Champion of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare and Early Booster of the Nazis: Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Magnus von Levetzow

Champion of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare and
Early Booster of the Nazis:  Kapitän, later
Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Magnus von Levetzow

Magnus von Levetzow was born on 8 January1871 in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany to a noble clan that had settled in Mecklenburg around 1300. Levetzow entered the navy in 1889 and attended the War Academy in 1900–1902.

In 1900, he served as Admiralty staff officer during the German blockade of Venezuela, and from 1906 to 1918 he was attached to the High Sea Fleet in various capacities. From 1909 to 1912, Levetzow was first Admiralty officer in the fleet command; in 1912, he commanded the light cruiser Stralsund and the following year in the grade of captain the battle cruiser Moltke.

Captain von Levetzow led the Moltke to the coast of England on December 16, 1914, and bombarded Hartlepool. On 24 January 1915, he stood off the Dogger Bank as the British demolished the armored cruiser Blücher. One year later, Levetzow joined the High Sea Fleet as chief of the Operations Division immediately under Captain Adolf von Trotha; Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer served as fleet commander. This triumvirate directed the fleet at Jutland on 31 May 31/1 June 1916 and inflicted serious material losses upon the British Grand Fleet, while twice facing annihilation by Sir John Jellicoe's dreadnoughts as the latter crossed Scheer's T.

In September 1917, Levetzow was temporarily appointed chief of staff to Vice Admiral Ehrhardt Schmidt's squadron for the conquest of the Baltic islands of Osel, Moon, and Dagö in the Gulf of Riga, which also netted the Russian battleship Slava. Levetzow received the order Pour le mérite in October 1917.

In November 1917, Levetzow returned to the High Sea Fleet, and by January 1918, was promoted commodore and given command of the Second Division, Scouting Forces, under Admiral Franz von Hipper. In August 1918, the restless Levetzow became chief of staff of the new Supreme Command of the navy under Admiral Scheer. In this capacity, he actively planned the fatal Operations Plan No. 19, which called for a suicide sortie against the British Grand Fleet on 30 October 1918. The sailors of the fleet instead rebelled.

Levetzow was a highly political creature. A fanatical follower of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Levetzow had spared no effort to propagate the state secretary's views in the navy and beyond. Levetzow recruited members of the court and of other ruling houses to uphold the Tirpitz line, and he used the same channels to drum up support for a fleet engagement as well as for unrestricted submarine warfare. 

Holger Herwig gives dual credit to the godfather of Germany's modern navy, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, and an influential officer, Captain Magnus von Levetzow, for inspiring the great unrestricted U-boat warfare debate as early as 1914. 

Tirpitz responded to a reporter's question about whether he intended to blockade Britain with its U-boats, "If pressed to the utmost, why not? – England wants to starve us into submission; we can play the same game, blockade England and destroy each and every ship that tries to run the blockade." Captain von Levetzow, apparently a man with a literary bent, sent a 1913 Conan Doyle story, "Danger! A Story of England's Peril," to his commander, Fleet Admiral Reinhard Scheer, and Kaiser Wilhelm. The story told was of an England starved out  in six weeks by a flotilla of U-boats. It must have been  irresistibly seductive to any patriotic German in 1914.  Thanks to these two officers, the idea was planted in  the collective brain of Germany's leadership early in  the war. The German public, the people who would increasingly feel the impact of the Royal Navy's  blockade on the Central Powers, independently came to look to the U-boat as the logical counter response.  Also, some of the early successes, like the achievement  of U-9 in sinking three British cruisers in a single day,  convinced many that Germany had a wonder-weapon that  it should employ to its fullest capability.

With the wily Trotha, Levetzow worked diligently to undermine the positions of Georg A. von Müller of the Navy Cabinet, Henning von Holtzendorff of the Admiralty Staff, and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg with the kaiser, the politicians, and the nation. 

Levetzow favored sweeping territorial annexations by Germany in Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa as late as September 1918, and he encouraged fellow naval officers to pursue these aims through Tirpitz's right-wing Fatherland party.

Von Levetzow with Fellow Admirals Raeder and
von Trotha at a Commemoration of the
Battle of Skagerraktag (Jutland)

Levetzow survived the reduction of the German navy to 10,000 officers and men under the Versailles Treaty and in January 1920 was promoted rear admiral and given command of the Baltic Sea naval station at Kiel. In this capacity he supported the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 and was forced to resign from the service. For a time, Levetzow hoped to establish close contacts between the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, as well as Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler of the NSDAP; however, by 1932 Levetzow accepted the kaiser's refusal to become embroiled with the Nazis and was elected an NSDAP member of parliament. 

Von Levetzow, President of the Berlin Police with 
Hermann Göring, Founder of the Gestapo, 1933

Hitler rewarded the admiral, who had helped to bring naval support to the Nazis, by appointing him police president of Berlin on 15 February 1933. For the next two years Levetzow energetically purged the Ministry of the Interior of republicans. Levetzow was an opponent of lawless violence and antisemitism and often came into conflict with the more radical Berlin Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership, as well as with Berlin Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels, who had been trying to have him replaced since from at least November 1934.  He was forced to withdraw from politics in July 1935 and died in Berlin on 13 March 1939.  He did not live to see the impact of unrestricted U-boat warfare on the course of the Second World War. 

Source: The World Biographical Encyclopedia; Over the Top, November 2016;  "Total Rhetoric, Limited War: Germany's U-Boat Campaign 1917 -1918," Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, May 1998, by Holger Herwig; Bundesarchiv