Erich Topp (2 July 1914 – 26 December 2005) was a German U-boat commander of World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords of Nazi Germany. He sank 35 ships for a total of . After the war, he served with the Federal German Navy, in which he reached the rank of Konteradmiral (rear admiral). He later served in NATO.
Early life and career Topp was born in Hannover on 2 July 1914. Topp joined the Reichsmarine on 8 April 1934.The German Reichsmarine was renamed to Kriegsmarine on 1 June 1935. He received his military basic training between 8 April 1934 – 13 June 1934. He was then transferred to the school ship Gorch Fock on 14 June 1934, and to the light cruiser on 27 September 1934. Under the command of Kapitän zur See Günther Lütjens, Topp sailed on Karlsruhes fourth training cruise. Karlsruhe left Kiel on 22 October 1934. The ship sailed via Skagen, the Azores and Trinidad to North America. Karlsruhe returned to Kiel on 15 June 1935.
Following his journey on Karlsruhe, Topp attended the main cadet course at the Naval Academy Mürwik (30 June 1935 – 29 June 1936). During this time at the naval academy, he advanced in rank to Fähnrich zur See (officer cadet) on 1 July 1935 and underwent further training. On 16 October 1936, he was again transferred to Karlsruhe, staying onboard until 31 March 1937. The next day, he was promoted to Leutnant zur See (second lieutenant) and took a torpedo training course, which he completed on 17 April. On 18 April, he was yet again posted to Karlsruhe, serving as an adjutant until 4 October 1937.
On 5 October 1937, Topp started his U-boat training at the U-boat school in Neustadt in Holstein and then became instruction officer. Topp was then posted to the Wegener Flotilla on 26 September 1938. There, he was appointed first watch officer on under the command of Kapitänleutnant Herbert Sohler. On 1 April 1939, Topp was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See (sublieutenant).
National Socialism In May 1933, Topp joined the Nazi Party and in 1934 also joined the Allgemeine-SS. Topp took the Hitler oath, convinced it was the "right thing to do." To the beginning of the war at least, his peers regarded Topp as a Nazi. Topp made the acquaintance of Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. Bormann married the sister of Topp's crew mate, Walter Buch. Topp was close enough to be invited to Bormann's residence in Berchtesgaden. Topp's political outlook was not shared by his uncle. His aunt through marriage, Anna Topp, was Jewish. During the Nazi reign, she was sent to and survived the Theresienstadt Ghetto. In his memoirs, Topp claimed not to have believed in Nazi ideology. One analyst wrote, "the contrasts and Topp's individual course make obvious the limitations of any quantitative study" [of his political convictions].
Topp came to terms with the Nazi regime and its crimes postwar. He entered into heated arguments with former comrades over the cause for which they fought. Topp was particularly critical of Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander-in-chief of U-boats and later the Kriegsmarine, and briefly defacto President of Germany. After the war, Topp expressed his view that the German naval command, and his superior Karl Dönitz, knew of the Holocaust. Topp referenced Dönitz's commitment to National Socialism, admiration for Hitler, and his presence at the Posen speeches. Topp was critical of Dönitz's pretensions to have been an apolitical soldier. Topp said of Dönitz, that his failure to do anything about it "comes very close to a passive toleration of these insane crimes." Few former U-boat commanders were as vocal in attacking Dönitz's character. His aunt's experiences in the ghetto from 1943 may have been a factor. Dönitz confronted Topp personally when the latter called upon him. He purportedly greeted Topp with a question, "I understand you think I should have been executed?" He presented Topp with his accusation, underlined, and a letter from Samuel Eliot Morison, the official historian of the United States Navy, which accepted Dönitz's defence that he knew nothing of the Nazi crimes. Morison was who told Dönitz of Topp's accusations, or "doubts", as Topp later claimed they were.
World War II World War II commenced following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. U-46, under the command of Sohler, had already been at sea since 19 August, returning to port on 15 September. Topp sailed on three further patrols on U-46 (3 October – 7 November 1939, 19 December 1939 – 10 January 1940 and 11 March – 23 April 1940). During these patrols, U-46 sank one ship of on 17 October and another ship of on 21 December. For his service on U-46, Topp was awarded the U-boat War Badge () on 7 November 1939 and the Iron Cross 2nd Class () in January 1940. On 1 May 1940, he was transferred to the 1st U-boat Flotilla.
Command of U-57 After eight war patrols under the command of Kapitänleutnant Claus Korth, command of of the 1st U-boat Flotilla was passed to Topp on 5 June 1940. Topp's fifth war patrol began in Kiel on 11 July 1940 and was destined for the North Atlantic, into the North Channel, and the Minch. Because the Gruppenhorchgerät, a hydrophone array, was experiencing technical difficulties, Topp took U-57 to port for repairs. U-57 arrived in Bergen on 15 July, departed again that day only to return to Bergen on 20 July. Two days later, U-57 was able to begin her patrol. The Befehlshaber der U-Boote (BdU—supreme commander of the U-boat arm) credited Topp with the sinking three ships of of shipping. On 7 August, U-57 arrived in Lorient, France.
On 14 August 1940, U-57 departed from Lorient on her 10th war patrol. Again, Topp led U-57 into the North Atlantic, the North Channel, and the Hebrides. On this patrol, Topp sank three ships of , and damaged another ship of . On 3 September 1940, U-57 collided with the Norwegian vessel Rona near the lock at Brunsbüttel and sank. Following the loss of U-57 — the boat was later raised and used for training purposes — Topp was awarded Iron Cross 1st Class () and initially remained with 1st U-boat Flotilla. On 4 November, he was sent to Blohm & Voss, the shipbuilding works in Hamburg, for construction training of , a Type VIIC U-boat.
Transfer to U-552
On 4 December 1940, Topp took command of U-552 and commissioned the U-boat into the 7th U-boat Flotilla. Following sea trials and training, Topp, with Leutnant zur See Siegfried Koitschka as his second watch officer, took U-552 on its first war patrol on 13 February 1941. The patrol, which was destined for the North Atlantic west of Ireland, began in Kiel. That day, they headed for Brunsbüttel, where they stayed one day. The following day, U-552 made a stopover at Cuxhaven before leaving for Heligoland on 15 February. After three days at Heligoland, Topp took the boat into the North Atlantic. U-552s first patrol ended in Saint-Nazaire, France on 16 March 1941. On this patrol, Topp sank two ships of .
The second patrol on U-552 began on 7 April 1941 from Saint-Nazaire and targeted the shipping routes in the North Atlantic, south of Iceland. On this patrol, the BdU credited Topp with the sinking of three ships and one escort totaling . The patrol ended on 6 May, again in Saint-Nazaire. In reality, Topp sank three ships totaling , and damaged one ship of which was then sunk by (Adalbert Schnee). The third ship sunk during Topp's second patrol in command of U-552, was the troopship S.S. Nerissa (5,583 GRT, 207 casualties and 84 survivors) on 30 April 1941 about 140 nautical miles west of the North Channel. This sinking resulted in the third-largest loss of life for a ship sunk by U-boats in the approaches to the British Isles during the Second World War.
On 25 May, Topp took U-552 on its third war patrol. The next day, U-552 returned to Saint-Nazaire before heading for North Channel on 3 June. The BdU assumed that Topp sank three ships of and he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross () on 20 June 1941. This patrol ended on 2 July in Saint-Nazaire. Later analysis revealed that the true tonnage sunk accumulated to . One of the ships was the Norfolk. The vessel carried mail and steel plates among 4,000 tons of general cargo. Captain Frederick Lougheed and 69 men were saved; one man was lost.
Korvettenkapitän Harro Schacht was Topp's commander in training on U-552s fourth war patrol. The patrol, which began on 18 August and ended on 26 August in Saint-Nazaire, resulted in the sinking of one ship of . This ship had previously been damaged by (Reinhard Suhren). Following this patrol, Topp was promoted to Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant commander) on 1 September 1941. The fifth war patrol took U-552 into the North Atlantic, patrolling southeast of Greenland. Topp left Saint-Nazaire on 4 September and sank three ships of . U-552 returned to Saint-Nazaire on 5 October.
Reuben James and Second Happy time The next patrol began on 25 October and ended on 26 November 1941 in Saint-Nazaire. This was also Koitschka's last war patrol as first watch officer on U-552. On 31 October 1941, during U-552s sixth war patrol into the North Atlantic, Topp encountered the destroyer escorting Convoy HX 156 east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland; hit by a torpedo in a forward magazine, she went down with the loss of 100 of her 144 crew, the first United States Navy warship to be lost in World War II. The destruction of the Reuben James facilitated a worsening of already rapidly deteriorating diplomatic relations between Nazi Germany and the still nominally neutral United States of America. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the incident to shift public opinion toward a confrontational stance with the European Axis powers. Support for the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s gradually eroded. On 13 November 1941, amendments to the act allowed for the arming of US merchant ships, their operation in the war zone, and active assistance to the British Empire to increase the tonnage available to it. Hitler and the Nazi leadership wished to keep the US neutral and the order to minimise contact at sea remained in force, at least until Operation Barbarossa had destroyed the Soviet Union. Roosevelt did not publicly mention the destroyer was escorting a British convoy, was not flying the Ensign of the United States, and was in the process of dropping depth charges on another U-boat when it was engaged and sunk.
On 11 December 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States. Dönitz ordered immediate offensive operations off the East Coast of the United States. Codenamed Operation Drumbeat (Unternehmen Paukenschlag), the U-boat fleet inflicted the largest naval defeat on the US Navy in history. Though few in number at the beginning—just five—the U-boats pressed home attacks close to the shore, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico. The American failure to initialise a blackout, ship captains' insistence on following peace-time procedures, and lack of effective naval defences contributed to high losses. In all, 397 ships were sunk during Drumbeat. The Germans termed this period, the "Second Happy Time". Topp crossed the Atlantic and joined Wolfpack Zieten.