Few world powers have been quite so fond of
insane megaprojects as Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Through the 1930s, Nazi Germany embarked on
engineering projects on a massive scale, drawing up plans for thousands of weird and wonderful
machinations from the total re-design and development of the capital Berlin into some kind
of totalitarian super-monument to the ridiculous P1000 Monster Land-tank. But at sea Nazi Germany
had a vested interest in combating the might of British shipbuilding both naval and merchant; but
despite being in power for 12 years Nazi Germany never built an ocean liner to answer Britain’s
Queen Mary or France’s Normandie. Why - when ocean liners were such a key symbol of national
power on the world stage - did Hitler fail to introduce a Nazi ocean liner? Well believe it or
not there were two fully-fledged plans for a super liner to carry the mantle for the German state
but they were never completed. And here’s why. When Hitler and his fascist party assumed
power over Germany in 1933 they assumed control of a nation with advanced engineering
capabilities and technological advancement. This was most evident at sea; Germany’s ocean
liner were some of the best in the world. Norddeutscher Lloyd’s Bremen and Europa
had directly threatened Britain’s dominance on the transatlantic trade and really
introduced a new era of transatlantic liner. They’d been introduced in 1929 and 1930, a product
of Weimar Germany nad 3 or 4 years before the nazis rose to power. The two sister ships were
Germany’s premiere offering at sea; they were over 900 feet long, displaced about 55,000 tons
and were very fast. The pair one the coveted Blue Riband each - the award for the fastest
passenger ship crossing across the Atlantic. They were pretty forward-thinking too; both ships
carried a catapult and a Heinkel He-12 mail-plane to be launched when close to the US so mail
could get a head start before the ship docked. While Bremen and Europa were absolutely
dominating the transatlantic trade, smaller German liners were operating less famous
routes. Hamburg Amerika Line had invested in three huge superliner sisters; Imperator, Vaterland
and Bismarck; but these had been confiscated at the end of the first world war and sold off
to British shipping lines instead. Hamburg Amerika line didn’t try to build a world-class
super liner after that; instead they focused on building smaller, more economic ships carrying
both cargo and passengers to south America. They did build some dedicated ocean liners
though like the SS St Louis here; a modest 16,000 ton transatlantic workhorse. She was pretty and functional but a far cry from the
gargantuan splendour of the Imperator. It was probably the Hamburg South-America Line
that was building the most impressive German liners of the 20s aside from NDL’s Bremen
and Europa of course - the Cap Arcona was a great example of these. Completed
in 1927 the ship was a real beauty; and at 27,000 tons she wasn’t small either! So that’s a rough assessment of the German
passenger merchant lineup at around the time Hitler came to power. By then, in 1933,
Bremen and Europa had been unseated from their place as fastest ocean liners in
the world by Normandie and then Queen Mary. Germany would have to answer the British
and European challenge and if there’s one thing Hitler and his lackeys loved most of all,
it was showing off. Ocean liners were grand and always in the spotlight; and Nazi Germany
needed a response to Queen Mary and Normandie. The Nazi government invited Germany’s shipping
companies to submit design proposals for superliners to catapult German shipbuilding back
into the world focus and Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg America Line’s designers set to work
on creating a true superliner for Nazi Germany. The first off the mark was Norddeutscher Lloyd. In
1937 NDL representatives took a train to Berlin to present their design to the Reich ministry.
They’d worked with the shipbuilder AG Weser in Bremen before on the SS Bremen and the design
they showed off that day in 1937 was very much in the tradition of the older ship. The design called
for a liner over 1,075 feet long and in excess of 80,000 tons. This would make the new
ship the largest liner in the world; but she would also be the fastest. The ship’s
long hull and clean lines would be the perfect form for carving through the water at
great speed; and to power it the ship would receive an enormous powerplant; turbines
driving no fewer than 5 propellers at 300,000 horsepower. This immense power output would
propel the new liner through the ocean at an average of 35 knots, meaning the Blue Riband
prize would fall to Nazi Germany. The fuel costs would have been enormous; but the government
intended to subsidise the liner’s operations. Crucially though the new liner’s decks would be even more uncluttered and clean than
those of Normandie or the Queen Mary. To enhance their profile and balance them out,
many ocean liners from the era used dummy funnels; smoke stacks not connected to the boilers
and constructed purely for cosmetic purposes. But NDL would have none of that; the new liner
would feature only one enormous funnel towards the front of the ship which gave the
ship a strange, imposing appearance. If completed, the monstrous ocean liner would
surely achieve the brief; deposing Queen Mary and reigning as the largest and fastest
ship at sea for the foreseeable future. In a curious twist for a narcissistic
regime the new liner would be named Amerika; maybe in a move to court American public opinion
and sway them towards more friendly relations with Germany in the case of a war with Europe.
In any case the design was largely approved and work continued on refining the details but
by the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 no keel plates had yet been laid
and the Amerika existed only on paper. But by 1941 things had changed a bit; Hitler’s
armies were at their most victorious, having crushed Europe’s armies and implementing
a sweeping invasion of the Soviet Union which - until then - had been going exactly as
planned, resulting in local success after success. Relationships with the United States had soured
though and in December 1941 the US sided with the Allies after being attacked at Pearl
Harbour; NDL’s superliner project would need a new name so Viktoria - Victory - was chosen as
a suitably bold and self-congratulatory moniker. Viktoria though stayed on paper - the ship
was never built because by the time NDL was at the final stages of preparation Hitler’s armies
began to suffer at the hands of the Allied powers; by 1945 it was all over. Hitler’s dream
of a great totalitarian state was dead, he was dead - and the ocean
liner Viktoria was dead. NDL lost basically all of its ships and its
days as a major transatlantic player were done. Viktoria’s drawings were archived
away and the plan was forgotten about. But while NDL had been kind of sitting on their hands through the late 1930s not-building
Viktoria, their competitors at Hamburg America actually managed to get a Nazi
ocean liner off of paper and into reality. Hamburg America - also known as HAPAG -
had spent the 20s and 30s building modest, smaller ships and had stayed mostly out of the
race for transatlantic dominance. But by the mid 30s it became clear that if the company
was to compete with its international rivals they’d have to do better than just offer
passage on small cargo-passenger ships. The plan called for a trio of superliners
whose construction would be subsidised by the Nazi government. HAPAG decided
to not follow in NDL’s footsteps; the trio of ships would not compete with
Normandie or Queen Mary for supremacy in either size or speed, but they would be
some of the largest German ships afloat. The first ship was planned through 1936 and
37 and the final design was curious to say the least. It would be 824 feet in length and
about 41,000 GRT - considerably smaller than the Queen Mary and more in the size category
of transatlantic liners that had been built and launched about twenty years earlier
in the days of Titanic. She’d be a little slow too with a turbo-electric setup driving two
propellers to give the ship a speed of 24 knots; 11 knots lower than the proposed speed of
Viktoria. The design team clearly took great inspiration from the French liner Normandie
with this one; the bow curvature and breakwater are almost identical to those found on the French
liner. I’ve even seen some people credit Valdimir Yourkevitch, Normandie’s chief architect,
with Vaterland’s design. The addition of two, squat funnels made the ship look a little stout.
She’d have had capacity for 354 first class, 435 tourist and 533 third class passengers. In 1938
the keel was laid at Blohm und Voss in Hamburg, alongside the likes of the German battleship
Bismarck. HAPAG chose to recycle a favourite old name; in the wake of the second world war the
SS Vaterland - or father land - had been taken off the company’s hands and sold to United States
Lines. That had been a huge blow to morale for the German people - so HAPAG hoped this new Vaterland
would carry the torch. Except - it never would. By 1940 the war was raging but Germany was doing
quite well and work on Vaterland continued until the ship’s hull was complete and ready for
launch. She rumbled down the slipway at Hamburg before being led into the fitting-out wharf;
but then disaster struck. German’y military fortunes were reversed and work on Vaterland was
diverted to more pressing matters. For years the ship’s incomplete hulk sat with work halted or
continuing at a crawl but then in July 1943, Vaterland’s day of destiny arrived. Operation
Gomorroah was a combined Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force initative to destroy the city of
Hamburg and for 8 days and 7 nights the city was bombed mercilessly by Avro Lancasters and B-17s.
The effect was tremendous and the raid left about 35,000 people dead, and 61% of the city’s housing
destroyed. When the smoke cleared it became clear that Blohm und Voss had received horrible damage
and the Vaterland itself had taken two direct bomb hits. One of these detonated within the ship
with such force that the ship’s forecastle deck at the front blew out and peeled up over
the bridge. The ship was now a write-off as far as HAPAG were concerned because things just got
worse from there; as their armies suffered more defeats and the war decisively turned against
Nazi Germany, no attempt to salvage or repair Vaterland was ever made. In 1945 the war was
over and cleanup could begin; but Vaterland sat forlorn and abandoned for another 3 years
until 1948 when the hulk was broken up for scrap.
