The Fleet commander of the Kriegsmarine (''Flottenchef'') was the highest ranked administrative officer in the

organization of the Kriegsmarine The organization of the ''Kriegsmarine'' refers to the operational and administrative structure of the German Navy from 1935 to 1945. Many of the organizational tenets of the Kriegsmarine were inherited from its predecessor the Reichsmarine. As ...

, and served as a member of the ''

Oberkommando der Marine The (; abbreviated OKM) was the high command and the highest administrative and command authority of the ''Kriegsmarine'', a branch of the ''Wehrmacht''. It was officially formed from the ''Marineleitung'' ("Naval Command") of the ''Reichswe ...

''. The fleet commander did not actually serve as commander of an at-sea fleet, but instead was the senior officer to which the vessel type commanders reported. The position of fleet commander was created from an older position of the ''

Reichsmarine The () was the name of the German Navy during the Weimar Republic and first two years of Nazi Germany. It was the naval branch of the , existing from 1919 to 1935. In 1935, it became known as the ''Kriegsmarine'' (War Navy), a branch of the '' ...

'' known as ''Der Oberbefehlshaber der Seestreitkräfte''. In 1926, the position adopted the name ''Flottenchef'', but was declared defunct one year later and left vacant with no assigned officer. The title became a position within the

Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official military branch, branche ...

in 1936.

Fleet commanders

The following naval officers served in the position as Fleet commander of the Kriegsmarine. From December 1940 to June 1941, a deputy to the fleet commander was established known by the title ''2. Admiral der Flotte''. The only officer to hold this position was ''

Konteradmiral (; abbreviated KAdm) is a senior naval flag officer rank in several German-speaking countries, equivalent to counter or rear admiral. Austria-Hungary In the Austro-Hungarian '' K.u.K. Kriegsmarine'' (1849 to 1918) there were the flag of ...

Leopold Siemens Leopold Siemens (17 May 1889 - 7 December 1979) was a Vice admiral in the ''Kriegsmarine'' during World War II. He served as captain of the cruiser ''Karlsruhe'' in the mid-1930s and held the short lived position of Deputy fleet commander of the ...

Relationships with other components

The fleet commander, by practice, was typically most closely associated with the German battleship branch. Most fleet commanders would make their

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically ...

on-board one of Germany's larger capital ships. Günther Lütjens, while serving as fleet commander, embarked on board the

battleship A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...

'' Bismarck'' and also tactically commanded the ship during the

Battle of the Denmark Strait The Battle of the Denmark Strait was a naval engagement in the Second World War, which took place on 24 May 1941 between ships of the Royal Navy and the ''Kriegsmarine''. The British battleship and the battlecruiser fought the German battlesh ...

. Lütjens was later killed on the ''Bismarck'', making him the only fleet commander to die in active combat. The fleet commander was not, by design, an operational officer, and thus could only advise the Navy group commanders who served as the operational heads of the various at-sea German forces. For this reason, there was significant jurisdictional conflict between the fleet commander and the group commanders. In mid 1943, the Kriegsmarine leadership attempted to solve this problem by merging the office of fleet commander with that of a group commander. A new position, ''Marinegruppenkommando Nord und Flottenchef'' was then created giving the fleet commander operational control over deployed forces in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

. The fleet commander was also technically the senior officer to the commander of submarine forces (''

Befehlshaber der U-Boote The ''Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote'' or BdU (Eng: "Commander of the U-boats") was the supreme commander of the German Navy's U-boat Arm (''Ubootwaffe'') during the First and Second World Wars. The term also referred to the Command HQ of the U ...

''); however, in this capacity

Karl Dönitz Karl Dönitz (; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German grand admiral and convicted war criminal who, following Adolf Hitler's Death of Adolf Hitler, suicide, succeeded him as head of state of Nazi Germany during the Second World ...

operated with near total independence, including the tactical deployment of his

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

s with little regard for the wishes of either the fleet or group commanders.Stern, Robert C., Battle Beneath the Waves: U-boats at War, Sterling Publishing (1999)

Disestablishment

The position of fleet commander was disbanded upon the defeat of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

in May 1945. In the modern day

German Navy The German Navy (, ) is part of the unified (Federal Defense), the German Armed Forces. The German Navy was originally known as the ''Bundesmarine'' (Federal Navy) from 1956 to 1995, when ''Deutsche Marine'' (German Navy) became the official ...

, the position of

Inspector of the Navy The Inspector of the Navy () is the commander of the Navy of the modern-day German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr. Since the various bodies responsible for the high command of the German Navy were merged in 2012, the Inspector has been based at th ...

is somewhat equivalent to that of fleet commander.

References

{{Authority control Kriegsmarine