The Battle of the St. Lawrence (40 page)

Twenty-eight hours after surfacing at 60° 5° N 64° 24° W in Martin Bay on the northeastern coast of Labrador on October 22, 1943, U-537’s captain gave the order to weigh anchor. Kurt, or WFL-26
(Wetterfukgerat-Land #26)
as it officially was known, broadcast its first weathergram three minutes later. For several days, every three hours Schrewe’s radiomen picked up Kurt’s broadcasts on schedule. Then they began noticing that the broadcasts were being jammed. One can only imagine their surprise when they discovered that the station jamming Kurt was in fact German.

Unlike “Langbein” and Janowski, who were known to Canadian authorities during the war and who disappeared after the war, Kurt remained unknown until the 1970s, when Franz Selinger, a retired Siemens engineer, wrote a history of the German Weather Service. Kurt’s remains, which are on display in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, were discovered in 1981 by a team led by historian W. A. B. Douglas.

T
he debate over the extent to which the
Kriegsmarine
or the
Wehrmacht,
as opposed to the
Einsatzgruppen,
shared Hitler’s eliminationist antiSemitism (to borrow Daniel Goldhagen’s perfect phrase) continues. Even if we grant that Timothy Mulligan (author of
Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany’s U-boat Arm, 1939–1945)
has a point when he argues that because the
U-Bootwaffe’s
bases were far from the death camps of Eastern Europe, it is going too far to say, as he does, that Dönitz’s men were “isolated from the regime’s true nature.”

First, it is unclear that physical distance itself explains ignorance. Second, Mulligan himself cites U-boatmen who had heard of mass killings of Jews in Latvia. In his
Dönitz: The Last Führer,
historian Peter Padfield quotes Diesel Matt (U-333), who tells of having been presented with a wooden box containing watches after his 1943 return to base: “The watches were all second-hand, all in working order; a few were watches for the blind. Then we knew exactly. That was too macabre. Nobody should say that he knew nothing. We knew at that time where they came from.”

The more stolid members of the
Wehrmacht
may have been shocked and even revolted by the wanton killings by the SS in Poland and the east and by the factories of death of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Birkenau. But, as many histories have made clear, the German army and General Staff stood by and did precisely nothing.

Perhaps more revealing than the statistics of deportations and killings is
this 1942 report, quoted by Jonathan Steinberg in
All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–43
(a comparative study of Italian and German attitudes toward the Holocaust), from a German army counterintelligence officer in Libya who was complaining of the Italian army’s scandalous attitude toward the Jews under its control: “It becomes clearer every day that the local Jews sit ‘in an iron barrel’ [that is, are protected], as the Italians appropriately put it …. A closer look reveals that the Italian administrative apparatus itself is ‘the iron barrel,’ which surrounds the Jews protectively and allows them to go on pursuing their dirty business. One frequently hears from Italian officials the astonishing opinion that the Jews of Libya are ‘decent chaps.’… The police make no distinction between Jews and Italians.” Steinberg goes on to comment: “The German intelligence officer, [was] not an SS fanatic but an army counter-intelligence specialist …. [He] simply cannot imagine how Italians could call Jews, any Jews, ‘decent chaps.’ He is amazed that the Italian police do not distinguish between Italian and Jew …. German anti-semitism was not the special preserve of a few fanatics in black uniforms but a pervasive, widespread and fundamental attitude found throughout the entire
Wehrmacht.
In many years of intensive research in German army archives, I have found fewer than five examples of German officers expressing anything other than the opinions quoted above.”

^a
Since SS
Frederika Lensen
could not be salvaged, naval records record it as being sunk.

T
he two most important historians of the Battle of the St. Lawrence are Michael L. Hadley and Roger Sarty. The former’s
U-boats against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters
(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985) was the first scholarly work to give shape to the battle. Sarty’s contribution to the recently published
No Higher Purpose: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1939–1943,
edited by W. A. B. Douglas (Vanwell, 2002), “The Battle of the St. Lawrence, February 1942-December 1941,” is required reading, especially for those interested in how the battle fits into the overall story of the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II. Equally important are Sarty’s articles “Ultra, Air Power, and the Second Battle of the St. Lawrence, 1944,” in
To Die Gallantly: The Battle of the Atlantic,
edited by T. J. Runyan and J. M. Copes (Westview, 1994), and “The Limits of Ultra: The Schnorkel U-boat Offensive against North America, November 1944-January 1945,”
Intelligence and National Security,
vol. 12, no. 2 (April 1997), 44–68. Less accessible but of great use to me are Sarty’s unpublished “Eastern Air Command Anti-Submarine Operations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1942” and “Eastern Air Command Anti-Submarine Operations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1942,” both of which were prepared for the National Defence Directorate of History; I thank Roger for making copies of this work available to me. More accessible is W. A. B. Douglas’s
Creation of a National Air Force: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force
(University of
Toronto Press, 1986), particularly the chapter “The Battle of the St. Lawrence.” More popular presentations of the battle can be found in Sarty’s
Canada and the Battle of the Atlantic
(Art Global, 1998) and Sarty and Brian Tennyson’s
Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars
(University of Toronto Press, 2000). The most accessible history of the Battle of the St. Lawrence is the excellent Web site maintained by the Musée Naval du Québec (Quebec Naval Museum), http://www.mnq-nmq.org.

Brian and Terence McKenna’s documentary
War at Sea: U-boats in the St. Lawrence
(NFB, 1995) must be treated very carefully, for while they correctly depict the RCN’s equipment problems, they leave the impression that both the RCN’s staff and their political masters happily sent men to their deaths.

In her
U-boat Adventures: Firsthand Accounts from World War II
(Naval Institute Press, 1999), Melanie Wiggins devotes a chapter to
Operation Kiebitz,
as does C. W. Harvison in his memoir of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
The Horsemen
(McClelland and Stewart, 1967); Harvison’s book also contains a chapter on Werner Janowski. Daniel Hoffman’s
Camp 30, “Ehrenwort”: A German Prisoner-of-War Camp in Bowmanville, 1941–194
5
(Bowmanville Museum, 1988) contains a great deal of information about the operations of the Lorient Espionage Group. Stephen B. Lett’s “A Book and Its Cover,”
RCMP Quarterly,
vol. 39, no 2 (April 1974), tells how the RCMP disassembled and then reassembled the book that contained the maps being send to the Lorient Espionage Group.
Operation Kiebitz,
by Jean-Guy Dugas (Ed. Franc-Jeu, 1992) is a French-language history of the breakout and recapture of Wolfgang Heyda. Jak P. Mallmann Showell’s
U-boats at War: Landings on Hostile Shores
(Ian Allan, 2000) contains important information about and excellent pictures of all three U-boat landings on Canadian shores.

The earliest treatment of the battle is in
Canada’s War at Sea,
by Stephen Leacock and Leslie Roberts (Alvah Beatty, 1944). The first post-war treatment of the battle was Jack McNaught’s two-part
Maclean’s
magazine article “The Battle of the St. Lawrence” (October 15 and 22, 1949). Joseph Schull’s
Far Distant Ships: An Official Account of Canadian Operations in World War II
(1950; Stoddart, 1987) sketches the battle.
The Battle of the St. Lawrence,
produced by Brian and Terence McKenna for the National Film Board (1995), is interesting but excessive in its criticism of the Canadian navy. More useful is the NFB series
Seasoned Sailors,
which contains interviews
with both Desmond Piers (rear-admiral, retired) and John Pickford (rear-admiral, retired). Henri-Paul Boudreau’s
Cette mer cruelle
(Ed. Nord-Côtières, 2000) is a French-language history of the battle.

Both
Arms, Men and Governments: The War Policies of Canada 1939–1945,
by C. P. Stacey (National Defence, 1970), and
The Naval Service of Canada,
vol. 2,
Activities on Shore during the Second World War,
by Gilbert N. Tucker (National Defence, 1952), are essential reading for anyone interested in policy, budgets, bases, building schedules and ship specifications. The first three chapters of
Out of the Shadows: Canada and the Second World War,
revised ed., by W. A. B. Douglas and Brereton Greenhous (Dundurn, 1995), are especially useful in understanding how Canada geared up for war production. “Army Participation in Measures Taken by the Three Services for the Security of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Lower River during the Period of German Submarine Activity, 1942–5,”
Report No. 3 prepared for the Historical Section (G.S.) Army Headquarters,
is an excellent source of information on the army’s role in the Battle of the St. Lawrence. The first volume of Tucker’s history
The Naval Service of Canada, Origins and Early Years,
is the basis of every other history of the Canadian navy’s beginnings. A more up-to-date work on the Canadian navy’s history is Roger Sarty’s
The Maritime Defence of Canada
(Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, 1996). Sarty and Michael Hadley’s
Tin Pots and Pirate Ships: Canadian Naval Forces and German Sea Raiders: 1880–1918
(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991) is useful for understanding the basis for Canadian naval defence thought.
Ready, Aye, Ready: An Illustrated History of the Royal Canadian Navy,
by Jack Macbeth (lt.-cdr., RCNR, retired) (Key Porter Books, 1989), is a good introduction to the history of the RCN during the war.

Though they cover much more than the Battle of the St. Lawrence, Marc Milner’s
North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys
(University of Toronto Press, 1985),
The U-boat Hunters: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Offensive against Germany’s Submarines
(University of Toronto Press, 1994) and
Battle of the Atlantic
(Vanwell, 2003) are extremely useful for understanding the tactics and limits of anti-submarine warfare during the Second World War. More popular histories of Canada’s navy in the Battle of the Atlantic are Donald E. Graves’s
In Peril on the Sea: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic
(Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, 2003) and
Tin Hats, Oilskins and Seaboots: A Naval Journey, 1938–1945
(Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, 2000). Robert C. Fisher’s “‘We ‘ll Get Our Own’: Canada and the Oil Shipping Crisis of 1942,”
Red Duster
(1993), also available on the Web, is a good introduction to the oil crisis that followed the U-boat offensive off the US east coast. Max Reid’s
D.E.M.S. and the Battle of the Atlantic 1939–1945
(Commoner’s Publishing Society, 1990) is the only available history of Canada’s defensively equipped merchant ships.