Karl Dönitz

He lost both his sons in the Second World War. Peter was killed on May 19, 1943 and Klaus on May 13, 1944.

Dönitz succumbed to a heart attack on December 24, 1980 and was buried in Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Aumühle sans military honours following his funeral on January 6, 1981.

Karl Dönitz was born on September 16, 1891, in Grünau, Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, to Anna Beyer and Emil Dönitz. He had an elder brother.

He was enlisted in the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) and became a Seekadett (Officer Cadet) on April 1, 1910.

He was commissioned as Acting Sub-Lieutenant or Leutnant zur See on September 27, 1913 and as First World War commenced, he served a Magdeburg-class cruiser called SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea.

He was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See (Sub-Lieutenant) on March 22, 1916, and then served temporarily as airfield commander at the Dardanelles before his request for transfer to the submarine forces was granted in October that year.

After his stints as watch officer on U-39 and commander of UC-25, he was back to the Mediterranean serving as commander of UB-68 from September 5, 1918. The U-boat faced technical problems on October 4 that year and as it surfaced, it was sunk by the British forces amidst gunfire and Dönitz was taken into custody as war prisoner.

Although the First World War concluded in 1918, he was released from the British prison of war camp near Sheffield in July 1919 and could return to Germany the following year.

He was made Lieutenant of Vorläufige Reichsmarine, the new German navy, on January 10, 1921. The ensuing years saw him becoming Lieutenant-Commander on November 1, 1928; Commander on September 1, 1933; and Naval Captain on September 1, 1935.

He was in command of first U-boat flotilla Weddigen, comprising German submarines U-7, U-8 and U-9. Kriegsmarine replaced Reichsmarine, the German navy during Weimar Republic, as the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945.

Dönitz pressed for converting the German fleet to U-boats in pursuit of executing a strategy of attacking only merchant ships. This strategy according to him would not only destroy oil tankers of the British fleet but would also put the Royal Navy out of their supplies required to run ships, thus affecting them the other way round.

With ultrahigh frequency transmitters developed by Germany during interwar years, he revived the First World War strategy of mass attack tactics against convoys, called wolfpack, in contending the merchant convoys. Wilhelm Marschall's 1922 strategy of contending convoys applying surface or near surface night attacks were also adopted by him.