America! #%$* Yeah!

So, American culture sort of owned the world in the post-war period. Just saying. The Europeans couldn't resist the appealing image of a surly, semi-suicidal teenager dangling that carcinogen of cool, the cigarette, from his lips. Sure, we may have been undermining the foundations of centuries upon centuries of European culture, but whatever. We rocked!

But seriously, what did all those continental cats dig our beat so much? My guess is the fragmentation of culture that began at the start of the 20th century (and maybe even beforehand) with the modernist movement. Every genre of music and art was becoming more and more specific and, dare I say?, esoteric, especially after WWII, so American mass culture stepped in to fill the void. And there were a lot more teenagers around, doing their baby-booming thing, as was their wont to do. In addition, America was awesome. Fact.

Oberkommando = So Cool

Having what is possibly the coolest, silliest, and funkiest name in the entirety of the German wehrmacht was the oberkommando der marine (supreme commander of the navy). Though the title is rather self-explanatory, I feel nevertheless compelled to outline the purview of this position. Mr. Oberkommando was in charge of the strategic operations of the kriegsmarine, and he had a number of henchman-like underlings (or so I would like to believe), namely (and take heed, dear reader, for this quote hails from the stygian depth of wikipedia's page on the kriegsmarine - dubious! to say the least) a "Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine), a Chief of Naval General Staff (Chef der Stabes der Seekriegsleitung) and a Chief of Naval Operations (Chef der Operationsabteilung)." These positions were in addition to the standard naval ranks (here is another excerpt from wikipedia, this time comparing the ranks of the German and US/British navies):

Kriegsmarine	US Navy/Royal Navy
Großadmiral	Fleet Admiral/Admiral of the Fleet
Generaladmiral	Admiral
Admiral	Vice Admiral
Vizeadmiral	Rear Admiral (Upper Half)
Konteradmiral	Rear Admiral (Lower Half)
Kommodore	Commodore
Kapitän zur See	Captain
Fregattenkapitän	Commander
Korvettenkapitän	Lieutenant Commander
Kapitänleutnant	Lieutenant
Oberleutnant zur See	Lieutenant (Jg.); Sub-Lieutenant
Leutnant zur See	Ensign/ --
Oberfähnrich zur See	Midshipman (Senior)
Fähnrich zur See	Cadet/Midshipman (Junior)

For instance, the first two oberkommandos, Erich Raeder and Karl Donitz, were both Grand Admirals. Yes, the Germans were quite efficient in their naval organization, and yet...they lost! Why? I will examine that in later blog posts. I will also discuss Raeder and Donitz in greater depth, for they lead rich, or at least half-interesting lives.