SMS Gneisenau (1879)
The crew attempted to drop the starboard anchor, but it did not catch in the stony ground. "Gneisenau" was driven into the mole repeatedly, striking it with her stern twice before being turned and pushed bow-first on the starboard side, forcing her aground. A merchant ship attempted to come to the crew's aid, but they were unable to connect a line between the two ships before "Gneisenau" began to list 35 degrees. A boat from shore also attempted to rescue the crew, but it too was forced ashore in the heavy seas. Wave action quickly smashed "Gneisenau"s hull against the mole, and part of her crew attempted to find safety by climbing the rigging. The ship rolled over onto her side, and the surviving crewmen reached shore with a line. Forty-one men were killed in the accident, including Kretschmann and the ship's first officer. "Charlotte" and the British ironclad were sent to aid the wounded. Those killed in the sinking were buried in Málaga's cemetery, and the survivors returned to Germany aboard the HAPAG steamship on 2 January 1901.
Erich Raeder during World War II
In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up the success of Operation Berlin with Operation Rheinübung, where the , the , the and the would be sent out on an extended raid into the North Atlantic under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens. On the night of 10/11 April 1941 the "Gneisenau" was badly damaged by a British bombing attack that put her out of commission for months. At that point, Admiral Lütjens advised cancelling the operation as having one battleship with only one heavy cruiser in support operating alone in the Atlantic was too risky, but was overruled by Raeder, who insisted on going ahead. Raeder's principal reason for going ahead with "Rheinübung" was his knowledge of the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, where the "Kriegsmarine" could only play a very small part, and his desire to score a major success before Barbarossa that might impress upon Hitler the need not to cut the budget for capital ships. Lütjens wanted Rheinübung put off until the "Scharnhorst" was finished refitting in July 1941, but since Barbarossa was due to start on 22 June 1941, Raeder insisted that the operation go ahead in May 1941. Though Rheinübung saw the "Bismarck" sink the battlecruiser , it ended with the sinking of the "Bismarck". The loss of a modern battleship more than outweighed the loss of an old battlecruiser, and that debacle almost put an end to Raeder's strategy of using capital ships to destroy the British Merchant Marine. Murray and Millet wrote that after the loss of the "Bismarck" that "Raeder's strategy of surface raiders had largely failed". After the "Bismarck" was disabled by a British torpedo hit on the rudder on 26 May 1941, Raeder sent a series of radio messages to Lütjens reminding him of his "fight to the last round" order of December 1939, an order that Lütjens faithfully obeyed. The German historian Werner Rahn argued in "Germany and the Second World War", the official history of the Wehrmacht that Raeder's orders to "fight to the finish" doomed most of the crew of the "Bismarck" to a watery grave; had Lütjens being given the option of scuttling or surrendering the "Bismarck" rather engaging in a hopeless battle, the lives of 2,200 German officers and sailors could have been saved instead of the 110 who were saved. Raeder himself was personally pleased by the sinking of the "Bismarck", feeling this had won the "Kriegsmarine" some much needed glory on the high seas and was consistent with his goal of "full engagement" where the "Kriegsmarine" capital ships were sent into action until they all were sunk to win his service glory, but Hitler was more than annoyed at the loss of the "Bismarck". The deaths of most of the crew of the "Bismarck" did not trouble Hitler, but he complained to Raeder that building the "Bismarck" had cost millions of "Reichmarks", and it seemed like a poor investment given that the ship was lost on its first voyage. Moreover, Hitler told Raeder that he believed that once the Soviet Union was defeated later in the summer of 1941, that it was quite possible that Britain would simply "collapse" as a result of that German triumph, and he wanted the German fleet to be ready to take advantage of the expected "collapse", not at the bottom of the Atlantic. After the loss of the "Bismarck", Hitler started to curtail Raeder's freedom to plan and launch operations on the high seas involving capital ships. Raeder's last attempt at using a capital ship as a raider occurred in June 1941, when he ordered the pocket battleship into the North Atlantic; she was badly damaged by an attack from British torpedo planes on 13 June 1941 that put her out of commission for six months.