Reinhold Gadow

Reinhold Gadow (born April 25, 1882 in Berlin , † after 1946 probably Sachsenhausen ) was a German naval officer with the highest rank of rear admiral and naval writer.

Live and act

Reinhold Gadow was born in 1882 to Curt and Nadia Gadow. His older brother was Hans Gadow, born in 1875. After attending elementary school, he joined the Imperial Navy in 1900 and became an ensign that same year. He completed his basic maritime training on the training ship SMS Stosch until 1901. Further nautical and special courses on the SMS Nautilus followed until 1902. After completing basic training, he was assigned to the East Asia Squadron in 1902. From 1902 to 1904 he performed on-board services on the SMS Hanse and was promoted to lieutenant at sea during this time. This was followed by a second command to the East Asia squadron. After his return he was on several ships as a watch and artillery officer in the following years, until 1911 he was in command of the SMS Berlin for two years. He achieved the rank of lieutenant captain. After accompanying cargo ships of the “Woermann series” to Tenerife at the end of 1911, he switched to mine testing and mine ships. First he was the first officer on the SMS Nautilus and then until 1914 as a consultant in the field of sea mine testing.

In the first World War

At the beginning of the First World War, Reinhold Gadow was deployed as chief officer on the "Queen Luise", which was converted into a mine ship. Loaded with 200 sea mines, the ship ran from Emden in the direction of England on August 4, 1914, with the order to mine the Thames entrance. While the mines were being laid, they were discovered by an English fishing cutter and the English squadron of 16 destroyers that had been summoned took the ship under fire. Shot on fire and the British superior force ordered Corvette Captain Biermann to open the sea valves. The "Queen Luise" sank on August 5th at 12.12 pm. 46 men of the German crew were rescued by the British ship “Amphion”. But while continuing the journey, the English ship itself got caught in the mine belt and sank after 2 serious explosions. 130 men of the British occupation and 18 men of the rescued Germans were killed. Gadow was one of the survivors, but remained in British captivity from 1914 to 1918. After his transfer to the Netherlands in 1918, he was released. When he returned to Germany, he was used to clear mines, explosives and sea barricades until 1919. Taken into the navy of the Weimar Republic in 1920, it was used again for the first time in the field of mine testing.

Activity in the Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933)

On September 1, 1920, after the events of the Kapp Putsch had torn the Navy as a whole and its leadership into a violent crisis of meaning, Reinhold Gadow was assigned to the intelligence office of the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. This department was the collecting basin of the two intelligence offices in the Reichsmarineamt and the imperial admiralty staff, which after the dissolution of both naval authorities in 1918/1919 were to form the core of the newly established naval intelligence service . The intelligence office was directly subordinate to the Adjutant of the Reich Defense Minister Ronn, who was responsible for the Navy. In addition, there was the communications center for technical communications, under the leadership of Richard Aschenborn (1848–1935). The task of the news office (N) was to obtain the political and military information important for the navy, to evaluate it and to pass it on to the responsible areas of naval command, the foreign armies department and other selected ministerial areas, parliament and the German press. Due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, the agency was not officially declared as an "intelligence service". In 1921 Reinhold Gadow became head of the intelligence office (N) in the Reichswehr Ministry with the rank of corvette captain. From 1922 on, Lieutenant Captain Ernst Franz and Lieutenant Norbert von Baumbach also belonged to the intelligence center. In the following year Gadow was promoted to frigate captain. His first two publications as a naval writer also fell during this time, the book “The German Navy in Past and Present” published in 1924 by the Berlin Scherl Verlag and the work “Sea Armament and Fleet Policy of the Powers from the Pre-War Period to the Present". On September 26th, Reinhold Gadow was commanded as chief officer of the "Braunschweig". His successor in office was Corvette Captain Walter Matthiae (1890-1960).

On behalf of the naval command, Gadow was commanded in 1926 as the German group leader of the naval group for the organization of the League of Nations. At the same time he was promoted to sea captain. He held this area of ​​responsibility at the League of Nations until 1927. During this time he published the book “For the 10th anniversary of the Skagerra battle”. After his return to Berlin, he was head of the naval budget department at the highest naval management from 1927 to 1929. From 1929 he was at the disposal of the naval command and was then sent into temporary retirement on June 30, 1930 with the character of a corvette captain.

Activity in the time of National Socialism

With Reinhold Gadow, the following years were filled with numerous publications on the history of the German Navy, its structure and selected military policy issues of the German Navy and its current position. This included the 1934 publication “A Disregarded War Doctrine” and the 1938 book “Military Tensions in the Mediterranean”.

Reinhold Gadow was reactivated on March 22, 1939 for another deployment in the Navy. Further books appeared from his pen on the Marine Complex, including the work “The Sea Power in the Next War” in 1939 together with Greenfield H. Russel. From September 1940 he was then head of the library in the High Command of the Navy (OKM). He held this office until the beginning of 1945 and used it intensively to publish further publications, including the “Yearbook of the German Navy”, which appeared from 1940, and the “Illustrated German Fleet Calendar”, which was published annually from 1943. On January 31, 1945, he was released into retirement with the character of Rear Admiral.

Reinhold Gadow experienced the end of the Second World War in Germany. In the turmoil of those days he was first taken prisoner by the English, then he was interned in special camp No. 7 in Sachsenhausen, which was controlled by the Soviet troops. In the fall of 1946 he was still in this prison camp, but from here on his trail is lost. According to the information provided by the Plön registry office on April 25, 1949, he died in the camp without an exact date or cause of death being known.

Fonts

• "The German Navy in the Past and Present" Scherl Verlag Berlin, 1924
• “Naval armament and naval policy of the powers that be from the prewar period to the present” Zentral Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1924
• “To the 10th anniversary of the Skagerrakschlacht”, Weber Verlag Leipzig, 1926
• "Military Tasks of the Reichsmarine", publisher of the Süddeutsche Monatshefte, Munich, 1927
• "Italy and France in the Mediterranean", Freie Deutschland Verlagsanstalt, 1930
• "History of the German Navy", Diesterweg Verlag Frankfurt / Main, 1934
• "A disregarded war teaching", Diesterweg Verlag Frankfurt / May 1934
• "Yellow or white in the Pacific", Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg, 1935
• "The current structure of the German Navy", German Society for Defense Policy and Science, Hamburg, 1936
• "Military policy tensions in the Mediterranean", German Society for Defense Policy and Defense Sciences, Hamburg, 1938
• "Military guiding principles in warship construction", Berlin 1938
• together with Theodor Arps, Hellmuth Heye and Oskar von Niedermayer "The sea in folklore representation: Small world geography of the world ocean", 1938
• "The German Navy", 1939
• together with Greenfield H. Russel “The Sea Power in the Next War”, Scientia Verlag, Zurich, 1939
• "Pirate State of England", Junker & Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin, 1940
• "German naval war train to the north", Enßlin & Laiblin Verlag, Reutlingen, 1940
• “The Navy in the Polish Campaign”, 1941
• "German Sea and Trade War", 1941
• "Theater of War in the Baltic Sea - The Navy in the Fight Against the Soviets", 1941, Verlag "Die Wehrmacht, Berlin"
• together with Arthur Boehm-Tettelbach “Germany's geographical military situation in its development 1914–1941”, 1941
• "The War of Attrition against England on All Seas", 1941
• as editor: “Yearbook of the German Navy”, Breitkopf und Härtel Verlag, Berlin 1939, was published annually for the years 1940 to 1945
• as publisher of “Illustrierter deutscher Flottenkalender”, Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, annually from 1943 to 1945
• "Fleet bases", Institute for Political and Foreign Studies, Heidelberg 1943/1944

Web links

• Literature by and about Reinhold Gadow in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Personal data and documents on Reinhold Gadow, files of the Reich Chancellery; in: www.Bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/00a/adr/adrag/kap1_7/para2_2.html.
2. ^ Carl Herbert, War voyages of German merchant ships, Hamburg 1934.
3. ↑ Hildebrand, Röhr, Steinmetz, The German Warships, Biographies, Köhler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herfort 1979-1993.
4. ↑ Sebastian Rojek, Sunken Hopes: The German Navy in Dealing with Expectations and Disappointments 1971-1930, De Gruyter Verlag Oldenburg 2017, pp 116 ff.
5. ↑ Ranking list of the Imperial Navy born in 1921 and 1923, Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, Kiel University Bookstore, 1921 and 1923.
6. ^ Walter Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab and the highest naval authorities in Germany 1848-1945, Verlag für Wehrwesen Bernhard & Graefe, 1958, Frankfurt / Main, p. 183 ff.
7. ^ Bibliography on publications by Reinhold Gadow, catalogs and archive of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich.
8. ↑ Ranking list of the Imperial Navy born in 1924, Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, Kiel University Bookstore, 1924.
9. ↑ Personal data and documents on Reinhold Gadow, files of the Reich Chancellery; in: www.Bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/00a/adr/adrag/kap1_7/para2_2.html.
10. ^ Publications and biographical information on Reinhold Gadow, library and archive holdings, Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr.
11. ↑ Personal data and documents on Reinhold Gadow, files of the Reich Chancellery; in: www.Bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/00a/adr/adrag/kap1_7/para2_2.html.
12. ↑ Biographical information about Reinhold Gadow, Archives of the German Wehrmacht and the Navy; in: www.oocities.org.