Did you ever think about it?

[AVGWarhawk]

After watching movies by Stabiz and footage from the real thing, etc. has anyone really thought about what the Germans were doing out there in the oceans? These guys were in a steel tube hundreds of mile from anywhere, including the bottom! There was no GPS or fast rescue boats. They depended on the compass and the stars to get where they were going. Talk about being out there on your own!! Next time you make the trip to the east coast in the game, stop in the middle of the Atlantic, go to outside view on the conning tower and just look at the expanse of water. This is what these guys had seen. Nothing but water and sky, while in a steel tube already over 1/2 sunk! It takes a large set of kahunas to do something like that in my view.

[bigboywooly]

Yeah it certainly does

I remember standing on the back of a ship some years ago in the bay of Biscay at night
Not a sound apart from the engines and not a light to be seen

Eerie but great all the same

They certainly deserve respect

[AVGWarhawk]

Yeah, eerie seems to be the word. Also a feeling of being insignificate in the large scheme of things.

[mookiemookie]

Take it a step further. Imagine being one of the guys in the engine room who never saw the sun, never got fresh air (except the few and far between times the kaleun let them up on deck) had no idea what was going on in an attack.

And still knowing that you were stranded in that iron coffin, in the middle of the ocean. Man, I would have gone stir crazy. I totally understand why Ghost from Das Boot flipped out.

[Jimbuna]

'Lonely' is the word that springs to mind with me....and the tight confined/cramped/damp conditions...yuk !!...what an existence

[Sailor Steve]

Standing on a deck and seeing nothing but water all the way to the horizon? Yeah, that can be lonely. Being inside with 50 or 200 or 6000 other sailors? No, lonely isn't the word. "Suffocating"...that's the word.

[melnibonian]

No 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. The achieve a lot with inferior machines and in really difficult conditions.

[mookiemookie]

The descriptions of the smell is what always gets me. The combined B.O. of 50 guys who haven't bathed in weeks, mixed with diesel oil, saltwater and urine on clothes that haven't been washed in weeks, and moldy food all in humid and stale air...blah. I wonder if you just became immune to it after a while. Turns your stomach!

[Safe-Keeper]

After watching movies by Stabiz and footage from the real thing, etc. has anyone really thought about what the Germans were doing out there in the oceans?

Yesh. They were deployed by Grossadmiral Dönitz to operate against merchant shipping bound for England, in an effort to starve the island out.

More info:
http://uboat.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...281939-1945%29



[/smartass]

[Subwolf]

Good point Safe-Keeper.

All of you who lives in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia were not occupied by the nazis for several years. Norway and most of the countries around Germany were. There is no history of occupation in your countries, you don't know what that means.

So I guess you are excused for all these nice words about the Germans during the war. But I hate them for it, and can never forgive them. That will never change.

However, I don't hate the people of Germany of today, they can't help what happened 65 years ago, and today they don't support nazism more than anyone else.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Subwolf

So I guess you are excused for all these nice words about the Germans during the war. But I hate them for it, and can never forgive them. That will never change.

Remember, I said I was born in Leningrad, USSR. I guess I'm not excused.

Well, but you're not one of those people who refuses to play SHIII because it's about Germans. Cheers for that, those kinds of things are a pet peeve for me.

To make amends, however, I promise to make a point of reading a book about the Battle of the Atlantic as it related to merchants seamen. Admit it, people - how many of you have read books about U-boats and escorts but read nothing about the merchantmen? Eh? Eh?

[Subwolf]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Remember, I said I was born in Leningrad, USSR. I guess I'm not excused.

I can't remember that the USSR was occupied either..

But yes the nazis tried to, and had to pay for it. That failed operation was the beginning of the end for Hitler.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Subwolf

But yes the nazis tried to, and had to pay for it. That failed operation was the beginning of the end for Hitler.

Not the whole of it, certainly. But the parts that were experienced the most brutal occupation seen anywhere. Certainly don't try to tell my grandfather the USSR wasn't occupied - Germans lived in his house, Germans killed his livestock, Germans took away his brother to a concentration camp, Germans left a 'present' in the barn when they were driven out, which was unfortunately discovered by my unwitting grandfather and friend, when they opened the door and the charge behind it detonated, killing one of the boys instantaneously and seriously wounding the other.

But these same Germans survived the battle of Demyansk pocket while they were there, being completely cut off from their own lines for weeks in the dead of winter under constant Russian counter-attacks, with an unfriendly Russian population around them taking revenge when opportunity arose. I can admire at least some of them for their persistence in a battle against all odds, can't I? As irony would have it, I'm sure some of these Germans were likely distant relatives of mine. All the more likely if any of them had last names like Mueller or von Koestner (my german roots). And, to think, aren't all people sort of related somewhere down the line?

That's quite off-topic, sorry. It's personal to me too as you can see. But I don't hold the same bitterness.

[melnibonian]

Originally Posted by Subwolf

All of you who lives in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia were not occupied by the nazis for several years. Norway and most of the countries around Germany were. There is no history of occupation in your countries, you don't know what that means.

So I guess you are excused for all these nice words about the Germans during the war. But I hate them for it, and can never forgive them. That will never change.

Subwolf hi

I am Greek and we did suffer as a nation from the Germans. We had in percentages (as we used to be only 7 milion then) the same amount of casualties as Germany and the Soviet Union. People were starving and dropping dead in the streets. Whole villages were burnt and destroyed, people executed for almost no reason. Also don't forget that 30-50,000 Greek citizens of jewish faith were liquidated in the concentration camps. Th whole jewish community of Thesaloniki vanished. That community was there for almost 1000 years, and whithin a few months all of them perished. We also had (and still have) a huge merchant fleet that suffered a lot from the U-Boats. Still we do not hate the Germans. We don't forget but we do forgive. After all a long time has passed and the only thing we can do is to learn from the past and try to make sure it will never happen again. I'm not a religious person but I do like to follow the quote 'Mistakes are human, forgiveness is divine'. Don't let me wrong I do not judge you for not forgiving and keeping the grudge (or anything else you like to call it) against the germans. I just state my opinion which is different to yours. I mean no offence to you and your beliefs, and if I said something that you find offencive or even difficult to accept I am deeply sorry. After all we all exchange opinions here and we all learn something from each other. That's the legacy of WWII. We live in a democratic state and we solve our differences through dialog (well most of the times at least)

[Subwolf]

melnibonian,

We all got our own opinions, and we respect each others in this thread, otherwise it would turn into WW3. This is still today a very sensitive issue.

But I think you should speak for yourself and not on behalf of the Greek people or the Jews, I'm sure that many of them would not agree with you.