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WILHELMSHAVEN
THE LIVERPOOL BLITZ
BANNER OF VICTORY OVER THE REICHSTAG
9
770306
154103
4 8
£4.25
Number 148
NUMBER 148
© Copyright
After the Battle
2010
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
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HORUMERSIEL
CONTENTS
WILHELMSHAVEN
UNITED KINGDOM
The Liverpool Blitz
IT HAPPENED HERE
Banner of Victory
over the Reichstag
2
42
48
SENGWARDEN
JEVER
Front Cover:
One of the most famous ships
constructed at Wilhelmshaven was the
battleship
Tirpitz.
She was launched on
Saturday, April 1, 1939 and destroyed by
the RAF using 12,000lb Tallboy bombs on
November 12, 1944. When she was
scrapped in 1948, this 15cm gun, one of her
secondary armaments, was salvaged and
set up at Wilhelmshaven. (Karel Margry)
Centre Pages:
After the war the Royal Navy
drew up several alternative plans to destroy
the Kriegsmarine facilities at Wilhelmshaven.
Plan No. 15 envisaged four large dams to
close off basins and the sinking of
blockships at locks and other places, but it
was rejected because of the expense of dike
building.
Back Cover:
The Soviet War Memorial in
Berlin photographed in March 2010. (Gail
Parker)
Acknowledgements:
For their invaluable
help with the Wilhelmshaven story, the
Editor would like to thank city Director of
Culture Dr Jens Graul for arranging all the
access permits; Markus Titsch for his expert
guidance and free use of his extensive
photo collection, and Herr Krüger of the
Marinearsenal. He also thanks Maurice
Laarman and Hans Houterman.
Photo Credits:
BA — Bundesarchiv; IWM —
Imperial War Museum; NAC — National
Archives of Canada; NIOD — Nederlands
Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Am-
sterdam; USNA — US National Archives.
Wilhelmshaven is situated 24 miles up the Jade river on the wide North Sea inlet of
Jade-Busen. When drawing his designs for the new port in the 1850s, Hafenbaudirektor
(chief of port construction) Wilhelm Göker had followed local dialect and spelt
Wilhelmshaven with a Lower German ‘v’ instead of with the High German ‘f’. However,
Berlin bureaucrats, thinking that this was an error, subsequently changed the ‘v’ to ‘f’.
When Göker discovered this on the day King Wilhelm I officially opened the new port, he
immediately informed General Albert von Roon, the Minister of War, who referred the
matter to the King. Wilhelm I confirmed the ‘v’, saying: ‘Indeed, that’s how I pronounced
it, dear Roon’. Subsequent new ports such as Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven followed the
precedent. We have marked some of the other towns that feature in our story.
2
Wilhelmshaven, the German port city on the North Sea, was
created by Prussia in the 19th century with the express purpose of
becoming the principal base and shipbuilding facility of the new
Prussian/German Navy. Officially opened in 1869 and already
enlarged in the run-up to the First World War, it was again greatly
Wilhelmshaven is a German coastal town
on the North Sea, about midway between
Hamburg and the Dutch border. Situated
some 35 kilometres up the Jade river on the
wide inlet of the Jade-Busen bay, it was cre-
ated in the 19th century for the sole purpose
of serving as a principal dockyard and base
for the German Navy, and served in this
capacity during two world wars.
It was Prussian Prince Adalbert who
selected Wilhelmshaven as a site for a naval
base. He had been appointed leader of the
federal technical commission to identify the
best way of countering naval threats from
Denmark against the north German coasts.
In 1848 he wrote a
Denkschrift über die Bil-
dung einer deutschen Flotte
(Memorandum
on the Formation of a German Fleet) in
which he identified a three-stage approach to
building a navy; he proposed firstly a coastal
defence force which would prevent blockade
and invasion; this would later develop an
offensive capability to protect trade; and
finally there would be a navy that could
apply force at a distance in support of foreign
policy. Following on from this, in 1849 he
recommended the construction of two bases
on the Baltic and North Sea coasts linked by
a canal. The former would become Kiel (the
site for it was acquired from Austria in 1865),
the latter would become Wilhelmshaven.
In 1853 Prussia secretly bought the village
of Heppens on the mouth of the Jade river
and adjoining lands from the Grand Duchy
of Oldenburg. Construction started in 1854
of a fortified shipyard two kilometres from
tidewater and accessed through a ship canal
and lock gates protected by fortified batter-
ies. Construction by shovel and wheelbarrow
was performed by an army of labourers who
suffered severely from ice, floods, malaria
and a shortage of drinking water.
The facility that became operational in 1870
consisted of a shipyard with two slipways and
three docks alongside a 400-metre square har-
bour (Bau-Hafen), a harbour canal (Hafen-
Kanal) and a ten-metre-wide entrance through
a lock built on land reclaimed from the sea.
Workshops, forges and general metalworking
facilities were constructed with engineers
recruited from Saxony and the Ruhr industrial
area. Prussia had no shipbuilding tradition of
its own, but copied and improved on the tech-
extended during the Nazi era to become the largest state-owned
naval dockyard in the world, Hitler labelling it the ‘Kriegshafen des
Grossdeutschen Reiches’ (War Port of the Greater German Reich).
This artist’s impression shows Wilhelmshaven with its three
entrance locks as it looked after the First World War.
WILHELMSHAVEN
nology of the world-leader Britain, installing it
in modern, purpose-built, state-of-the-art and
state-owned facilities in Wilhelmshaven, Kiel
and Danzig. (The Germany Navy were also
able to place orders in the private yards of
Blohm & Voss at Hamburg, AG
Vulkan/Weser at Bremen and Schichau at
Elbing.) Large areas for anchoring — known
as the Wilhelmshaven Roads and the Schillig
Roads — were available in the Jade estuary.
The new naval base (town and harbour)
was officially opened by King Wilhelm I on
June 17, 1869, and the name of the town
changed from Heppens to Wilhelmshaven.
The Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard)
opened in 1871 after Wilhelm I had become
Kaiser. The first ship to be constructed from
the keel up in the new dockyard was the
6,700-ton
Grosser Kurfürst,
begun that year.
Emphasis soon shifted towards building a
defensive coastal battle fleet, confirmed by a
law of 1873. The shipyard and harbour were
extended with an Ausrüstungs-Hafen (fit-
ting-out harbour) and Neuer Hafen (later
during the Third Reich called the Torpedo-
boots-Hafen); the Ems-Jade Canal built to
ensure secure barge access from the Ruhr
industrial area, and a second entrance, 24
metres wide and 114 metres long, opened in
1886. (Although the second to be con-
structed, it was named Entrance I, the origi-
nal, smaller lock becoming Entrance II.)
The two new naval bases — Wil-
helmshaven on the North Sea and Kiel on
the Baltic — had initially been linked by the
narrow Eider Canal for mutual support and
combined operations. As ships grew larger a
new Kiel Canal was begun in 1887 and com-
pleted in 1895.
The fleet laws of Admiral Alfred von Tir-
pitz, passed in 1898 and 1900, challenged
British supremacy in the North Sea and
required further expansion of shipbuilding
capacity and harbour facilities. A Third
Entrance, 40 metres wide and 250 metres
By Tony Colvin
long, later called the Tirpitz-Schleuse, was
begun in 1900 and finished in 1909, while a
Betriebs-Hafen (commercial harbour, later
called the Nord-Hafen) and three new har-
bours — the Grosser Hafen (later Hipper-
Hafen), Zwischen-Hafen (Scheer-Hafen)
and West-Hafen (Tirpitz-Hafen) — were
excavated along the south end of the town.
Docks Nos. 4 to 6 were constructed in the
North Quay and a 40,000-ton floating dock
built. In 1907, harbour expansion required
the new Kaiser Wilhelm Swing Bridge which
came to symbolise Wilhelmshaven.
During the First World War, Wilhelmshaven
played a major role both as dockyard and naval
base. Main projects carried out by the Kaiser-
liche Werft included the completion of the
heavy cruiser
Hindenburg,
launched in 1915
and commissioned in 1917, and the conversion
of seven blockade-breaking merchant sub-
marines into Imperial Navy U-boat cruisers in
1917. The workforce employed in the dockyard
grew from 11,500 in 1914 to 21,000 in 1918.
Throughout the war, the Hochseeflotte (High
Seas Fleet) — a large force of 99 ships under
Admiral Reinhard Scheer — was based in Wil-
helmshaven. From there they sailed to the
war’s big sea battles at Heligoland in August
1914, Dogger Bank in January 1915 and Jut-
land (Skagerrak) in May 1916.
In 1913 a cabinet decision of Kaiser Wil-
helm II established a seaplane base in Wil-
helmshaven. As a result, in 1914 the 2.
Seeflieger-Abteilung built a Seeflug-Station
Nordsee (Naval Aviation Station North Sea)
on the south side of the Grosser Hafen on
what became Wilhelmshaven’s ‘Fliegerdeich’
(airmen’s dike). During the war it became
one of the largest seaplane facilities com-
plete with hangars, cranes, an apron for air-
craft and associated buildings. Seaplanes
were built here by the Kaiserliche Werft.
3
ATB
Left:
Hitler leaving Wilhelmshaven’s Marinegedächtnis-Kirche
(Naval Memorial Church) in May 1931 at the time of the
national elections. Built in 1869-72 and originally named the
Elisabeth-Kirche, the church was developed into (although
never officially named) a Naval Memorial Church in 1918 in
memory of the many losses suffered by the Kaiserliche Marine
in the First World War. This picture by Heinrich Hoffmann,
Hitler’s official photographer, of a humble Hitler crowned by a
crucifix became a true vote-catcher. Thousands of copies were
In November 1918, a mutiny began on
ships of the fleet anchored in the Jade and
Schillig Roads and spread into the town
where dock workers seized power over the
naval base and proclaimed Wilhelmshaven
and the surrounding area a Socialist Repub-
lic. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg abdicated
and the Free State of Oldenburg was
declared. The subsequent elections led to a
Communist coup in January 1919, which was
suppressed with force by regular troops of
the naval garrison.
The post-war years were difficult times for
Wilhelmshaven. Building of trawlers and
passenger steamers kept the dockyard facili-
ties — now re-named Reichsmarine-Werft
(State Naval Dockyard) — operating until
the first cruiser ordered by the Weimar
Republic government,
Emden,
was laid
down in December 1921. Orders followed for
torpedo boats; another cruiser,
Königsberg,
in 1925, and the pocket battleships
Admiral
sold, treated as icons and achieved the purpose of persuading
religious Germans that the Führer was a god-fearing person.
Centre and right:
The church and its portal survive unchanged.
As the nearby Christus-Kirche was destroyed during the war
and not rebuilt, so the surviving Marinegedächtnis-Kirche, no
longer with a garrison to serve, became the parish church and
was renamed the Christus-Kirche. With the founding of the
Bundesmarine in 1955, the church became the Christus- und
Garnison-Kirche in 1959.
from May 11 to 13, speaking at a rally in
Jever on May 12.
During the June 1932 provincial elections,
having lost the presidential election to Hin-
denburg on April 10, Hitler set up base in
Horumersiel for a week, from May 21 to 27,
going off to speak in six places; Oldenburg,
Wilhelmshaven, Rodenkirchen, Delmen-
horst, Cloppenburg, and Bad Zwischenahn.
His work bore fruit when the Nazi candidate,
Carl Röver, was voted Minister-President of
Free State Oldenburg on June 16. Oldenburg
was one of five Länder where the Nazis were
elected (the others were Anhalt, Brunswick,
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Thuringia). In
Wilhelmshaven the NSDAP received 40.4
per cent of the votes while the Social Democ-
rats polled only 24.4 per cent. However, in
larger Rüstringen (where most of the dock-
workers lived) the Nazis polled only 26.4 per
cent against the Social Democrats 47.2 per
cent.
Scheer
in 1931 and
Admiral Graf Spee
in
1932. However, attempts to establish Wil-
helmshaven as a fishing port and seaside
resort failed and unemployment in the area
remained high.
The Nazis had strong support in Olden-
burg and during the 1931 and 1932 elections
Hitler campaigned actively in the Wil-
helmshaven area, on each occasion setting up
his headquarters in the Strand-Hotel Zur
Schönen Aussicht in Horumersiel-Schillig,
one of the most popular holiday resorts in
Germany, 24 kilometres north of Wil-
helmshaven in Friesian Wangerland.
The 1931 campaign began with 1,500 SA
men marching in Wilhelmshaven on April
29. This was followed on May 5 by a packed
rally in Wilhelmshaven’s Zentralhalle
addressed by Prince August Wilhelm of
Prussia, the Kaiser’s fourth son who had
joined the Nazis in 1930 and raised their
social profile. Hitler himself was in the area
TITSCH
The Strand-Hotel Zür Schönen Aussicht in Horumersiel, the
holiday resort 24 kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven (see the
map on page 2), was Hitler’s regional campaign headquarters
during the 1931 and 1932 elections. Hitler set up base here in
May 1931, in May 1932 and again for one night in October of
that year. Here a large crowd greets Hitler during his last, brief
visit on June 11, 1936.
4
Horumersiel was untouched by the war but afterwards
changed out of recognition when the harbour was moved
several hundred metres to the south. As a result, the Strand-
Hotel is no longer on the seafront. A new extension has also
altered its frontal appearance. Hitler’s room was in the dormer
facing the sea but a request by us to see it was refused without
explanation.
ATB
ATB
EHRENFRIEDHOF
FLAK HQ BUNKER
SURRENDER CROSSROADS
MÜHLENWEG BARRACKS
RATHAUS
TIRPITZ
LAUNCH
RAEDER-SCHLEUSE
DE
ST
RO
YE
R
BA
SE
TIRPITZ-SCHLEUSE
U-BOAT
BASE
LUFTWAFFE
BARRACKS
SEAPLANE
BASE
Map of Wilhelmshaven as it was during the war. We have marked the main locations that feature in our story.
BUILDING HITLER’S FLEET
With Hitler coming to power in January
1933, and soon assuming an aggressive for-
eign policy, Wilhelmshaven and its Reichs-
marine-Werft shipbuilding yards gained new
impetus.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had limited
a defeated Germany to warships of no more
than 10,000 tons displacement. The govern-
ment of the Weimar Republic, by making
clever use of technical innovations to create
a lighter hull that allowed for heavier guns, in
1929 had ordered construction of three
10,000-ton heavy cruisers, or pocket battle-
ships, the
Deutschland, Admiral Scheer
and
Admiral Graf Spee.
All three were laid down
before Hitler came to power but they were
completed during the Nazi period. Two of
them, the
Admiral Scheer
and
Graf Spee
were built at Wilhelmshaven, the former
being launched on April 1, 1933 in the pres-
ence of Admiral Erich Raeder, the comman-
der-in-chief of the Reichsmarine, and the lat-
ter on June 30, 1934. (The
Deutschland
was
built by the Deutsche Werke yard at Kiel.)
In 1935 Hitler traded on British feelings of
angst, guilt and appeasement to push for an
Anglo-German Naval Treaty permitting
Germany to build the equivalent of up to
one-third of Britain’s total tonnage, and to
build 35,000-ton battleships as permitted
under the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty.
Hitler ordered the construction of two
32,100-ton battleships, which were really bat-
tle cruisers: the
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
with nine 28cm (11-inch) guns. Of the twin
ships, the
Scharnhorst
was built at Wil-
helmshaven. Laid down on June 15, 1935, she
was launched on October 3, 1936 and com-
missioned on January 7, 1939. (The
Gneise-
nau
was built by the Deutsche Werke at
Kiel.)
TITSCH
Left:
Hitler greeting his enthusiastic followers in front of the
Strand-Hotel. It was also at Horumersiel in 1932 that Hitler first
met Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film director who later
produced the classic Nazi propaganda films
Triumph des Wil-
lens
(1934) and
Olympia
(1938). She had heard Hitler speak at
the Berlin Sportpalast and on May 18 had written to the
NSDAP headquarters in Munich asking for a meeting. Three
days later she got a phone call from Wilhelm Brückner, Hitler’s
adjutant, telling her that Hitler had just been saying that the
most beautiful thing he had ever seen in a film was Riefen-
stahl’s dance on the sea in
Der heilige Berg,
and inviting her to
Horumersiel the next day. She travelled to Wilhelmshaven by
train, being met by Brückner, Sepp Dietrich and Dr. Otto Diet-
rich in a Mercedes, and an hour later Hitler greeted her at
Horumersiel. They walked together on the coastal path where
he pointed out various ships that he could see through binocu-
lars. He also praised her film
Das blaue Licht.
They walked
again after dinner. Riefenstahl was invited to stay overnight at
the hotel, and to accommodate her Julius Schaub, Hitler’s aide
had to vacate his room. The following morning, May 23, after
breakfast, Hitler ordered an aircraft to fly her to Hamburg,
where she boarded a ship for Greenland and the filming of her
next movie,
SOS Eisberg.
Right:
The hotel is one of a few
surviving venues where Hitler stayed.
5
ATB

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