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Prior to the war, Dönitz had pressed for the conversion of the German fleet to one that would be made up almost entirely of U-boats. He advocated a strategy of attack only against merchant shipping, targets that were relatively safe to attack. He pointed out that destroying Britain's fleet of oil tankers would starve the Royal Navy of supplies needed to run their ships, which would be just as effective as sinking them. He claimed that with a fleet of 300 of the newer Type VII U-boats, Germany would knock Britain out of the war. In order to deal with the ever-present escort ships, he proposed grouping several subs together into a " wolf pack," overwhelming the defense.
At the time many felt that such talk marked a weakling, and this was true of Dönitz's commander, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. The two constantly fought for funding priorities within the Navy, while at the same time fighting with Hitler's friends such as Hermann Göring in the Luftwaffe, who received much attention. Raeder had a somewhat confusing attitude; notably he apparently did not believe the German fleet of capital ships was of much use, commenting at one time that all they could hope to do was to die valiantly. Dönitz had no such fatalism.
When the war started in 1939, Dönitz had recently been promoted to the rank of senior captain (Kommodore) on January 28. The German Navy was unprepared, having anticipated the war to begin in 1942, as decided in previous war plans. At the time, Dönitz's U-boat force included only 50 boats, many of them short-range. He made do with what he had, while being harassed by Raeder and Hitler calling on him to dedicate boats to military actions operating against the British fleet directly. These operations were generally unsuccessful, while the other boats continued to do well against Dönitz's primary targets of merchant shipping.
On September 1, 1939, Dönitz became a rear admiral (Konteradmiral); on September 1 the following year, he was made a vice admiral (Vizeadmiral).
By 1941 the supply of the Type VII had improved to the point where operations were having a real effect on the British wartime economy. Although production of merchant ships shot up in response, improved torpedoes, better boats, and much better operational planning led to increasing numbers of "kills." On December 11, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States joined the war. Dönitz immediately planned for Operation Drumbeat against the eastern coast shipping, which was carried out the next month with dramatic results.
On at least two occasions, Allied success against U-boat operations led Dönitz to investigate possible reasons. Among those considered was espionage, Allied reading of German Navy communications (the Naval version of Enigma, etc.,) Both investigations into communications security came to the conclusion that espionage was more likely, if Allied success had not been accidental. Nevertheless, Dönitz ordered his U-boat fleet to use an improved version of Enigma (intended to be even more secure) — M4 — for communications within the Fleet, on February 1, 1942. The Navy was the only branch to use the improved version; the rest of the German military continued to use their then current versions of Enigma. The new network was termed Triton (Shark to the Allies). For a time, this change in encryption between submarines caused considerable difficulty for Allied codebreakers; it took ten months before Shark traffic could again be read (see also Ultra and Cryptanalysis of the Enigma).
By the end of 1942, the supply of Type VII boats had improved to the point where Dönitz was finally able to conduct mass attacks, which became known as "das Rudel," the "wolfpack." Allied shipping losses shot up tremendously, and there was serious concern for a while about the state of British fuel supplies. By 1943, Dönitz replaced Erich Raeder as the Commander in Chief of the German War Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine).
During 1943, the war in the Atlantic turned against the Germans, but Dönitz continued to push for more U-boat construction and technological development. At the end of the war the Nazi submarine fleet was by far the most advanced in the world, and late war examples such as the Type XXI U-boat served as models for Soviet and American construction after the war.
Both of Dönitz's sons died during World War II; his youngest son, Peter, was a watch officer on the U-954 and was killed on May 19, 1943, when his boat was sunk in the North Atlantic, killing everybody on board. After this loss, Peter's older brother, Klaus, was allowed to leave combat duty, and began studying to be a naval doctor. Dönitz lost Klaus almost a year after Peter died, on May 13, 1944. Klaus convinced his friends to let him on the fast boat S 141 for a raid on the Selsey off the coast of England on his 24th birthday. The boat was destroyed and Klaus died, even though six others were rescued.
In his final will, Adolf Hitler chose Dönitz as his successor as German Head of State (Staatsoberhaupt), a choice that shows how distrustful Hitler had become of Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler in the final days of the war in Europe. Significantly, Dönitz was not to become Führer, but rather President (Reichspräsident), a post Hitler had abolished years prior. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was to become Head of Government and Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945 and Goebbels followed suit a day later.
Dönitz became the sole represenative of the crumbling German Reich. On May 7 1945 he authorized the German Chief-of-Staff General Alfred Jodl to sign the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies. The surrender documents included the phrase All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European Time on 8th May 1945. The next day shortly before midnight, Jodl repeated the signing in Berlin at Zhukov's headquaters, and at the time specified The_end_of_World_War_II_in_Europe occured.
Dönitz appointed Ludwig von Krosigk Reichskanzler and they attempted to gather together a government. Dönitz devoted most of his efforts to trying to ensure that German troops surrendered to the Western Allies and not to the Soviets, since the Germans feared vengeful Soviet reprisals. However his government was not recognised by the Allied powers and was dissolved when its members were captured and arrest by British forces on May 23, 1945 at Flensburg.
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