ISBN 1-55750-396-6
198 pages

Acknowledgements; Introduction; maps; photos; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: The German Navy in Norway and France; Important Signals; The Basic Dimensions

   Published originally in the UK by Sutton as part of their Fortress Europe series (along with Hitler's Siegfried Line by Neil Short and Hitler's Atlantic Wall by Anthony Saunders), the latest book from Jak Mallmann Showell is, like the others in the series, a paean to concrete. Mallmann Showell ("the son of a Kriegsmarine U-boat man killed in the Battle of the Atlantic in 1944") has earned a reputation as an extremely prolific writer of books about U-boats, and German submarines are seldom missing from any page of Hitler's U-Boat Bases, but for the most part the real center of attention belongs to "floodlights, piledrivers, cranes, diggers, and cement pumps...."
   More than a year after the beginning of the war, when it began to look like the conflict might not be a short one, and when RAF bombers were mounting ineffective but constant raids against Germany, the Kriegsmarine in conjunction with the Todt Organization—Germany's civilian labor and construction administration—began a huge building program to provide steel-reinforced concrete "pens" to protect U-boats from Bomber Command attacks on bases in Germany and occupied Europe. Mallmann Showell's first chapter describes the planning, the massive construction efforts, and the human element of the building program, which was to continue at various bases until the end of the war.
   The author takes a visceral, personalized approach to his subject, almost as though studying the U-boats and the concrete pens has made him very protective of them and very sensitive to any implied criticism of the builders and the buildings. Some of that attitude becomes apparent in paragraphs about the labor force in the first chapter, with no pretense of political correctness.

   The term 'forced labour' needs some clarification because a number of historians have connected it to the emotional word 'slave' to suggest that Germany was the only country during the war which engaged in this type of practice. Yet, as far as possible, Germany looked for volunteers and even later, when the Todt Organisation was given permission to recruit from low grade prisoners in jails, the men were asked to come forward rather than being forced into the job. What is more, generous incentives were offered to those who did volunteer. Even British prisoners - 'other ranks' - were keen on working and there are a goodly number of escape stories involving officers who lamented the fact that the Geneva Convention prevented them from taking part in more interesting activities than just sitting around in prison camps. For a long time, it has been in vogue for the media to show in great detail what the Germans were supposed to have done to others, but they hardly ever mention what was done to the Germans. In view of this highly one-sided view of history it is to be expected that so many accounts make a point of emphasising that the German authorities employed 'slaves' as forced labour, but always fail to mention the positive sides of the story. For example, that the overstretched naval resources in foreign countries were also used to feed a vast number of destitute children. In any case, the conditions endured by the German conscripted workers were no worse that those experienced by the Bevan Boys, British youngsters who were conscripted to work in British coal mines. What is more, the large masses of German 'slaves' who were forced to work by the Allies after the war, had to endure even worse conditions.

   Mallmann Showell goes on to outline the construction process and the uses of four main types of bunkers: covered locks for raising and lowering water levels, construction bunkers where U-boats were actually built, fitting-out bunkers where U-boats were readied for service, and bunkers where operational boats could shelter from the RAF between patrols. The chapter includes a long, rather odd document from the U-Boot-Archiv by an anonymous sailor who served at the base in Lorient, and ends with excerpts from an account of the base at St Nazaire by an officer who commanded the 7th U-Flotilla there.
   The next chapter, which comprises the heart of the book, covers bunkers at each U-boat base:

• Trondheim
• Bergen
• Kiel
• Hamburg
• Bremen
• Heligoland
• Brest
• Lorient
• St Nazaire
• La Pallice
• Bordeaux

   This part of the section on Brest serves as a good example of the kind of information Mallmann Showell provides for the bunkers at each base:

   The Germans considered Brest to be an ideal location for U-boats and for the surface fleet, but naval planners found the long access from the landward side, over steep sided countryside, somewhat tricky. Even today, the entire dockyard area is still hemmed in by cliffs, making it difficult to reach. This became a decisive factor in the construction of submarine pens and very nearly resulted in the planners looking for an alternative port. At the time there was no easy, direct rail access, hardly enough room to manoeuvre heavy machinery and very little space to store building materials. The problem was eventually overcome by importing the majority of goods by water, pre-fabricated parts from Germany were brought to the commercial docks, five kilometres away, and carried over by barges. This took place at a time when the battleships/battlecruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst as well as the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were in port. They attracted a good number of British bombers, which demolished quite a few of the lighters used for the building of the submarine pens.
   Planners did not have a great deal of choice as far as location for the pens was concerned and quickly decided on the old seaplane station on the western extremity of the harbour. Seaplanes had their heyday long before the war, when landing in remote areas was solved by making use of the only naturally flat surfaces around. However, the unpredictability of water made the majority of operators favour land-based runways. Although the British, German and French navies devoted considerable resources to the development of floating aircraft, the problems of coping with waves continued to be troublesome and this type of transport was usually limited to smaller, reconnaissance types of planes, rather than developing fleets of long-distance amphibious bombers. Removing the seaplane base did not appear to be a great loss to either the German occupying forces nor the French, who used the base again immediately after the Kriegsmarine vacated it in 1944. The reason for wanting the bunker within the confines of the naval base was that there was already a hub of essential services. Underground fuel tanks, for example, were less than half a kilometre away. The hill behind the bunker had been hollowed out with a number of deep tunnels which provided an attractive backup for the Germans. On top of this, the long mole sheltering the harbour from southwesterly winds also acted as a useful defence against torpedo-carrying aircraft.
   Originally designed with two bays, similar to Elbe II in Hamburg, the Brest bunker was due to have been built in water and wet ground at the base of the cliffs, below the naval school. Being tidal meant the designers had to consider the same problems of allowing sufficient depth at low tide and enough headroom at high water. The double pen accommodation was quickly enlarged and the modified design was still under construction when it was altered once again. This time, the additional pens were to be made both wider and longer to accommodate larger supply submarines and the very long-range boats which were then already under construction. This was hardly underway when the plans changed once more and a special base for long-range boats was planned for Bordeaux. Enlarging the pens sounds quite straightforward, but presented the planners with considerable problems because they had started the building as far away from the centre of town as possible. This meant that it was necessary to extend sideways over a very narrow stretch of land at the base of high cliffs, working in the direction from which supplies were coming and on top of the all-important building site with cement mixers. In addition to this, it was necessary to concoct some ingenious schemes to prevent the larger pens from blocking the road and rail thoroughfares inside the bunker by building swing bridges under the thick concrete roof.
   The building work, which started in 1941, was undertaken by the construction firm Julius Berger from Berlin, while local technical know-how as well as heavy plant was supplied by Campenon Bernhard of Paris. It has been suggested that the first set of two wet and two dry pens was inaugurated with great ceremony on 13 September of that same year by U372 (Kptlt Heinz-Joachim Neumann). And U83 (Kptlt Hans Werner Kraus) carried out some docking trials a few days later. However, the U-boat Command's war diary shows U372 to have arrived in Brest on 13 August 1941 and set out for sea again on 10 September. Therefore, it is likely that some other boat participated in the commissioning of the bunker. Whatever happened, this was hardly significant. The bunker was not completed until a year later and the area continued to resemble an untidy building site for some time to come.
   Long before this inauguration, it was decided that the ceilings should be strengthened, but it was thought both the walls and foundations could suffer by having the additional burden piled on top. Therefore a variety of strengthening techniques were applied to different parts of the roof. Some were covered with a layer of concrete beams. Other parts, with stronger foundations, had granite blocks laid on top while additional concrete was poured onto another section. The roof received further modification in 1943 when three anti-aircraft batteries and radar towers were added. These were supported by an accommodation bunker for the gun crews and space for storing ammunition.
   For most of 1942, air raids had not been too much of a problem. The first attack by a solitary aircraft towards the end of 1940 was followed by about 75 raids with over 3,000 aircraft, but in February 1942 the Royal Air Force lost interest in Brest and there followed a period of calm, probably because most of the town had been destroyed by that time and existing bombs could inflict only little damage on the might of the U-boat bunker. A few US air force bombers put in an appearance during the beginning of 1943, but following this brief annoyance, the place was left in relative peace.

   The information for each bunker also includes anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages about the current (year 2000) state of the structure and its post-war use, along with tips on how to reach the site and the best spots for viewing. All the text is also accompanied by a great many photographs of the bunkers, both wartime snapshots and Mallmann Showell's contemporary photos. In many ways, these photos are among the best parts of the book, although some readers might wish the author had made more of an effort to choose his vantage points to more carefully duplicate the original views (as in the "After the Battle" volumes). Even so, besides providing the history of each bunker, the author makes it easy for travellers to conduct their own tours of the colossal structures, about which he obviously cares a great deal.
   In fact, the author's attachment to the bunkers sometimes seems a bit extreme, given their nature. Here's what he has to say about the U-boat facilities on the island of Heligoland. "Since the British made very little effort to interrupt this [very limited activity at the base], they probably knew of the minor role which these pens [at Heligoland] were playing. Yet, the attraction of devoting a lot of resources and risking many lives for their destruction did not pass and a few weeks before the end of the war the Royal Air Force was sent in with heavy bombers to destroy the base."
   The final chapter covers the Allied bombing campaign against the bunkers. The author begins the chapter by devoting considerable ink to damning the bomber offensive while pointing out that civilians suffered far more than the bunkers, which were for the most part barely scratched. While it's easy to criticize the combined bomber offensive, and Bomber Command's role in particular, few commentators have gone so far as to insinuate that it would have been best to make no effort whatsoever to destroy, damage, or disrupt the U-boat bases. Given that kind of one-sided text and the equally disingenuous captions that accompany many of the photos of damage caused by bombing and by local resistance groups, Mallmann Showell almost seems to believe that the U-boat bunkers were actually engaged in some kind of benign commercial activity and should have been left undisturbed during the war. The text is more even-handed when describing the post-war bombing tests conducted against the bunkers and the demolition programs that eventually flattened some of the sites.
   When he climbs down from his high horse and focuses on the bunkers themselves rather than the morality of war in general and the bombing campaign in particular, the author does a good job with his material. This is certainly the best and most complete treatment of the U-boat bunkers yet to appear in the English language, and the photos are especially fascinating. Combining the historical material with guides to the bunkers as they currently exist is a winning combination, guaranteed to make Hitler's U-Boat Bases attractive to many readers.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press.
   Thanks to NIP for providing this review copy.