Wolf: U-Boat Commanders in World War II

by Jordan Vause

Book Overview

Cultivated by the Allied press during the war and fostered by movies and novels ever since, the image of a U-boat skipper held by most Americans is the personification of evil: the wolf who stalks... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557508747
• ISBN13: 9781557508744
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

You'll see Das Boat in a new way

this book brings back some of the mystery to the U-boat and its crews.For a long time The Boat was seen as a "one size fits all" description of U-boat warfare. This book presents the different personalities of U-Boat commanders and its not difficult to imagine each would run his boat in a different manner.Also it is pointed out that the Boat was written by Bucheim who was never in actual combat by being depth charged,but who witnessed a sinking or two. The chapter where former U-boat commander Merten gets into a shouting match with Bucheim was particularly interesting.Merten is not presented as a Nazi or war-glorifier,but was offended by Bucheim's portrayal of U-boat crews as a bunch of post-traumatic,ribald,hopeless,submariners. According to Merten that may be accurrate for that boat,but not all the boats.The crew on the Boat definitely suffers a morale problem in the the movie and I had never seen this aspect previously,a person would wonder if they would be more vulnerable for a trip to,"Davy Jones Locker" As Vause points out in his book Das Boat is based on fact but it is not factual,it is a surrealist picture.I rewatched the movie and when I saw the scene where The Boat meets another Type VII on the seas, I wondered what might be going on inside that other sub.A whole different crew with a whole different way of playing their role.On the other hand and more realistically,they're probably surprised to see another U-boat that hasn't been yet sunk.Almost as surprised that they themselves are in fact still alive!!Could be time for another movie on this.Sort of makes Hemmingways "Old Man" of the sea and his fish troubles seem insignificant.

Makes you take another look at Das Boot.

i enjoyed this book because it points out the different personalities of the U-boat commanders as opposed to accounts that have a "one size fits all",seen one u-boater seen them all interpretation.The chapter where former U-boat commander Merten gets into a shouting match with author of Das Boot,Mr. Buchheim,was particularly enlightening.As Buchheim descends into profanity you wonder which nerve Merten has struck.The book breaks down the U-boat war into different periods and after reading this book you will have to ask yourself if Buchheim's crew on Das Boot might be more surreal than real as was the movie Apocolypse Now in regard to the Vietnam War.Objecting to one scene in the Boat,Merten says,"I'm sure no U-boat captain ever had to use a gun to get a sailor to perform his duty".The shaky "Johan" on Das Boot quivering in fear is as fictional as Kurtz in Apocolypse Now?But if Johann did not exist in reality he would have needed to be invented anyway.Johan adds some humanity to the story we can all identify with even if his action seems selfish and endangers the crew.And I'll bet down in the deep bowels of some U-Boat there were other "Johanns";true stories we could only imagine.

Terrific stuff, very readable.

Wolf is a departure from many of the submarine books of WWII. Rather than being a cold, dry, analysis of tonnage sunk and mission totals, it looks at the careers of a dozen U-Boat commanders as personal stories, warts and all. Starting with the illegal re-establishment of the Kriegsmarine's U-Boat fleet and particularly the early training, it progresses through the waves of new commanders who took over as their predecessors were either killed or transferred to desk jobs. Vause divides these waves into those who started in U-Boats before the war, those who joined up early and achieved commands in the early days of the war and finally, those who were fed piecemeal into the mincing machine that was the last two years of the Battle of the Atlantic. It was in these final two years when the U-Bootwaffe suffered its worst casualties. For the uninitiated, 36,000 German sailors went to war in U-Boats and 32,000 did not return, the worst casualties of any combat group in WWII. The highlight of the book for me was the odyssey of Victor Oehrn who, strangely for a submariner, was captured by Australian infantry in the North African desert! Without wishing to spoil the story, I can honestly say it would be worthy of a movie script and is very well presented by the author. A great primer for anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with the U-Boat campaign of WWII, it is not intended to be a definitive work and does not get bogged down in cold analysis. Such books have their place but this is the alternative. At times funny, often sad but usually very insightful, it must be recommended very highly.

Wolf, U-Boat Commanders in World War II

Very well written. Was very complimentary to his first on Wolfgang Luth. I would recommend this to any WWII naval history buff of the North Atlantic, or more serious information finder of the times and places. I hope Mr. Vause continues his work, as patiently as I will wait.

Good book: complements Harold McCormick's book

Good book. Interviews with Jurgen Oesten complement Harold J. McCormick's "Two Years Behind the Mast: An American Landlubber at Sea in World War II." Anyone who has read that book knows that Commander Oesten sunk McCormick's Liberty ship on July 23, 1944. For some reason, however, McCormick's book is not cited in Vause's bibliography