Tales of three ships: Bismarck, Deutschland, and Moskva
Adolf Hitler beamed from the dockside of a shipyard in Hamburg, Germany on Valentine’s Day in 1939. A granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck had just smashed a bottle of champagne against a battleship’s prow and declared: “On the order of the Fuhrer, I baptize you with the name ‘Bismarck.’”
The Bismarck was the most massive ship in the German fleet on the day she was christened. Captain Ernst Lindemann would later issue an order that only the masculine form could be used to reference the pride of the German war fleet. “So powerful a ship as this could only be a he, not a she.” She was large, ferocious, fast, and equipped with pioneering radar-directed firing capabilities. With an innovative anti-torpedo belt of nickel, chrome, and steel, the German brass believed the Bismarck was as close to unsinkable as any ship ever built.
As the tiny shards of a shattered bottle of champagne drifted to the bottom of Hamburg’s harbor, Admiral Erich Raeder vowed to the Fuhrer that the 2,000 officers and men aboard the Bismarck would honor the memory of its namesake, Germany’s Iron Chancellor, “to their last breath.”
Admiral Raeder’s vow that the crew of the Bismarck would honor their battleship’s namesake “to their last breath” was fulfilled in May 1941 with the help of the Royal Navy. After a lengthy cat-and-mouse chase in which the Royal Navy lost sight of the Bismarck for days at a time in miserable North Atlantic weather, a torpedo from a carrier-based British biplane damaged the Bismarck’s rudder – her one area of submerged vulnerability - rendering her unable to steer. The massive ship was a crippled target as she awaited the approach of British battleships, destroyers, and cruisers.
Even before the Home Fleet squadron under the command of Admiral John Tovey closed on the doomed German ship, Adolf Hitler was distraught upon learning that 2,300 German lives were about to be lost. (All but 188 of the German seamen onboard the Bismarck would die in a one-sided battle the following morning). Just before retiring to bed after 2 o’clock in the morning, “the ever more irritable” German Chancellor stated that “he would never allow a battleship or cruiser out into the Atlantic again.”
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In the years leading up to the War, individual warships (unlike airplanes or tanks) were launched with great fanfare, and sailed with patriotic sentiment. A mere glimpse could inspire the pride of admirals, kings, and common citizens. Some ships were named after national heroes like Bismarck or, in the case of the German pocket battleship Deutschland, carried the name and the pride of the nation. Adolf Hitler, more so than most leaders, focused on the symbols of his version of patriotism. As a result, the up and down fortunes of the German Navy helped drive Hitler’s volatile temperament between extremes of jubilation and fury.
Earlier in the war, in December 1939, Hitler was concerned about the impact on German morale if a ship that bore the name of the Fatherland was lost in battle. And so he personally ordered the rechristening of the Deutschland to her new name: Lützow, a nondescript nom de mer reclaimed from a ship that Germany had recently sold to Russia.
It hardly needs to be stated that Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill took very different paths in their approaches to life and leadership. Although Churchill was alert to the impact of the fortunes of war on public morale, he viewed his ships as tools of battle. When his personal private secretary John Colville voiced distress after the Royal Navy lost several ships in a battle off the coast of Crete in May 1941, Churchill gently scolded him. “What do you think we build the ships for?” Colville added in a diary entry that Churchill “deprecates the navy’s way of treating ships as if they were too precious to ever risk.”
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History will one day reveal the specific fate of the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva – whose name translates in English to “Moscow.” What is beyond dispute is that the Russian ship - which had originally been named Slava, which translates to "Glory" - now sits at the bottom of Black Sea. American intelligence sources say it was mortally wounded by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles. Russia claims that after an internal explosion and fire, the Moskva sank in heavy seas as she was being towed back to Russia in mid-April.
It is not yet known how many Russian seamen honored the memory of the Russian capital to their last breath. Russia has so far claimed a small number of casualties. The parents of missing Russian sailors have publicly begged to differ. We do not yet know the how the loss of the Moskva impacted the volatile temperament of Vladimir Putin. But we will find out. History always tells us in the end.
Thanks for reading,
Bill