World War II – The Weapon the US Never Imagined Would Get So Close
Five days after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, and just a day following Germany’s declaration of war against the United States, Adolf Hitler reached out to Rear Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat fleet. Hitler, seething with a desire to show American forces they weren’t beyond the reach of the Third Reich, demanded an immediate and aggressive U-boat campaign against the U.S. mainland. The strategy was deceptively simple: remain submerged daily to evade detection and emerge under darkness to unleash terror on coastal shipping. When Captain Reinhard Hardegen, commanding officer of U-123 and one of the first to bring his U-boat into American waters in January 1942, surfaced, he was met with a sight that left him astounded. The American coastline was ablaze with light. Seemingly oblivious to the lurking danger, Merchant vessels were illuminated like Christmas trees. It was a turkey shoot waiting to happen. For six months, these daring German skippers would brazenly hunt along the American coastlines virtually unchallenged. Their audacity grew to such heights that they began patrolling on the surface in broad daylight, visible to American beachgoers, who could only watch in stunned disbelief. As these German wolfpacks inflicted chaos and destruction along America’s Eastern Seaboard, the U.S. government, scrambling to keep a lid on the escalating crisis, churned out propaganda. Meanwhile, the U.S. military, caught off-guard in its peacetime stupor, was jolted awake. The enemy called it “The Second Happy Time,” and America would have to adapt swiftly to stop it or face a crippling humiliation. Credit to : WW2 on TV