Wonder how many more Uboats Germany would of had if they had not build a useless surface fleet?
That’s precisely the entire point of the article. The author concludes by throwing out loose numbers like “thousands” and “hundreds” and conjecturing how that would have changed the outcome of the war. He says the Allies would have still defeated the Axis with its greater industrial might, but it would have taken longer.
“Wonder how many more Uboats Germany would of had if they had not build a useless surface fleet?”
The Plan Z Fleet would not be ready before 1946. By pushing the war timetable forward, Hitler essentially screwed over his Navy planners. This kind of “shooting blanks” effect happens all the time in warfare. Hitler was born in Austria-Hungary. His concept of strategic distance was Vienna to Berlin. And so he had blinders on when it came to things like the true value of a long-range Navy and strategic bombing.
IIRC, the Third Reich put 800 U-boats to sea. They were wickedly effective against Allied shipping, but the various means to detect & engage them rapidly evolved.
600 U-boats were sunk during the war.
-—Victor Davis Hanson’s great book “The Second World Wars” has some comparisons of what the Germans could have had , had they not squandered assets on such as the Bismarck and the V-2 rockets-—
Their ships were beautiful though.
Lots more at the start of the war.
But Hitler didn’t understand their importance in WW1 and so didn’t really support them before WW2. He, like most any guy stuck in the trenches, could understand battleships though.