The Odyssey of a U-Boat Commander
Page 26
He asked me how he should act now that he was a free man again. It was a reasonable question after his long isolation from social and political developments. I gave him this advice: "Take a long time to assess the situation in which you find yourself. You will be swarmed by journalists who are out to get a sensational story. Make as few public statements as possible. Such an attitude will earn you respect from those who are critical of you." A half year later he had been persuaded by a publisher to write his memoirs, which came out under the title, 10 Jahre and 20 Tage. They were later complemented by two more books, Mein uwechselvolles Leben, and Antworten auf 40 Fragen. All three are attempts to justify his actions. The meetings in my house and later at his retirement seat of Aumiihle showed that DOnitz, too, had returned home.
But while for us coming home brought with it a time of soul-searching, of self-assessment, and a return to peace and truth, Donitz would continue to give the impression of a desperately stiff and inflexible mindset. He had returned, but he still lived in the world he had left ten years before. I had to think of Lot's wife looking back and turning into a pillar of salt.
You cannot fathom a human soul. Undoubtedly the idea of National Socialism captured Donitz. He was intoxicated by the military successes to whose glamor he contributed himself and that blurred his vision. All that is human. Then the shadows lengthened with the declining military successes, the defeats, and finally the catastrophe. He saw these shadows as if they were ghosts that could be exorcised. His personal life was ascetic and full of suffering. There can be no doubt his U-boat men's drama of life and death affected him deeply, as did the loss of his two sons. In our many meetings and conversations I have never succeeded in finding out from his casually expressed sentiments what really went on underneath the surface of his mind and in his soul.
Grand Admiral Donitz's apologists hold that he was an unpolitical officer, but I am not convinced and here my criticism sets in. His unconditional commitment to Hitler, his decrees and speeches that reflect National Socialist ideology and utterances of its chief spokesmen-all this induces me to reject this assessment. As Commander-in-Chief of the Navy he enjoyed, as do most flag officers, access to a high level of information. So much we know today from the talks he gave; so much we can deduce from his presence at meetings where, for example, SS Leader Himmler openly described his strategy of liquidation against Poles, Russians, and Jews. From my own experience as a flag officer, albeit under a different regime with freedom of opinion, I learned that official information was but a small part of all the information I ultimately had access to from other sources as well. I conclude from this experience that Donitz knew more than he ever admitted.
Quite independent of the preceding considerations one must demand from men in the highest positions of leadership political responsibility for what they did and failed to do. In vain the world waited for a "final word" from Donitz that could have been seen as a kind of confession of his entanglements with a criminally tainted political regime. Many expected that he, as we, would feel the need to admit to a moral defeat. However, I do not think it wise to speculate which kind of belief, thinking, or conviction enabled Donitz to span the abyss of infamy of which he must have been aware. Not unlike Hamlet, he seemed to say that no one could penetrate the heart of his secret. He knew of the mass executions behind the front lines, that expression of a monstrous contempt for the value of human life. His reaction: "It is not my business to get involved in matters that lie in the realm of the political leadership." This comes very close to a passive toleration of the insane crimes and stands in sharp contrast to the traditions and basic principles that for generations had formed and informed a soldier's world.
One day, I believe it was in late 1956, I received a telephone call from Heinrich Schwich. As a war correspondent he had accompanied us on a war patrol. During a surface attack against a convoy he spoke his dramatic account directly into a tape recorder. He remained calm and collected when a tanker filled with gasoline blew up spectacularly some 800 yards away. The heat was murderous and I sent all nonessential personnel to take cover below. Schwich simply kept on reporting, even when our boat became an obvious target before the burning horizon and destroyers began firing at us.
By the end of the war Schwich had become the chief commentator for Radio Berlin. When the Russians approached he defended the station with a handful of soldiers. He was captured and spent six years in East German prisons. Bodily a wreck but unbroken in spirit, he was finally released and made it to the West. Schwich drew my attention to the book, Haie and kleine Fische (Sharks and Little Fish) by Wolfgang Ott, who had been a naval officer. The plot dealt with two of man's basic themes and experiences since creation, love and death, set against the backdrop of the war. Whether all the details of life on the minesweeper, in occupied France, or on the U-boat matched wartime reality, only those who were actually there may be able to judge. How genuinely Ott caught our sense of shock and upheaval, and what made the book truly a work of confession for our generation, only those whose life has been changed by the war can sense.
The book annoyed and scandalized many of its readers. But any provocation of this kind also illuminates a complex situation. People who do not know that pornography can be stimulating for some and despicable for others will feel scandalized. As will those who fail to realize that obscenity is a stylistic means of expression to portray the shocking as truly appalling-and not only since the days of James Joyce, Norman Mailer, and Henry Miller. People will likewise feel provoked by the jargon of a French prostitute, or express outrage when some officers are depicted as naked, with their deficiencies exposed. Readers who judge in this fashion will miss the true meaning of the book, will fail to discover the courage to act independently or the readiness to suspect basic human traits behind every mask. Such readers will never understand the grim irony vis-A-vis those for whom obedience is a higher virtue than freedom of thought.
I endorsed the book, wrote a review of it, and later worked as a technical consultant when it was made into a movie. The studios were in Ben- desdorf near Hamburg. The director was Frank Wisbar. During the war he had been a German officer. Later he emigrated to the United States and directed a number of well-known films, among them Nasser Asphalt. He had a wonderful personality and was fascinated by this project. The film architect, likewise a genius in his field, recreated in full detail the central control room as well as the decks and bunks of a Type VIII boat. While the film was being shot, the central control room was flooded with a huge amount of water. A bearded actor played the role of the chief engineer. When he emerged completely drenched after one of the scenes, he said to my wife: "No ten horses could have dragged me onto a real Uboat." We all stayed in a farmhouse. The film crew and the actors were an open-minded, funny group. We enjoyed many interesting talks, about ordinary subjects and some not so ordinary, depending on the situation, but always invigorating.
To take up the cause of Buchheim's book, Das Boot (The Boat), was of special concern to me. He masterfully captured in a literary sense the reality of U-boat warfare as I myself had experienced it. His subsequent books, U-Bootkrieg, Die U-Bootfahrer, and Zu Tode gesiegt, also helped make Germans comprehend at last the deadly struggle and defeat of the U-boats and their crews. It was a perhaps unintended but nevertheless positive by-product that both the book and the movie version of Das Boot corrected many stereotypes about German soldiers. I wrote to Buchheim:
It is remarkable to me what your book depicts as the "reality" of the U-boat war after 30 years. I mean by this a higher reality that derives from the ambiguity of our existence and from the unfathomable depth of our individual experiences. This reality speaks to us in images that have undergone changes over the years so that our eyes can no longer see the original impressions. It is this that has fascinated me about the book. Many must have had experiences like those described by you. But it requires a special clef to give them a form that captures all nuances and currents, all inner and outer upheavals.
A member of the German Embassy in Washington has told me that the movie version of Das Boot, even more so than the book itself, has done much to undo traditional stereotypes held about Germans in the United States. Indeed, it was awarded an "Oscar." My engagement for Ott and Buchheim in letters, talks, and publications brought a flood of reactions. They covered the entire spectrum from outrage ("No, it did not happen this way!") to lack of understanding ("How could you as an old Uboat man help those creatures foul your own nest?!"). I witnessed public protest actions against the books ranging from a collective boycott of bookstores to demonstrations against the publishing house. All this encouraged me even more to make my position unambiguously clear. As a creatively active individual I reject categorically any collective judgment with respect to artistic matters. Collective judgments are manipulated judgments. They shake the very foundations of our civilization, our right to form our own opinion. Our recent past is full of examples of such manipulated judgments. It forced a number of our greatest artists, painters, and thinkers to leave their country either by force or voluntarily because their life was threatened or they could no longer make a living under the prevailing circumstances. Every creatively active person is most sensitive when this subtle atmosphere of freedom and tolerance from which all real art and culture sprouts is endangered.
In the participants of the last war, the books rekindle the memory of all the infernal situations and horror that war visits upon man. They also bring back the images of men who kept on fighting amidst the collapse and the insanity of further bloodshed because such were their orders. As a member of the West German Navy I learn from these books that a sol dier is neither a caricature nor a potential murderer, but that he represents the whole scale of human and manly life with all its strengths, weaknesses, and mistakes. These books could only have been written and can only be understood before the backdrop of one of the mightiest intellectual metamorphoses western civilization has ever gone through. In our century something has been set in motion that in an incredibly short time has transformed the traditional foundations and notions about man's very existence and his environment. The work of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Freud, to name only a few, contributed in the field of science to revolutions whose intellectual impact has been and remains explosive. A few creatively gifted minds are trying to map out paths through this incredibly broadened field of manifold experiences with respect to nature and the human existence. I find it self-evident that the means of expression and presentation must be broadened accordingly.
WEST GERMAN NAVY
Many friends and acquaintances found it difficult to understand why I gave up my successful career as an architect to rejoin the Navy. It was no easy step for me, and I took it only after careful calculation of advantages and disadvantages.
When we built the Mercatorhalle in Duisburg I came into close contact with the city administration. At the time they were looking for a new director of public construction for the city. My name came up. I was interested in the position for two reasons. My partnership with Graubner had begun to run into problems, and we agreed that we would end it as soon as conditions allowed. Another reason was that by taking this influential post in the middle of the Ruhr District we were likely to get to build more projects in a region that was rapidly expanding economically.
And then there were my contacts with the new West German Navy. Several officers working in the personnel section had let me know that the Navy desired my return to active duty. My starting position would likely be a military-political assignment with NATO in Washington. It was no easy decision for me. My friend Klahn, the painter, told me, "Let your heart decide for you." I replied: "My heart is where I can feel the breath of the world." He looked at me as if he was about to declare that this must be another of my illusions. But then he said: "Well, I see you have made up your mind." I went to Washington, and from the moment I arrived there I knew that I would not regret my decision. But the six months before I could take up my assignment in the United States were a testing time of doubts and challenges for me.
What was the West German Navy like in 1958; how did I experience it?
Diary:
January 15, 1958
Arrival at the "Red Castle by the Sea," the naval academy, or Marineschule, in Flensburg-Murwik. How my perspective has changed over the years! After working as an independent architect I sense the atmosphere of a monastery, little light and air. Artistically insignificant decorations from the fin de siecle era, narrative wall paintings, pithy sayings. We are shown to our rooms. The bedroom has six bunks; we share bathroom and shower.
Official welcome. Nothing of importance. In the evening: "Gentlemen, the Admiral!" Flottillenadmiral Hubert von Wangenheim-narrow lips, protruding chin, a big, bent nose, had been a farmer after the war. Each of us gives a brief summary of his life. An incredible mosaic. Every profession is represented, from a top industrial manager to a former member of the Foreign Legion: grocers, millers, gardeners, sales representatives of all kinds, a deputy mayor.
Topics of conversation: Modern artists are only interested in making money, mainly charlatans. It is useless for me to join the discussion. Other subjects: via South Africa to the question of racism. Strong words about the white man's claim to supremacy. The danger of mixing the races is being emotionally demonstrated: "Would you allow your daughter to marry a Negro?" That is the end of the argument; everything stays on the surface; nothing profound.
At midnight we bring out three cheers to honor someone's birthday. The cheers sound shallow, hang stale in the room. How full and genuine they sounded fifteen years ago. Of course we have to empty our glasses in one gulp; that's the tradition. We sit by the fireplace until 1:30 A.M. Would anyone care for another glass of beer? Well, that means one more for everyone. There is no direct pressure to conform, but if you exclude yourself you become an outsider in no time.
We get up at 7 A.M. We have to shine our shoes ourselves and also make the bed. Breakfast at 7:30 A.M. At 8 A.M. our work routine begins. A petty officer of the administrative branch tells us about the new regulations, about compensation for being separated from our families, about reclaiming travel costs, and so forth. Such things should be handled quietly and quickly, not last four hours. One in our group mentions he has seen officers with the rank of major behind typewriters. The motto of West Germany's armed forces seems to be: Everyone must lend a hand. The style of subalterns has triumphed everywhere.
At 12:30 r>.na. we receive our new uniforms. Poor fabrics, small selection. One cannot do anything about it. I feel as if I was in a panopticon, looking in from the outside through dirty little windows. The millers, gardeners, and sales people are being put in uniform. But no uniform can disguise what differences lie beneath the identical caps. This is no elite that is being fitted out here.
In the evening a meeting with my Crew classmate Heinz Kuhnle. We talk about the new type of naval officer without the division of the corps according to specialization. Each officer should be exposed to as many different fields as possible. That will bring out his talents. Midshipmen will have to learn how to be a welder, an electronic technician, how to do things at a work bench. I think it is a good idea.
Admiral von Wangenheim makes a clear statement about the ab
ortive plot to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944:
Those who demand from me that I respect the decision of the men of the 20th of July must be prepared that I respect the decision of the others who fought on to the end. The question of superior insight is necessarily linked to one's information level which would open up the possibility of criticism and acts of resistance. The problem of resistance remains an acute one for us Germans as long as Germans live unfree on the other side of the border. I respect the dead of the 20th of July; I reserve judgment about the men who now claim to be members of that resistance.
March 8, 1958
Took a walk along Flensburg Bay. Pleasant and quiet. Looking out over the sea helps, too. My wife called that Duisburg has raised additional questions. I must add that by that time I had not yet decided for good whether to return to active duty. While I did participate in this orientation course, I kept the option open of remaining a civilian. 1-Iamlet: "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."