19:12 (Paris Time)
Saturday, February 1, 1941
Les Folies Bergère Cabaret
32 Rue Richer, 9th District
Paris, Occupied France
One of the French doormen at the entrance of the famous Folies Bergère Cabaret politely interposed himself as a young German officer was about to storm inside, obviously in a hurry. While his job was to prevent people from going inside the cabaret without paying the entrance fee, one had to be careful and diplomatic with German customers, in order to avoid some nasty backlash with the German occupation authorities.
‘’I am sorry, sir, but you will have to go first at the ticket counter.’’ Said the man in German. Thankfully, the German officer replied in an equally polite tone.
‘’I came here to find a German officer, to give him an urgent message, not to watch the show, mister.’’
‘’In that case, I will escort you to the show room, sir. Follow me!’’
Before leaving his post, the doorman signaled to one of his backups in French.
‘’Marcel, watch the door for a moment while I escort this officer in.’’
Letting the big, Marseilles ex-gangster in charge of the entrance, the doorman then led the young German naval officer inside the cabaret, bypassing the coatroom and walking inside the big, high-ceiling show room where dozens of customers were having supper while watching the female dancers on the large stage. The doorman smiled in amusement as the young Kriegsmarine officer, who was in his early twenties, slowed down his step and nearly stopped as his eyes fixed on the nude young woman presently parading on the stage: the dancers of the Folies Bergère never failed to get a reaction from male customers, be they French or German. He however politely reminded the German that he was not here for the show.
‘’You may now look for the officer you are seeking, sir.’’
‘’Uh, yes, indeed.’’ Said the young man, taking with difficulty his eyes from the nude dancer and starting to scan the room. He saw quickly enough his target, a tall, medium-built man in his late twenties wearing the going out uniform of a Kriegsmarine kapitänleutnant, sitting at a table with a pretty redhead woman. Going in quick steps to that table, he stopped at attention beside it and gave a military salute to the officer.
‘’Kapitänleutnant Otto Kretschmer?’’
‘’Yes?’’ Replied the officer, whose face would pass as that of a quiet university student if not for his uniform, while returning the salute. ‘’What is it, Leutnant?’’
In response, the newcomer took a sealed envelope from an inside pocket of his uniform vest and handed it to Kretschmer.
‘’Leutnant Hugo Schmelling, from the staff of Admiral Dönitz. The Admiral has tasked me to find you and to give you this as quickly as possible.’’
Now both curious and a little annoyed at being hounded like this on one of his precious days off between war patrols at sea, Kretschmer took the envelope and, opening it, extracted from it a single sheet of paper folded in three. Reading quickly what turned out to be an official order, the submarine commander looked up sharply at the messenger.
‘’Admiral Dönitz wishes to see me at his office in the Paris headquarters of the Kriegsmarine, first thing tomorrow morning? Do you know what this is about, Leutnant Schmelling?’’
‘’No, Kapitänleutnant! I only know that it concerns an urgent and confidential matter.’’
‘’Very well! You can tell Admiral Dönitz that I will be at his office tomorrow morning at eight. Dismissed!’’
Schmelling saluted again, with Kretschmer saluting back before the young lieutenant pivoted on his heels and walked away, escorted by the French doorman. The redhead woman sitting at the table then cautiously asked a question to her dining companion. Having been arrested last year by the French Police on behalf of the German authorities, to then be released thanks to the intervention of the Irish Chargé d’Affaires in Paris, Margaret Kelly Leibovici was anxious not to appear too inquisitive about the affairs of a German officer, however gallant and decent he was.
‘’They are recalling you already, Otto? But, you told me just one hour ago that you still had over a week of leave left.’’
Otto Kretschmer gave a wry smile to the most pretty Irish woman and famous dancer nicknamed ‘Miss Bluebell’, who directed the no less famous dancing troupe of ‘Les Bluebell Girls’, which performed nightly at the Folies Bergère.
‘’I thought so as well, Margaret, but it seems that something has happened to cause the good admiral to send for me. I suppose that I could blame that on my present title of ‘submarine Ace of aces’. However, don’t worry about our supper together: I fully intend to take the time to finish it and then watch your girls dance.’’
Margaret smiled warmly at that: Otto knew that she was married, to a Jewish man no less, with one toddler son and another child on the way, and had not tried once to profit from his fame or standing as a highly decorated German officer to try enticing her into a date. From all that she knew of him, Margaret considered Otto Kretschmer to be both a decent, humane man as well as a brave and competent naval officer. It also helped that Otto was in no way what you would call a Nazi fanatic. He was also a cultured man who spoke fluent English, thanks to past university studies in England before the war, on top of a quite passable French.
‘’That will please me most, Otto.’’
07:53 (Paris Time)
Sunday, February 2, 1941
Headquarters of the Kriegsmarine in France
Château de la Muette, 16th District
Paris
Having been introduced by an aide into Admiral Dönitz’ office in the opulent Salle Roger Ockrent of the Château de la Muette, an 18th Century style palace built in the 1920s and presently occupied by the Kriegsmarine, Otto Kretschmer stepped forward and stopped at attention in front of Dönitz’ work desk. He then saluted him in a military manner while announcing himself in a strong voice.
‘’Kapitänleutnant Otto Kretschmer, reporting as ordered, Admiral!’’
Dönitz, a tall and thin man with a severe expression, returned his salute and showed him a nearby, comfortable looking chair.
‘’Please, make yourself comfortable, my dear Kretschmer.’’
The commander of the U-Boote arm of the Kriegsmarine waited until Kretschmer was seated before speaking again, looking at him thoughtfully.
‘’You must be wondering what caused me to fetch for you when you still had over ten more days of shore leave left, so I will go straight to the point. Simply put, I need the best submarine commander I have in order to fulfill a highly classified task that has the potential to heavily impact this war in our favor. For that, however, you will have to leave your faithful U-99 and take command of a new submarine.’’
Not a little shocked by that announcement, which sounded pretty much like an order rather than like an offer, Otto gave a confused look to his commander.
‘’But, what kind of mission could it be that my U-99 could not do?’’
‘’Actually, taking command of our newest submarine and shaping it and its crew for war patrols is what has the potential to impact the war, my dear Kretschmer.’’
‘’Uh, I’m afraid that you lost me there, Herr Admiral.’’
Dönitz, his expression most serious, then bent forward, resting his forearms on top of his desk while staring at Kretschmer.
‘’What I am saying is that your new command, the U-800, is the prototype of a new class of submarine with vastly improved capabilities compared to our present Type VII and Type IX submarines. It is a truly revolutionary design with performances you could only dream of right now. Because it is so revolutionary, it will need a commander able to exercise maximum initiative and tactical flexibility, in order to get the most out of it. You are such a commander, Kretschmer. You also have a lot of experience of combat operations at sea, experience that I expect you to use to analyze the true capabilities of that prototype submarine.’’
‘’And…where is that wonder prototype submarine, Admiral? When do you expect me to sail in it?’’
‘’It is presently being completed at the Germaniawerft Shipyards in Kiel and will be ready for launch in about three weeks. That will give you the time to assemble your crew and starts its theoretical training in Kiel, before the sea trials of the U-800 in the Baltic and the pre-patrol training at sea of your crew. Then, when you will deem both your boat and crew ready for combat, you will leave on a long-distance combat patrol in the coastal waters of Newfoundland and Canada, in the Western Atlantic.’’
That made Kretschmer think furiously as he measured the risks of such a mission. The enemy had plenty of aircraft stationed on Newfoundland and along the Canadian East Coast, something that made submarine patrols in those waters quite a risky affair. There was also the question of the distances involved, which would mean cruising ranges well in excess of the autonomy of a Type VII submarine like his old U-99. Presently, only Type IX submarines had the kind of range that allowed them to deploy to the Canadian coastline without using refueling at sea.
‘’What can you tell me about that new submarine, Admiral?’’
In response, Dönitz picked up a file on his desk and presented it to Otto, who briefly got up to grab it before sitting back down and opening it. It was stamped ‘Top Secret’ on its cover and contained a few pages of texts and drawings, along with a few photos. As Otto’s eyes widened on reading the content of the file, Dönitz spoke again, his tone grave.
‘’Kretschmer, I had to fight hard to convince the Führer to let me build this prototype. I also burned a lot of political favors in order to overcome the opposition of many big industrialists and Party officials who wanted to protect their pet contracts and projects. If you don’t prove the worth of this prototype at sea, in combat, then the U-800 will probably end up being the sole boat of this new class. The future of the U-Boote arm and possibly the outcome of this war are thus in your hands.’’
Otto looked up briefly from the file at those last words, understanding that his admiral meant what he had just said.
‘’You can count on me, Admiral. Uh, may I ask who designed this new boat? This is totally revolutionary.’’
‘’It definitely is, my dear Kretschmer. The man who designed this submarine is actually a naval engineer who approached me personally about a year ago with the complete plans for the U-800 already in hand. Basically, that engineer, who could easily be called a true genius, had been tinkering about future concepts for submarines and also about some remedies of his own for the various problems we had been encountering with our submarines and torpedoes. He had however been a bit too forceful while exposing his ideas to his earlier employers at the Blohm und Voss Shipyards in Hamburg and had been fired as a result. He then had worked on his own time to produce the plans for the U-800 and for a few other things before approaching me. He was actually able to convince me of the worth of his ideas and I thus hired him as a civilian technical consultant for the U-Boote arm, so that he could have access to the Kriegsmarine’ resources. He is now supervising the completion of the U-800 in Kiel.’’
‘’I see! He must be a truly exceptional designer, if I can go with what I see here.’’
‘’He is, but he is also a bit difficult to work with, something not uncommon with top geniuses. He has by the way helped us recently to correct the design faults that were causing our torpedoes to misfire or miss their targets so often in the recent past. I however kept that in-house and had our torpedo mechanisms modified under the table, so that those damn idiots at the Ministry of Armaments’ Torpedo Department, who had been refusing to acknowledge that our torpedoes were mostly duds, wouldn’t interfere and prevent us from modifying our torpedoes.’’
Otto rolled his eyes as he remembered those frustrating months at the start of the war, when nearly half of fired torpedoes would either refuse to detonate on impact, explode prematurely or simply miss their target by passing too deep under them.
‘’Thank God for that man! Those defective torpedoes cost the lives of too many of our submariners.’’
‘’Amen to that! Now, thanks to him, we will have reliable torpedoes for our submarines. That is in fact one major reason why I gave him my support for producing the U-800.’’
Otto nodded in understanding, then resumed his reading. After a couple of minutes, he looked back at Dönitz, convinced by what he had just seen.
‘’Admiral, if this new design fulfills even half of its promises, then I promise you the most successful war patrol you will have ever seen. Could I in turn ask you a favor? Would I be allowed to pick men from my U-99 to help form the crew of the U-800?’’
‘’Hmm, I would be harsh to refuse you that, Kretschmer, in view of what I am asking of you. However, don’t go overboard: poor Kapitänleutnant Bremmer will need some crewmembers with experience if he is to have any success with the U-99.’’
Otto grinned at that.
‘’I will try not to be too greedy, Admiral. When should I be going to Kiel?’’
Dönitz then gave him a large envelope in response.
‘’Here are your new orders, along with a directive from me that will facilitate your dealings with the personnel department, so that you could select your new crew. You will also find in this envelope your travel and requisitions authorizations, plus a detailed list of the crew requirements for the U-800. Once you will have selected and assembled your crewmembers, you will go as a group to Kiel to start studying the U-800 and train on it. Be in Kiel in no later than two weeks from now. We will decide later on when you will be ready to go to sea for the first war patrol of the U-800. I expect great things from you, Kretschmer.’’
As Otto was getting up from his chair, most satisfied and eager, Dönitz gave him another envelope, a smile on his face.
‘’Oh, I nearly forgot. You will be commanding the U-800 with a rank commensurate with what I am expecting of you, Korvettenkapitän Kretschmer. Your new rank is effective from yesterday. Make sure that you report to Kiel with the proper uniform.’’
Caught by surprise by this, Otto froze for a short moment before saluting, a grin on his face.
‘’Thank you, Herr Admiral! I will not disappoint you.’’
‘’I know that you won’t, Kretschmer. And, please: do try to report on the radio from time to time when you will be on your next war patrol.’’
Chuckling at that, Otto pivoted on his heels without replying to Dönitz, then walked out of his office.