Naval Officers Under Hitler

This book is a collective biography of the 318 men who joined the German Navy in 1934 to become professional officers. It traces their lives and mentality from their upbringing in the Weimar Republic through their post-war careers. Unique in its subject matter and methodology in both German and international military historiography, Naval Officers under Hitler is a professional, political, and psychological group portrait based on personal interviews and correspondence as well as archival research. It stresses the drama of recent German history that these officers experienced closely as observers, witnesses, participants, victims, and sometimes, beneficiaries. The book argues that the vast majority of junior naval officers under Hitler, while well trained and prepared to defend their fatherland as good patriots, felt no profound or lasting attachment to Nazi ideology. Instead their ideological preferences remained with patriotic, conservative groups such as the German National People's Party and its successor organizations after World War II. Otherwise love of the sea and of the naval profession lay at the center of their overall mentality and priorities.