The reality of the submarine war

A simulation challenges a player because his tactical skill as well as 
reactions are being tested. As in almost every game, the goal is to 
compete with others and to be better than them. Most games take 
advantage of this natural human desire.

Superficially, war can be viewed from the same perspective: one's 
own "crew" is fighting one's "opponent" who must be outwitted. 
Countless board and computer games use historic or imaginary war 
scenarios to captivate the player.

Thus, war becomes an abstract process, in which tactical decisions 
must be made in order to score points. The winner becomes a hero 
for a day, and the reality of war fades.

The history of submarine warfare in WW2 can lead to glorification of 
war and worshipping of heroes, both of which can distract us from the 
Wehrmacht's campaign of destruction in the east, the bombing of 
civilians, and the murder of the European Jews, as well as from the 
fact that U-boat crews were also subject to the will of a criminal 
group in charge of the German Reich.


Very early in the war Goebbels' propaganda machine created the 
hero figure of the German submarine commander. The best known 
example was Kapitnleutnant Gnther Prien after he had penetrated 
the British fleet base at Scapa Flow with U-47 in 1939 and sunk the 
battleship "Royal Oak".

The ecstatic victory celebrations quickly covered the fact that the 
submarine force was but a small part of Hitler's war machine. 
Propaganda claimed that these victories could be duplicated and 
made exaggerated use of them. It did not take Goebbels and his 
ministry very long to understand that the U-boat war could be 
utilized more readily than the fight of any other branch of the armed 
forces to create lies and distortions because results could not be 
verified by outsiders. Thus, absurd claims of success were made 
until the very end.

The illusion of the submarine war being a fight of "one man against 
the other" is quickly dissipated, if one takes a closer look at historical 
facts. Only a short time after the formal British declaration of war, U-
30 torpedoed the English passenger liner "Athenia". 112 people lost 
their lives, most of them women and children. Thus, Germany 
violated international law on the first day of the war. As a result, the 
German submarine forces were perceived very negatively by the 
whole world. The main purpose of the submarine is the destruction 
of helpless victims. Merchant ships were the primary target, and the 
term "tonnage war" disguised countless dead sailors.

The U-boat crews themselves lived like gophers in an underground 
mine. There were no storage facilities, neither were there sleeping or 
crew quarters. Often crews had to live for a hundred days inside 
their narrow cigars without ever being able to move around much or 
breathe fresh air. Hygiene was virtually unknown, and that alone 
could cause psychological damage without ever coming into contact 
with an "enemy". The enemy, however, could not be seen, he was 
an abstract target that could not be experienced. War took a terrible 
toll, and the submarine war was a prelude to our current age of 
possible mass destruction. The submarine war was without a doubt 
one of the most brutal aspects of the Second World War. Lothar-
Gnther Buchheim, an author who participated in the war on board 
submarines, writes the following about the fight: "Again and again 
we found survivors of sunken ships floating in life boats on the 
endless ocean. U-boat crews would try their best to equip them with 
provisions, charts and a compass, but they could not rescue the 
victims of their torpedoes. Beginning in September 1942 they were 
not allowed to do anything for the shipwrecked sailors. (...) Their own 
possible end always in mind, the men had to leave the helpless 
sailors waiting in their rafts or half sunken life boats to meet a 
terrible end.. (...) In addition to the fear of being abandoned there 
was the fear of oil. If heavy oil would find its way into a swimmer's 
lungs, he was as good as dead. They were afraid of the cold that 
numbed the limbs, and (...) they were afraid of thirst."

When the murderous battle on all seven seas was over the majority 
of the crews had been killed. Almost 39,000 german sailors put to 
sea in submarines; 27,082 of them never made it home.


