did they know?
 

did the men know that when they went out that they probably werent coming back especially in 44 and 45

In SH3?

Yes, probably... The kriegsmarine enrolled very young men in those days, with insufficent training due to the heavy losses of personell in the Atlantic. These were "ready" to die for their fatherland, and become "heroes". Even Admiral Dönitz, who lost both of his sons in WWII, understood the reality in late 44-45..

The veteran U-boat commanders all knew that their numbers were dwindling rapidly, and that the new replacements were being "fed to the wolves", but for the most part their spirit was unbroken, and many of them believed Doenitz's promises that new boats were just "a few weeks away", that new schnorkels, "bugs", balloons and other improvements would once again swing the battles in their favour...:nope:

Unfortunatelly they did. In the book Iron Coffins there are some really vivid accounts of people and their feelings during that period.

This is an interesting point. I was looking for information about what kind of sailors became U-Boat men and came across this interesting article written by Timothy Mulligan a couple of weeks ago. It's entitled "German U-boat Crews in WWII: Sociology of an Elite". You can find it in The Journal of Military History Vol. 56 no. 2 pp. 261-281.

Anyway, he discusses reasons why the U-Boat arm of the Kriegsmarine continued to fight with such enthusiasim even after suffering such severe defeats.

If you don't have access to the journal, I can email you the .pdf. Just PM me.

And please excuse my spelling errors--I'm a horrible speller and and it embarasses me :damn:.

Cheers,

J

Looking through the Mulligan article again, it has some interesting stats on the age distribution, geographic origin, and civilian occupation of the U-Boat crews he was able to piece together.

Here's the table showing the civilian occupation of the U-boat crews he studied (edit: I don't remember his methodology and I'm too lazy to read the article again right now)--clearly he was only able to gather this particular info on a limited number of crew members (edit:again, I don't remember if this was a random sample or just a limited sampe size, again, I'm too lazy to re-read the article right now), however, it's still an interesting table.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...U-Boatinfo.jpg

Pretty interesting stuff really. If you want the .pdf, let me know.

J

Admiral Donitz indeed understood the reality in 1944-45 and that the u-boat in its current form was obsolete and unable to make a difference to the outcome of WWII. Even though Donitz was not found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg because he had conducted the war at sea appropriately (Chester Nimitz was called as witness for the defence to say that Donitz had conducted the u-boat war along similar lines to the US submarine war in the Pacific), it could be argued that he needlessly sent thousands of u-boat crewmen to their deaths. Not a war crime in itself, but perhaps something that needs to be taken into account when assessing Donitz.

With regard to the Kriegsmarine enlisting young men in 44-45, I'm not sure this was actually the case (read the Clay Blair books), however, no matter what age and the amount of training the crew received, allied ASW was so effective at this time it probably wouldn't have made much difference.

Nemo

In deed Captain Nemo, the average age of U-Boat crews were older than that of the US Navy from the same time period.

And my response to Donitz sending men to their death--certainly not a war crime. Military commanders always have to make those decisions. In "Iron Coffins", the excuse to send Werner to sea again is given to him frankly by his commanders--you have limited chance for success, but as long as there is a U-Boat threat, the allies will be using resources to search for the U-Boats--which takes resources away from other allied opperations.

While war crimes are a sticky business, Donitz didn't even come close to committing one by sending U-Boats to sea as sacrifices for, what he saw as, the broader military goal.

Of course, just my opinioin.

J

i think they did know
after alot of u-boats didn return to port i think they would start to notice:rotfl:

Also Captain Nemo, Donitz was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremburg--just not for the U-Boat war. His defence attorney actually called a US naval officer to testify that the US prosecuted the submarine warefare in the pacific exactly as the germans had.

BUT, Donitz was convicted of other war crimes (someones head had to role for what happened--so the mind set was and usually is), however, he killed himself the day before he was to be hung.

J

edit: my poor grammar--probably didn't catch it all

Doenitz didn't kill himself and was not convicted for the same war crimes as the Nazi Leaders. He got 10 years and died in Germany in 1981

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz

melnibonian, you're absolutley correct.

Ah jeez, when will I learn to get away from my keyboard when i'm drunk--I was thinking of Georing :oops:

Ahahahah...I love laughing at myself. And now let's all join in:rotfl:

Cheers,

J

No worries mate we all have days (and some of us nights as well) like these;) :p :rotfl: :rotfl: :up:

Your grammar is excused, but your half knowledge isn't. ;) Dönitz didn't commit suicide and he wasn't sentenced to death but ten years prison for the "Laconia directive" which prohibted uboats to help survivors. This directive was only introduced because American planes had attacked and almost sunk German uboats helping survivors under a flag of truce flying the Red Cross banner and sending out uncoded radio messages. In my opinion Dönitz did the right thing there. If you take the accounts of the fast troop ships which weren't allowed to stop for survivors either. Queen Mary even rammed and sank an American escort ship and wasn't allowed to stop helping the survivors.