Imperial German Navy personnel of World War I

Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; German: [ˈdøːnɪts] ; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II.
He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. As commander of UB-68, he attacked a convoy in the Mediterranean while on patrol near Malta. Sinking one ship before the rest of the convoy outran his U-boat, Dönitz began to formulate the concept of U-boats operating in attack groups Rudeltaktik (German for "pack tactic", commonly called a "wolfpack") for greater efficiency, rather than operating independently.By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished.On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure.
By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Hermann Bauer (22 July 1875 – 11 February 1958) was a German naval officer who served as commander of the U-boat forces of the Kaiserliche Marine during World War I. In addition to his World War I career, Bauer is well known as the author of the book Das Unterseeboot, a treatise on the design and operation of U-boats, which was later translated into English by Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover's translation became a basic text for the US submarine service.

August Thiele (26 August 1893 – 31 March 1981) was an admiral during World War II and commander of the heavy cruiser Lützow. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves.
Thiele received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his command of Lützow and his leadership of Kampfgruppe V (5th battle group) during the occupation of Oslo. Thiele had taken command of the battle group after the sinking of Blücher. He was appointed commander of the Kampfgruppe II (2nd battle group) in the Baltic Sea on 28 July 1944 and commander of Kampfgruppe "Thiele" on 23 March 1945. With the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, Admiral Hipper, Admiral Scheer and Lützow, and the ships of the line Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein and the light cruisers Emden, Köln, Leipzig and Nürnberg he participated from sea in the land battles for Courland and in Samland.

Hans Wolfgang von Gronau (25 February 1893 – 17 March 1977) was a German aviation pioneer and Luftwaffe general. During World War II he was the German air attaché and the chief of the Luftwaffe liaison staff in Japan.

Max Reichpietsch (24 October 1894 – 5 September 1917) was a German sailor executed in 1917 for socialist agitation in the Imperial German Navy.

Johann Wilhelm Kinau (22 August 1880 – 31 May 1916), better known by his pseudonym Gorch Fock (German pronunciation: [ɡɔʀx fɔk]), was a German author. Other pseudonyms he used were Jakob Holst and Giorgio Focco.

Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger (Wilhem Otto Walther Schwieger) (7 April 1885 – 5 September 1917) was a U-boat commander in the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during First World War. In 1915, he sank the passenger liner RMS Lusitania with the loss of 1,199 lives.

Helmut Hasse (German: [ˈhasə]; 25 August 1898 – 26 December 1979) was a German mathematician working in algebraic number theory, known for fundamental contributions to class field theory, the application of p-adic numbers to local class field theory and diophantine geometry (Hasse principle), and to local zeta functions.

Wolfgang Wegener (September 16, 1875 in Stettin – October 29, 1956 in Berlin-Zehlendorf) was an officer in the Imperial German Navy, retiring in 1926 with the rank of Vizeadmiral (vice-admiral).
He is noted as the originator of a series of influential works, published between 1915 and 1929, outlining the so-called Wegener Thesis. This thesis criticized the naval strategy adopted by Germany in the First World War, and proposed an alternative strategy based on threatening the sea lines of communication of the United Kingdom with both surface and sub-surface forces. The Wegener thesis is often regarded as a significant contribution to German naval strategy in the Second World War, although the extent to which this was actually the case is disputed.