Iron Coffins: A U-boat Commander's War, 1939-45

[Hinrich Schwab]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I think the problem lies in the fact that Werner, or his publicist, claimed that it was fact. It's not the poetic license that causes a bad reaction, it's the pretending that there was none.

Agreed.

Here I disagree. Buchheim said that his account was fiction, loosely based on fact. That makes all the difference.

What I said didn't come out right, apparently. What I meant to say was that the time gap between the events themselves and the publishing of the respective works was sufficient to where fiction or not, there would be details lost over time. Das Boot, despite its intended fictionalization of events, portrays some accurate details. I was just discussing on the U-Boot HAHD forums that Trumann* from the novel is a fictionalization of Peter Zschech.


*Just a refresher, Trumann was the guy that shot up the club.