Adalbert Snow

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U 201 (background), in front U 123

Otto Adalbert Schnee (born December 31, 1913 in Berlin , † November 4, 1982 in Hamburg ), known as "Addi", was a German naval officer , most recently a corvette captain and submarine commander in World War II .

Reichsmarine and transfer to the Kriegsmarine

Schnee joined the Reichsmarine on April 8, 1934 ( Crew 1934 ), where he was assigned to the 2nd Company of the 2nd Ship Mastery Department of the Baltic Sea in Stralsund . Here he completed his first basic infantry training. He then took up his practical on-board training on June 15, 1934, on board the Gorch Fock , which he ended on September 26, 1934 with his appointment as a midshipman . One day later, on September 27, 1934, Schnee continued his on-board training on the cadet training ship Leichter Kreuzer Emden , where he was appointed senior seaman on October 1, 1934 and senior staff officer on January 1, 1935 . From November 10, 1934 to June 14, 1935, he made the Emden's fifth journey , a trip abroad to Southeast Asia . The then commandant of the Emden had been frigate captain Karl Dönitz since the end of September 1934 , and he later became his adjutant . After he had completed two on-board commands, Schnee was delegated to the Mürwik Naval School for an ensign training course on June 27, 1935 . For this he was appointed ensign at sea on July 1, 1935 .

Snow completed his first navigation course from November 4, 1935 to November 9, 1935 on the minesweeper Frauenlob and another from February 10, 1936 to March 31, 1936 on board the Hecht tender . From the end of March 1936 to the end of July 1936, Schnee completed several specialist courses: For example, the ensign torpedo course, the ensign anti-aircraft machine weapon course, an ensign blocking course, the ensign communications course and his second and final ensign infantry training. The conclusion was an ensign artillery course. On October 11, 1936, he returned on board the light cruiser Leipzig , where he completed his on-board training. Afterwards, Schnee was transferred to the command of a division lieutenant on this ship on April 1, 1937 , with simultaneous appointment as a lieutenant at sea . In this role, Schnee was then involved in safety trips in Spanish territorial waters as part of the Spanish civil war .

Submarine gun and World War II

Patrols

U 23

  1. August 25, 1939 to September 4, 1939 as 1st officer on watch
  2. 9 September 1939 to 21 September 1939 as first officer on watch
  3. October 1, 1939 to October 16, 1939 as first officer on watch
  4. November 1, 1939 to November 9, 1939 as first officer on watch
  5. December 5, 1939 to December 15, 1939 as First Watch Officer

U 6

  1. April 4, 1940 to April 19, 1940

U 60

  1. July 30, 1940 to August 18, 1940 (1 ship with 1,787 GRT sunk)
  2. August 21, 1940 to September 6, 1940 (1 ship with 1,401 GRT sunk)
  3. September 16, 1940 to October 8, 1940

U 201

  1. April 22, 1941 to May 17, 1941 (3 ships with 19,961 GRT sunk)
  2. June 8, 1941 to July 12, 1941
  3. August 14, 1941 to August 25, 1941 (4 ships of 7,825 GRT sunk)
  4. September 14, 1941 to September 30, 1941 (6 ships with 14,535 GRT sunk)
  5. October 29, 1941 to December 9, 1941
  6. March 24, 1942 to May 21, 1942 (4 ships with 22,730 GRT sunk)
  7. June 27, 1942 to August 8, 1942 (6 ships with 28,036 GRT sunk)

U 2511

  1. April 29, 1945 to May 5, 1945

After his return to Germany, Schnee left Leipzig and switched to submarine weapons on May 21, 1937, where he attended a submarine course at a submarine school. After this he was assigned on July 3, 1938 as watch officer U 23 , which at that time was under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Otto Kretschmer . In June 1938, in addition to his regular submarine service, he attended an additional course for submarine torpedo officers at the naval school in Mürwik. In the course of the attack on Poland , U 23 ran two patrols into the North Sea, but found no sea targets. By the end of 1939 another three operations followed in the North Sea and off the British east coast - including a mining operation . In the course of this, Kretschmer sank four ships with 14,943 GRT.

Submarine commander

On January 3, 1940, Schnee left U 23 and from January 31, 1940 to July 10, 1940 completed the commanders' course for submarines. During this time he acted as commander on the training ship U 6 . With this was involved from April 4, 1940 to April 19, 1940 in safety trips during the Weser exercise in the North Sea. No ships were sunk on this voyage. After completing his commanders training course, Schnee handed over command of U 6 to Lieutenant Captain Georg Peters and on July 19, 1940, he was in command of U 60 , which he commanded until November 5, 1940. With this boat he ran out to three companies in the North Atlantic and also operated in the northern Scottish Pentland Firth . Snow succeeded in sinking two ships of 3,188 GRT. He then gave up command and acted from November 6, 1940 to November 27, 1940 as deputy commander of U 121 .

After a building instruction for the U 201 under construction in December 1940, Schnee became its first commander on January 25, 1941. He held this command until August 24, 1942. At that time it was customary for the crews of the German submarines to come up with a boat-specific symbol that represents their unit, which was worn on hats and boats and attached to the tower . The crew of U 201 chose to depict a snowman . Schnee, meanwhile appointed captain lieutenant on March 1, 1942 , set out on his first patrol with U 201 on April 22, 1942 . On a total of seven patrols, snow in the West and Central Atlantic sank 23 merchant ships with a total tonnage of 93,156 GRT. For this he had already been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 30, 1941 . On July 15, 1942, Schnee received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross as the 13th commander of the submarine weapon.

Admiral Staff Officer

After the command of U 201 was handed over to Kapitänleutnant Günther Rosenberg , snow was temporarily “available” before he became an admiral staff officer with the commander of the submarines Karl Dönitz on October 26, 1942 . Here he acted as a convoy Asto, who was responsible for the planning and organization of escort attacks. Schnee then held this function until February 1944. He then worked as a consultant in the Navy High Command .

Following this, Schnee was delegated to the submarine construction instruction for the new U 2511 of the type XXI on July 24, 1944 , and promoted to the corvette captain on August 1, 1944 . On September 29, 1944 he became the commander of the newly commissioned submarine. The submarine command placed considerable hopes in the combat power of these new boats. On February 28, Dönitz had announced to Hitler that the Navy now had a suitable offensive weapon again. He called the XXI boat a "perfect underwater vehicle" and predicted a "turning point in naval warfare". Admiral Staff Officer Schnee, reactivated as commander, left the company on April 30, 1945 with U 2511 . Deviating information also cite May 3rd as the start of the voyage that took the boat into the North Atlantic, more precisely into the waters west of Great Britain. According to his information, snow approached the British heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk unnoticed up to torpedo range. Since Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz had issued an armistice order shortly before on May 4, 1945, no torpedo was shot down. The boat withdrew as instructed and, according to various statements, returned to Bergen on May 5 to 7, 1945. The credibility of his account has been questioned by some recent literature sources, while other literature sources and crew members confirm it. Snow himself and his team were disarmed in Bergen on May 9, 1945 by the British troops arriving there and interned for a short time in Norway. The submarine was sunk in Operation Deadlight in 1946.

rating

In the high command of the Navy, Schnee was the submarine commander whose reported sinking numbers diverged the most from the actual numbers. He reported the sinking of 30 merchant ships with 204,633 GRT and two warships. Research in the course of the comparison with actual sinkings, however, showed a different picture after the war. The research of the naval historian Bodo Herzog resulted in a number of 24 sunk ships with 122,897 GRT. This would put snow among the German submarine commanders with the most sinkings in 22nd place. The actual sinking data, however, amounted to 21 merchant ships and one auxiliary warship with 92,522 GRT. However, significant differences between the number of sinkings reported during the war and those recorded after the war were common in the reality of submarine warfare. For example, in September 1943, during an attack by the Leuthen submarine group with 21 boats on the ON 202 and ONS 18 convoys, only 3 instead of the reported 15 warships and only 6 instead of the reported 9 merchant ships were sunk.

post war period

As early as the summer of 1945, snow was brought to Germany by ship and began his service in the German Mine Clearance Service on September 1, 1945 , where he took over the leadership of the 4th Company of the 1st German Mine Clearance Replacement Department. In October, Schnee acted as a defense witness in the trial against the commander of U 852 , Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, and his officers, the so-called Eck trial . The court was interested in his testimony because it had been informed that Schnee had instructed Eck before he left. Schnee had given Eck detailed instructions for the journey into Southeast Asian waters and expressly warned him of the danger posed by opposing air forces. After the sinking of a freighter, Eck had ordered that the survivors be fired and life-saving appliances destroyed. Schnees statements and his testimony did not lead to the hoped-for strengthening of the defense position. Eck, his second officer, and a marine doctor who had acted as an on-board doctor were executed. On December 6, 1945, Schnee was released from the demining service.

Processing and club activities

The submarine war of the Second World War was initially not dealt with in the early post-war years, and later only insufficiently. The first literary processing was left with a retelling of the publications of the propaganda company during the war, some of whose members had traveled on submarines and soon returned to writing after the end of the war. Snow has played an active role in this since he was featured on the cover of the weekly magazine Illustrierte Woche - Badische Illustrierte : On the periscope of a submarine with a sinking ship in the crosshairs, he directed a uniform and naive series of texts called “Kampf und Untergang of the German Navy ”, which ran for 22 weeks. In August 1958, as chairman of the U-Bootkameradschaft Hamburg, he criticized the film U 47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien , which was released that year, as " falsifying history for business reasons" and instead called for "historical loyalty and respect for the dignity of the dead." October 30, 1968 Until his death in 1982, Schnee was president of the Association of German Submariners (VDU) . In this function he also participated in the so-called "Buchheim controversy" that arose after the publication of the novel Das Boot in 1972. In a statement for the VDU in the magazine of the Marineoffiziersvereinigung (MOV) in October 1973, Schnee criticized both the work and the author Buchheim , who he accused of being business-minded, in drastic terms. According to Schnees, Buchheim placed exaggerations, twisted incidents and placed the language and actions of the people "in the present day" in order to appeal to the reader. As a result, the text contains “disgusting messes” that are “embarrassing” and are “unreasonable” . Snow in 1980 published in circuit Coast , the association magazine of the VDU, an article about the public strongly criticized celebrations for the funeral of Doenitz, where in addition to veterans, representatives of neo-Nazi organizations took part. He rated the German song "spontaneously sung out of the crowd, including the first verse" as "the most beautiful farewell present for the deceased".

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Michael L. Hadley: The myth of the German submarine weapon , Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3 8132 0771 4 , pages 102-106
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll, Der U-Boot-Krieg, Volume 1 The German U-Boat Commanders , ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg, 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , Page 211
  3. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 431.
  4. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 427.
  5. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 438.
  6. ^ Georg Högel: Embleme coat of arms of Maling's German U-Boats 1939 - 1945 , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 5th edition, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7822-1002-7 , page 73
  7. ↑ a b Bodo Herzog : German U-Boats 1906-1966 , Bernard & Graefe Verlag (under license from Karl Müller Verlag), Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 , pages 255-256
  8. ^ Michael Salewski : The German naval warfare 1935-1945. Volume 2: 1942-1945 , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7637-5138-6 , page 496
  9. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 544.
  10. ↑ Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz - Legend and Reality , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 , pp. 118–119
  11. ↑ German Shipping Archives 23, 2000 . Scientific journal of the German Maritime Museum. 1st edition. Convent Verlag, Bremerhaven, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-86927-023-4 (Reinhard Hoheisel-Huxmann: THE FRONT INSERT OF THE U-BOAT U 2511 - REAL SEAL? Page 347-372).
  12. ↑ Dieter Hartwig : Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz - Legend and Reality , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 , p. 342
  13. ↑ Blair, Clay : U-Boot-Krieg, anthology 2 1942-1945, Die Gejagt , licensed edition for Bechtermünz Verlag in Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-8289-0512-9 , pp. 611-618
  14. ↑ Peter Padfield: Dönitz Des Teufels Admiral , Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3 550 07956 7 , page 410
  15. ↑ Dwight D. Messimer: Heinz-Wilhelm Eck in Theodore P. Savas: Silent Hunter. German submarine commanders in World War II , Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-24621-4 , pages 262-264
  16. ↑ Michael Salewski: On the Reality of War. Analyzes and controversies about Buchheim's “boat”. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-423-01213-7 , pages 158-160.
  17. ↑ Peter Padfield: Doenitz Des Teufels Admiral , Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3 550 07956 7 , page 18
  18. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 675.
personal data
SURNAME Snow, Adalbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Snow, Adalbert Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, submarine commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th November 1982
Place of death Hamburg