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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Are you talking about the theatrical version, the Director's Cut, or the 5-hour Uncut version? I thought the last one got the feel just right.
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If either the movie or the book actually got anything right - as in historically accurate - it is purely coincidental. The book was an avowed piece of anti-war propaganda by a committed activist, and the movie was true to its source. Buchheim was always quite candid about the book's purpose. Historical reality was secondary to "psychological reality" - in other words, emotional impact on the reader. Herbert Werner, in his memoir, comes through as not exactly a nice guy, and he tells some fibs, too. (Someone please show me the 300 m deep within half a day's steaming west of Kiel!). But IMO, he does a far better and certainly a more honest job of capturing the way the men in the boats saw and thought about themselves (and the way they behaved under stress).