Peter-Erich Cremer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter-Erich "Ali" Cremer (born March 25, 1911 in Metz , † July 5, 1992 in Hamburg ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander in World War II .

Life

Peter-Erich Cremer was born on March 25, 1911 in Metz in Alsace-Lorraine , which belonged to the German Empire until 1918 .

Interwar period

After graduating from high school, Cremer first studied law in Grenoble for a few semesters . In August 1932 he applied as an officer candidate in the Reichsmarine . With the light cruiser Cologne he took part in a world tour as a midshipman from December 1932 to December 1933. On January 1, 1934, Cremer was appointed ensign at sea . In the course of his on-board training on the battleship Deutschland , he was promoted to Oberfähnrich zur See on September 1, 1935, and on January 1, 1936, after his time on the Deutschland, to Lieutenant at sea .

Second World War

Then Cremer came to the naval artillery, before he was transferred to the destroyer Theodor Riedel as a first lieutenant at sea (since October 1, 1937) as an officer on watch and an artillery officer . On February 1, 1940, he became a lieutenant captain and received the Iron Cross, 2nd class ten days later . On April 9, 1940, Cremer took part in the occupation of Trondheim on board the Theodor Riedel as part of the Weser Exercise company .

In August 1940, Cremer reported to the submarine weapon. After appropriate training on the school boat U 152 , which he commanded from January 29 to July 21, 1941, he put the U 333 in command on August 25, 1941 . U 333 was a submarine class VII C boat and was much larger than the type II B boat U 152. It had the symbol of the “three little fish” on the tower. On its first patrol, U 333 was involved in the attacks on the Allied convoys ON 53 and ON 54 . Cremer sank a Greek steamer and a Norwegian merchant ship. He also mistakenly torpedoed a German ship, the Spreewald .

Spreewald incident

The Spreewald was a blockade breaker and with a cargo of rubber, tin, tungsten and quinine on the way to Bordeaux . For this purpose, the ship used several camouflages, including the Norwegian freighter Elg and the British freighter Brittany. Cremer sank the Spreewald, which he took to be a British ship, with two electric torpedoes and reported: "[...] Passenger freighter 8000 GRT sunk [...] probably loaded with ammunition because a large explosion after the second hit." The Spreewald only had 5083 GRT. 25 men of the 60-strong German crew survived the sinking. Of 86 British prisoners of war that the Spreewald had taken over from the privateer Kormoran , 60 survived. Cremer was arrested on arrival in Lorient and brought to court martial . After discussing all matters and with the intervention of Günter Hessler , Dönitz's son-in-law and admiralty staff officer, Cremer was acquitted. Since the Spreewald was not where it was supposed to be, Cremer was not to blame, so the reasoning. The reasons that led to the loss of the Spreewald were kept secret.

More patrols

On its second voyage, U 333 was initially overrun by a tanker at periscope depth and severely damaged. Nevertheless, Cremer was able to continue the voyage and sink three ships and damage a fourth. The latter ship, the American tanker Java Arrow, was initially abandoned by the crew after a torpedo hit, but was later made seaworthy again. After returning from his second company as a commander, Cremer received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 5, 1942 . At this time Cremer had sunk seven enemy ships with 21,790 GRT. In his reports he had clearly overestimated his successes and reported a total sunk tonnage of 56,800 GRT. On the fourth venture, U 333 got into a battle with the British corvette HMS Crocus on October 6, 1942 off Freetown ( Sierra Leone ) . The corvette and the submarine collided after prolonged artillery fire and were both damaged. Crew members were also killed or injured on both sides. Cremer was also badly wounded and had to give up the command of his boat. It was not until May 18, 1943, after a long time in the hospital and working as 2nd admiral staff officer with the commander of the submarines , that he was able to take over U 333 again. He drove four more missions until July 1944 before handing the boat over to Oberleutnant zur See Fiedler. In November 1944, Cremer, promoted to Korvettenkapitän on July 11, 1944 , put the new submarine U 2519 of class XXI into service. However, due to various defects, it was no longer used at the front. On May 3, 1945, it was sunk by its crew in Kiel .

rating

Cremer is one of the few submarine commanders who survived World War II. His luck and skill in the most difficult situations soon led his men to the saying: “Ali Cremer is as good as a life insurance.” Today's view of Cremer's abilities is divided. Bernard Ireland, British military writer, characterizes Cremer, although a survivor, as far from a competent submarine commander. Ireland interprets Cremer's various collisions as largely self-inflicted and also questions his tactical decisions: Unnecessarily long diving times, for example, would have led to the loss of contact with wanted convoys, and Cremer's repeated misjudgments during attacks would regularly have unnecessarily endangered his boat. The British military historian Clay Blair characterizes Cremer as a courageous, resourceful and aggressive commander, who was awarded the Knight's Cross mainly because of these characteristics, less because of the sunk tonnage - which was also significantly lower than Cremer had indicated to the submarine guide.

Land Command

In April 1945, when the submarine war was considered a failure, Cremer briefly led a tank destruction force in the Navy . According to the Wehrmacht report of April 25, 1945, he destroyed “24 tanks within a few days”. At the end of the war, Cremer was in command of a 400-strong guard battalion made up of former submarine crews in the Mürwik special area , which protected Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz .

After the war

After the end of the war, Cremer was taken prisoner by the British, but was released after just one month. After being a prisoner of war, he worked as a managing director at a large company in Hamburg until his retirement. In 1985, Cremer spoke in the newspaper Die Welt on the occasion of the broadcast of the television version of Wolfgang Petersen's film Das Boot, based on the novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim . He rated the three-part series as realistic and suitable to depict the submarine war "as it really was". Together with Hans-Günther Lange , the former commander of U 711 , who made similar statements, he contradicted the views of Karl-Friedrich Merten and other protagonists of the Buchheim controversy , which had reignited on the occasion of the filming of the controversial novel. In 1986 he published a book about his war experiences together with the writer Fritz Brustat-Naval, who specializes in marine fabrics . With this book the full truth about the circumstances of the sinking of the Spreewald became public for the first time . Ali Cremer: U 333 was published by Ullstein Verlag and a second edition was published as a paperback in the same year. A third edition appeared in 1993. The book was also published in Danish and several times, sometimes under different titles, in English.

Awards

literature

"Ali Cremer: U 333" in other languages

  • U333 The Story of a U-boat Ace. The Bodley Head Ltd, London 1984, ISBN 0-370-30545-0 .
  • U-Boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1984, ISBN 0-87021-969-3 .
  • U-Boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic. Oxford 1984.
  • U 333, Peter Cremer. Copenhagen 1988.

author

  • Introduction by Peter Erich Cremer in Terence Robertson: Hunt for the "Wolves": The dramat. Fight d. British anti-submarine defense in the Atlantic. Stalling, Oldenburg 1960, DNB 454063369 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 46.
  2. ^ Georg Högel: Emblems, coats of arms, Malings German submarines 1939-1945. 5th edition. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7822-1002-7 , p. 92.
  3. ↑ Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945 (online) Entry 1. – 30. January.
  4. ↑ Michael Gannon: Operation Paukenschlag The German submarine war against the USA. Bechtermünz Verlag under license from Ullstein Verlag, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-86047-905-9 , pp. 301-302.
  5. ↑ a b c d Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 3: German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 , pp. 172–173.
  6. ^ A b Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 1: The Hunters, 1939–1942. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , pp. 554-556.
  7. ^ A b Bernard Ireland: Battle of the Atlantic. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2003, ISBN 1-59114-032-3 , pp. 103-104.
  8. ^ A b Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 1: The Hunters, 1939–1942. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , pp. 636-638.
  9. ↑ Richard Snow: A Measureless Peril: America in the Fight for the Atlantic, the Longest Battle of World War II. Scribner, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4165-9111-5 , p. 42 ( preview in Google book search)
  10. ^ Peter Padfield: Doenitz. The devil's admiral. Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt et al. 1984, ISBN 3-550-07956-7 , p. 474.
  11. ↑ Michael L. Hadley: The myth of the German submarine weapon. ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0771-4 , p. 138.
  12. ↑ Jürgen Schlemm: The submarine war 1939-1945 in the literature an annotated bibliography. Elbe-Spree-Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-931129-24-1 , p. 36.
personal data
SURNAME Cremer, Peter-Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cremer, Ali (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German submarine commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1992
Place of death Hamburg