Books You May Not Like -- Steel Boat, Iron Hearts, by Hans Goebeler, with an assist by John Vanzo

This is the story of one man's (Hans Goebeler's) experiences in the Kriegsmarine as a U-boat crew member, specifically aboard the U-505.  The U-505 has some distinction, not necessarily for it's combat record but rather because it was captured by a US Hunter Killer Group (a naval squadron made up of carrier based aircraft and destroyers, created to run U-boats to the ground and sink them or take them a prize) and is currently at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  It is one of the few boats to actually survive the war...and Hans Goebeler was one of only 8,000 (out of about 38,000) German submariners to survive the Battle of the Atlantic.

So Hans joins the Kriegsmarine in 1941 and manages to get into the submarine force by virtue of his skill, demeanor, and the fact that he was pretty short for a stormtrooper.  It's a pretty unflinching look at life inside a World War II Submarine.

I mean, imagine it...you and, oh, 55 of your closest friends are stuck inside a steel tube that is 200 feet long and (here is the kicker) about 14 feet wide, for about 3 months or so...maybe less if the shipyard workers of Lorient sabotaged the boat - which they did often.  You have no air conditioning, and you and all of your buds have to survive on the 64 gallons of water a day produced by the distillery units...enough water to cook and to drink, serve whatever mechanical needs are necessary, but not enough for anyone to shower.  Ever.

You like eggs?  I hope so.  You have to eat dozens of them before they go bad as all the food sort of starts to rot in the warm waters off the coast of Africa.  For the rest of your life, you will hate them; your love of eggs is the first casualty of the war, for you.

You play a deadly game of cat and mouse, your goal: to sink Allied merchant shipping.  But while you are hunting you are also hunted...allied ships ping you with acoustic sonar and try to sink you with depth charges, but even more frightening is Allied air power, looking for boats having to recharge batteries on the surface (U-505 was not equipped with a snorkel), which gets harder to avoid as the war goes on.

And so you patrol the seas, hopefully sink some merchant shipping, and pull back into Lorient with three months of stink and facial hair on you, victory pennants flying, your only thoughts of the companionship you will find in the red light district...

U-505 was not a lucky ship.  It had a couple moderately successful cruises, but its first skipper was relieved after sinking a sailing ship belonging to the President of Columbia (inducing them to declare War on Germany, which I am sure did the Allied cause a lot of good), and the second skipper never won the hearts of his men because he was a douche.  He wasn't very good at submarining either, and in over a year at the healm only sunk one or two ships.  But by 1943 the war was going against the Germans.  The U-boat fleet was subjected to incredible sabotage (I think almost through all of 1943 the U-505 only got out on an actual patrol once, where it was heavily damaged in the Carribean and yet still made it back to port...perhaps the most heavily damaged U-boat to ever make it back, a testament to the professionalism of the crew).  At last the skipper committed suicide on board, the only submarine skipper to do so while on duty.

And so it goes on.  Finally the boat is captured by the US in June 4, 1944, the first enemy boat to be captured by the US Navy since the war of 1812.  The crew spends the rest of the war in America, at a prisoner of war camp I think in Louisana.  Because the US doesn't want the Germans knowing the boat was captured, the men's families are not notified that they are still alive (a violation of the Geneva Convention!! or at least so says Hans).  But finally the war ends and they are allowed to write home again.  Hans and his crew were transfered to Scotland, where they broke rocks as penance until 1947, when at last they were allowed to return to Germany.  All were required to disavow the Government, but Hans, loyal to the end, jumps of the train and sneaks in to the country, loyalty intact.

And that is sort of the striking thing about this book.  Hans is completely unapologetic for serving in the Kriegsmarine during the war, and makes a point often of saying so.  I am not sure he really needs to be apologetic -- though most American readers will probably want to know how he reconciles his pride in serving in the U-boat fleet with the fact that he was fighting for Nazi Germany and what it stood for.  The answer is he doesn't, at least in the book.  I am not sure he mentions the plight of the Jews at all...he rather points out the devastation of the Allied air raids in Lorient and Germany, as well as the struggle against Communism which to him was paramount and got underway when he joined up in 1941.   As to his opinions on the many dark sides of the Nazi regime, well, we never are privy to those.

And if you also don't like a lot of "wink wink nudge nudge" here's what we did on the Rue Pastorale, you probably won't like this book.  Hans recounts his many adventures ashore with something a bit of "these were the best days of our lives" lavisious glee...though he never goes into the details (though there is one rather hilarious story that actually takes place on the boat when this guy, he...).  He had a very good time.  But I don't begrudge him that -- if you or I were young and single and had to spend two months or more in a steel tube with rotting food and shit in buckets, pulling boring duties punctuated with sheer terror, I imagine we might well behave the same.  I actually am sure I almost certainly would have.  After a while though, it does kind of get old.  It's like "yes, Hans, we get it, we get it.  You fucked a lot of women, and you drank a metric tonne of booze."  It's like the opening scene from Das Boot replayed many, many times over.  But hey, that's the way it was.

Before you write off Hans as a Nazi playboy, you should also know that he and his shipmates served with honor and devotion, or at least as much honor as one could under the circumstances, as most naval men always have. They made it a practice to cripple a ship and then make sure most of the enemy sailors aboard had gotten off before sinking it, after which they rendered what aid to survivors they could.  Not much, but a bit of food and water before slipping away.  He also moved to America after he retired from work in Germany, to Chicago to be with his beloved boat, and was instrumental in getting veterans of the U-505 and the men from the US Navy who captured the German sub together, where none showed any will will towards the other, even though its not unlikely that the men sitting across the table from Hans killed some of his friends on other boats.  The kind of binding up, that sort of coming together, is a lesson to us all, I'd say, as is Hans pride in his service.

So yes.  If you are interested in what it was like to be on a World War II submarine, this is a rather good book.  It's a quick read, a straightforward account, and it gives a different perspective on the war in total.