Nazi Indoctrination of the Kriegsmarine and its Relations with the NSDAP in the Years 1935–1945 – Outline of Subject Matter

The article deals with the problem of institutional mechanics and willingness for acquisition of the Nazi worldview in the Kriegsmarine. In the centre of the reflections remains a crucial question: how the indoctrination process in the German navy took place during the time after 1935. Furthermore, the organisational interactions between the NSDAP and the Kriegsmarine are analysed, as well as motives and limits of the Party’s endeavours to ideologically impact the attitudes and views of the sailors. How this development of indoctrination efforts was carried out and what results it brought is described on the basis of the Nazi pseudo–pedagogic concept of “military spiritual leadership” (wehrgeistige Führung). As part of the measures to preserve its “state within the state” status, the navy, especially during World War II, began to systematically Nazify itself in a paradoxical aim to show Adolf Hitler that it was not necessary to put an end to its traditional independence. In order to prevent the “coordination” (Gleichschaltung) from above, the Kriegsmarine engaged itself more and more in a process of self–indoctrination. The text is an outline of the subject matter.