Evening Post WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943. HITLER'S LIFEBUOY, THE U-BOAT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 30, 4 August 1943, Page 4

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943. HITLER'S LIFEBUOY, THE U-BOAT

Probably few people realise the full extent to which Hitler's fate has been linked with the fate of the U-boat. Long before the war Germany, with bitter memories, had calculated the influence that-sea-carriage would have on a world conflict, and had determined the position of the U-boat as a weapon of offence and defence. The Nazis had realised that the Western Powers, Britain and America, could exert their full strength by means of sea-carriage alone; that,' in this vital respect, air power, however tremendous in its influence, had not altered the value of maritime power in an amphibious war; and that the U-boat, even if it might fail to starve.insular Britain into surrender, yet had an excellent chance to paralyse the striking arm of Britain and America, and thus prevent an invasion of Europe or of the Axis-occupied area in either Europe or Africa. Nothing was clearer than that the, U T boat, if it could deny to the Anglo-American invader his essential ships, would become the first line, and probably the most important line, of Axis defence. To deny Britain and America the power to invade, by denying them a sufficiency of ships, would, at the ■ very least, reduce the war to a stalemate, and would make Germany unbeatable by the Western Powers; so, at - any rate, the Nazis calculated, and' not without good reason. They saw that the fuel and requirements ,of the Allied- air war itself depended largely on sea-carriage; and even when they rashly antagonised Russia in 1941, they still hoped to cut the Allied sea route to Russia and to i "blitz" the Soviet army. In the last analysis, it will be found that Hitler lost his chance of victory when he 'failed to conquer Britain in 1940 by I direct assault. But his chance of a stalemate, to be secured by inflicting shipping paralysis on the Western Allies, still remained. In other words, the U-boat" became Hitler's lifebuoy. It supported him for months and years. But now it is failing him, and that failure is' possibly the biggest event yet in this eventful year, 1943.

To say that.the U-boat was the first line of defence of "the fortress of Europe" is not to ignore the guns and shore defences and other defensive, dispositions established by the Nazis on European soil. The Dieppe raid showed what intensified shore defences can do. But what Hitler did on parts of the coast of France could not be done all: round his defensive arc; it was physically impossible for him to repeat the Dieppe fortifications all along the "soft underbelly" of Europe, and all round, the Mediterranean. These holes in the coastal defences of the over-long perimeter of Axis Europe prove beyond doubt that the real defence was the U-boat; it was the only Axis defence that could attempt to be universal as against sea power. Then, in addition to Axis Europe and Axis-occupied Europe, there was a potent factor in the shape of oversea France. Realising that he could not fortify all coasts, everywhere, Hitler did not try to seize French North Africa; to plug that hole he relied on the French armistice, on Petain, and on Laval —but most of all he relied on the U-boat. If the U-boat had preyed on Allied shipping to the extent Hitler hoped, the Anglo-American seizure of North Africa could never have happened,^ and the unfortified beaches of Algeria and Morocco would have remained uninterfered with. But in the .closing weeks of last year, with dramatic suddenness, Algeria fell to the only, half-opposed Allied invader; the exploded French armistice disappeared overnight; and Hitler realised the deadly fact that his Vichy policy could not save him, once the U-boat had let him down. That the U-boat had failed was proved beyond all question by the Anglo-American armada that opened North Africa, and which since then has opened Sicily, and which will presently open Europe itself. It is clear, then, that when Hitler lost the U-boat war he lost the whole war. He lost his power to prei vent maritime blows at "the fortress of Europe." The fall of French North Africa was the first big advertisement to the world that "the bridge of ships" had triumphed over the submarine, that the U-boat could not prevent Allied bridgeheads in Europe, and that Hitler's first '.line of defence had fallen.

Did the Nazis'. realisation of this tremendous happening influence their submarine policy? Did they realise that the U-boat shield had been pierced, and did they then lose a good deal of their faith in it? Or is the reduction of Allied shipping losses in 1943 solely the result of the Allies' intensified and improved war against the submarine and its lairs and places of manufacture? No answer can be offered with any confidence to that question, but it can be said with considerable confidence that the submarine has ceased to be a weapon that can avert Axis defeat by guaranteeing the inviolability of Axis coasts. Every day indicates a conquering concentration of Allied shipping power and also a conquering concentration of Allied air power, the latter being, as stated above, partly a result of the former. It is widely hoped that air control will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of invading soldiers; some airmen even hope that the invading army may be dispensed with except as machinery to take possession of airbroken ten-ilories. But without adventuring into that debatable area, it is sufficiently satisfying to remember the long period during which the sinkings of ships seemed to be almost the grave of hopes of victory, and to compare with those black days the month of July just closed, when in the Western Atlantic (not long ago the Üboats' happy hunting ground) only six ships were sunk. The American authority who publishes this figure stars it against the background of the first year following Pearl Harbour, [when sinkings averaged ten weekly. These comparative figures, and the account today of the defeat of a large U-boat pack, give colour to Mr.

Churchill's recent remark that "the German hopes of the U-boat warfare turning the tide of war are sinking as fast as the U-boats themselves." The Prime Minister's words are well chosen. As a tactical weapon and as a serious nuisance the U-boat may revive, but in its supreme strategic aim it has failed, and the hope that it can save Hitlerism by a stalemate is no longer widely held, and is no longer a guiding impulse in Nazi counsels.