Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
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Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
Can someone explain to me why, according to feldgrau.com/stats.html, there was such a phenomenal rise of the manpower held by the Kriegsmarine during the war? The link suggest that from a size of 50.000 men in 1939 , the German navy grew 16-fold to 810.000 in 1944(!). Did Hitler really needed that many seamen by then? Wouldn't be perhaps better to had distribute them to his collapsing army?
EDIT: Title corrected by moderator- GT
EDIT: Title corrected by moderator- GT
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Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manopower during the war
Because of the U boats
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Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manopower during the war
according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsmar ... 8U-boat.29 , 60 % of the launched u-boats were destroyed by the end of the war, and 3/4 of the crewmen died. No way the kriegsmarine could maintain the abovementioned manpower figures based on the u-boat fleet as the last It was taking casualties continuously.steverodgers801 wrote:Because of the U boats
Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manopower during the war
I would venture a guess that a good deal of the manpower increase has to do with defending the coastline and harbors.
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Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manopower during the war
the U-boat crews only numbered about 40K in the entire war. The majority of KM soldiers served on small combatants, auxiliary ships and land-based formations.
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Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
The expansion of the U boat arm required men. those men also require support personal and defense and such
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Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
However, the same can be said about the expansion of the mine warfare arm, of the E-boat arm, of the coastal artillery arm,...
Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
As of 1 June 1944, 28,845 officers and men were serving with the large surface fighting ships of the Kriegsmarine (destroyers and up), 70,724 with the U-boat arm, and no less than 423,587 with the so-called "third fleet" (Dritte Flotte), that is the many different units of Marineoberkommando Ostsee, Befehlshaber der Sicherungsstreitkräfte West and Befehlshaber der Sicherungsstreitkräfte Nord. In addition, of course, there were all kinds of shore establishments, the coast artillery (Marineartillerie) and so on.
Source, R. Lakowski, Die Unbekannte Flotte.
Source, R. Lakowski, Die Unbekannte Flotte.
"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Re: Rise of Kriegsmarine's human manpower during the war
I wrote about this once here in a query. Where did the Kriegsmarine find all of the Officers and NCOs necessary to man all of the auxiliary warships. Was it similar to the USN with their 90 day wonders and turned out coastal navigation qualified officers who had never been to sea before?