Did you ever think about it?
 

After watching movies by Stabiz and footage from the real thing, etc. has anyone really thought about what the Germans were doing out there in the oceans? These guys were in a steel tube hundreds of mile from anywhere, including the bottom! There was no GPS or fast rescue boats. They depended on the compass and the stars to get where they were going. Talk about being out there on your own!! Next time you make the trip to the east coast in the game, stop in the middle of the Atlantic, go to outside view on the conning tower and just look at the expanse of water. This is what these guys had seen. Nothing but water and sky, while in a steel tube already over 1/2 sunk! It takes a large set of kahunas to do something like that in my view.

Yeah it certainly does

I remember standing on the back of a ship some years ago in the bay of Biscay at night
Not a sound apart from the engines and not a light to be seen

Eerie but great all the same

They certainly deserve respect

Yeah, eerie seems to be the word. Also a feeling of being insignificate in the large scheme of things.

Take it a step further. Imagine being one of the guys in the engine room who never saw the sun, never got fresh air (except the few and far between times the kaleun let them up on deck) had no idea what was going on in an attack.

And still knowing that you were stranded in that iron coffin, in the middle of the ocean. Man, I would have gone stir crazy. I totally understand why Ghost from Das Boot flipped out.

'Lonely' is the word that springs to mind with me....and the tight confined/cramped/damp conditions...yuk !!...what an existence :down:

Standing on a deck and seeing nothing but water all the way to the horizon? Yeah, that can be lonely. Being inside with 50 or 200 or 6000 other sailors? No, lonely isn't the word. "Suffocating"...that's the word.

No matter what we think of the second world war and Germany I feel we should respect the level of professionalism, endurance and (unfortunatelly) ruthlessness of the U-Boat crews. The achieve a lot with inferior machines and in really difficult conditions.

The descriptions of the smell is what always gets me. The combined B.O. of 50 guys who haven't bathed in weeks, mixed with diesel oil, saltwater and urine on clothes that haven't been washed in weeks, and moldy food all in humid and stale air...blah. I wonder if you just became immune to it after a while. Turns your stomach!

It is not what we think of Germany, there was less than a handful of radicals. For the most part the German soldiers were much like you and me. Unfortunate that Hollywood always shows the extremely bad side of the Germany back then. If you get out of Hollywood and read accounts by soldiers in the Germany military, most loved, laughed, cared for family and country...not much unlike the Allied troops. Most thrown into a war they did not want.

As far as inferior machines as to what we have today....you bet man, it was sometimes a shoe string operation at best. Hell, the wildcats that flew off carriers had no compass, fly only while the sun is up so they could see their way back. Now that takes a large set of nuts to do that!!!!

A very different world then what we see today, no doubt.

That must have been a living hell!!! I would suspect they did not smell themselves after a while. What I find funny are old movies reels showing the crew coming off the boats, smelly and beards, etc. and the girls kissing and hugging them. It's like honey, I have not brushed my teeth or washed my rearend for over 4 weeks. Man, the stench!:dead: Must be very brave women or extremely hard up.

Oh I do agree in everything you say. All of the operations during WWII look dated by modern standards, especially U-Boat operations. Still the german crews did the best they could (soe ties even more) given the circumstances. I feel they did more than enough for their country in a messy, bloody and horrible war.

Yes, the one mans vision(Hilter) was not the vision of all. Didn't the U-boat arm claim to be no part of Nazi Gemany?

In the Iron Coffins and a few other books of the period they do claim that U-Boat crews had nothing to do with the Nazis. That's of course not true. They had as much to do with the Nazi party as any other part of the German Army or the German people (with the exeption of the SS obviously). Some of them (like Luth) were die-hard Nazis were others did not support them. In general though they did tolerate them and up to a point agreed with them. Obviously after Germany entered the war all this became accademic. Their country was at war so there was no question about not doing their bst for the final victory or fight until the bitter end. Thet of course doesn't make them criminals but they share the same level of responsibility like the rest of the German people for what happen in 1939-1945.

IIRC that they made a special effort to keep the Kriegsmarine, or at least the U-bootwaffe as one of the least politicized arms of the the German armed forces. I know Doenitz never joined the Nazi party. Don't know much about Raeder, though.

True. I would imagine that any branch of the German armed forces at the time had a percentage of true Nazi's in it that mirrored the overall percentage of true Nazis in the German population as a whole. But I think the point of it is that the Nazi doctrine was not ingrained as an integral part of the command structure of the Kriegsmarine. At least not to the degree of other branches of the German military, anyways.

Not trying to make excuses for them, of course.

No one is trying to make excuses for Germany, Japan, England, USA and all other countries that took part in this horrible war. They all have their fair share of crimes and responsibility for it (some more than others obviously). All I was saying is that since the country was at war there was no question of Nazi or not. They were professional soldiers and they did all they could to reach the final victory. To be fair the nature of war they were involved in allowed them to be distanced from crimes involved in the Russian Front or with mass deportations etc. hence it was simpler for them as they were fighting a lonely kind of war not to be so stict about Nazi ideology as the Panzer Divisions for example that were fighting in close proximity with the SS.

Exactly. I remember posting something a while back..."when you're 200m underwater with depth charges raining down on you, political ideology means squat!" :yep:

I think the very nature of the warfare they were waging was also a factor. Despite the fact that merchant sailors were civillians, sinking cargo ships to cut off your enemy's supply chain was a pretty sterile and businesslike thing without much room for political ideologies. It just comes down to pure numbers. Sink more ships than they can build. Deny as many tons of supplies to them as you can. Little room for political expression there.

Much different than razing towns and villages because of the ethnicity/religion of the inhabitants.

Agreed on all points. What is the saying? "You will find no aethiests in a foxhole."

Whilst I was off the coast of Scotland last year on a Royal Navy Nuclear Submarine we surfaced for a few hours and I went up the conning tower to get some fresh air and the weather was quite bad, a force 8 I think, and the boat was rolling around quite badly even later on when we dived to 60 meters, and thats on a 5000 ton nuclear submarine, imagine what it was like on a U-Boot 60 years ago.

BTW: Ive been to Scapa Flow on a boat too a couple of years ago and was quite impressed that the German U-Boats got anywhere near the place looking at the terrain and the weather, these men have my respect from one submariner to another, they had it hard, very hard and what they achieved paved a huge cornerstone in todays modern submarine warfare.

Respect your enemys past and present :know:

Never a truer word mate :yep: Never had the experience personally (visiting Scapa) but I once watched a documentary and it def looked 'VERY FORBIDDING' :yep:

talking about the smell:
they brushed their teeth evereyday :D showers were onboard, but usable only every 10 days, because they had not enough water which they gained from evaporation.

the disussion about the role of soldiers in world war 2 shows that its impossible to sort them by country and ideology. of course there were a lot of soldiers in the german army who were also Nazis. I don´t want to apologize anyones behavior, i can only tell you about my grandpa, who wanted to become forest ranger when he was young. it would have lasted 4 or 5 years or he could serve in the army for one year. he served and before his year was over, the second world war began. i guess, there were many whoose possibilities were raised only by serving in the army or even joining the Nazi party. These, for me, were poor pigs. Those who identified themselves with the Nazi party, their programm and their ideology, were barbarous men. Its a sad part of the german history. But it developed something good in the german population: we try to avoid wars as good as possible and we are very aware of the government. in so far, i think no one would be able to install a new dictatorship in germany, even not an official "elected" like an other big country has.
a government sending their people into a war, is ruthless and worthless.
i had a lot of discussions with a friend from britain about 9.11 and afghanistan. my education is to solve a problem political, find its sources to achieve a solution. for him, it was only possible to sent troops. long nights of discussions and we were unable to figure out whats right or wrong. finally i´m glad germany didn´t join, as everyhing is only a big "make-me-and-my-pals-rich-war" lead by some greedy governments.
in so far, van Clausewitz is not right any more....
as its said: "war is the terror of the rich, terror is the war of the poor" - wo don´t need either