Commander of the submarines

In the First World War, the commander of the submarines (BdU) was the supreme command post of the submarines , which emerged from the submarine inspection and the leader of the submarines on June 5, 1917, and whose departments were led by an FdU . The reason for the formation was the formation of larger submarine groups in Flanders and the Mediterranean, each headed by an FdU Flanders ( Korvettenkapitän Karl Bartenbach ) and the Mediterranean Sea ( captain at sea / Commodore Theodor Püllen and captain at sea / Commodore Kurt Graßhoff ).

The only BdU of the Imperial Navy was the sea captain / Commodore Andreas Michelsen .

In the Navy of the German Wehrmacht , BdU referred to both a service position and an office . The name originated on September 19, 1939 from the FdU leader of the U-Boats . Since January 1936, the head of this department has been Captain Karl Dönitz with the title of Leader of the U-Boats .

From September 19, 1939 , Dönitz , who had meanwhile been promoted to Rear Admiral , held this position with the title of Commander of the U-Boats (BdU). Doenitz retained this position when he was promoted to Grand Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy on January 31, 1943 . After the end of the Second World War , the office was not continued.

The office was initially located in Kiel , then from the summer of 1940 briefly in Paris , then from November in Lorient , where a naval shipyard and large submarine bunkers were also built. Until 1942, Karl Dönitz headed the U-Bootwaffe operations from a villa on the headland of Kernével .

Famous pepole:

• Peter-Erich Cremer : Second Admiralty Staff Officer 1942/1943
• Eberhard Godt : First Admiral Staff Officer and Chief of Operations from January 1938 to July 1940
• Robert Gysae : 1940 at the disposal of the BdU
• Heinrich Liebe : Speaker from August 1944 until the end of the war
• Walter Lohmann : flag lieutenant and second admiralty staff officer from June 1916 until the end of the war
• Dietrich Niebuhr : Admiral Staff Officer 1918
• Gustav Poel : Staff position from 1940 to 1941
• Hans Rehberg : War correspondent in World War II
• Hans-Rudolf Rösing : Speaker 1938/1939, later FdU West
• Alfred Saalwächter : Admiral staff officer before the end of the First World War
• Herbert Schultze : Admiralty staff officer from December 1942 to March 1944
• Gerd Suhren : engineer officer February / March 1943

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Andreas Michelsen: The U-Boat War 1914-1918. KF Koehler, Leipzig 1925, p. 43, DNB 575122404 .
2. ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. Karl Müller, Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 , pp. 135-142.
3. ↑ Lars Hellwinkel: Hitler's Gate to the Atlantic. The German naval bases in France 1940–1945. Ch.links, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-672-7 , p. 57.
4. ↑ This villa belonged to a canning company and was therefore called "Sardinenschlösschen"