Too few submarines - Germany
The German Navy's main task at war was to cut Britain's maritime life line by a maritime blockade. Since Britain is an island, without fuel, metals, other materials, all imported by merchant ships, its military production will stop, its Air Force, Navy, and mobile ground forces will be immobilized, and it will no longer be able to defend against a devastating air bombardment campaign that will reduce its war effort to futile suffering of single-sided mass destruction, and it will have to surrender. This was true against Britain and also against Japan, both island nations. In World War I, German submarines almost succeeded in cutting Britain's maritime life line by sinking a huge number of British merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean. Despite this fact, the new German Navy built for World War 2 was similar to the old one. Most of its resources were invested in mighty battleships and heavy cruisers, which were a serious headache to the large Royal Navy, but not anywhere near the threat posed by the German submarines. The German surface Navy could not achieve its goal, only die trying, and Admiral Roeder, head of the German Navy, said so himself.
Doenitz, head of the German submarine force, pleaded repeatedly for producing more submarines, but his arguments were irresponsibly dismissed by Roeder, who said that Royal Navy claims that it solved the submarine problem with ASDIC, a new device which could detect submarines underwater. There was no serious attempt to properly evaluate the change, if any, to the proven ability of a large force of submarines to defeat Britain.
As a result, when the war started in 1939, the German Navy had 3 mighty battleships and 8 heavy cruisers, and more in construction, and only 12 submarines capable of atlantic operations (there were also 43 smaller submarines for coastal and training duties). It was a tiny fraction of the 300 atlantic submarines Doenitz asked for (in order to always have 100 in position).
The events of the war soon proved that Doenitz was right. Under his brilliant leadership, German submarines were the greatest danger to Britain although they were so few. Their number increased slowly, but this gave Britain enough time to adapt to the threat and survive, with enormous effort and horrible losses. By mid 1943 Germany had about 400 submarines, but it was too late, because by then they faced a gigantic and fully developed anti-submarine force which defeated them.
It's important to state that with the resources and manpower needed to build and operate a single battleship, about 50 atlantic submarines could be built and operated, so if Roeder or Hitler had supported Doenitz before the war, and for example built 150 more submarines by 1940 instead of the 3 almost useless battleships, Britain could be decisively defeated at sea by 1941, before the US and Russia were at war, and Hitler could win the war.
Originally Posted by vvvvvvv
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