[Kaleun Cook]

Okay, I decided to translate it paragraph for paragraph every once a while I have the time to do it. here's the first one.

Edit: I kindly ask all the native speakers to correct any spelling mistakes, wrong chosen words or wrong tenses.


A translation of the german text "Die Wahrheit blieb auf Tauchstation", printed in GEO Nr. 10/1981, shown on the website linked in the starting post


The truth remained submerged (Wikipedia translates the title: The truth remained hidden under the sea)

A report by Lothar-Günther Buchheim


How I felt regarding the huge technically expense for this movie I have been asked when I visited the sites of the film in Geiselgasteig or in La Pallice, the commercial port of La Rochelle and former german uboat base at the french Atlantic coast. How I felt regarding the production costs of 25 million Mark for Germany's most expensive movie, which I quasi would have caused. How I felt? I walked around deeply depressed because what I saw did not allign with my idea of this movie at all. It slipped away. It is not "my" movie anymore, although that is claimed everywhere.

On the other hand noone asked me if I like what has been made from my book. On the contrary, I have been treated how an author usually is by a film producer: as an disfranchised story deliverer. In this case that has a worse impact than usually because is not any movie. This movie is going to be, whether it is wanted or not, the documentary evidence for the operations of all uboats in the Second World War. The whole world will get its idea of the uboat war upon this movie. There can be published as many books as the authos may write: they will not change that this movie is going to be considered the only "true" evidence. That is due to the cogency of pictures that is stronger that that of words.

If the Americans had made this movie how it was planned originally my situation would be haunting as well but it would be easier: for the Americans there would have been a sloppiness bonus. About such a movie one could have shrugged one's shoulders: typically american, just like a regisseur from over there would orchestrate such movies with the common calls on all prejudices against the Germans. That the movie "Das Boot" now is a "national" movie makes things more difficult: the Germans have no bonus. In this movie everything would have to be correct - but it is not.

It is going to be like this: not the military adviser will be hold liable for the mistakes, not the regisseur, neither the producer. For every obscenity, for each mistake I will be denigrated. I already know today that there will be no means to defend myself. No advice that I am not the adviser, nor the regisseur, nor the producer but only the author of the book "Das Boot" will be of use.

When the book became a worldwide success masses of film producers got in touch. Eventually Bavaria bought the story. Through the help of tendercompanies they wanted to finance the for german conditions enormous project and also planned to rely on the help of an american company: Hollywood should have come to Geiselgasteig. The Americans came. Robert Redford was supposed to play "the old one", the commander of the uboat, John Sturges should have been the regisseur. Everything seemed to be at best.

But then the Americans presented a script that I considered as a poor piece of worksmanship falsifying my novel. The clash was there. There was a compromise. "The other side was as adamant that one scene - the murder of american officers in a rescue boat by men from the Boot - would be in the movie as we required that it would not be", said the chief dramaturg of Bavaria, Helmut Krapp. In the american script even the SS appeared. Uboat men were shown as war criminals, I was shown as their desolately instigator. I threatened to forbid the use of the title and to cancel the use of the name of the author. I wanted a movie to be created that shows the operations of the german uboats using the example of a very cruel patrol of U96 - but not a caricature according to american taste. Back in those days, 1978, I wrote my own script, 600 pages long - better: I wrote my movie - and that more away from the novel than according to it - a text that will be published with the title "U96, Scenes of the naval war" as a book in this autumn.

There were new american partners, but they where only looking for a sensational war story as well. They brought their own script writer - when he was done everything bounced. Don Siegel, the new regisseur, flew back home. The money giving tendercompany gave up. Six million Mark were gone and not one meter of the movie was recorded. The money was used to built quite a few uboat models, two of them in original size. Temporary the Bavaria area looked like a junkyard at the Atlantik coast, temporary like a real dockyard with "Helligen" (sry, can't translate that) and all that goes with it. The Bavaria hired a new regisseur: Wolfgang Petersen. The new one wanted to write the sript himself. Mine would be too long was said in those days - at all events usefull for a six hours film.