Review of "U-Boat War," by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim

 Review of

U-Boat War, by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim, ISBN 0517606712

Five out of five stars

The inner workings of the U-boat and the men in them

 Buchheim is probably unique in his credentials for reporting on what went on inside the German U-boats or submarines in the Second World War. Given a camera, he was ordered to join a submarine crew and produce documentation that could be used for propaganda purposes.

 One fact is critical for understanding the material in this book. No branch of the German military had a higher death rate that the submarine forces. The casualty rate was 75%, most of which were fatalities. The men that crewed the boats were all volunteers, they went to sea knowing that it was likely they would never return.

 A voyage generally lasted two months, during which the men never bathed and some of the crew never viewed anything outside their boat. They worked in very cramped conditions, and sometimes spent days where they were in tense and potentially deadly combat situations. They also knew that when they torpedoed a ship, the men on that ship were almost certainly doomed.

 The photos in this book show the men going about their jobs. While some of them show the men at ease, most demonstrate them active at their posts and at times when they are hunting and being hunted. The tension and anxiety are visible on their faces.

 There is also a textual description of the U-boat war from the last prewar years through the first action in September of 1939 until the end of the war in Europe in 1945. Once again, the reader is reminded of the narrow-mindedness of the military. The German leadership insisted on building capital ships such as the “Bismark” when it should have been clear from World War I that the only real naval weapon that the Germans had that could threaten England was the submarine. One is left wondering how the war would have been different if all the resources used to build the “Bismark” were used to build additional submarines instead.

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