Buchheim, Lothar-Gunther The Boat

Originally published in Germany in 1973 under the title Das Boot, Buchheim's autobiographical novel looks at the Battle of the Atlantic from a German U-boat perspective. The book is arguably revisionistic, boasting a humane submarine commandant - called alternately the "Old Man" or "Herr Kaleun" (the standard naval abbreviation for his full title, Herr Kapitänleutnant) - who deeply regrets the necessity of sinking civilian vessels, professional, competent officers and a crew of decent, often unwarlike men nicknamed the "children's crusade" because of their extreme youth (most of the crew are in their late teens). Indeed, the only fervent Nazi shipboard - the sub's arrogant First Watch Officer - is pretty much disliked by one and all, and often openly mocked by the Old Man himself. Buccheim aptly captures the tedium of underwater patrol work , the adrenaline-filled moments of stalking and torpedoing Allied convoy vessels. His taut descriptions of the flip side of pursuit, when the U-boat itself has become prey to attacking Allied warships, is admirably done: claustrophobic, shattering, tedious and fearsome.

As the novel moves towards its close, most readers will feel a grudging respect for officers and crew of the U-boat. But that respect turns to horror in a penultimate scene in which a neutral passenger liner, lights blazing, is torpedoed off the coast of Spain because the U-boat's officers cannot decide whether she is Spanish or an enemy vessel. Luckily the torpedo is a dud and subsequent interrogation of the ship's captain by the Old Man reveals that the liner is indeed Spanish and is en route to South America with over 2,000 passengers. The ship is allowed to sail on, unmolested. But in the novel's most chilling scene, Herr Kaleun tells his officers that had their torpedo not been a dud and had it sunk what turned out to be a neutral ship, they would have had to have destroyed all evidence of their misdeed - and that would include machine gunning to death all survivors. "Only dead men tell no tales," observes the novel's narrator (a young naval war correspondent serving aboard the sub, a role in which Buchheim himself had served during the War).

Das Boot became a bestseller in Germany and was published in the United States two years later under the title The Boat. It was turned into a masterly German television miniseries by Wolfgang Petersen in 1981 and subsequently re-cut into a feature film which was released worldwide in 1981 (see Appendix 4, "Cruel Seas Goes to the Movies" for additional film details).