The True Story of Hitler's U-Boat War - Roger Moorhouse

25:53Francis Foster:Why does that pivot happen? I think the first failure, if you like, to capitalise is numbers, as I said before. The Germans just do not have the numbers to maximise that opportunity that they're given. They have the opportunity. The British Institute convoy operations already at the beginning of the war they had done so at the end of the First World War. So there was nothing necessarily new about that. But it didn't really, in terms of the defensive operations, it didn't really get into its swing properly, probably until late 1941, maybe. So there was a window when the British are not quite yet up to speed.

26:31You don't have, for example, the benefit of reading German cipher traffic, which comes in later on as well after late 40, 41, you start to get German cipher traffic being read by Bletchley Park. So you've got that. There is an opportunity. The Americans are not yet in, as I explained earlier on, but the Germans don't have the numbers to realize it, to make that work. So that's the sort of the initial failure. So yes, they score high figures, but they're not able to to score high enough figures to do what they want to do, which is effectively knock Britain out of the wall. So then you get to 1942 onwards, effective that sort of pivot moment 1942-43, which is where the Allied game improves drastically.

27:20So the Americans come in, you've got more in the way of manpower, you've got more in the way of escorts. Enigma traffic is coming on stream much more consistently by that stage.

27:30Francis Foster:And tell us about that, because I didn't know this, but that actually came from a U-boat. Yes, it did. The machine was captured on it. Tell us about what happened, because most people haven't heard about it. Yeah, as I said before, the standard practice, at least in the early phase of the war, was that U-boat, if it was discovered by a destroyer, would be forced below the surface, of course, depth charged. If they were damaged in the process, or if they were just exhausted their air, then they were forced to surface at some point, at which point they would either try and fight it out on the surface, which they could do.

28:05They had a deck gun and so on. Some of them did. A bit of a suicide mission against the destroyer, but some of them did. What was more usual was that you would surface, you'd kind of white flag and you'd evacuate the crew and then the U-boat would be scuttled. So they'd pull the seacocks and the U-boat would be scuttled. So that was kind of normal practice. And you can see that in a lot of the early engagements with the Royal Navy, you can see that from the archival record, was that death tolls are actually pretty minimal, but it's always that maybe a small proportion of the crew are killed. Most of them survive, go into British captivity, and the U-boat is scuttled.

28:44Francis Foster:And it's scuttled to prevent sensitive equipment being captured, the boat being captured, etc. Precisely. The example of U-110 10 is different in that respect because everything worked the same way. So they were forced to the surface. The captain decided to try and scuttle it, got his crew off. But for some reason, it didn't work. Either the order wasn't carried out to pull the seacocks or you had to open various levers to let the seawater in and so on. For some reason, that didn't happen. So the crew are all kind of floating away from this U-boat, which he's expecting to see sink beneath the waves, and it doesn't.

29:24And then there's a horror of horrors. The British boarding party comes out to U-110 and starts rifling through everything, pulling out the Enigma machine, pulling out all the code books. This is a huge boon for the British, absolutely huge. It's been lauded as one of the great British naval victories up there with Trafalgar. And in terms of the significance for what comes later on, I think that's probably not mistaken. That's not misplaced.

29:51Francis Foster:And how come the Germans didn't realize this, the Germans back home, I mean, hadn't realized that this had happened? It was kept pretty secret. The whole thing, there's a huge operation on the British side to prevent the Germans from realizing that Enigma was being read all the way through the war and in all theatres. So there's an interesting example, I think, in the Mediterranean where Enigma had told them that a German ship was in a certain place in the eastern Mediterranean and it was duly sunk. And then so as to make sure that the Germans didn't realize that we knew what was going on, where this was going to be, they sent out reconnaissance planes.

30:34So from the German side, the narrative was, okay, it was spotted by the reconnaissance planes. So all the way through, there was always this maximum effort given to trying to sort of shield the reality of ultra intelligence.

30:51Francis Foster:And talk to us about the Enigma machine, because people know the term, but might not understand the significance of it. Just tell us the story of that from the beginning. What is it? What was it used for? Why was the discovery of it so significant and the impact it The Germans had been experimenting with this. Initially, it was a commercial enterprise. They produced this cipher machine. There are many similar machines going around in the 1920s and 1930s. The Germans developed one, which was initially on the open market in the 1930s. It had been essentially deconstructed and broken by Polish engineers and mathematicians before the war.

31:32and in the summer of 39, so just before the outbreak of war, they handed over everything that they had worked out on the Enigma machine, which by then was the sort of standard encryption machine of the German military.

31:44Francis Foster:This is basically a way of preventing other hostile forces from getting your communications and knowing what's going on. So we have now end-to-end encryption. It's kind of a common phrase these days. That was a good example of end-to-end encryption. It was considered to be unbreakable. So it would encrypt the message that was typed into it. It looked like a typewriter, essentially, with a sort of plugboard in the front of it. And you had a number of settings and a couple of dials that you had to set. So when you're setting it up for that particular day, you have a number of settings you're supposed to follow.

32:21Then it broadcasts basically nonsense, what looks like nonsense. but at the other end, with the same settings, you can decrypt it at the other end. So all that anyone is intercepting if they're intercepting the message is nonsense, is a series of letters. So it was considered unbreakable and it was absolutely crucial for the British and others to make sure that that assumption was never challenged by the Germans, and it wasn't, crucially. Interestingly, Dönitz, in his memoir, which came out in 1957, in 1957, after he'd spent 10 years in prison, he talks in his memoir about, we still don't know if the British broke Enigma.

33:05So, he's still ignorant about it in 1957, which is kind of remarkable. So it was the great secret, even post-war. I think the story broke in the 70s in the end, which is remarkable. So the breaking of that, and it wasn't a one-hit thing where you break Enigma and then you're in forever because of the different models. The German Navy, for example, had a four-rotor model, which was another level of encryption, for example. Because the codes would change at regular intervals, it was quite possible for Bletchley Park, where all of this was done, to be locked out for a period and have to re-break with the new codes.

33:45But they were always on top of it. So, increasingly, as the war went on, those gaps where they were locked out grew less and less and of less duration. So crucially for the Allies in the U-Boat War, the knowledge of where the German Wolfpacks were meant that they could direct convoys around them. So, initially, in a defensive capacity, you could use Enigma traffic in that way. And then later on, in a much more offensive capacity, you could actually target individual vessels or target individual wolf packs. There's a great example of a supply ship. They had these things with Type 14, which was a supply U-boat, which is much bigger than the Type 7.

34:29It would patrol the Atlantic, basically, and liaison with its attack U-boats, and they would get fuel, they would get torpedoes, they'd get food, and then they'd go for another two, three weeks. So, actually, meaning that they didn't have to cross back across the Atlantic back to France to be resupplied. So, brilliant piece of logistics and brilliant piece of technology. When the British realized that that's what the Germans were doing with these Type 14s, they started targeting the Type 14s. And there's one example, I think it was U-489, on its maiden voyage, comes out of port, goes through the North Sea, down through the mid-Atlantic.

35:10It's being watched all the way via Enigma. And it's destroyed within a couple of weeks of leaving port. Never has a rendezvous with any of its attack U-boats. It's on its maiden voyage. This is indicative of how the war had turned, was that in some instances like that, we could literally know where it was at all times and attack it accordingly and destroy it. So it didn't have a chance.

35:36Francis Foster:The impact of Enigma must have been so big because you literally got access to the enemy's communications. It's an extraordinary achievement. Effectively. And it's not, like I said before, it's not perfect. Yeah. And it is sometimes halting and sometimes you get locked out. But yeah, absolutely, you have access to their communications. Quite right. And it also had a devastating effect on German and U-boat morale, didn't it? It did. And I mean, more so actually, in that respect, the Germans never knew that Enigma had been broken, as I said before. But the fact that they're being destroyed in such numbers and inexplicably as well.

36:13Francis Foster:It's probably even worse for morale, because you don't know why, but you're suddenly getting your ass handed. So you get all of these conspiracy theories going around. One interesting example in this... Was it about the Jews? Not that one. So you don't have the machine? Oh, nein! Now there's an interesting story of, you know, one of the other innovations that really changed the game is the advent of airborne radar for the British. So that, you know, bombing vessels, bombers for example, armed with aerial radar, you can read where a U-boat is from about five, six miles out. You could be on top of it and bombing it within, you know, but they will spot you.

36:58They've got 30 seconds to dive. A good U-boat crew can dive in 25 seconds, so it's touch and go. That's much more effective than trying to track them and attack them via a destroyer, because you can see them on the horizon. You can travel pretty much as fast as they can in a U-boat, so it's quite easy to get away. You can't escape attacking aircraft. So, they had these radar detectors on the U-boats, which would ping when they'd been spotted on radar. They would ping. But then, when the radar set was updated by the British and changed to a different frequency, then it stopped pinging. So then they're going, well, how are we still being detected, and this isn't working?

37:41So then they come to the conclusion that their machine must be actually betraying their presence to the British. Right? So this becomes the narrative for the U-boat crew. So they start switching them off entirely, which is kind of suicidal, because then they don't know when they're being read at all. So it's really, again, that's as a conspiracy theory, it's really kind of catastrophic for the U-boat crews. That's one of the ways that the stress of that situation, how it manifests itself in irrational decision making. So you've got individual commanders going, so you turn the bloody thing off, it's betraying opposition.

38:16This is the commander saying that. So it's the stress we were talking about earlier. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that it did is that it meant that so many U-boats got wiped out. So many U-boat commanders got wiped out. And this is obviously catastrophic because of the loss of life. But more pertinently, it's the loss of experience that the U-boats were... The loss of experience, it was catastrophic, wasn't it, really? Because you have at least three generations of U-boat crews and commanders. The first phase that we talked about earlier, when they actually are pretty competent, they're doing what they have to do.

38:57They're short on numbers. They're short on U-boats. They're short on crew. But they're pretty competent. That's the first happy time. That generation, very often they had pre-war naval experience, both the men and the commanders. And the technology. You talked about it in the book. There was a U-boat from 1935. Yeah, absolutely. So they're pretty long in the tooth, a lot of them. Someone like Gunther Prien that sank the Royal Oak in 1939, he'd been in the German Merchant Marine in the early 1930s. So he had been a sailor for a long, long time, a tremendous amount of experience. By the time they're killed off, and Gunther Prien is killed in March of 1941, By the time they're killed off, you've got their deputies and their sort of officer corps become the next commanders.

39:47And they're reasonably competent, but they don't have the same degree of experience, nowhere near. So already in about 1941, a lot of the interrogation reports from the British, and the British, as I said before, when they capture these crews, really extensive interrogation procedure that they go through. And they're saying in many cases already in 1941 and beyond that they're astonishingly inexperienced. Some of them had only been in the U-boat force for a couple of months. Their training had been perfunctory. Their morale was really low. This is only 1941, like really early, when you'd think that Germany is still in the phase of of sweeping all before it, certainly in the land war, that morale is really fragile in the U-boat arm.

40:36And it's partly because of that inexperience. It's partly because these young men have not got that long tail of experience. By the time you get to the end phase of the war, you've got commanders who are 22, 23 years old, commanding a U-boat, who weren't even in the Navy at the beginning of the war, who have had a really shortened, of necessity, a shortened training regimen for themselves and their crews. And essentially, the question is, do they actually know what they're doing? And the figures for that period, I mean, it's obviously, this is one factor among many, but the figures in terms of sinkings for the second half of the war are catastrophic for the Germans.

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42:44A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. It's Cambria amazing, all right. Bring a date, your team, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceandtales.com. See you on the roof. And the game also shifts as well because, look, the technology, it's not very good. No, no. I think there was a stat 30 % of torpedoes failed to launch. Yeah, that's the 1940 they have the torpedo crisis in the German military, in the German Navy. This is made manifest, particularly in the Norwegian campaign in spring of 1940. And yeah, you're right. So, you know, one in three torpedo firings fail, which means, you know, you might hit the target, but you'll just hear this sort of clunk as it hits the hull of the target ship when it actually explodes.

43:41And it actually took... That was only solved by capturing a British submarine and then retroengineering the detonators on the British torpedoes, and then refitting those to German torpedoes. But yeah, the technology is really quite primitive. The Type 7, as I said, the backbone of the fleet, is essentially an updated version of the U-boat from the end of the First World War, which was called the UB-3. Various technological advances have been made, but it's essentially the same thing. So really quite primitive, mass-produced, did the job. It's a submersible rather than a submarine. It spends most of its time on the surface.

44:19It only dives to either attack or to avoid attack. So it's a very primitive vessel. And again, the example of the torpedoes is a good one. That shows as well how primitive they were and how fallible they were as well.

44:37Francis Foster:That's quite unusual, isn't it? Because especially towards the end of the war, Hitler in particular is staking a lot of his resources on super weapons. The idea that we're going to build something that's going to fundamentally shift the course of the war, which we're clearly at this point losing. I don't know why I'm speaking for we, the Germans. Freudian, mate. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully I can get away with that. But you know what I mean. But what you're saying is they really didn't do that with the U-Boats. Well, they did. They did. So the core of the U-boat fleet, which is these Type 7s, about 70%, and then Type 9s was a larger vessel, which also pretty primitive, but worked very well.

45:17So they did from 1943 onwards, there's this very, very analogous actually to the wonder weapons that you just mentioned, the V1s, V2s, and everything else. They started looking at the next generation of submarines of U-boats and what should it looked like? What propulsion systems, for example, should it have that would enable it to stay beneath the surface either for longer periods or even indefinitely? And the conventional form of having diesel engines and electric batteries and so on, that was considered old hat. Let's not do that because that means we have to surface, which means we're vulnerable.

45:53So they start looking at various propulsion systems. There's a German engineer called Walther, who was not really a charlatan because he was a bit brilliant. but he led them down a number of dead ends, in terms of things like the propulsion systems that were independent of air, essentially. So creating propulsion systems that would work perpetually underwater. So they put an awful lot of money into that. And then there's two generations of U-boats at the end. This is electrically powered, so huge battery packs underneath them, a bit like your electric vehicle today. Type 21s, Type 23s, which they produce essentially from, you know, 44 onwards exclusively.

46:40So all the order book for the Type 7s is kind of, okay, we won't build those anymore, we're going to build these ones. And they're radically different, particularly the Type 21s, which is the ocean-going version. It points in many respects, it points to a lot of the technology and the technological developments that you'll see in the Cold War. So a really fascinating vessel, but it consumed huge amounts of manpower, man hours, raw materials, steel, all the rest of it. They had more than 100 of these built at the end of the war. Not one of them saw combat. Wow. Because they're constantly fighting teething troubles and difficulties to actually get them up to speed.

47:26So for the second half of the war, you've got the same thing. You've got these sort of wonder weapons and all of the faith being put in the wonder weapons. And there's Goebbels' diary entry, which I quote, where he talks about, you know, if we can get these on stream, you know, by June 1945, he's talking about June 45, you know, this is going to change the war. It's a very similar story to the V2s, except the V2s actually were used in anger. The Type 21s never were. But in a sense, you know, it's difficult with a counterfactual, but you almost sense, had they put all of that effort into just producing more type 7s or more type 9s that you know the the tried and tested vessels that they had um they might have uh done better should we say in

48:11Francis Foster:the in the last i was gonna ask you about the done better thing is a really interesting point because uh i mean churchill talks about this as well i mean hitler made a hell of a lot look everybody makes mistakes especially in you know in that sort of situation particularly when you look back at it with full knowledge of everything. But do you think that if the Germans hadn't obsessed about making these, it's interesting, I mean, I am, I think, confessing to being both a nerd and autistic in this conversation, but, you know, I watch, like, people restoring World War II weapons on YouTube. There's some channels that do way bigger numbers than us, by the way, mate.

48:42Francis Foster:But a lot of them talk about the fact, you know, this is a German submachine gun, and it's, like, way more complicated than a Russian one or an American one or a British one. Do you think if the Germans had focused more on mass production, they would have... I probably wouldn't have won, but do you think they would have had a much better chance in the world? Yes. I don't think it would necessarily change the end result because of what you're facing. Certainly after 1941, you're facing the industrial might, not only the United States, and the best example there is Liberty ships in this context.

49:14They're producing Liberty ships almost by the week in US shipyards. So they're more than replacing what's been lost in the Battle of the Atlantic. On the other side, you've got the Soviet Union, which is very good at this stuff, at actually mass production. You look at the T-34. They concentrate on one model of tank, effectively, for most of the war, until the end of the war when you've got some others, JS-1, for example, JS-2s. But most of the war, they're producing T-34s. And it's pretty primitive. It's very effective, but pretty primitive. in it's if you ever if you want nerdery you know go to bovington uh i've been in a t34 it's not comfortable no i mean and if i mean when i back in the day you know i i've done a bit of welding in my time constantine you might you might i might surprise you if you look at the welds on a on a on a german panther like they're perfect yeah and bearing in mind you know the thickness of the steel it's very tough to actually get a decent weld the welds are all perfect if you look at welds on the T-34, they're catastrophically bad.

50:12But they used it basically as a throwaway weapon. And you've always got another one. The Germans never had another one. They never had another Panther. They couldn't throw them away in the same way. So absolutely, I think that could have maybe prolonged the war from a German perspective. I don't think it would have changed the result because of the sheer disparity in the economic potential of the two partners. But it was when you were talking about towards the end of the war, where they were still building U-boats, and the Nazi leaders were going, look, well, we can't just focus this on one factory because we're getting killed out here.

50:49So we've got to do it in two or three factories. So then what would happen is then you stuck it all together. And it doesn't fit. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the story of the Type 21, effectively. That's why the Type 21 spent, you know, the first Type 21 is actually launched in the summer of 1944. So, it could have potentially made a difference. But it spent so long in sort of troubleshooting and trying to find out why it leaks and why it does this and the other. And it's exactly what you said. Because of the aerial campaign against Germany, against German factories, they had basically kind of dissipated production and said, okay, well, this factory over here is going to do the tail sections.

51:27There's eight sections, I think, to a Type 21. So, each section was going to be built at a different place, and then they'd pull them all together and they'd essentially assemble the finished article. And the intention, obviously, is that with the bombing campaign, if one of those gets temporarily knocked out, it doesn't knock out the whole thing. So you can kind of work around the bombing campaign. But the end result, and of course, you're using slave labor, using concentration camp labor, so they're not bothered what the tolerances are. They're too busy, you know, worrying about where the next meal is coming from.

52:00They're not going to get beaten to death by God. Also, they fucking hate you. Yeah, and they hate you. So sabotage is a thing as well. So there's that. So the sections that are built are very often built not to tolerances, and they don't find out until they try and put them all together. And they actually try and go and float it in the Baltic, and it doesn't work. So this is why they spent, you know, more than a year very often in troubleshooting, never saw action.

52:24Francis Foster:Was there ever a conversation, you talked about the stat, 16 % never sank anything. Was there ever a conversation of like, boys, this isn't working. How about we, look, at this point, we're getting absolutely smashed here. Let's put this steel into anti-aircraft guns so that our cities don't get flattened. Let's actually redistribute these resources to something that's going to defend our country as opposed to trying to win the war that's no longer winnable. Was there ever... or was Hitler just too deranged by this point? He was like, you know, we're going to win. Yeah, I think, well, 43 is a...

52:59you know, the more you look at the progress of the war, 43 is the sort of tipping years, the tipping point of the war. The summer of 43, essentially Germany comes to the same position that it was at the end of the First World War, which is that, you know, sane heads would have told them that we may not yet have lost but we can't win so you've got you know the battle of the atlantic is effectively lost may 43 um north africa is lost may 43 you've got italy falling out of war in september um battle of kursk on the eastern front is huge um bombing of hamburg right well this is all of that

53:37Francis Foster:happens in that summer but this was the point i was going to make but people don't recognize this because we think of battle as individual things but while the battle of kursk is going on this great decisive battle, German cities are getting flattened. Yeah. And you're thinking this battle is cursed because miles away from Germany, if you actually care about Germans, you'd be like, let's consolidate, maybe let's sue for peace. Yeah. You know. But my point is, at the end of the First World War, they got to an analogous situation where they realized, haven't yet been defeated, but they can no longer win.

54:06And that's when they sued for peace, at the end of the First World War. The difference in the Second World War is that you have an ideology, which is fundamentally kind of millenarian, and it's the added element of the racial element, the ideological element, particularly on the Eastern Front, that you can never make terms with the Soviets. That means, effectively, they're going to fight for another two years. So essentially by 1943, the war is more or less done.

54:35Francis Foster:The outcome is clear. The outcome is clear. But because of that ideological element, the derangement, as you put it. I mean, Hitler, you know, he's not technically deranged as in insane, but he's ideologically off with the pixels. But you know what I mean, though, because when you're making decisions that are not in the interest of your country and your people, by that point, or even strategically correct, right? Because if, say, you are the leader of a country and you, if you look at objectively the situation, you know that the war can't be won. And let's say you want to continue fighting, you would at least do everything you possibly can to throw those resources into protecting your country, your people, your cities from being wiped off the map.

55:22Francis Foster:And instead, what he's doing is telling everyone to stand to the last man and miles away and doing all these crazy things. So that's what I mean by deranged. I just mean someone is making very, very bad decisions. Yes, absolutely. And you can see that where there is a shift after 43, it's too It's not in terms of protecting the homeland at all. It's towards what we said before about wonder weapons, and that becomes the focus. Which is, okay, we can't win in the conventional form, so we're going to try these novel weapons, whether it be V1s, V2s, or these Type 21s, whatever it is. And there are some innovations that you can see in that period, particularly in the U-boat War as well, which are of note.

56:05You know, there's stuff, Alberich, this sort of covering, this rubber covering that they put on U-boat. So they were effectively immune to ASDIC and sonar detection, which is kind of fascinating. And as I said, it presages a lot of the developments of the later Cold War. So stuff like that is really fascinating. But there's no, it's much more offensive in nature. And I think that comes down to the ideology, that they're still ideologically addled, and that you can't possibly, you know, just sort of focus in and protect the people. It has to be offensive all the time.

56:40Francis Foster:And why is that, Roger? I mean, obviously, there's a more modern context in which sort of someone has been in charge for a very long time, can't get the feedback, etc. Is that part, by this point, has Hitler cleaned house of anyone who would tell him, you know, Mein Fuhrer, this might not be a good idea? Is that what's happening? Or are they all true believers? It's a bit of both. So any of those dissenting voices or potentially dissenting voices within the high command and the upper echelons of politics have been effectively removed or moved to safety, as it were. And also, even those that...

57:17There are numerous accounts of generals, for example, who in the field will see a particular scenario, a particular catastrophe, and will say, I'm going to go and confront the Fuhrer and tell him this is how it has to be. And they go to Hitler. And Hitler does have this weird charisma, is the only word for it. Magnetism. Is a magnetism. And there are very few people within the upper echelons of the Third Reich that are immune to it. One of them being Klaus von Stauffenberg, for example. He talks about, I think in one of his letters, he talked about going to see the Fuhrer and being mindful that this was the narrative, was that he had these sort of piercing blue eyes and all of this stuff.

58:04And he was a very, very, extremely persuasive character, very difficult to contradict. And he said, after that first meeting, he said, you know, I looked into his eyes, I shook his hand, there was nothing. He didn't feel the magnetism. Most people, the vast majority did.

58:21Francis Foster:Staffenberg, by the way, is the guy behind operation valkyrie who tried to kill hitler in 1944 yeah yeah um operation valkyrie great movie by the way yes yes but he's a minority stauffenberg uh in not feeling that in not sensing that um the vast majority even those sort of you know reasonably coherent and independent-minded generals who see a problem and say right i'm going to go and confront the furore they will come out of their meeting with the Fuhrer saying, the Fuhrer's right, we have to do this, you know, and they're sort of back on stream. So that combination, I think, of, like you said, cleaning house is a good phrase on the one hand, also just that sheer magnetism that he seemed to have.

59:08Do you know what strikes me about that? It's very convincing.

59:10Francis Foster:It's so weird, Roger, isn't it? Because when I think of the Germans, particularly in that period, they are an intensely pragmatic people. They're practical, they're hands-on, like we talked about, their engineering is incredible. They're thinking about... And yet they are so captured by an ideology and also one man. Isn't it incredible? It is. I agree. The two almost contradict each other, right? Because you said there is that tremendous pragmatism and technological now. That base is astonishing in Germany. But at the same time, certainly in the upper echelons, absolute ideological capture, which was impossible to escape, effectively, within the regime.

59:55So anyone that dissented, you'd be shuffled out to some sinecure post or worse. So there was no way to really effect any change within the regime at all. And that's one of the reasons behind the assassination attempts as well. And it was very interesting because you touched on it in the book in that there was a little bit more free speech in the U-boats, wasn't there? Because you're essentially, you're a crew, you're a team, you were isolated. So people could speak a little bit more freely, couldn't they, about what they thought about Hitler and where the war was going? I mean, this is one of the things that surprised me, actually, was how, I can't really use the word liberal, but comparatively liberal the regime was in the German Navy.

1:00:41And, you know, You can see in numerous anecdotal accounts, there's one of the U-boat captain coming into port in France and calling out to the welcoming crew on the quayside and saying, are the Nazis still in charge? And someone shouts back and says, yes, they are. And then he puts the U-boat in reverse and everyone laughs. And you think, well, how did he get away with that? But he did, Right? And everyone laughed and they moved on. So, um, once you use, and there's numerous accounts similar. I mean, German Navy, of course, like any, any branch of the military is a cross section of German society.

1:01:18So you've got Nazis, you've got anti-Nazis and you've got the mass in between that, that go with the flow, kind of believe, maybe not, you know, whatever. Um, that's reflected in the U-Bert Arm as well. Um, where, where it sort of seems peculiar is when, By the middle of the war, the Nazi regime is tightening up its political control. Particularly after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt in the summer of 1944, you've got essentially political officers being used in the Wehrmacht, for example, like you had in the Soviet Union in the Red Army, to ensure ideological conformity. That doesn't happen in the Navy, and it doesn't happen in the submarine arm either.

1:02:02Um, and you have to ask why. And Dönitz, who is a Nazi, like, he believes, he's one of these guys that believes that Hitler is infallible, right? Um, and yet he effectively blocks the sort of indoctrination measures that the High Command wants to institute in the Navy. And we have to ask why he does that. And I think there was a plausible explanation that I read that said, essentially, he viewed it as superfluous. It was unnecessary. because his navy, he'd effectively created the U-boat arm. That was his baby. As far as he was concerned, it was all ideologically on side. All his young men were fine, patriotic, upstanding Germans that wouldn't possibly dissent from the Nazi opinion and Nazi ideology.

1:02:48So all of this stuff is unnecessary. Not only is it unnecessary, it gets in the way. So he basically kind of allowed them to have their little indoctrination office, but he didn't allow any of their men to ride along on the boats. He said there was no space, which is kind of true. So there's a sort of a brick wall, and it's not oppositional. It's basically saying, you guys are superfluous. We don't need you. We're already on side, right? But the end result is exactly as you describe. It's a haven necessarily, but it's certainly, you know, less ideologically under the jackboot than perhaps other branches of the German military.

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1:04:40Yeah, I mean, you know, this is one, again, a surprise to me. I think there's a crucial point here that you have to make, which is the assumptions that are made on both sides once war breaks out. One of the corollaries of war is that you have to dehumanize the enemy. You have to be able to portray the enemy as a monster, someone who deserves to be killed, and it's your duty to do so, because it's a brutal business. And as soon as you allow that dehumanization to slip, you've got a problem. But it's interesting in the U-boat war, in the initial phase initially, the opening two years of the war perhaps, there are many more examples of U-boat crews helping those that they've just sunk than any sort of maltreatment or atrocity or anything.

1:05:34There's only one documented war crime, incidentally, by the U-boat arm, which again astonished me. Now, there may be some more that all of the victims were killed, the U-boat crew themselves were sunk later on the mission, so there's no evidence, no one knows, there's no record. It's quite possible. But there's one documented atrocity, which was the machine gunning of survivors of the Pileas in 1944. There are many more examples of shipwrecked sailors being helped, being given food, being given blankets. There's even one crazy example where a U-boat sank a, I think it was a Greek steamer off the Irish coast, and then towed the lifeboats to the Irish coast.

1:06:17It took 24 hours, right? Which is insane when you think about it. They're in the middle of the war, and they're towing survivors from the ship they just sunk. But it speaks to what you just mentioned, this idea, the phrase I use in the book is the solidarity of the sea, which is a kind of a tradition that's older than Nazism and goes back generations. Even in wartime, the target is the ship. The target is the tonnage and the cargo. It's not necessarily the crew, right? And that idea, I think, permeates even into the U-Bert Arm and I think quite a long way through the war. There's a really interesting case in 1942, September 42, of the sinking of the Laconia, which is quite a well-known incident off the West African coast, where a passenger vessel was torpedoed by U-boat.

1:07:08The U-boat surfaces in the aftermath, and they used to do this quite regularly. They'd come to the surface and sort of ask some of the survivors what ship they were from, where they were headed, what the cargo was, etc. Because they never really knew what the target was. That was normal. And when they did surface, it was U-156, they surfaced and they realised that all the voices they heard were Italian, right? And they're allies, right? So it's carrying Italian POWs, this vessel, Laconia. So the decision is made to mount a rescue operation. So they start rounding up the floats, the debris, the survivors, pulling them all together.

1:07:49And there's Brits in there, as well. They're all ordinary, fair-paying passengers as well. And for four days, this commander of U156 basically is herding together the surviving lifeboats and survivors from this sinking in Mid-Atlantic. And he's radioing on Claire in English, you know, unencrypted, I would stress, to say, anyone wants to come and help me, you know, I won't fire on you if you won't fire on me because we're having a bit of a catastrophe here. And in the end, he gets attacked by the Americans. So he's attacked by American aircraft and has to dive. He has survivors up on his deck and he has to dive, leaves them in the sea.

1:08:35That is a big shock to the German naval community in World War II, right? So Dönitz reports this to Hitler. Hitler rages and says, well, why are they picking up survivors anyway? So this is the ideological gulf. So for Hitler, it's about tonnage, yes, but it's also, he's saying, shoot the crew. That's Hitler's viewpoint. You can see it much more brutal. And Dönitz, to his credit, as I said, he doesn't deserve much credit, but in this occasion, to his credit, he pushes back and says, no, we're not going to do that, because that's not the way naval operations work. the end result is what's called the laconia order where donitz orders that german crews from then on are not to assist shipwrecked sailors i'm really glad that you brought up donitz because he strikes me as this fascinating character on the one hand completely ideologically possessed and artsy on the other hand you go you look at the way he he's behaved and he comes across as a man of integrity.

1:09:37And then at the end of the war, he goes to the Nuremberg trials. And that's another fascinating story. Yeah, it is. He's a really interesting character. And I think he encapsulated quite well. He combines those two, you know, at first sight, quite kind of contradictory worldviews, if you like. You know, he is a convinced Nazi. As I said, he adored Hitler. He thought Hitler was the, you know, the best thing since whatever the last best thing was. But at the same time, he's a man from that naval tradition. So in moments like when he issues the Laconia order, and he has that argument with Hitler, he's trying to combine those two worldviews in a satisfactory manner to himself and to his traditions.

1:10:25And the Laconia order is an interesting one. From then on, the German Navy essentially had an order not to assist those that they'd sunk. Prior to 1942, that was the norm. As far as it was possible, very often it wasn't possible. But if it was possible, they tended to do it. At least, you know, a couple of blankets, land is that way. That would be the sort of the bottom line. From then on, that tails off very, very swiftly. So what is already a brutal conflict, a brutal theater of the conflict becomes all the more so.

1:11:00Francis Foster:Do the Allies reciprocate this? not particularly it's it's um no i think i mean there wasn't much in the way of uh obviously there's no love lost there's not much in the way of sort of atrocities committed the other way um there's one i know of in the pacific war with the americans the uss wahoo they shot survivors of a of japanese uh merchantmen um so you know that that's kind of interesting in itself but there's not really the same... But if a new boat surfaces, they will pick up the crew and let them scuttle it still. As long as it surrenders itself? Yeah. Yes. If it shapes to open fire and defend itself, then it'll be shot at.

1:11:44That's a little bit of a target, of course. Exactly.

1:11:46Francis Foster:And so sticking with Donance then, so he's the head of the Navy throughout the entire war? He's the head of the U-boat arm initially and then from 1943 he's the head of the Navy. And what happens to him at Nuremberg? So he's tried at Nuremberg as one of the principal war criminals. He's indicted for crimes against peace and I think three charges at Nuremberg. And brilliantly argued actually by his lawyer. Was he a Jewish lawyer? No. That would be a hell of a plot to him. It would, wouldn't it? No, he's an old naval, former naval judge, stood as his lawyer. and actually quite effectively argued that the war that Dönitz had been conducting was very, very similar in its nature and its conduct to the naval war that the Allies had been conducting as well.

1:12:37And he had testimony, for example, from the US Admiral Chester Nimitz, essentially saying the same thing, that it wasn't possible to take shipwreck sailors on board. The best you could do was point them in the direction of land and say, good luck. And unrestricted submarine warfare was kind of the norm. So he's basically forcing the prosecutors at Nuremberg to say, well, if you're going to damn Dönitz, you have to damn the Americans as well. He got 10 years at Nuremberg. Which is a fairly light sentence by Nuremberg Sanders. Which is, by Nuremberg Sanders, exactly, is quite light. He's not someone that deserves sympathy at all because of his political convictions.

1:13:21But I think, as you said before, there's a degree of integrity as a naval man that we should probably bear in mind when we make these judgments about Dönitz.

1:13:31Francis Foster:And one thing, this is going off script a little bit, but I think it's a fascinating question to ask a historian who's as well informed about that conflict as you are. And a big question to ask, too, what do you make of Nuremberg? it's interesting i think nuremberg you know there's a lot a lot of complaints made about it being sort of victor's justice and so on um there's a there is a legitimate complaint um to be made about the soviet sort of presence at nuremberg because the soviets had done a lot of the same things um as the nazis were being you know accused of and convicted of and for them to to then be in the ranks of the accusers is sometimes a little bit hard to swallow.

1:14:16And of course, they even tried to get, for example, the Katyn massacres onto the German charge sheet, which was a massacre they'd committed against the Polish office class in 1940. Thankfully, that was blocked by the Allies. But that shows you the kind of the cynicism and the hypocrisy that is going on at some level in Nuremberg.

1:14:39Francis Foster:I guess the counterargument, not that I would defend, I mean, the Soviet atrocities, if you actually read about them. Yeah, horrific. Absolutely horrific. Awful. But I guess, given the contribution that the Soviets made to defeating Germany, it was going to be hard to give them out. not least because... Oh, you're cool. Sure. And Stalin's got his bloody troops all over Eastern Europe, so you're kind of in a... No, it would have been, but it's just that, you know, that... On a purely moral principle level. And having, you know, the attempt to put the Katyn massacres on the German child sheet is pretty astonishing cynicism.

1:15:11Yeah. So that's an angle that perhaps we should bear in mind. The wider aspect of sort of Victor's justice, I think you see in Nuremberg the first real widespread realisation of the true horror of Nazism, which for most people wasn't entirely clear before. You had isolated incidents that they knew about. They knew about the Holocaust, for example, from really late 1941 onwards, but very often in piecemeal examples. And the same thing with the horrors of the concentration camps, which is largely a separate issue to the Holocaust. I mean, they're linked, but they're kind of separate. So by the time you get to 1945-1946 with the Nuremberg trials, people are beginning to put together the massive evidence that has been, piecemeal evidence that has been gathered in the meantime, and put it together into a coherent whole, arguably for the first time.

1:16:11So that realization of the true horror of Nazism is something I think that colors a lot of decision-making. There's a growing assumption on behalf of the Western judges and prosecutors as well that just sees German and Nazi as synonymous, as they're all equally guilty or equally barbarian. There's a real, I'd say hatred even, that comes into the proceedings at that point. So that's an element of Nuremberg that I think is interesting. It's noticeable when you had what we might call the lesser Nurembergs, the other trials that go on, the Krupp trial, the Foreign Office trial and so on that go on into the 1950s, the desire to execute those found guilty diminishes as time goes on.

1:17:11And yet, as we know, the vast majority of the defenders in Nuremberg are executed. So I think that's testament to that realization of that horror in 1945-46, which then sort of dissipates and other factors kick in. the need to sort of rebuild Germany, the need to create a stable Germany in the heart of Europe, the desire for revenge dissipates as time goes on.

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1:18:25Yeah, it did. I mean, it's a fascinating moment. The U-boats themselves had been, as I said, up against it really since 1943. So they'd seen, interestingly, sort of seen their horizons shrink from the point at which in 1942, they were going right across the Atlantic. They were attacking the American Eastern Seaboard, for example. There were U-boats that went to raid Allied vessels in the Indian Ocean. So, really, it's a global operation in the middle of the war. Then by the end, you're shrunk back to the point at which German U-boats can barely exit the North Sea. So, there is a growing realization that something's coming.

1:19:10This isn't going to be good. But precisely what shape it's going to take, nobody knows. right um so yeah hitler's suicide when it's announced um is a shock and a lot of those crews you know for a lot of them it's it's a relief because they think okay well this this will hasten the end and we might get home um for a lot of them if they're more ideological it would it would be considered tragic you know that that your great leader had died or a disillusion there's a couple of accounts in there with people saying well you know here's this man that led us up the mountain and he's abandoned us. He's shown himself to not be the heroic figure that we thought he was.

1:19:46So you've got a complete spectrum of opinion in that moment. But what follows is interesting, because Dönitz actually succeeds Hitler as head of state in a sort of rump Nazi administration. And he gives an order for the U-boat force to essentially surrender, which to most of those commanders is seen as a sort of dishonourable end. They don't want to give away their valuable weapon of the U-boat itself. They don't want to surrender that to the enemy. They'd rather scuttle it. They'd rather sink it themselves. So a lot of them do. There's examples of naval recruits, for example, running away from training in that period because the war's over, just go home.

1:20:38So the whole edifice is kind of falling apart.

1:20:43Francis Foster:There are a few, Roger, sorry to interrupt. Take the lovely U-boats to Argentina, South America, a few of those as well. Yeah, there's a couple. I mean, there's a few of these examples, which is interesting because this idea of them surrendering to the Allies sticks in the craw of a lot of commanders. This isn't how it should be done. So a lot of them, in a curious twist actually, that they actually consult their crews. So it becomes a kind of democratic exercise, which you wouldn't imagine in a dictatorship. But the commanders sort of say, well, what do you want to do? What should we do? Because we've been told to surrender to the allies.

1:21:19That's dishonorable. We don't want to do that. So what should we do? And there are some that sort of say, well, sail to a neutral country. We'll go to a neutral country. We might be able to escape the worst effects of imprisonment and interrogation, all the rest of it. So some of them go to Sweden, Some try to go to Portugal, for example. And a couple of them, as you say, end up getting to Argentina in the erroneous assumption that they're going to get a favorable reception. Of course, Argentina had declared war on Germany, I think, in February of 1945, belatedly. So that particular piece of news had not reached them.

1:21:53They thought they were going to a neutral country. And those two, one of them being, I think, U-977, which was the last one, actually arrives in August 1945. So really late. And it's a remarkable voyage, you know. So they sort of set off, and they're still in the North Atlantic when they're told to surrender. And they basically say, we're not doing that. So against orders, they basically sail south. No plans, no maps, you know, for where they would need to get to. Not enough food either. They spend most of the trip submerged, which is horrific. so just to give a bit of detail in that particular account they talk about watching the mold grow on the inside of the u-boat um up the up the uh inside of the bulkheads and so on because everything's so damp they're going through the tropics everything's so damp um if you're submerged you can't get rid of feces so a lot of that is just kind of stored in the boat so that that's an added element to the yearboat stink.

1:22:56So that's a particularly horrific voyage. When they actually get to Argentina, and they are duly taken into custody by the Argentine authorities as they should be, the commander says to his crew, now we have to surrender, but just pat yourselves on the back effectively for what you've done that you've got here. He says, we had another three months of freedom. In terms of seamanship, what you've done is astonishing. You know, that's the, I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he says to them. And it is astonishing. Yeah, because there was some stories that you highlighted in the book. The one that I found very interesting was when the German U-boats were told to surrender to the Soviets, they as one went, rather not actually, let's go to the British.

1:23:42Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm quite aware of what the Soviets would have in store for them if they surrendered to the Soviets. So they turned around, went the other way. Entirely logical, if you know what the Soviets were going to do to you. And conditions actually, the British and the Americans were pretty good. The Germans themselves were very worried. A lot of the crews were worried about what surrender would mean, that they could be deported to an uncertain fate. That really didn't happen. I mean, most of the crews went through interrogation, went through whatever processes were deemed necessary by the Allies.

1:24:23Most of them were home by 1947. So it was actually not a terribly onerous fate for most of them. And then, of course, bear in mind on the converse that the prisoners that the Soviets had, most of those either died in captivity or eventually returned in the 1950s, so much later. so treatment of certainly of U-Bert Cruz by the Western Allies was pretty benign actually

1:24:49Francis Foster:Roger it's been great having you on congratulations on this book it's out we won't know if it's out when this interview is out before or after but it's out on October 9th that's right so if we are releasing this before then it's out on October 9th can't recommend it enough your writing is brilliant as well I mean obviously it's hard to read that from a video interview but I've always enjoyed all the books of yours that I've read and really really fascinating and stuff. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a moment. Before we do, as you know, we always end with the last question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

1:25:21Before Roger answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. For what reason did the German high command never realize that the Enigma code had been cracked? Can you explain the economic relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union? Was being assigned to a U-boat seen as high status or a death sentence? Yeah, I've thought about this for a little bit the last few days. And it's a difficult one because I think, you know, you are doing a great job of airing a lot of these issues that, you know, as you say, should be talked about and are not.

1:25:59The one that sort of struck me, and it struck me just actually driving over here today, seeing how many of the Union Jacks and crosses of St. George are still flying. Now, weeks after that, what was it called, Raise the Colors or whatever that operation was called. And I was speaking recently with a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a few months. And he said, and he's a sort of standard, he describes himself as a centrist, he votes Lib Dem, for God's sake. And he said, I'm done. I've been radicalized. His words, I've been radicalized. So what I just would mention in this context of the thing we're not talking about is the radicalization of the center or the mobilization of the center.

1:26:43You know, I think the mass of the British people is a bit like a sort of a large cow. It's kind of bovine. it will put up with a hell of a lot. Um, it will put up with a lot of prodding and provoking. And then at some point it will turn. And I feel like it's kind of turning. Mm-hmm. Um, and you can see that in, you know, in the Epping protests, you could see it last year in Southport and so on. I think you can see it with those flag protests the last few weeks or, you know, a couple of months ago. Um, so I think there's something stirring there. And it's, I'm not saying it's worrying, because I think it's kind of on one level, it's maybe a healthy corrective for British politics, because we've been, you know, under more or less progressive governments, really, for 10 years, to a greater or lesser degree.

1:27:33You raise your eyes constantly. I'm living in 97. I think the last, you know, I think the last Tory government, you know. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You'd go further.

1:27:43Francis Foster:I'd go further. Yeah, okay. Okay, no, fine. Approaching 20 years at this point, I'd say. So I think there's a degree to which ordinary people are beginning to think, well, hang on, this narrative of anyone that sort of raises their concern about the nation being bigoted, neo-Nazi or whatever it might be, they're suddenly going, what, you're talking about us? Like, really? Well, it's one of the fascinating - And they're stirring. And I think politics - sorry to interrupt. No, no, I'm not interested. But I think politics, it feels like politics a little bit in the last year has shifted almost onto the streets in a way that it wasn't before, which is kind of fascinating and kind of scary at the same time.

1:28:27So I just wonder where that goes. That could be successfully harnessed by maybe a resurgent Tory party or maybe by reform with Randa Farage, but maybe not. and it just seems to me it's a little bit like uncharted territory well the only reason i was

1:28:46Francis Foster:jumping in is i wanted to very much emphasize why we love talking to historians when you came in earlier you were like you've had a lot of historians on recently is that a strategic thing there's not we just love historians because one of the things it does is it makes you immune to all the stupidity if you've just listened to a historian talk for an hour about naughty u-boats It becomes quite difficult to call a Gary the white van man who just thinks maybe illegal immigration shouldn't be happening a Nazi or far right. Because you go, what are you talking about? Right. So I think that's definitely the case.

1:29:21Francis Foster:Another thing is, you know, I live in a leafy middle class part of Kent. There's an England flag or a British flag on every lamppost right now. You know, so I don't think it was about one moment in time. I just think it's how a lot of people feel. And they're perfectly entitled to feel that way. I agree, and that's why I don't view it. I'm not necessarily putting the writing on the wall in any sense, and making blunt comparisons to this period, because that would be daft. Right. But it just strikes me that, particularly with that element of increasingly seeing politics playing out on the streets, and we saw that with the Palestinian protests as well, and then more recently with Epping and stuff, it just strikes me that that is an interesting shift.

1:30:06that, you know, just it seems to me like uncharted territory. You know, where does that end up? And I don't know the answer to that, but it's going to be interesting to watch.

1:30:15Francis Foster:All right, this is where all the U-boat nodes are going. Talk about welding. Head on over to substack, triggerpod.co.uk. We'll talk all about more U-boats. And welding. I heard that a German U-boat got discovered as the captain flushed a loo roll, causing sewage to return inside and forced the crew to the surface near the British coast. Is these true and are there other ridiculous discovery destruction stories of U-Boats?