most of them prioritize battleships over CV and SS. The kinds of Donitz and Yamamoto are rare even in WWII.
That's how they were trained. Every admiral, even Nimitz, Halsey and Yamamoto,, had read "The Influence of Seapower Upon History (the Mahan book), which taught them to seek one big, final fleet battle. Unfortunately, a combination of tech and other factors rendered the strategy obsolete
Uh, Yamamoto was a huge proponent for Aircraft Carriers. He explicitly ordered that when attacking Pearl Harbor they destroy the aircraft carriers and support infrastructure. The admiral in charge of the operation (Yamamoto planned it, but did not execute it) was in the opposite school of thought and decided to destroy the battleships and didn’t want to risk planes for infrastructure. The IJN undermined each other so much it makes the Soviet political system seem kind and cohesive.
@@ksfirewolf1530 Not the admiral of the operation, but the pilots. Pilots are assigned to attack specific ships with the armament they carry, but all went for battleships. Also, the CVs are all missing during pearl harbour. But yeah, I did say people like Yamamoto and Doniz are rare during the time.
@@benlex5672 ah sorry, I thought you were saying they were battleship admirals, I just misunderstood what you were saying
Even with absence of cv's in pearl harbour, had Japanese destroyed the fuel reserves their, it would have delayed US response for at least a year.
It's diabolical, it's lemon scented... This plan can't possibly fail!
i was looking everywhere for a comment like this
Status of the waves:
R U L E D
*clears throat*
RULE BRITANNIA
BRITANNIA RULE THE WAVES
*picks up a cup of tea and salutes*
Problem is Britain never ruled them again after WW2.
@@unacittabizzarraechiassosa4143 so they went to the falklands by car?
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 Of course not but the uncontested naval power after WW2 was the US, not Britain. Also even as early as the Interwar period the Royal Navy was in stagnation.
Germany: Yes if Plan Z goes through we will have a navy the size of the British!
Britain: Builds an equivalent force on top of what they had before
Germany: *Surprised Pikachu face*
Plan Z, Royal Navy's greatest victory.
I'd love to see a document where it turns out Raeder was a British spy.
@Muhammad Farhan Well in last war Germany did have big surface fleet but that didn't do shits when submarines were biggest weapon in German navy. Raeder should learn from that and funnel all navys resources to Submarines, destroyers (for laying mines) and perhaps cruisers if they wanter surface raiders, even thought auxiliar ships were far better in that role. In big picture, battlecruisers and battleships were nothing but deathweight without carriers.
just imagine how devastating the kreigsmarine could have been if it could field let's say 200 u boats in the atlantic by the time France fell. It's a good thing the Gernans made so many stupid decisions during that war.
In all honesty if Germany had completed plan z and waited till 1948 it would put up more of fight in the naval theater for sure
NW Emerson it’s a joke
Interestingly, Drachinifel said yesterday in the latest drydock that if Dönitz had had his 300 fleet submarines by the start of the war, there was a fair chance that they could have starved Britain into surrender early (forcing them into a favourable peace treaty) by cutting their trade and imports. By late war when the subs actually arrived in larger numbers, there were corvettes, sloops, destroyer escorts, escort carriers being mass produced, long range patrol aircraft to close the Atlantic Gap, new technologies and tactics deployed, and it mostly meant a lot of targets for the Allies to sink.
Yeah I more or less agree
Military History Visualised made a great video about this subject, basically the answer is no. There is no reason to think the British would have surrendered. The British maintained ~160 destroyers with plenty of ASW to combat ~30-40 uboats. If the Germans had built 300 (btw how tf were they going to do that) before 1939 the British would have put a much higher emphasis on ASW. Once the war started and the Germans ramped up Uboat production, so did the British with their escorts. It is common nazi fetishisation to say that had the Germans changed ONE decision they would have won the war. There are reasons history played it the way it did
@@ledavalon7118 You make a good point that the British would have prepared accordingly, but we know that they severely underestimated the threat of U-Boots. See how they used fleet carriers for ASW patrols at the beginning of the war (and how it went for them). With 300 U-Boots, even against more destroyers and ASW ships, it's also fair to assume that at least a few British capital ships would be sunk early in the war. This could possibly scare the British enough about an invasion (which would most likely still be impossible, anyway, but even irl when it was even more impossible, the British were afraid of it) so they sign a peace treaty and withdraw from the war. Nazi Germany would be more than happy to sign a peace treaty that doesn't punish the British too much as long as it takes them out from the war while they handle the USSR (which in all fairness would again be too much for them to handle). I wonder how the war would have gone in that case. Maybe the USSR would have spread their influence towards western Europe after defeating the Germans.
@@rare_kumikoI disagree, if Britain went out of the war, the whole resource drain of the north african theatre would not have taken place, Barbarossa might have started early against an even more defenseless Soviet Union with more time until the Rasputitsa. There were many close calls and history might well have went along another path.
Kreigsmarine: exists
Royal navy: I'm about to do what's called a pro gamer move.
Man u stole my tongue
@Vitraxon KKTK battle of Cape Matapan would like to know your location.
Only couple of Bismarck battleships with some handy U boats would have finsihed the game...the problem is Britain got more ships than losses...they got ultimately some 100 ships from USS..which include 50 Destroyers.in just 15months of War..just imagine if KG gets this?
@Vitraxon KKTK Bismarck got a lucky hit against an old ship then got obliterated by an almost as old ship. And it was the most successful part of the German surface fleet most of which was sunk or crippled before it. German navy is one of the biggest failures of WW2. German cruisers and destroyers all did badly against (usually lighter) British cruisers and destroyers. The Scharnhorsts did badly against British capital ships (aircraft carrier on taxi duty apart). Tirpitz did nothing and Bismarck basically had a 1 and 1 record. Given how competent the German Navy was in ww1 its actually crazy how poor they did in ww2.
@Vitraxon KKTK They were much more competent than the Germans, they just had no fuel.
You quickly became one of my favourite history channels. Keep the quality content going!
Same
Agree !
Couldn't agree more. I can't get enough 20th century naval warfare history and stumbling upon his Norway videos, I was hooked. I've read and watched sooo much on the pacific naval actions but wasn't all that informed about what was going down with surface fleets in the Atlantic and North Sea.
Dan McCarthy What is great about him is that he had a great debut, usually the content is mediocre and then becomes excellent but his first ones were already on top of the game.
From what I understand, the German naval expansion was rarely about defeating the Royal Navy in a grand set piece battle. Tirpitz's vision was for a navy smaller than Royal Navy, but big enough that Germany can exert pressure in diplomacy against them.
8 Aircraft Carriers?!?! HWHAT?! Couldnt even build one...
Yes 8 by 1945.
It's not like they would have expanded productions capability in 6 extra years
And it wasn't 8 but 4.
@@ReichLife Initially it was 8
And initially it had 9 years. Naval build up plans rarely survives first drafts, Germans are hardly unique here. Several months after Plan Z was accepted, the Panzerschiffes were cut out, with Carriers probably even earlier in the spring.
Want to hear actual crazy Naval build up plan? Soviets planned to build 15 battleships with firepower similar to that of Nelson and Iowas. With timing being nearly the same as Plan Z.
@rob 998 The Soviets couldn't manufacture cemented armor plates in thickness greater than 9.4 inches, which meant their BBs would have had to either use weak laminated armor, or inferior face-hardened armor of full thickness. Add in Soviet machinery performing underspec, the ships being drastically overweight for the capabilities actually present on them, and the number of drive shafts being few enough that all props were cavitating horribly at max power, and you end up with overweight, under armed, under armored, slower than deigned ship.
In summary, like ALL summaries about Germany's position pre-war and during WW2, they were screwed no matter what they did and the only question is which strategic and armament options would have allowed them to hang on the longest or do the most damage before they get beat.
They could have won if they made the Allies lose faster.
What I mean is even though they were doomed from scratch, had they convinced the Allies through blitzkrieg that they had won, they would've won.
They blitzed through Poland and then through Netherlands, Belgium and France. Denmark and Norway soon followed. That's 6 countries utterly defeated in a unimaginable swiftness. If they managed to blitz the UK then they would have won. Imagine if UK signed peace and let Germany be the puppet master of Europe. If that happened, Barbarossa could succeed.
Even in our timeline, Germany did manage to inflict heavy losses to the Soviets. The Soviet Union was really close to capitulation. Maybe Germany would never be able to rule the region due to endless guerrilla warfare and sabotage, but if they had destroyed the Soviets central government and been able to seize Soviets industrial capacity, then they could deter the UK and the US for long enough for a call for peace to be called.
Hindsight show us that all the variables should go in favor of Germany in order to it be considered a victor. But they've been scarely close enough to victory, even though odds have always been in favor of the Allies.
@@joaovilaca1436 peace with Britain would allow US and British industry to sell products to Germans
@@thatdude3938 Listen dude, they were never going to be able to invade Britain and the minute they fucked with either the USSR or USA they were fucked. In fact they double fucked themselves.
If they had focused more on U-Boats, they probably could have destroyed the supply line of Britain and starved them out until they had to surrender
@@alexanderzippel8809 Doubtful. The only time that more U boats would have made a huge difference would be in the first two years of the war, but that would have required a massive buildup of submarines BEFORE the war and if they'd have done that, it certainly would have provoked a huge naval building / ASW development response among the other European powers leading up to the war as well, thus this larger sub force would be dealing with a great many more anti-sub and convoy protection assets along with other possible countermeasures like a greater strategic stockpile of goods held by Britain in anticipation of Uboat blockade efforts, or the building of high speed cargo ships at the onset of the war instead of towards the end of it.
Germany would have ran into another huge problem if they had invested so much into their subs prior to the war though. The issue is that Germany didn't have the steel and oil reserves (or shipbuilding capacity or manpower) to go into the war with the huge modern air force and mechanized ground army plus having a huge prewar Uboat fleet like Doenitz wanted, and if their tactical air forces and tank corps has to take big hits in numbers and logistics to support the giant Uboat force then it's likely that they never have the ability to take France and run Britain off mainland Europe in the first place.
"8 Aircraft Carriers"
LMAO they can't even finish one
I think germans finished one and sunk it in the baltic lol
@@cody100pl20 No the Graf Zeppelin was basically finished but then they scrapped it for the metal.
Edit: this is wrong information, I got something mixed up.
Scrapped? I thought the soviets towed it through the baltic sea but sunk bcoz those ruskiy can't even handle an aircraft carrier
@@dimdimbramantyo7666 O shit yeah you're right, my bad. The Graf Zeppelin was *almost* finished by the germans but they never did.
@@dimdimbramantyo7666 Yes, the germans scrapped it (the important parts) and used its hull as storage space. When the soviets advanced the germans sank it close to Stettin but after the war it was raised again and used as target practice.
It later sunk during a storm in the bay of Danzig
How not to prepare for a war: Signing a naval limitation with the Anglos
Planning on having such a significant surface fleet that you'll need a naval limitation treaty with the British in the first place.
It was actually a naval expansion treaty for all intents and purposes, it expanded the limit placed on Germany by Versailles.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 "you can have a bigger navy, as long as we can have an *even bigger navy still.*"
Actually it had no effect and Germany could have kept it in place.
Well it split the stresa front. France and italy split with england on german policy. The french later reconciled but by splitting the italians from the allies politically they made it so the royal navy had to contend with the regia marina. It effectively gave germany access to the Italian navy eventually since Mussolini was then convinced a democracy even when posed with a threat of a rearmed germany would not act.
Just a small correction: The map at 1:10 is too modern regarding the Netherlands, as the province of Flevoland (east of Amsterdam) was only reclaimed in the 50s and 60s. The area which is now displayed as Flevoland was still the Zuiderzee (water) back then.
"Luckily for Durnitz, If there was one other organization in the world Less well prepared to fight the Battle of the Atlantic, it was the Royal Navy" I laughed so hard I had to rewind five times.
Having a Wishlist doesn’t mean it will be successful.
Executing the Wishlist is 90% of the operation needed for success.
So how is your wish list for russia mr Napoleon :v
The capital ship end of the surface Kriegsmarine fleet was basically a very expensive series of static deterrent defences built out of steel
War Thunder's keeping the economy of our military/History channels!
Me when playing as Germany or literally as any major:
*BUILD THOSE CARRIERS BOYOSSS*
Edit: 5:49
That picture looks familiar...
Apparently the Royal Navy had 2300 + ships in 1945! Mostly patrol vessels but still a pretty HUGE number!
Hitler: it’s evil, it’s diabolical, it’s lemon scented!
This plan Z can’t possibly fail!
**Laughs in HMS King George V**
Looks like Plankton was doomed from the start
If you really think about it it’s basically High seas fleet 2.0 on britains doorstep just imagine the British response.
they had already planned to build the Lion Class Battleships and would likely build them a few extra Vanguard’s perhaps a new Battlecruiser class and a lion Class successor perhaps that and the new Battlecruiser type would be a revitalised G3 and N3 design.
They’d also add tones more carriers probably including something like the huge Malta Class.
Many many more light and heavy cruiser classes and even more Destroyer and escort ship classes and probably several more submarine classes.
The High seas fleets return would only mean the Grand fleets return would certainly follow
Yours is one of the few channels I have to stop everything Im doing and watch whenever a new video pops up. Excellent work my friend!
I follow around 30-40 history channels on youtube. Among them I'd say you've easily become my top5, on the same level with the likes of EpicHistory, Bazbattles, HistoriaCivilis etc.
I hope you will keep it up and find a way to finance your efforts. I'd pay, but I'm broke af. Your depictions and footages are amazing. Thanks dude, I enjoyed alot, as always.
Binge watching these videos on ww1 and ww2 navies! Keep up the good work, I’m learning so much from these videos. Always been so interested in it this era of history, your videos have great production quality and get straight to the point. Bravo 👏🏼
Can you make a video about escape of ORP Orzel from Estonia please?
mixererunio Good one!
Thank you so much for providing actual numbers of ships lost! In almost every book or video about WW2, they always give the number of tonnage sunk which is a bit of a challenge to visualize for someone not very good in maths.
Germany just isn't in a geographic position to be a sea power.
Yes, they are in a bad spot. And as Henry Kissinger says, "Germany is too big for Europe but too small to conquer the world."
@@ToddSauve They know, that's why they wanted to get bigger
Hitler wasn’t planning to attack Britain so he deliberately neglected the navy while channeling lots of investment to the army and the Air Force.
Excellent content, as always.
Not getting notified! Keep up the great work!
Excellent video as always. I have been wondering when you are going to upload.
Your channel is very good man, good work.
Finally a new video, good job
I like your video, it is thoroughly researched and of high quality.
I'd push back on the idea that it was folly for the RN and the Kreigsmarine to focus on capital ships in the interwar period because submarines/escorts proved much more important. Constructing capital ships was a slow process. Their size and complexity meant there were only a few places/companies which could build them (especially in Germany). If you didn't start design/construction of them until war broke out, you'd be waiting roughly two years into war for a new capital ship. In the contrast the production of smaller ships could be ramped up quickly. This is what both the Kreigsmarine and RN actually did. They more or less fought surface actions with capital ships planned and or built in the interwar period, and built large quantities of smaller ships in the middle of the war.
Granted, the Kriegsmarine Plan Z looks really foolish in hindsight because we know the war starts in 1939 and not 1948. But the idea of building capital ships first is not imprudent.
Its kinda based on the 'naval strategy is built strategy'
Something nearly many ignored
The problem with this argument is that it ignores actual technological advances and future strategy. "Build-as-needed" only works if you're fighting EXACTLY the last war. Which has not happened ever since the advent of industrialized warfare in the 1850s.
Building a bunch of strategically obsolete capital ships is foolish. Who cares if you can't build them fast enough once war starts? They're already pointless. And all the actual forward-thinking naval folks in the 20s and 30s had pointed this out - the day of the heavy gun-armed ships was dead and buried by 1928, and the writing was on the wall in 1922.
This was everyone's myopia. Heck, the US couldn't even get around to cancelling the Iowa class, despite the fact that it was bleedingly obvious that they were completely useless in terms of material and cost BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN LAID DOWN.
WW1 showed that commerce raiding was the name of the game in the next war. Capital ships are completely useless for that mission - the biggest thing that you need for that is something like the Graf Spee.
@@eriktrimble8784 I guess someone forgot to tell HMS Glorious that battleships were obsolete.
They obviously weren't until late in the war. And the idea that the British/US/Japanese would have had more success if they scrapped their battleships in the 1930's and only built submarines is kinda silly.
@@Sphere723 Battleships were obsolete by 1930. Not in 1940. Obsolete does not mean completely ineffective, it does mean that, for the investment in them, they were RADICALLY less effective than the same amount of resources put into something non-obsolete. Glorious could easily have been sunk by heavy cruisers, or heck, even light cruisers. And how much of an investment return does Bismark, Prince of Whales, Repulse, Barnham, plus Hei, Kirshima, Yamato, Musashi, Kongo, give in 1940? Everything they did could have been better, and more cheaply done by something else.
The US/RN/IJN/etc. would have had SIGNIFICANTLY more success if they'd stopped putting ANY resources into BBs in the mid-20s (when it was pretty obviously demonstrated that they were obsolete) and instead build subs and small surface ships (light/medium cruisers, DDs, and DEs), not to mention CVs. 90% of surface actions in WW2 were with ships of no more than CA status. That's because you didn't NEED anything more than a CA to do the job. BBs and BCs were simply overkill, too vulnerable, and too expensive to use for any real purpose. Heck, even DDs were better at shore bombardment. You could have built over 3 Baltimores for 1 Iowa; the former had 80% of the AA capability, and exactly the same level of anti-ship/shore bombardment utility of the latter. And they could be in 3 places. THAT'S why BBs were obsolete.
If anyone had been paying attention (and there were mid-level naval folks screaming about this since the late 1920s), it was clearly demonstrated that BBs and BCs were seriously vulnerable to air and submarine attacks, and had little ability to upgrade to defend themselves. The writing on the wall was in the 1920s. That it was ignored by the upper brass of pretty much all navies is not really excusable. There were glaring warnings about BB obsolesence. They were just ignored.
@@eriktrimble8784 I think the word you are looking for is obsolescent.
Thanks for the video
i just found your channel. its great. thanks.
IMHO, the Battle of the Atlantic was the real turning point of the war. It was the one battle that could have won Germany the war, is the one battle they put the least amount of resources towards. I guess we should all be grateful for that. I know my Dad was, he made dozens of convoy crossings as a member of the US Navy Armed Guard.
they built 1,000 submarines, almost all were destroyed. They put ridiculous amounts of focus on the uboat campaign what are you talking about, they simply could not keep up with allied production of convoys and at the end uboats were being sunk faster than they could be built. The Germans threw everything they could at the Atlantic, it wasn't enough. Stop with this nazi fetishising bullshit that Germany could have won battles simply by deciding to
@@ledavalon7118
Like the video says, The Germans started the war with less than 30 ocean going boats. They didn't put any production effort into the U-boat arm when it mattered most, before the war. The window of opportunity for the Germans to win the Battle of the Atlantic was early on, when they devoted the least resources to it.
Your dad was one of the unsung heroes of the war ...... and my dad too
@@ledavalon7118
You have a reading comprehension problem.
@@ledavalon7118
I have no, zip, zero interest in debating intellectually dishonest people like yourself who attribute strawman scatological theories to shoot down.
Great work!
Hitler making an unreasonable request that blatantly ignores the logistical capabilities of his armed forces? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.
ua-cam.com/video/6FoiU_jkL0Q/v-deo.html
@@jameshenderson4876 Not exactly. The somewhat unlikely wishlist was Raeder's. After all, given enough time it would have been theoretically feasible for them to build a large surface fleet. It still likely would not have been a match for the British fleet, it would still have been a colossal waste of resources, in both oil and steel, but they could have theoretically had it.
The completely unreasonable part was Hitler wanting it in half the time. So yes, Hitler still gets first place for "Biggest Contribution to this Dumpster Fire." Because don't forget, if anything Hitler always had to approve the dumpster fire before it was lit. And then after it was lit, he had a tendency to throw gasoline on it.
@@hfar_in_the_sky Raeder wanted in 10 years, Hitler in 7. Both ridiculous.
@@jameshenderson4876 True. Very true.
@@jameshenderson4876 Neither would have done much to the RN either.
Man, i was expecting Conway's All the World's Fighting ships in the source.
I remember you once said somethig about how ridiculously expensive the book was in Drach's server lmao.
Raeder: This Plan Z can't possibly fail!
Royal Navy: Mmmmmmm about that
Great video
Really like your focus on naval warfare, it’s a good idea both from a business and content standpoint. Keep it up!
Thank you for the "p in p" graphics.
They really help geeks w/technical questions like me.
😎✌🏼
Is it possible though that if germany focused on u-boats from the beginning, the royal navy would have reacted accordingly?
Perhaps somewhat, but remember the RN also had to plan against the US, Japan and Italy. All of these nations had capital ships, so the RN would have likely still been focusing on it
A plan is nice, not proof
Hey Historigraph, was hoping that you would take a look into the campaign in Papua New Guinea during WWII, I can’t find much on it and you seem to do things that not a lot of people talk about, really would love to see the Campaign from the start ( I have no Idea about ) to the conclusion. I only know about the kokada Trail. I’d find it awesome if you covered this overlooked battle in Australian History.
Good clip :)
Of the German surface ships, only hilfskreuzer cruisers were efective. And only in the beginning, 1940-41.
Later they were destoyed by help of ultra deciphering.
Good video.
The merchant ships the Kriegsmarine converted to auxiliary cruisers for raiding were on the other hand pretty effective at sinking brirish merchant ships due to their range at lack of British protection in the pacific and indian ocean,
So much more exciting watching videos like these than sitting in history class reading from a textbook
Here in the USA, most kids can't actually read a text book.
One point seems to carry across various arms of the OKW and that was the mistaken belief that other countries were as bad as they were at building new / replacing old. In the BoB Germany consistently underestimated how many fighters were left as Britain replaced those that were lost / damaged faster than Germany thought we did.
Lov ur vids m8 k
The surface fleet did take alot of focus off the U-boat threat, all of the rn focus was on the small number of surface vessels, and forced them to keep heavy ships with the convoys, had they belt more uboats instead of selling them, they could have done more damage but... the outcome is what the world needed
They say admirals like big ships and submarines are dirty little boats. It was the same with the US in the Pacific, American submarines were designed to work in that ocean and reckoned to be the most successful in the war. Some maintain left to themselves they could have starved Japan out and cut off the Japanese occupied islands, but as I said at the beginning - admirals like big ships.
The video might as well have been titled: "Germany: How not to conduct grand strategy during World war II".
Oh, and great video!
Hoi4 players, always use Uboats when playing as Germany
Especially with the slight OPness of subs right now... (A torpedo reveal chance variable, not sure which one, is 4% when it should be 40%. And subs can fire while retreating.)
@@randomguy-tg7ok 1940 sub hulls with snorkels are undetectable.
Nah I like to build Super-Battleships for the Sea and Super Heavy Panzers for the land.
@Hot Dog Lost Fog Dedicated Naval Recon planes would be a nice addition.
Like the PBY Catalina
Germany: I’ve exhausted every evil plan in my filing cabinet, from A-Y
Hitler: A-Y?
Germany: Yeah A-Y you know the alphabet
Hitler: What about Z
Germany: Z?!?!
Hitler: Zzzzzzz! The letter after Yyyyyyu
Germany: W, X, Y, Z PLAN Z HERE IT IS, JUST LIKE YOU SAID
Hitler: Oh brother
"there was one organization in the world less prepared to fight the Battle of the Atlantic: the Royal Navy"
USN CNO Adm. Ernest King: Hold my beer...
This would be the same Ernest King who refused to consider a convoy system off the US East Coast because convoys were a British idea, and Ernie was Anglophobic because apparently he had not been treated politely enough when, as a junior officer, he served with a US Battle Squadron attached to the Grand Fleet in WW1, would it?
How many US merchant seamen were lost just because Ernie didn't like Limeys?
Fortunately, the RN & RCN provided enough escorts to permit the establishment of a convoy system until US new construction arrived, but, seriously, for an opinion on the RN in WW2, Ernie is not the authority to pick.
One of his daughters said of him "he is the most even-tempered person in the United States Navy. He is always in a rage." He even instituted the court-martial of Captain McVay of USS Indianapolis in 1945 because McVay's father had reprimanded him early in his career. To be fair to him, though, apparently he detested the US army almost as much as he detested the British!
Will you do any more videos on the English "civil war", there seems to be a gap in the youtube history community on this subject.
Germany- w, x, y, PLAN Z HERE IT IS.
The Z-plan was a peacetime memorandum for an ocean fleet that could rival the other world powers.
Always remember: Germany did not plan for a world war, they planned for a world power.
Germany:
Japan: Creates Super Submarines that can deploy midget submarines to act as scouts
and can launch planes
@@RenegadeSamurai Oddly enough that would be a good design now with bigger yields and more accurate weapons. Super stealthy ocean planes. Outside of the better counters. Although smaller planes might be able to be made more stealthy. And we could design subs not to need the wings folded if needed for better stealth too. could be interesting in a modern version.
@@randomuser2461 Why do you need a plane from a sub when a sub can launch cruise missiles already?
more land battles please
Love your videos, thanks for all your hard work!! One small detail, howcome you call Scharnhorst a Battlecruiser, its more of a Battleship in my view altough a small one. But still with battleship level armour nevertheless.
11-inch guns too small for a battleship
The Scharnhorsts were originally designed for 15 inch guns and during the war Gneisenau was actually planned to be upgraded. Yet due to loss of technical skill they instead used the same guns from the Deutschlands. So the twins are more battleships that were undergunned, their armor and speed for the time is on par with the other fast battleships.
@@mjbaricua7403 Agree 100%
At least they actually stopped working on this farce before the H-39s were launched.
Plan Z: *exists
Raeder: *Cowabunga it is*
I feel that the contribution of Canada to the escort fleets isn't fully underscored in this video.
Given that by the end of the war, Canada had a standing fleet of over 400 ships that were mostly focused on fleet escort.
Will you ever do a video on the 1942 Channel Dash?
Might want to check out Drachinifel channel. He done it already through and through. Also his video on Plan Z is both far more expanded and accurate.
2:30 ... because rushing a schedule _always_ works really well.
Its hard to justify lots of ships during peace time, but they can't magically appear in time of war. The RN currently has 74 ships.
Between the wars, the Admiralty mothballed a large number of older destroyers of the V & W class. These were to play critical roles at Dunkirk, in anti-invasion flotillas, and as convoy escorts.
Japan be like: Yo dawg, heard you like aircraft carriers and your submarines are really few
So I put an aircraft carrier in a submarine
Raeder: Longwinded explanation of a complicated, ambitious plan.
Hitler: "ADOOOLF HITLEEEEEEER!"
Donitz: "Oh my god! He just declared war!"
What animation software do you use?
Nobody
Plankton: *PLAN Z CAN'T POSSIBLY FAIL!*
When I first licked on the video, I expected something about zombies. But...I... learned something here
Plan Z was a pipe dream. Germany didn't have the shipyards or the slips to have that number of capital ships under construction. The specs for some of the proposed classes were not realistic.
Too the planners did not realize it wasn't necessary to have one cruiser class specialize in commerce raiding, another for fleet scouting. Light cruisers are general purpose, one-size-fits-all ships.
Plan Z played to the RN strengths, not the KM. Donitz was right, but ignored. He had to scrape to get the few boats for Operation Drumbeat in early 1942, which closed down the Gulf of St Lawrence, and halted oil tanker traffic between the Carribean and US east coast, sinking one quarter of the tanker fleet. It cost the Allies 2 million tons of shipping sunk off the US between January to August.
If Donitz had a few dozen more Type IX boats he may have been able to shut down convoy traffic completely.
Hope it doesn’t get demonetised mate
Haha already has been
Historigraph I’m so sorry that UA-cam is a jerk to you. You make very high quality videos that are very original. Hopefully UA-cam can get their act together.
@@historigraph The adpocalypse has gotten ridiculous.
Such bollocks
Niceeee
Focusing construction on capital ships makes sense if you think of it. Capital ships take years to build and what you have at the start of a war is essentially all you're going to have for the first 3 years. Smaller ships can be churned our much faster and you will start seeing new ones soon after your shipbuilding industries go to war production.
Bruh if you are germany in mid 30's and 40's there is not enough resource for building capital ships. Even if you do that your fleet will be no match for royal navy. But if you focus on u-boats you can blockade the isles pretty easily even if your casualties are high. Cause submarines are easy to massproduce. If I were Hitler I would start construction of U boats from the start of 1934 till the 1943. I wouldn't attack Poland in 1939 cuz its stupid.
@@Utkankaya If Germany started building large numbers of submarines - Great Britain and other countries would have invested a lot more money into antisubmarine warfare. Personally I think that Germany should have focused on economic development rather than military domination. In 15 years they could have dominated Europe economically and achieved a lot of their goals without firing a shot.
Light cruisers make for good commerce raiders. Most of the RN light and heavy cruiser classes were built for patrolling trade routes to counter commerce raiders.
The KM had a "fleet in being" in 1939 that was enough of a threat to tie down the RN to keep most of their capital ships in home waters.
Unleash a light cruiser squadron of half a dozen ships into the convoy routes in 1941 instead of one lone battleship would have caused untold havoc with the convoys.
The European Axis was not able to provide enough oil for the Italian navy.
www.regiamarina.net/detail_text.asp?nid=125&lid=1
If Germany had built the Plan Z fleet, it would have been unable to fuel them.
Excellent video. But I always find it weird how warthunder and other games like always have 20 million or so active player base.
Lessons from ww1 on german side. Ground, tanks decide battles. Conclusion, build tanks organize them and support them with air, infantry and artielly. Works great.10/10 Air, air force. Also huge impact on recon and and ground support, logistical strike, moral chaos and fast air inf units. Great potential, used 9/10. Naval air force is highly missing. Naval in ww1. Giant fleet, built with huge costs and loads of resources. Still vastly outnumbered by RN, french and later US fleet. Only U-boots posed a real threat and caused huge losses to allies. Still in great contrast with the first two arms, experienced gained but still the old mistakes were made. Why? How could that have been more clear a fail of a strategy? Even if plan Z completed the germans would not have enough fuel to run them ships. Even if built they woul not be able to leave ports cuz of overwhelming allied numbers, which already happened in ww1. They did not even have enough fuel to run Tirpitz alone!! Only U-boots promised any chance of success, still were not enough built.
i fucking love your videos
What if they built multiple fast carriers instead of the Bismarcks and then escorted them with the Scharnhorsts + Admiral Hippers to raid the atlantic with a carrier battlegroup. Throw the Deutschland class panzerschiffes out there too as raiders to try and pull British capital ships all over the place.
The carriers could fan out scout aircraft over a large area to find convoys to attack. Convoys not escorted by an equivalent carrier battlegroup would not stand a chance and the escorts would be sunk along with the convoy, even potentially battleships.
The RN could react by creating fast carrier battlegroups with the Courageous class, Ark Royal and Illustrious class carriers, along with the Hood, Renown, and Repulse and the KGV Battleships to hunt down the German ships.
I am far from an expert on any of this stuff, but I feel like this might have tied up a lot more British capital ships in the atlantic and created potentially the opportunity to defeat the Royal Navy piecemeal instead of trying to face the entire RN in a single decisive battle with an imaginary Plan Z fleet, or trying to use lone battleships as raiders. Also sounds really cool to me.
It takes more to run a carrier task force or even a single carrier than just building the ship. Germany had no experience with carriers, their pilots had never trained for carrier operations, and by the time they would have had just one operational carrier air group, it probably would have been sent off to defend against US/UK strategic bombers.
I would LOVE to know what would've happened if Doernitz had the ear of German command earlier on in the war. And historical speculation isn't really something I really even like!
Sounds like the "small boy" mentality, prevalent in many men; "Look at my big battleship. Bigger/ longer, faster than yours".
But you cannot say that about a submerged U- boat, which is more deadly.
Also that one boy: I got big tank! big rail cannon! big battleship! big rocket! so what you got noob!?
The other bois: *UNITS SPAMMING!*
That one boy: That's cheating!!!!!
Interesting to note that the country nowadays with the largest absolute number of submarines is neither Russia nor the PRC nor the USA but the DPRK. They're not necessarily optimized for commerce raiding in the modern environment but just worth mentioning a 80 subs has a lot of potential even if some are misget subs by modern standards.
Just stack up a few super heavys with a few carriers... dat force
Interesting
Please do more of the uprising videos like you did for Hungary
Next video on siege of Budapest