[fatty]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Soundly true. Infact the Ubootwaffe, was argubly the most "unpoltiical" branch of their armed forces. But i will say what set me on my course of thought. Somewhere on uboat.net i found a post once (I can't find it now), by a fellow who claimed to be in the merchant marines during the time. He admonished the posters in this particular thread for hero worship, or rather, words like, "I never thought id hear about admiration for the uboats!" This set me thinking. Here was a man who faced it. On our side of the conflict, and now now, we "youngin's" are bestowing adulation, and praise for the same men who tried to kill him.

Even if his claim is false, the principle remains true. Put yourself into this situation: you find an old man in your home country. (US or UK), and he starts to talk about how it was out in the atlantic as a merchant sailor. How lofty will you hold uboats in admiration then? Will you defend or bestow praise on their actions to this man (a fellow countryman or ally) who was there? To us, the reality of Uboats nothing more then storybook material. We never see, nor feel, nor touch, nor fear. Its just a story. To others, the reality was very different. Its these thoughts, that made me rethink my enthusiasm.

The idea that certain branches of Germany's armed forces were relatively light on politics during the Second World War is helpful for clearing our consciences while playing from the other side, and maybe it even holds some truth - I don't know, I'm not a historian. But as I've said in other threads on the same subject, I refuse to accept that u-boat skippers or whoever should be immune to reprehension. The submariners had a great degree of courage to sail in their iron coffins for month after month, but they lacked courage to escape service to the Nazi regime.

They were fighting for their country and not for the Führer, some say. Just like any Allied sailor. Fair enough, but the circumstances were grossly different compared to those on the other side of the trenches. Germany was not embarked on a defensive mission to repel invaders - at least not for a few years - and this is reflected in the submarine arm, with their extraordinarily long-ranged boats. Goebbels et al certainly did their best to skew the Allies in such a way to make them seem the aggressors, but through the employment of slave labour, the book burnings, the systematic exterminations, and even Hitler's published literature the mission of Germany - to conquer nations and subjugate entire races - was not really a secret.

So I think it's fair enough that many (not all) u-boat captains and crews were not super sieg heil Nazis, you can't lose sight of the larger picture that Ducimus hints at. They departed from their bases with bellies full of torpedos to kill merchant mariners and choke out relief supplies bound for Great Britain. I can't believe that any military officer would do so and not be able to anticipate that this would make possible an eventual invasion and occupation of the British isles and the enslavement of yet another people. So in a bizarre twist I think it took more courage for German submarines to realize what they were actually fighting for and to pop the hatch and surrender to the nearest destroyer, compared to those who fought on with their heads in the sand believing it was their duty to serve their nation regardless of the swastika.