German Auxiliary Cruisers in WW2

video dedicated to the German Auxiliary Cruisers (Hilfskreuzern or Commerce Raiders) of World War Two and their commanders and crews. Photos and documents from all the 9 ships that took part in the German Raider Campaign 1940-1943.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• german
• hilfskreuzer
• auxiliary
• cruiser
• pinguin
• atlantis
• komet
• kormoran
• raeder
• donitz
• u-boot
• hitler
• nazism
• orion
• raider

[rdemeyrick]

This Video is in very bad taste. The men of these vessels may have been "mariners doing their duty" but those duties were offensive and unacceptable...eg blowing up non-military vessels, and killing many hundreds of non-military personel. Their exploits should not be subject of this tribute. They may have been decent men, but they were on evil missions.

[willembrock]

Historically, the commanders always tried to treat as well as possible every prisoner onboard their ship, The missions...there was only one way to defeat Britain: defeating her merchant navy.

[rdemeyrick]

Willembrock; My comment was not directed at the commanders or thier crews. I was not trying to suggest they executed prisoners. But the missions killed 100's of civilians. Unlike many wars, there can be no serious dispute that Germany and its allies were in the wrong in WW2. They had no moral right to try to "defeat Britain", and as for laying mines in shiping lanes as far away as the East Coast of Australia, this was totally unjustified. The exploits of these raiders should not be glorified.

[willembrock]

I'm Italian and my country suffered a lot during the Second World war: Unfortunately the war is always the war, and compared to some atrocities that units of the German Army committed in Northern Italy the "death toll" of these "missions" was quite low...There are a lot of interesting books about these ships written either by British and Greman authors that confirms what I'm saying

[teutonalex]

My grandfather's nephew Horst L. served aboard the Pinguin. He went down with her when she was caught by HMS Cornwall. The two fought it out for 27 minutes until Pinguin's stored mines where hit. Gedenken an alle Seeleute des 2. Weltkrieges.

[Bauhotte]

One of my grandpas served on the "Orion",

the longest time he was in sea was 17 month!

@rdemeyrick: Austrlia was in war with Germany so the mines are justified!

[Kaiser3945]

Irritating shit music. What the f... has it got to do with Q ships?

[Capitancanguro1]

@elementalcat Stick wiki up your house.

[elementalcat]

@Capitancanguro1

To get your facts right, you might want to look up "Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran" on wiki.

[Capitancanguro1]

@RMSTitanic87 The Kormoran did not sink the ship,she was sunk by friendly fire.

[Dolphindream15]

so many cruise ships went into war not built for war but they went in so many of those ships went to there watery grave,,how many really surrvived the war,,,I know queen mary and Queen elizabeth surrvived ,,any other ocean liners that may have surrvived the war,,

[RMSTitanic87]

Kormoran was the only one to sink a major warship. Kormoran is favorite ship. Great tribute there sir.

[matamuelas]

Good video of one of the less publicited facts in WWII: weak modified ships gunnered with a few cannons, much courage and a lot of astuteness.

With the regular German Navy status during WWII impossible to stand against UK at sea.

Bad taste? .... mmmhhh at war many facts are of bad taste: Wilhem Gustloff, Dresden bombardment, Hiroshima, etc. etc.

In YouTube you can see that the germans were not stupid, pampered and so easy to kill as in the Hollywood movies (jejejeje).

[kamikaziu]

Don't forget that it were Germans who started the war.