Did you ever think about it?

[Subwolf]

I can't believe you guys, feeling so sorry for the German U-boat crews...

But none of you even mention the heroic civilian men and women who sailed in the merchant fleet during the war, those who gave their lives to save your country from the nazi's, those who sailed for up to five years under a constant threat of getting killed by a torpedo, and could never get a good night's sleep while at sea.

They are the real heroes of the Atlantic war.

Of course it was tough for the Germans too, but remember...they started the war, they wanted it to happen.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Subwolf

I can't believe you guys, feeling so sorry for the German U-boat crews...

But none of you even mention the heroic civilian men and women who sailed in the merchant fleet during the war, those who gave their lives to save your country from the nazi's, those who sailed for up to five years under a constant threat of getting killed by a torpedo, and could never get a good night's sleep while at sea.

They are the real heroes of the Atlantic war.

Of course it was tough for the Germans too, but remember...they started the war, they wanted it to happen.

Agreed on that point. The merchant sailors were men of valor and bravery, and no one is taking away from their deeds. But to say that the average U-boat sailor isn't worthy of some measure of respect is wrong, I think.

Perhaps this might express it better than I can. They're the words of USN Captain Edward Beach, from the introduction of Iron Coffins:

"'Madness!' cries Werner, and it was madness. But there were heroes, too, who deserve admiration even though their cause was wrong and, therefore, their sacrifice was worthless. No one can fault the warrior who believes in his country so strongly that he dies for it. This ought to permit these brave spirits to lie in peace, secure in the world's regard for them and their memory. Madness though it was, these were the flower of young German manhood, unfortunately - but not to their own discredit - early imbued with a warped ideal of how to achieve German destiny. They ought not to bear too harsh criticism, considering the Treaty of Versailles is now hardly considered an ideal document. Furthermore, they were a group unsullied by the cancer which afflicted the leading body politic. Beacuase their leaders told them so, they believed that if they fought desperately, they might save their country from the disaster plainly grinding in from every side. They expected death, and most of them found it; but they fought hard all the same, and they carpeted the ocean floor with their bodies."

[AirborneCZ]

o matter what we think of the second world war and Germany I feel we should respect the level of professionalism, endurance and (unfortunatelly) ruthlessness of the U-Boat crews.

of course. I might be new to sub sims but this is something i know of muay thai, my army's IFOR missions etc...

its called warriors respect.

same as I witnessed at the Wehrmacht/SS WWII graveyard where during D-Day celebrations I have found flowers by GI's vets at Michael Wittmann's grave (!) stating among others i.e. "From one soldier to another".

That pretty much says it all. (for NAVY guys= M.W. was the best German and World's Panzer Ace ever)


it has no relation what we think of Germany koz we (in Europe beside Germany) could now think about young US guys in Iraq (no flaming please, I have my deepest and greatest respect for all of them and have many friends among them!!)...

my point is just to make very clear distinction between front line soldiers and politicians.... I guess you know what I mean...

[Subwolf]

Well I play SH3 because it's a good strategy game, but I don't go too far and believe that the U-boat crews were the heroes.

I read a book by a commander of a British destroyer escort, and I totally agree with his words when he could confirm a U-boat kill, but I think those words are too strong for this forum.

SH3 is just a game, but as far as the German U-boat crews are concerned:

[CCIP]

I'm personally in it for that whole 'feel'.

And I think it's too simplistic to say something along the lines of '' or '' about U-boat crews. You have to realize that they were people called up to fight in a total war. There was a lot of good and bad guys on all sides of the war, but in a battle 'good' and 'bad' is simply a matter which side you happen to be on. A U-boat sinking your ship is as bad as a ship sinking your U-boat.

I'd never be particularly interested in war were there not a sharply controversial humanistic aspect to it. I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, but I'm fascinated by people pushed to the limit - and not in the sport-like sense of it, either - but totally in a life-and-death sort of way. And the Battle of the Atlantic certainly did that. It's one thing to judge war sitting at a desk at home, and another thing to judge it with your finger on the trigger of a weapon aimed at an enemy.

I'd never confuse a game with reality, of course, but things like that are always in the back of my mind when I play wargames. Likewise, some imagery in SHIII is amazing food-for-thought for thinking about the conditions as they really were.

[Subwolf]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I'm personally in it for that whole 'feel'.
And I think it's too simplistic to say something along the lines of '' or '' about U-boat crews. You have to realize that they were people called up to fight in a total war.

They were brainwashed by their sick leader, they were ready to conquer the whole world

I lost five family members in the Atlantic during the war, their ships sunk by them. That's the reason for my opinion about this.

[CCIP]

Alright, that's fair enough then. On a personal level, holding some bitterness at lost family members is acceptable. And I read further up and definitely agree with you on the point of the merchant seamen, they definitely deserve praise above all.

But I think the side they fought on shouldn't be dismissed outright. 'Heroes' might not be a totally appropriate term depending on how you define heroes, and certainly I don't think sinking Allied merchant ships is something you want to take as an example of heroism to future generations. It's not. But some of the things done on U-boats might be far more admirable, if you can look past the side of the war they fought on.

I'd be the last to bring Nazi forces up as heroes of course. To put it in likewise-personal perspective, I was born in the city of Leningrad - that should say something about what I feel about the war. But you can't look at it as some war machine that was composed of completely brainwashed millions. It was not. It was composed of people. Again, this is also very personal to me, being of mixed Russo-German-Finnish ancestry and with my family having lost a lot of kin in the war in all sorts of awful ways - from dying of wounds, to dying of hunger, to dying in a concentration camp.

I'm completely and utterly opposed to the 'demonization' of even the highest Nazi leaders in that way. If we don't acknowledge what they did as part of the fabric of humanity, then we've learned nothing from the war. Even the worst enemies of our sense of humanity have something to teach us about being human. Forget U-boats, crewed mostly by 20 year olds who couldn't begin to make sense of what they were getting into, nor had any logical way of avoiding it. Cursing them on the battlefield is acceptable, cursing them some 60-odd years after the fact is just plain rude. As long as the survivors acknowledge that their country's cause was criminal, they deserve none of this dehumanization today. And if they do, then so does every other wartime submariner in history.

[AirborneCZ]

I read a book by a commander of a British destroyer escort, and I totally agree with his words when he could confirm a U-boat kill, but I think those words are too strong for this forum.

Bing it on!

Surprise us??

"Bunch of Bosches got what they deserved" ? or "Another scum of the world is gone."???


Have you ever realized that those guys dying in both german subs/british merchants/us DDs/everywhere else were mostly 18+ guys that never really got a chance to understand any of this $hit????

I guess not koz most of the guys like you never seen guy dying/ or even dead body which is perhaps good thing but still leaves you behind kind of psychologic curtain.... I was unfortunate enough to go behind it.

All-volunteer army is a gift of today's world.....

[AirborneCZ]

They were brainwashed by their sick leader, they were ready to conquer the whole world

First, Im sorry about your family members, my family has its "war-losses" too and so did several hundereds thousands of my countrymen, but still they were conscripts if you know what is that.

Im not defending WWII Germans for Christ sake, my nation was bleeding under them, but its the same bull$hit like saying that RAF (and my uncle was a RAF bomber crew member) & USAF bombing of German cities (with more civilian victims inflicted than by Little Boy&Fat Man in Japan that actually stopped the war) has shortned the war....

[AirborneCZ]

I really have not found anyone calling the u-boat crews as heros.

well anyway discussion has moved that way. And I have the guts to call them HEROS koz Im not tied with some politcal correctness issues.

As much as the USN crews, as much as RAF &USAF & Luftwaffe crews & pilots, as much as anyone who didnt fight that war because of stupid ideologies but simply because they were doing their best to survive and did extremely well under extreme conditions.

You can hate someone in the heat of the battle, but you gotta respect them if they fight fair. That of course counts only for some. On all sides. And all conflicts. Up to now.

[Ole]

Here's the problem: How do you reach a political solution with a person/group who's only goal in life is to literally kill you, destroy your culture, society, and country, and impose their religion and views on you and the rest of the world? The source of the problem is that from their point of view, there's no compromise possible. I'm in Iraq, I've been here for over 2 years. I've seen enough first-hand to know something of which I speak.

your problem is a war in a country, where terrorist from all over the world travel to, to fight against you. for me, these terrorists can all be erased, got no problem with that. but if you think this is the only way it goes, well, your opinion. the process going on in the arabic countries, is a process like it has been in europe over 500 years ago. for me, regarding their society structures, they are far behind us, but they overhaul. this process is more comprehensive than you might think. in the history of europe, many wars have been fought by religious causes, it was part of our history to achieve what we got today. our problem today is: we sell them weapons, train them in terror-tactics, financiate them and finally wonder when they turn against us. thats the point we should think about.
i say, leave them alone, don´t help them, sell them anything, let them pass their cultural developments on their one. but this is much more complex as to explain here in short form.

It's ironic that you consider the Nazis "barbarous men", yet you apparently believe the right thing to have done after 9.11 was to reach some sort of political compromise. The 9.11 attacks weren't barbaric? People being forced to jump out the window, to certain death, to avoid being roasted alive, isn't barbaric? Think for a moment what it must have been like for them, being forced to make that choice. If that's not barbaric, I don't know what is.

read again, i didn´t say what you are trying to assume.

We're supposed to sit down, negotiate, and reach a political compromise? Polical compromise didn't work with Hitler, either, did it?.

study the history, and you´ll find out, that in the beginning of the expansion politics of the Nazis, their neighbours neglected political sanctions. the only action was a condemn in the league of nations. thats not consequent and it is like today. the UN does realy not condemn any countries actions or even impose a sanction.

As far as "a government sending their people into a war, is ruthless and worthless.", Britian and France were the ones who declared war on Germany, not the other way around. So, by your definition, the British and French governments were ruthless and worthless.

you only read want you want. i wrote every country. not only british and french. a war is always battled on the back of the underclass, thats the point i was talking about.

Please, think about what you're saying, and what would be the logical outcome of your views. Throughout history, there have always been people/groups who wanted to impose their views on others.
I'll grant you, democracy is a sometimes messy and inefficient form of government, but it's the best one so far, for protecting the rights of it's members. Trying to reach a political compromise with dictators and tyrants is just not possible. Just remember, the only reason you can have these discussions with your British friend, and post your views here, is because of democratic goverments. Do you really want to give up those rights?

you make me angry, you should become a advocate. i didn´t wrote anything about abolishing democracy, so why do you say that? Yoi say a political compromise with dictators is impossible? so why did your government work together with saddam hussein against iran since 1979? i hope you know about it.

to come back to the main statement: a war is always bad, for the country attacking, defending, it doesn´t matter. i think every country should always try to prevent a war as good as possible. actually this is not happening today, that is sad.
and please stop assuming such bull****, thx.

[orangewhale]

They may have been motivated by an awful ideology and a 'ruthless sick leader' or whatever but those boys in those iron coffins and i stress the word boys, were not much older than me. In fact some of them would have been 19 year olds like myself. If all you can bring to mind when you think of that is that hitler was a bad man so everyone of his followers was evil then you need to watch das boot again. They went out boys came back men and they had to live with the torture of what they went through the rest of their lives if they lived through it. Don't you think they deserve a bit of credit everyone makes mistakes and they made the mistake of following a misguided ideology but i'll be damned if im gonna call them evil if they had to live through that just to learn what war was really about, rather than some abstract far flung glory seeking stunt that was to literally die for and for your country. Let them have peace in their iron coffins at the bottom of the sea i say. A good history teacher once said to me, in the study of WWII it does no good to concentrate on how evil hitler was because it detracts from the pursuit of the facts that surround that war. Remember wether we are Greek, Jews, or Germans we are all still men and women. Under the sun under the stars there is but one race the human race, we all suffered in that war let it rest and pay respect to the dead and not what makes them different for some far flung ideology.

Hope that makes some interesting point, i don't know, have a ponder on that one people.

[AVGWarhawk]

I really have not found anyone calling the u-boat crews as heros. The discussion is about what they saw and experienced. That is all. Nothing more, nothing less. As the victor countries sit in their high horse, I was only pointing out that these men in the boats and in the trenches were not unlike the victors. They had wives, family, homes and sense of being a countrymen to their land. The thread was about the great spans of ocean and the undertaking of being ordered to sink Allied vessels basically on a shoe string of technology. The same as what Allied forces had to content with. One cannot sit back and wonder how any of the opposing forces did what they did with by todays standards would be cavemen tools. How it turned into who is a hero and who is not is beyond me. But I guess that what open forums are about and all opinions are taken, mulled over and thought about. Like I said from the start, imagine yourself in the middle of the Atlantic in a boat that is already half sunk, a radio that might work, might not, a compass that is so-so and depending on a clear night to see the stars so you could figure out with in a few hundred miles where you are on the planet. That is all this thread was to be.

[Subwolf]

Well AVGWarhawk...

This just confirms that you got little knowledge about U-boats. Half sunk? Okey maybe if it's damaged. Otherwise a U-boat is a much more seaworthy and safer vessel than a surface ship...

But again, I'm really surprised that some of you can really honor the U-boat crews. No thanks

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Subwolf

But again, I'm really surprised that some of you can really honor the U-boat crews. No thanks

I think you're still a bit touchy on just what we mean by that, I don't think most of us 'honor' them in the way you'd assume. Chill out. None of us are building a cult of U-boat worship, I think

I'll put it this way - I'll respect any good soldier, not because of what they fight for, but in a pure sense of military honour. It's an idea that's been around since the most ancient times you know, doesn't even have to be humanist in the sense that I take it.

At the same time, if by some chance I lived in World War II, and I ended up near a U-boat with some potent weapon? You bet I'd be trying to sink it.