SPOILER ALERTS
I finished the book about 48 hours after my original post.
i just have been to tied up to post much about it.
final thoughts...
World War Two had always been a fascination of mine, mostly because my grandfather was an infantry man who served in every major campaign from Normandy to the post war occupation of Germany... also my Paternal Grandfather was a merchant seaman, too young to enlist until the later part of 44-45.
Their stories of sea and sweat and enemy sightings always intrigued me... it is they who i credit with spurring my interest in the subject.
Silent Hunter III has been a valuable lesson to me.
No "video game" has ever lead me down a path so rich in learning about geography, history and science as SH3 has. In my quest for realism i have read numerous books about the U-boat war written by authors from both sides of the Atlantic.
Iron Coffins - though not professionally or eloquently written by a worldly English scholar - IS a hard look into the true life of the sailors of the U-Boat service.
The book starts with a happy time of glorious and productive hunts on the towering waves of the open Atlantic Ocean and develops into a twisted tale of inexperienced and eager young crewmen who were doomed before they ever boarded their boat.
Because WW2 has intrigued me so much throughout my life, i have watched virtually every war movie i can lay hands on - from
Hogan's Heroes to Harts War... from Tora Tora Tora to
The Big Red One. But the central theme that bothers me about these movies and some of the books i have read is the picture they painted... that virtually all Germans from 1939-45 were monsterous- murdering NAZIS. - of course this is a point of view that one had to take with a grain of salt.
In reading the accounts written in books like
Iron Coffins, and
Steel Boat Iron Hearts it has really opened my eyes that these men who served on these U-Boats were really not too different from the grandfathers i idolized as a child.
They may not have been "party members" - but in the end they were men who were doing what they felt they had to do for their country... and i cant fault a man for that. They had girlfriends and wives who loved them, they had families who worried for them, they had friends and brothers serving in various branches on other fronts. it sounds eerily similar to the experiences of my own family during times of war.
Werner really puts it into perspective - and says it they way i have seen it for a long time.
for him the U-boat war was personal - evey day the Allied bomber stream was destroying entire sections of his home town brick by brick.
his mission in
his mind was simple... keep bombs and fuel and other supplies from reaching England, for if he could do that - he might save his family or loved ones.
in the end... his efforts were futile - his entire family killed by the bombing raids, his childhood girlfriend and her entire family suffered the same fate as millions of other German citizens had suffered.
By the conclusion of the books final chapters - the German military is swinging wild punches in all directions in a dark room. Confusion has gripped the German leadership.
When the Red Army moved through Eastern Germany into Berlin - German Women suffered the greatest and largest case of mass rape in human history... and nobody could stop it.
I find myself thinking... what if i was powerless to do anything and it was my family and my home which stood firmly in the sights of the enemy? and in the meantime... "duty" traps me into service hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
A question - thankfully i cant answer
German currency was worthless. Entire vast cities lay in ruins, piles of brick and mortar and wood and steel lay strewn about as if Gid had reached down with his fist and smashed the landscape.
from 1939-45 there was untold suffering - unparalleled by probably any other event in history. Concentration camps, displaced citizens, forced labor, conscripted soldiers, refuges, devastated local and global economies, entire towns, cities and nations ceased to exist sometimes after a single attack - entire continents aflame with war... entire family names - erased from the ledger of history... all because of one man's bitter and evil ambitions.
Nothing remained of life for Werner in Germany except imprisonment and the long harsh reality of reconstruction. The only thing worse than losing a war - i would think - is fighting so hard, fighting so desperately with so much sacrifice and so much loss of friends and family and so much heart and tears being thrown into the conflict and...
still losing the war.
fortunately things like heart and sacrifice and desperation steered the conflict towards victory for the Allies.
From books like iron coffins we can learn of the U-boat tactics, we can learn of the day to day life and procedures, we can even learn of the history of U-boat war fare.
but i think that the most important lesson anyone can take from such a book is that - even though we sometimes have to stand up against evil... ultimately war is an ugly, bitter, wasteful hell on earth.