Kriegsmarine

Unlike the United States Army, the German Wehrmacht had a long standing professional officer corps that had experience going back to the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. While many American career officers had seen action in World War I, the vast majority of Americans entered combat for the first time.

The Phony War ended on the night of April 8, 1940 when British warships mined the fjords of Norway to prevent Swedish iron ore from reaching Germany. The Norwegian Ambassador to London protested, but within hours the Allies learned of a massive German thrust through Denmark that was already landing in Norway.

Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were captured during the war. Their fate depended on whether the Red Army or the British or Americans took their armistice. Prisoners of the Western Allies had a much better chance of survival.

In the Spring of 1941, air attacks on England had failed to break the will of her population to carry on the war. Heavy combat in the Atlantic focused on Kriegsmarine U-boats attacking merchant ships bound for England and attempting to starve the British into submission. Except for a few exceptions, German capital ships had not entered the Atlantic to raid convoys.