Vause, Jordan. Wolf: U-Boat Commanders in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

ISBN 1-55750-874-7
249 Pages

Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

We recently reviewed Samuel Mitcham's Eagles of the Third Reich, a history of the Luftwaffe told through the biographies of its leading officers.

Jordan Vause's Wolf takes a similar approach with the U-Bootwaffe, but leans even more toward a social and psychological study of U-boat commanders with less explanation of the course of the war at and under the sea.

In Mitcham's book each Luftwaffe commander is clearly a unique character, sometimes with few redeeming characteristics, but almost always colorful and memorable. It's easy to keep track of them by their stunts and peccadillos and outrageousness.

Vause proceeds from the premise that of the evolving images or stereotypes of U-boat skippers from the early days of the war to the present, none have been or are really true, that each individual skipper was shaped by his own upbringing and pre-war experiences and -- perhaps most importantly -- that phase of the Battle of the Atlantic in which he took part. These may all look like identical gains of sand, he seems to be saying, but as you spread the grains upon a wide table and examine each one closely you will begin to see that each is different and distinguishable from its brothers.

The book focuses on a few leading U-boat personalities such as Doenitz himself (who was a modestly successful submarine commander in the First World War), Prien, Kretschmer, Oehrn, Oesten, Luth, and Herbert Werner. Vause discusses their pre-war years and describes their war patrols and compares and contrasts their attitudes toward National Socialism, discipline at sea, the press and propaganda and their own positions as media stars, the realization that Germany was doomed to defeat, the near certainty of death in the "iron coffins" in the last years of war, and so on. For every ardent Nazi skipper, we're told, there was someone uncomfortable with politics. (A single U-boat skipper was executed during the war: he had ripped Hitler's portrait from a bulkhead and hurled it into the trash declaring that henceforth on his boat there would be no worship of idols.) For every commander who knew in his heart that Germany would ultimately emerge victorious there was one who doubted it right from the start. For every commander who watched without emotion as the crews of sinking merchant ships drowned in the icy North Atlantic there was one who struggled with his own impulses toward compassion and assistance.

Of most interest are the attitudes of these men toward each other, especially in the post-war years. When speaking of Hans-Joachim Rahmlow, whose U-570 was surrendered to the RAF without a struggle in 1941, its capture giving away to the British many German secrets, one former U-boat officer at first says "I suppose these days he would have been exonerated due to a temporary incapacity. Unsuitability. Insanity. Something like that." When pressed for his own opinions, he replies "I would have strung him up."

Equally vivid is the chapter devoted to the farcical but deadly serious post-war feud between U-boat captain Karl-Friedrich Merten and Lothar-Gunther Buchheim, a wartime journalist aboard a U-boat who later wrote Das Boot which was then turned into a highly successful film. Merten and Buchheim for years, until the former's death, fought ferociously in the press (and on the phone) over the authenticity of the latter's books and films in depicting the war under the sea and life aboard the boats. Merten, Vause points out, conducted all his successful patrols before the Battle of the Atlantic turned against Germany and made U-boat duty nearly suicidal.

Similarly, the surviving skippers have formed into factions that may be loosely defined as the hardline "still bitter and dream[ing] of final victory" (according to an old U-boat man) and the more tolerant, "progressive" ones, a number of whom served with distinction in the Bundesmarine and rose to important naval commands within the NATO alliance. This latter group included Erich Topp, another officer with whom Merten feuded for years before they made uneasy peace with one another.

Wolf includes interesting stories (not the least of which is Victor Oehrn's as he is seriously wounded by Australians and captured at the Alamein Line while driving through the desert in search of Rommel's headquarters) and insiders' details of the men who commanded the U-boats along with some amateur psychoanalyzing.

Despite his contention that these men were all individuals rather than stereotypes, the ultimate impact of his book makes them all seem more alike than Vause could have intended. That is, their similarities stand out more than their differences. While perhaps not identical grains of sand, few of these men could be considered iconoclasts, mavericks, or even eccentrics.

Yes, they came from different backgrounds and brought with them different views and attitudes and it's also true that they were forged in different fires during the "Happy Times" or the late war bloodbath. But (at least until the later years of the war when hundreds of mostly unsuitable men were scraped together from every conceivable nook and cranny to take command of the hundreds of new U-boats being rapidly built and just as rapidly sunk), the skippers discussed in Wolf stand out most memorably for their shared characteristics. These men were carefully selected as conservative, tradition-minded youngsters. They were rigidly trained to take their places as interchangeable parts within larger undersea machines. The unsuitable ones were weeded out. Whatever their political interests or religious views or preferences ashore at the Scheherazade nightclub between patrols, they were self-disciplined, hard working, skilled and courageous, highly concerned with the well-being of their crews, and determined to do their duty even if it meant sacrificing themselves.

A mildly satisfying read which might have been improved if Vause had expended more pages on interesting stories and events and fewer striving to highlight the psychological differences among officers.

Available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press.

Thanks to NIP for providing this review copy.