Free Dönitz: The Last Führer by Peter Padfield Page A

jump, and above all would England come in?
    On the same day the British Admiralty sent out the ‘Warning Telegram’ to all ships. Aboard the
Breslau
before Durazzo they saw their British neighbour weigh and take up another position far to seawards out of torpedo range. That night she disappeared. She made no signal, ‘let alone a personal leave-taking as she broke the long lying-timetogether. With that the change of our relationship to England became obvious’. 64
    In Pola, meanwhile, the crew of the
Goeben
had been assisting the dockyard men sent out from Germany and, working around the clock in the fierce heat below decks, had replaced 4,000 defective tubes in the battlecruiser’s boilers in eighteen days. She sailed down the Adriatic on the 30th, and late on the 31st Admiral Souchon ordered the
Breslau
by wireless to Messina in Sicily, calling on the way at Brindisi to organize colliers for a rendezvous at sea. The cruiser sailed secretly that night, arriving at Brindisi in the early hours of August 1st. Dönitz had been chosen to make the coaling arrangements with the German consul and, after he had been put ashore, the cruiser continued on her way; he was to be picked up later by the
Goeben
.
    It was a close, heavy summer’s night as he walked through the silent streets looking for the Consul’s residence. Finding it eventually, he made his way in to an inner courtyard—it was an old palace—but found he had to shout to rouse the household. At length a man appeared on one of the balconies demanding angrily who it was; when he saw the naval uniform his manner changed. ‘His first question, which he put to me without knowing what I wanted of him at such an early morning hour, was: would England take part in the coming war or not?’ 65
    After a morning spent in arrangements for the colliers, Dönitz had lunch with the Consul and his family, then went down to the harbour and sat alone on the outer mole gazing out to sea, gnawed by fears that the
Goeben
might be diverted and might not be able to pick him up; he would have to spend the war in Italy instead of in the fighting with his ‘beloved
Breslau
’. Late in the afternoon she appeared, ‘God be thanked …’and he went aboard and reported the success of his mission to Souchon. 66
    She sailed that night, steering south-west for the toe of Italy. The following morning, August 2nd, was fine and hot; the sea flashed and glittered under a blue sky cut grandly to starboard by the heights of Calabria. Rounding Cape Spartivento with Mount Etna ahead shimmering in a heat haze, she steered up for Messina; soon the masts and funnels of the
Breslau
could be made out amongst the assembled shipping; Dönitz transferred to her as soon as they were moored.
    By now it had become clear that Italy was not going to come in on the German side; it was also clear that the German squadron was not going to have the support of the Austrian fleet on which Souchon had counted. He had come to Messina to carry out an agreed plan for a joint strikeagainst transports which would carry army units from North Africa back to mainland France, but now he was alone. No doubt it was because of the question mark over England’s intentions, but it left his two ships dangerously exposed to the British Mediterranean squadron headed by three battlecruisers, now concentrated at Malta, barely 150 miles to the south.
    In Berlin, meanwhile, Wilhelm had collapsed. Monstrous reality had forced itself in, distorted as it was in his egocentric view: ‘as a reward for keeping our pledges we get set upon and
beaten
by the Triple Entente as a body so that their longing to ruin us completely can be finally satisfied’. 67 Up to this point France had done her utmost to give no provocation, but von Moltke’s heavy artillery and troop trains were precisely timetabled; the Chancellor had been forced to dash off a note to Paris to legalize the declaration of war necessary on the next day.
    Souchon, informed of the