| Bismarck Second Edition:
Scenarios, Stories and History, Part 4
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2023
 Our story began with:
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
With the loss of Bismarck, German strategy in the North Atlantic shifted away from the series of surface ship raids to one of reliance on submarines and long-range aircraft. The Playbook edition of Second World War at Sea: Bismarck winds up with several scenarios dedicated to the possibilities of further action, with the scenarios themselves based on Allied rather than German war planning for the most part.
While wargames are not by any stretch of the imagination the equivalent of a true historical study (there are no footnotes on the pieces), you can pick up a few insights from them, when the underlying model is solid.
Sir Stafford Cripps, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Jack Tovey. One of these men had great skill in naval operations.
What the commerce-raiding operations of Bismarck, the game, show pretty clearly is that Bismarck, the ship, should never have been sent into the North Atlantic. She had not been designed for such a mission, nor had the other conventional surface warships deployed in the same role (the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen). The German fleet had been built according to political rather than strategic imperatives: Adolf Hitler approved building the ships in order to show Germany’s improved international standing and most importantly its new accord with Great Britain. The Anglo-German Naval Treaty of June 1935 marked one of the new regime’s first diplomatic successes, and putting pen to paper in London had to be followed by putting rivets to steel in Wilhelmshaven.
That treaty set Germany on course to build a conventional fleet that could never match that of the United Kingdom, one that could contribute little to achieving German strategic goals in the war that Hitler’s rise made inevitable. The Weimar Republic built long-range armored cruisers whose design acknowledged Germany’s new geopolitical reality; a few more of those diesel-powered ships (burning fuel that Germany could provide far more easily than heavy oil) might have been much more useful in the North Atlantic.
After the loss of Bismarck, the Germans still had one more new battleship, Tirpitz, which was completing her sea trials in the Baltic when Bismarck made her one and only sortie and not yet considered ready to join her sister ship as some German naval planners had hoped. But with the game, Bismarck, we can (and do) look at what difference a second new German battleship might have made in the North Atlantic.
 The British have the force to deal with two German battleships, even though individually the German ships outmatch any single battleship the Home Fleet can deploy against them. The problem for the British in the game, as it would have been in the actual war, lies not in the waters off Iceland but in London. The former First Lord of the Admiralty, now Prime Minister Winston Churchill, still insisted on sticking his fingers into the Admiralty’s pie. The Home Fleet could not easily concentrate its force, with its heavy ships scattered over the map to suit Churchill’s strategic vision. In game terms, that yields plentiful opportunities for naval engagements on a near-equal basis, but it’s not an optimal deployment for Allied victory.
 The Germans have their own incompetent leadership with which to deal; Adolf Hitler ran his empire like a feudal emperor, forcing his barons to jockey for his favor. In that environment, the German Air Force had no political incentive to support the Navy. Giving minimal fighter cover to naval bases and shipyards only detracted from Germany’s already-slim chances for victory in the war, but allowing British bombers free reign to pound German surface warships in port meant that those ships would not be stealing the Leader’s favor. And this was far more important to the Air Force leadership. In terms of the game, and the naval situation, this meant that on top of maintenance issues, the German Navy could never deploy all of its surface forces in the North Atlantic as some important ships would always be under repair (and subject to more bombing while under repair).
 The strategic balance shifts even more heavily toward the Allied side once the United States enters the war. The game doesn’t delve into the North Atlantic after the formal American declaration of war; by that point, the German Navy’s outlook had shifted to the Arctic where its remaining ships could have more impact deployed against the convoy traffic headed to Soviet Arctic Ports (and covered in our Arctic Convoy game). But the United States did take a rather aggressive form of neutrality, with substantial forces cruising the North Atlantic. And we let them fight the Germans.
 Hitler’s Germany briefly entertained notions of trying to build a powerful surface fleet that could truly contest the North Atlantic sea lanes, and we studied that in game form as well, in the Plan Z expansion set for Bismarck. Plan Z’s kitchen-sink approach granted approval to the German Navy factions that wanted more commerce-hunting armored cruisers, more traditional battleships, more mine warfare vessels and more submarines. That should have been a tell that Plan Z was always a bluff, not a serious proposal, but the Navy leadership appears to have believed that for a brief moment in 1939 they had Hitler’s blessing for a wild spending spree. That came to a quick close with the September 1939 invasion of Poland.
 The Plan Z scenario set reveals that even with a mighty surface fleet, the Germans would still face a daunting geographic reality. The island of Britain, with the other islands along the boundary between Atlantic and Arctic waters (Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes), makes for a formidable geographic shield. The vital sea lanes that the Allies must defend and the Germans must attack are on the wrong side of this shield from a German perspective. A fleet with many more badly-designed ships (and the Plan Z ships would not have been very good, another indicator that this was not a serious strategic blueprint) still would have to get past this line in order to attack Allied shipping.
Though little recognized in popular histories of the war, Allied access to Iceland (and perhaps more importantly, denial of such access to the Germans) made all of the difference in the North Atlantic naval war. The Allies could base ships and planes there to search for the Germans; the Germans could not and had to figure out how to slip past the British patrol line in the gaps between the islands.
 In Plan Z, the Germans must try to capture the steaming volcanic island; with it in their hands, they have a better chance of isolating Britain. But it’s hard to hide a major shipbuilding effort, and had Germany embarked on massive naval expansion Britain would have had a chance to improve her own forces as well.
Our Second Great War at Sea alternative history expansion for Bismarck, seen in The Cruel Sea and The King’s Ships expansion sets, takes place in a reality where the First World War ended in a negotiated settlement. The great empires of Eastern Europe survive for another generation, as does Kaiser Wilhelm and his High Seas Fleet. Germany has a far more robust economy, a far more powerful fleet, and possession of Iceland from the start of the war. That makes for a completely different strategic situation, and a hefty challenge (with lots of battleship action) for the game’s players.
You can order Bismarck Playbook Edition right here.
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good.
He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.
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