Paul Wenneker

Born in Kiel to a naval family in 1890, Paul Wenneker joined the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in 1909 as a Seekadett and completed his training aboard the SMS Victoria Louise. During World War I he was serving on SMS Mainz, which sank during the Battle of Helgoland Bight, and he was one of the survivors taken prisoner. Wenneker returned to Germany at the end of the war and continued serving in the Reichsmarine. He was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See (lieutenant junior grade) in 1919 while serving in the Baltic Sea aboard a minesweeper, and was promoted to Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant) in 1920. Wenneker served on and commanded several minesweepers and torpedo boats, before serving on cruisers in the second half of the 1920s. He became a Korvettenkapitän (lieutenant commander) in 1928 and a Fregattenkapitän (commander) in 1933. From 1933 to 1937 he served as the German naval attaché in Japan, and was promoted to Kapitän zur See (captain) in early January 1935.[1][2]

During his first term as attaché, in January 1935 Wenneker was invited to tour the Japanese submarine I-2. In-between these terms, from 1937 to 1940, he was commanding officer of the German pocket battleship Deutschland.[3] He was promoted to Konteradmiral (rear admiral) in 1939.[1] After arriving in Japan for the second time as naval attaché, he was promoted to Vizeadmiral (vice admiral) to increase his status among the Japanese. He met with Richard Sorge, a diplomat at the German embassy in Tokyo and secretly a Soviet spy, who became well acquainted with Wenneker, proving him with the details of army and navy politics in Japan.[4]

Battleship Yamato underway on sea trials. Wenneker was unaware he visited the most powerful battleship of all time for a very long time.

While he was the German naval attaché, Wenneker urged that the submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy be used to attack American supply ships traveling between the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii, as Germany's U-boats were doing in the Atlantic. The Japanese rejected his advice, believing that submarines should only be used to attack U.S. Navy warships. Wenneker believed that Japanese submarines were inferior to German designs, being too large to be maneuverable and having worse radar capabilities, and on his initiative, Hitler eventually agreed to send two Kriegsmarine U-boats to Japan for the Japanese to be able to study their technology. The first, U-511, arrived in Japan in the summer of 1943 and was examined before being used as a training ship. The Japanese believed the German U-boat was too complicated for them to build more in their shipyards. The second German submarine, U-1224, was used by a Japanese crew that had traveled to Germany and spent several months being trained by the Kriegsmarine there on German submarine operations and tactics, but they were lost when the submarine was destroyed on its way to Japan in the spring of 1944 by a U.S. anti-submarine hunter-killer group. Wenneker also managed the Yanagi missions, the exchange of technology and key personnel between Japan and Germany during the war using submarines. They had to pass through the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and many of the submarines were lost during the journey with their entire cargo and passengers.[5][6][7]

During the war, there was a disconnect in strategic collaboration and communication between the German and Japanese military staffs.[8][9][10] But among the branches of the German Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine developed a closer relationship with the Imperial Japanese Navy than either the Heer or the Luftwaffe did with their Japanese counterparts,[9] and a large part of the reason for this was Wenneker's efforts to establish a partnership with Japanese naval officials in Tokyo.[11] It was also possible because the Japanese sent a large naval delegation to Berlin as part of the commitments to the Tripartite Pact in 1940, led by Vice Admiral Naokuni Nomura.[9] An effort was made by the Oberkommando der Marine (Naval Staff) to maintain contact with Vice Admiral Nomura, and with the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff through Wenneker in Tokyo. The communication between the Oberkommando des Heeres (Army Staff) and the Wehrmacht Operations Staff with the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff was infrequent by comparison.[10] Wenneker, who spoke fluent Japanese, built up contacts over his many years in Japan, and also because Japanese and German naval personnel were serving alongside each other in the "Southern Region," referring to southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. At the naval bases in Japanese-occupied Malaysia and Indonesia where German and Japanese naval crews used the same facilities, there were sometimes tensions and strained relations, but these were resolved because of Wenneker and his influence with the Japanese Navy.[11] In addition to being naval attaché, Wenneker was also in command of German naval forces in East Asia as the German Admiral East Asia (Deutscher Admiral Ostasien),[12] and worked closely with the U-boat crews and other personnel in the Southern Region bases.[13] He was also responsible for the network of German spies that existed in major cities across East Asia, who were part of the Abwehr.[14]

Germany complied with the Japanese naval delegation's requests for access to technology and information, with Hitler ordering all branches of the Wehrmacht to assist the Japanese, but this was not reciprocated on the Japanese side, which tried to keep information from Wenneker. It was only after considerable German pressure[9] that in 1943, Wenneker was allowed to tour the Japanese "super battleship" Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, interested in temporarily trading the ship with the German battleship Tirpitz. He was allowed to board the ship for an hour long tour, exploring parts of the main deck and traversing through the Pagoda mast. He was told that Yamato was a 45,000 ton battleship armed with nine 40 cm (15.7 inch) naval guns. He very much enjoyed his tour, amazed by the floating goliath.[15] However, what was not told was that Yamato actually displaced 72,808 tons, and was armed with nine 46 cm (18.11 inch) naval guns, the largest naval guns ever made, making Yamato the most powerful battleship ever made, far outclassing the Tirpitz in surface action capabilities, who herself was only armed with eight 38 cm (14.96 inch) naval guns.[16]

After the war ended, Wenneker was detained by the American occupation authorities, and was interrogated by Rear Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie of the U.S. Navy, in which he spoke about Japanese-German naval relations and his opinion on the shortcomings of the Japanese submarine warfare campaign. The Americans noted the Wenneker had been an associate of the former German ambassador to Japan, Eugen Ott, who had been in contact with the Soviet spy Richard Sorge and had a falling out with the German government.[5]

• Iron Cross of 1914, 1st and 2nd class
• Spanish Cross in Gold with Swords
• War Merit Cross (1939), 1st and 2nd class with Swords
• German Cross in Silver (24 April 1944)
• Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords (18 January 1945)
• Order of the Rising Sun, 1st Class (Japan)

• Hildebrand, Hans; Henriot, Ernest (1990). P — Z. pp. 530–531. ISBN 3764814993. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Geerken, Horst (2017). Hitler's Asian Adventure. Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3738630138.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Hansen, Peter (2006). Execution for Duty. Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 1781596212.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Rahn, Werner (1993). Japan and Germany, 1941—1943: No Common Objective, No Common Plans, No Basis of Trust. Vol. 46. Naval War College Review.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

• WW2DB: Paul Wenneker
• Profile of Wenneker
• In depth career history, with photos at the Wayback Machine (archived October 29, 2009)