Theodor
Krancke, born March 30, 1893, in Magdeburg, joined the German navy in April
1912. During World War I serving on in the IX Torpedo Boat Flotilla,
attached to von Hipper’s battlecruisers, he participated in the Battle
of Jutland. From 1927 to 1929, he was the torpedo officer on the
pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein.
When World War II
began, this successful Kriegsmarine officer gave up running the Naval
Academy to take part in naval operations. As chief naval advisor to
Admiral Raeder, he oversaw planning of the 1940 invasions of Norway and
Denmark. Two months later, he was given command of the pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer. In late October 1940, he began a successful 5-1/2 month
North Atlantic raid, capturing three merchant ships and sinking a total
of 13 merchant vessels and the auxiliary cruiser HMS Jervis Bay. In
June 1941, he was appointed head of the Quartermaster Division of the
Kriegsmarine, and a year later promoted to naval advisor at OKW.
On
April 20, 1943, he was appointed Marinegruppenkommando West on the Bois
de Boulogne in Paris. Von Rundstedt’s naval counterpart, he commanded
all naval surface units and coastal batteries in the Western Theatre,
and as such directly answerable only to Dönitz and OKM. Krancke always
remained at odds with Rommel’s naval advisor, Admiral Ruge, refusing to
understand why a naval officer was attached to an army command. Ruge, in
turn, resented the undertone that he should be at sea or a lackey on
some naval staff.
Krancke felt that when the invasion came, it
would probably be somewhere between Boulogne and Cherbourg. On June 4th,
he departed for Bordeaux to wind up some mining operations in the Bay
of Biscay. Because the weather was scheduled to be bad for the next few
days, and because he felt a landing at this time would not occur because
the tides were wrong, he suspended minelaying operations and naval
patrols to the order.
When D-Day began, Krancke rushed back to
his headquarters in Paris but could do little to remove the huge Allied
fleet parked off Normandy’s coast.
Krancke, an ardent Nazi, had a
major hand in suppressing the anti-Hitler coup attempt in Paris on July
20, 1944. When he found out that the military governor had arrested
several of the SS and Gestapo, he threatened to march into Paris and go
to the prison with a thousand marines to free them.
He was later
given command of Naval Group Norway, which he held until April 1945.
After the surrender, he remained in command, overseeing the removal of
minefields and the dismantling of German naval defences in Norway.
Captured by the British on August 27th, he was released on October 3,
1947, and retired to his home near Hamburg.
He died on June 18, 1973.
Source :
https://www.casematepublishing.co.uk/blog/2019/05/23/countdown-to-d-day-krancke/
http://thirdreichcolorpictures.blogspot.com/2010/08/admiral-theodor-krancke.html
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