{"id":5677,"date":"2017-12-29T14:30:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T19:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=5677"},"modified":"2018-02-23T14:35:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:35:49","slug":"the-human-face-of-the-enemy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/glossen-43-2017-current-issue\/the-human-face-of-the-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Human Face of the Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

English and American Cinematic Depictions of Nazi-era Naval Personnel <\/strong><\/h3>\n

by Michael Panitz<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"painting<\/a>

\u201cDer F\u00fchlungshalter”. U-Boot des Typs VII C, watercolor by Hans-Peter J\u00fcrgens[i]<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

INTRODUCTION: SUBVERTING THE FACE, RECOVERING THE FACE<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The face is the gateway to the individuality of the Other. The 20th<\/sup>-century Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel, commented on Genesis 1:26, \u201cGod said, let us make the human in Our image\u201d, that each human face is distinct from every other, and that this individuality is itself the image of God within humankind. Another 20th<\/sup>-century philosopher, the French-Jewish Emanuel Levinas, has rooted an entire ethical system in the recognition of the metaphysical significance in the face-to-face encounter of two people.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

The recognition of the \u201cface of the Other\u201d, i.e., to acknowledge the three-dimensional humanity of the enemy, is challenged by war. All war is dehumanizing. To overcome deeply-rooted inhibitions about taking the life of a fellow human, military training leads the soldier to depersonalize the act of killing.\u00a0 He is conditioned to regard his opponent as a \u201ctarget\u201d; he \u201celiminates\u201d the target.<\/p>\n

With the mobilization of entire societies on wartime footing that characterized the two World Wars of the 20th<\/sup> century, war has also involved indoctrinating citizens to think of their enemies in impersonal terms. This is most graphically and radically seen in Nazi propaganda films, depicting Jews as rats and vermin. When a society first accepts the depiction of the enemy as vermin, it becomes psychologically possible to use Zyklon-B, originally developed as an insecticide, to perpetrate genocide.[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

In democratic societies, as well, the tendency during wartime in the modern era has been to depict the enemy in ways that prepare the audience of those depictions to go into battle and to take lives. In World War II, not only standing armies, but entire nations, stood pitted against each other. The combatant nations conscripted their members on a large-scale. For example, 11 million Americans served in the military during that conflict. Much of the younger cohort of a belligerent nation\u2019s wartime citizenry was likely to be in uniform before the end of the war. Great Britain, with a smaller population and longer span of conflict, called up an even larger percentage to fill its recruitment needs. Moreover, the civilian sector of the society was instrumental in sustaining the morale of the soldier. Civilians corresponded with their relatives and dear ones in uniform. Civilians were called upon \u201cto do their bit\u201d. Many women entered the workforce to fill the places of men in uniform. Men and women, young and old, were exhorted to donate blood and financial assets, to display stoicism in coping with privations and, in England, large-scale homelessness, without losing the political will to carry on the struggle.<\/p>\n

Therefore, shaping the mass psychology of the public ultimately had military value. The military encouraged journalists to accompany the troops and write morale-building pieces for civilian consumption, also exercising censorship over words and images that would be transmitted home.[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The technological innovations of modern warfare also contribute to the elimination of the face of the enemy from the consciousness of the soldier. \u201cDon\u2019t fire until you see the whites of their eyes\u201d is advice from the era of the musket, whose lethal range was measured only in tens of meters. In warfare since the mid- 19th<\/sup> century, the rifled barrel was lethal at longer range, and the machine gun mechanized killing.<\/p>\n

This depersonalization is especially a feature of naval warfare, where the fighting, albeit carried out by the members of each vessel\u2019s crew, was between ship and ship. Second World War undersea warfare was an extreme example of this. Most of the 50 crewmembers of a U-Boat never saw the ship they had torpedoed, let alone its crew. When attacking on the surface, as U-Boats typically did at night, only the gun crew and the watch-standers saw the action. When submerged, only the captain and those few officers he would invite to the periscope could see their enemy. On the other side, the crews of anti-submarine warfare vessels\u2014patrol boats, trawlers, frigates, corvettes, and destroyers\u2014rarely saw the men of the submarines they fought. An oil slick and some floating debris were the visual evidence of the destruction of the enemy vessel, corroborating the acoustical evidence of a vessel breaking up underwater provided by the surface ship\u2019s hydrophones.<\/p>\n

The effort to sustain the will to fight the Second World War involved the genres of fiction as well as journalism. American and British filmmakers produced large numbers of war films, celebrating the exploits of fictional heroes defeating the nation\u2019s foes and presenting models for emulation to stimulate the fighting spirit of the populace.<\/p>\n

This essay focuses on one aspect of those war stories: It examines American and British cinematic depictions of one group of German fighters, the officers and men of the Kriegsmarine<\/em>, during and after the Second World War. Are they seen as \u201cfaceless\u201d or as individuals? Contemporaneous depictions of them in stock, impersonal terms are ordinary, and are to be explained by the norms of 1940\u2019s wartime film-making. But even during wartime, several outstanding filmmakers, in one case at the cost of public censure, endowed the German foe with redeeming features,. A closer analysis of these artistic efforts is warranted, with the goal of explicating their exceptional status.<\/p>\n

After the end of the war, with the Anglo-American public still eager to relive recent victories, there was a continuing market for Second World War stories and films. In the 1950\u2019s, however, such movies began increasingly to explore differences among the enemy Germans, depicting some as non-Nazi German patriots, and others as closet anti-Nazis. This artistic development also calls for elucidation.<\/p>\n

Finally, these two eras of war-story telling have left a legacy for more recent cinematic and television productions, and this essay will offer a brief exploration of the continuing effects of that legacy.<\/p>\n

Why focus on Kriegsmarine<\/em> sailors, and not Luftwaffe<\/em> aviators or Wehrmacht<\/em> soldiers? In fact, some American-made films have told stories about those branches of warfare, and the emergence of depictions of differences among Wehrmacht<\/em> personnel corresponds to the phenomenon discussed in this essay, that the focus on German fighters as individuals grew stronger in post-war film-making.[iv]<\/a> But the Kriegsmarine<\/em> merits special attention, because within the navy, the 40,000 man submarine force was composed of freiwillge<\/em>, volunteers. As such, ideologically-driven Nazis were prominent in that sub-community. Hence, cinematic depictions of U-Boat officers as Nazis are unsurprising, but departures from that norm are all the more worthy of elucidation.<\/p>\n

I. The Wartime Years: Ordinary and Extraordinary Depictions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To understand the visual cinematic conventions of World War II naval stories, it is reasonable to begin with wartime documentary film footage. The American documentary series Victory at Sea<\/em> premiered as a television program in the 1952-1953 season, and was released in theaters in 1954, but it consisted of wartime footage.[v]<\/a> It covered American naval operations against both Japanese and German adversaries. The relevant footage of German ships and personnel consisted of captured German war photo-journalism. This extended both the perspective and the time-span of the series, allowing the documentary to cover the first two years of the Second World War at sea, prior to the entry of the United States into the conflict.<\/p>\n

In that footage, Kriegsmarine <\/em>personnel are depicted without individuality of personality, but only functional differentiation.\u00a0 Engine stokers, hydroplane operators, torpedo technicians, sonar operators, and officers are all depicted at their battle stations, but no attention is paid to them as individuals.<\/p>\n

Understanding why these warriors are depicted without personality thus resolves into two questions: why German wartime journalism chose to do so, and why American editors kept this footage in the final release.<\/p>\n

For the Nazi-era German photojournalists, depicting the men as so many cogs in the wheel of the military machine was a positive, not a negative. Nazi ideology hailed the primacy of the state, claiming that the individual found his true nobility not in pursuit of personal goals, but rather in service of Vaterland<\/em>, Volk<\/em> and Fuehrer<\/em>. Nazi ideologues derided the individualism of western society as decadent, and Nazi wartime propaganda predicted the victory of German single-mindedness over the armed forces of their internally-feuding Western enemies.<\/p>\n

For the American editors of this captured archival film, the facelessness of the German sailor served as both a sobering reminder and as a validation. On the one hand, Americans acknowledged the efficiency of the German foe, whom they had only defeated after years of maximum effort. On the other hand, seeing the German depicted in depersonalized terms was a confirmation that Americans had fought for a good cause, that of human freedom and individual self-determination.<\/p>\n

The archival footage of American sailors also shows them at action stations, but crucially, that is not the only footage of such sailors shown in Victory at Sea<\/em>. The Americans are also depicted in off-duty moments, enjoying various recreational pastimes. The message is that Americans became warriors of necessity, but remained humans throughout. They never lost their individual faces.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Crash<\/a>

Movie poster for Crash Dive, 1943. Source: Tyrone-power.com\/crashdive.html<\/p><\/div>\n

Turning from documentary to fiction films released during the war years, it is important to keep in mind the genre conventions and production conditions of those films. In their numerous war movies, both American and British filmmakers dealt with governmental information ministries and conformed to official guidelines. These guidelines were designed to guarantee that the films would be essentially morale-boosting efforts for the nation at war. The German (and Japanese) enemy in such films is typically depicted in typological and stereotypic terms.<\/p>\n

One such film was the 1943 Crash Dive<\/em>, starring two popular leading men of the era, Tyrone Power and Dana Andrews. The plot is conventional: As its tagline advertising breathlessly announced:<\/p>\n

Tyrone Power — Leading a reckless crew on the war’s most
\ndaring mission! Battling death in a depth-bombed submarine!
\nBlasting Nazis on a bold Commando raid! Finding love in
\nprecious, stolen moments! Crashing his way to unforgettable
\nglory in…Crash Dive<\/em>!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The film is a propaganda vehicle, extolling all the types of service within the U.S. Navy. Initially, the protagonist, Lt. Stewart, is seen successfully piloting a small, swift patrol boat in action against a German submarine. Against his preferences, he is transferred to duty as the executive officer of a submarine, Corsair<\/em>. But ultimately, Stewart learns of the importance of all the branches of the navy, and the film closes with a stirring speech in which he eulogizes each of the different types of warships in the U.S. Navy (except for destroyers\u2014likely an oversight. Hollywood was, after all, a province of civilians.)<\/p>\n

Crash Dive<\/em> follows many of the tropes of wartime American films\u2014brothers in arms, who resolve their inter-personal conflict by teaming up for the greater goal; the heroic self-sacrifice of the \u201cone who didn\u2019t make it\u201d, dying so that his comrades might live; the maturation of the protagonist\u2019s initial brashness into more enduring courage. One such trope, in particular, reassured Americans that they were not being hypocritical in maintaining a racially segregated country while fighting a war against Nazi racism. Although the armed forces were segregated, there were African Americans in specific, secondary roles within the services.\u00a0 These films tend to portray them in a partly-positive, but also partly-condescending, light. The African-American in Crash Dive, <\/em>Oliver Cromwell Jones, is serving as a steward aboard Corsair<\/em>. That relatively lowly station was the only one officially open to African Americans in submarine service at the time. When the call is made for volunteers to stage a hazardous commando raid against a German military installation, Jones steps forward unhesitatingly. That is an endorsement of his courage. When asked why he is doing so, he gives a patriotic answer. His character is also given a moment of racially self-conscious levity: seeing his fellow commandos with black paint on their faces to render them inconspicuous at night, he exclaims, \u201cI\u2019m the only born commando here!\u201d[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n

The German Kriegsmarine<\/em> officers and sailors in this film, both on the Q-ship that the Corsair<\/em> sinks and on the base attacked by Corsair<\/em>\u2019s commando party, are given only two-dimensional portrayals. There is no effort to see them as individuals.<\/p>\n

If Crash Dive<\/em> exemplifies the run-of-the-mill war film, perhaps forgettable today except to film buffs, two other wartime efforts stand out and continue to speak to today\u2019s audiences: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger\u2019s 49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em> and Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Lifeboat<\/em>.\u00a0 In each of these, the Germans emerge as fully-realized characters.<\/p>\n

\"49th<\/a>

Movie poster for 49th Parallel, depicting a party of Kriegsmarine sailors heading ashore in Canada. Source: https:\/\/www.filmaffinity.com\/en\/movieimage.php?imageid=841250554<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1941, the recently-reorganized British Ministry of Information extended the scope of its activities to include not only documentaries but also feature films made in support of Great Britain\u2019s war effort. Its first project was to underwrite Powell and Pressburger\u2019s 49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em>.\u00a0 The title is an oblique reference to the border between Canada and the United States, much of which follows that line of latitude. The story is the saga of six survivors of a German submarine, destroyed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada, who attempt to make their way across Canada to gain refuge in the then-neutral United States. (This was before Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack upon U.S. naval forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, propelled the U.S. into the war.) One by one, they die, leaving only Lt. Hirth, the most ardent Nazi in the group. He actually makes it across the border before being sent back on a clever technicality and subdued.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers were eager to contribute their talents to the British war effort. Powell resolved to set the film in Canada, with the United States as the intended destination of the determined Nazis, to bring the Americans into the war on the Allied side. In a later interview about the work, he acknowledged, \u201cI hoped it might scare the pants off the Americans.\u201d Pressburger, a Jewish refugee from Hungary who was working as a scriptwriter in London, also characterized his work as a contribution to the British war effort: \u201cGoebbels considered himself an expert on propaganda, but I thought I\u2019d show him a thing or two.\u201d[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the propaganda value of the film was a bit of military disinformation that it promulgated. The film depicts a fully-operational and comprehensive system of Canadian anti-submarine air defenses. This did in fact not exist at the time of the filming, in 1941. In a later interview, Powell acknowledged the factual inaccuracy, and stated that he suggested the existence of such a fully articulated system in the hopes that it would convince German war planners of the futility of continuing their operations in Canadian home waters.<\/p>\n

49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em> is noteworthy for its depiction of different personality types among the six U-Boat submariners attempting their escape. While the German protagonist, Leutnant<\/em> Hirth, is depicted as a rabid Nazi, one of the enlisted men, Vogel, has no ideological ardor. This comes to the fore when the submariners encounter a farming commune of ethnic German Hutterites (a Christian group similar to the Amish). During the time that the submariners spend in the Hutterite community, Hirth attempts to rouse their German racial consciousness, but fails completely. As their leader, Peter, explains, they are motivated by Christian love, not by racial hatred. Vogel, on the other hand, is impressed with their outlook and way of life. A baker by trade, he improves their bakery and delights them by providing them their daily bread, which they acclaim highly, to his great satisfaction. Ultimately, Vogel seeks to defect. He declares to one of the Hutterite women that he is willing to submit to internment as a Prisoner of War, so as to join the commune after the war.<\/p>\n

How to account for the sharp difference between Hirth\u2019s and Vogel\u2019s characters, in a British propaganda film? The answer is seen in the fate of Vogel. Sensing Vogel\u2019s ambivalence, Hirth, as his acting superior officer, marches him into the woods, accuses him of treason, pronounces him guilty without even according him the opportunity to speak up in his own defense, and shoots him on the spot.<\/p>\n

Powell\u2019s and Pressburger\u2019s message is that there are, indeed, \u201cgood Germans\u201d, but that they are not in positions of authority.\u00a0 Under the right conditions, they would be capable of being influenced by the goodness of the people of the Free World. But they do not control Germany; hardened Nazis do. The only way to reclaim Germany into the fellowship of moral nations is to defeat the Nazi leadership. Victory is a precondition for reformation of character.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Lifeboat,<\/a>

Movie poster for Lifeboat (1944). Source: https:\/\/thehitchcockproject.wordpress.com\/category\/week-29-lifeboat-1944\/<\/p><\/div>\n

Like 49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em>, Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s 1944 film, Lifeboat,<\/em> was occasioned by wartime exigencies. The American Maritime Commission asked Darryl F. Zanuck, head of the Hollywood movie company 20th<\/sup> Century Fox, to make a film about the U-Boat menace to North Atlantic shipping. \u00a0The request was indeed timely. In early 1943, at the time of this request, the U-Boat offensive was still claiming heavy losses of Allied shipping in the North Atlantic.[viii]<\/a> Hitchcock was not then working directly for Zanuck, but rather for another film mogul, Robert O. Selznick. But Selznick leased Hitchcock\u2019s services to Zanuck and Lifeboat<\/em> is the result.<\/p>\n

Unlike 49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em>, where the characters of Hirth and Vogel represent the extremes, in the work of Alfred Hitchcock, the portrayal of character focuses on the ambivalence and the moral ambiguities that are the common human condition.[ix]<\/a> This, in turn, affected his portrayal of the U-Boat commander in his 1944 film, Lifeboat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nine people find themselves aboard one lifeboat. Eight of them are survivors of a torpedoed merchantman, and the ninth is a German, who feigns being a common seaman but who is soon unmasked as the Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>\u00a0of the submarine, which was itself destroyed in the battle. Over the course of the many days in which they are adrift, without fresh water and with dwindling food supplies, their carefully constructed personas are stripped away and the conflicted inner person emerges. Each one has both good and bad sides to his character. The nurse Alice, for example, initially the exemplification of altruism, proves to have been \u201cthe other woman\u201d, engaged in an affair with a married man.<\/p>\n

The most problematic member of the ensemble (other than a young German sailor pulled aboard at the very end, as a dramatic echo of the main action), is the German Willi. He insists that the others are setting the wrong course, heading away from Bermuda rather than towards it, as is their intention. When challenged as to why he would help them to take him to Bermuda, when he would simply be a prisoner there, he answers, disarmingly, that he is already a prisoner on the lifeboat, and in Bermuda, at least he would be safe from starvation. But he is seen furtively consulting a hidden compass, and it ultimately becomes clear that he is hoping to take the lifeboat to a rendezvous with his submarine tender.<\/p>\n

While initially presenting an inoffensive persona, Willi gradually reveals his true colors.\u00a0 After a storm nearly swamps the lifeboat, Willi takes command. The force of his personality and his physical stamina, coupled with the demoralization and the physical disintegration of the others, allows him to dominate his fellow survivors.<\/p>\n

But after he is unmasked as a water hoarder, the fury of the other passengers is such that, led by the nurse Alice (!), they mob him, beat him senseless, and heave him overboard to his death.<\/p>\n

Willi is a complex character. On the positive side, he is a cultured man, multi-lingual, knowledgeable of music. A medical doctor before the war, he saves the life of fellow-survivor, Gus Smith, by amputating his gangrenous leg. When rowing the lifeboat, he sings lullabies to the weary passengers. But despite these positives, Willi is ultimately an evil man. He hides his compass from the others and he lies to his fellow passengers about the way to safety, in fact leading them towards capture. He murders Gus, after Gus catches him hoarding water while the others are nearly dying of thirst.<\/p>\n

The defining characteristic of Willi is his sense of purpose, in sharp contrast to the fractious internal debates among the other lifeboat passengers, representatives of British and American democracies. Class tensions simmer in the angry relationship of Kovacs, the proletarian from a working class district of Chicago, and Rittenhouse, the fascist-admiring self-made millionaire. The others bicker over who is to take command; Willi simply does so at the opportune moment. He bides his time, plays his cards perfectly, and utilizes the life-threatening danger of a storm to take command just at the moment that the others are too debilitated, emotionally and physically, to challenge him. Only then does he expatiate on the superiority of the German.<\/p>\n

Viewed today, it is easy to recognize that Hitchcock intended this film to convey a wartime message: that the Allies needed to unite so as to be able to defeat so well organized an enemy as the totalitarian Nazi society. Filmed in 1943, when the outcome of the war was not yet certain, the characterization of the Nazi as resourceful, cunning, and strong was a call to take seriously the challenge of defeating so able an adversary.<\/p>\n

Despite his aims, Hitchcock\u2019s characterization of the German officer Willi as a complex character aroused considerable, even virulent, criticism. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther observed:<\/p>\n

There remains the alarming implication, throughout all the
\naction of this film, that the most efficient and resourceful
\nman in this\u00a0Lifeboat<\/em>\u00a0is the Nazi, the man with ‘a plan.’ Nor
\nis he an altogether repulsive or invidious type. As Walter
\nSlezak plays him, he is tricky and sometimes brutal, yes,
\nbut he is practical, ingenious and basically courageous in
\nhis lonely resolve. Some of his careful depictions would be
\nregarded as smart and heroic if they came from an American
\nin the same spot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The noted critic and author Dorothy Parker, after whose brash manner the leading character in the film, \u201cConnie Porter\u201d (played by the stage star Talulah Bankhead) was modeled, panned the film with characteristic wit and ruthlessness: She gave it \u201cten days to get out of town.\u201d[x]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hitchcock responded to his critics in words that ring true to the reader today. In retrospect, the widespread misinterpretation of his film upon its release is best understood as a reflection of the mass psychology of wartime America. In a 1962 interview with the filmmaker Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained his goal in creating Lifeboat:<\/p>\n

We wanted to show that at that moment there were two world forces
\nconfronting each other, the democracies and the Nazis, and while the
\ndemocracies were completely disorganized, all of the Germans were
\nclearly headed in the same direction. So here was a statement telling
\nthe democracies to put their differences aside temporarily and to gather
\ntheir forces to concentrate on the common enemy, whose strength was
\nprecisely derived from a spirit of unity and of determination.[xi]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the added perspective of time, it is now clear that Hitchcock was incorporating some positives in his portrayal of Willi so as to portray him as a formidable foe. Defeating him was therefore a greater dramatic achievement.[xii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately, Hitchcock passes negative judgment upon the wartime German in general.\u00a0 In the final scene of the film, another German is pulled to safety by the lifeboat passengers, and he immediately pulls a pistol on them.\u00a0 After the African American, Joe, disarms him, but the passengers then allow him to remain on board, the German asks if they are going to kill him. Then, Kovacs, the leading male protagonist, muses,<\/p>\n

‘Aren’t you going to kill me?’ What do you do with people like that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In its own historical setting, the question was rhetorical. The 1944 Anglo-American audience was relied upon to answer, \u201cdefeat them\u201d. The individuality of the submarine commander did not yet constitute a change of attitude towards Germany; it was still univocally the enemy to be beaten.<\/p>\n

II. Sea-Change in the Cinema of the 1950\u2019s<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The seeming exceptions to the norm in wartime films of depicting German sailors in two-dimensional ways, therefore, did not constitute a fundamental reevaluation. Individual Germans were good, but not in control; alternately, Germans had some good points of character, but were ultimately still evil.<\/p>\n

In the course of the decade following the conclusion of the war, much was to change, first in life, and then in cinematic art. In the post-war era, relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers quickly deteriorated.\u00a0 On February 9, 1946, Josef Stalin defended a new Soviet Five Year Plan, giving priority to rearmament over consumer needs, on the grounds that peace with the capitalist-imperialist powers was impossible. Later that same month, George F. Kennan, the leading U.S. diplomat in Moscow, wrote his famous \u201clong telegram\u201d alerting the State Department to the ways of the Soviets. In March, Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, delivered his \u201cIron Curtain\u201d speech in Fulton, Missouri. The \u201cCold War\u201d had been declared.[xiii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cold War had a profound effect upon the political development of Germany. At war\u2019s end, the four principal victorious allied countries each administered a part of conquered Germany. With the rupture between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, the United States, Great Britain and France agreed to unite their three sectors. In the new political climate of 1948-1949, The United States and Great Britain gradually developed a willingness for the non-Communist part of Germany to gain independence. This was accomplished by the middle of 1949, with the emergence of the Federal Republic of Germany.<\/p>\n

Would this new country be allowed to rearm? That depended on how the Western Allies viewed Germans. In July, 1948, after a massive American airlift broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin, Americans began to feel more positively about their former German foe. Characteristic of this change for the better was the statement of the U.S. Air Force pilot delivering the last of the \u201cCandy Bomber\u201d parcels in \u201cOperation Little Vittles\u201d. Lt. Harry Bachus, who had spent nearly half a year during the Second World War as a Prisoner of War on the outskirts of Moosburg, piloted the B-17 airplane that made this final run, coincidentally, over the same German city where he had been interned. His remarks sum up a remarkable transformation, obliquely acknowledging that Germans had been victims, too, and that American generosity could pave the way for a better German future:<\/p>\n

We can show the German people, and particularly these
\nyoungsters, who will be the leaders of tomorrow, that the
\nairplane can be an instrument of mercy and good will as
\nwell as a machine that can destroy mankind.\u201d[xiv]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question of a rearmed Germany was bound up in the larger issue of the military preparations of Western nations to counter the prospect of Soviet aggression in Western Europe. In the course of the year of the Soviet blockade, 1948-1949 the Western Allies created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.[xv]<\/a> At first mostly a declaration of principles, NATO became a serious military reality in December, 1950, when the American president, Harry S. Truman, appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander of the NATO alliance forces.<\/p>\n

Who would fill the ranks of soldiers and sailors, defending Western Europe? All the Western Allies were eager to reduce the strain upon their economies of maintaining large standing armies. What of (West) Germany? Should they shoulder their part of the burden, especially as their country was most likely to be the route of an anticipated invasion?<\/p>\n

The British and Americans promoted that step; the French were opposed,. After three years of diplomatic wrangling, in August, 1954, The French National Assembly finally rejected a long-standing proposal to create a European army. The Americans threatened \u201can agonizing reappraisal\u201d of their commitment to defend Europe.<\/p>\n

In this atmosphere of crisis, the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, lobbied for the enlargement of NATO to include Germany and Italy. He offered some reassurances to calm French nervousness about a rearmed Germany: Germany would possess no atomic, ballistic, or chemical weapons; there would be no restoration of the German General Staff, and all German forces would be totally integrated under the command and control of the NATO Supreme Commander. Those proposals quickly met with approval by the existing NATO states, and the French, too, yielded. Pierre Mendes-France, the head of the French government, simultaneously removed an obstacle to French-German rapprochement by reaching an agreement with the F.R.G. Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, to return the Saar valley to West Germany.[xvi]<\/a> The German army and navy were reborn in 1955, now in the service of defending western democracy against Communism.<\/p>\n

This new political climate acted as a catalyst for artistic reevaluation.\u00a0 It is possible that, given time, as the passions of the Second World War receded, film makers would have explored the human face of the German enemy because of the dramatic potential of that new approach. But the political realities of the Cold War, including the desire in the USA to see Germany pay towards the cost of defending the West from the Soviet Union, stimulated this change in attitude towards the prospect of a rearmed Germany. That, in turn, showed up even in 1950\u2019s-era films about World War II.<\/p>\n

A harbinger of this change is to be seen in one brief moment in the 1953 film The Cruel Sea<\/em>. That film was based closely upon Nicholas Monsarrat\u2019s novel of that name. The novel, in turn, grew directly out of the author\u2019s wartime experience as a Lieutenant Commander in the British Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, commanding vessels engaged in anti-submarine warfare. Near the end of the film, the British sailors see their first German U-Boat survivors when, having destroyed the submarine, the British rescue the German survivors from the waters of the Atlantic. One officer exclaims to his fellows: They look just like our own! Having spent six years fighting a faceless enemy, suddenly seeing men\u2014and moreover, men in the same half-drowned, diesel oil-smeared condition as the merchant seamen of torpedoed cargo ships whom they have been rescuing from the water\u2014came with revelatory force.<\/p>\n

The exploration of the human side of the German Kriegsmarine<\/em> enemy is given full treatment in three movies that premiered in quick succession in the mid-1950\u2019s: The Sea Chase<\/em> (1955), The Battle of the River Plate<\/em> (1956) and The Enemy Below<\/em> (1957).<\/p>\n

The first of these stories, The Sea Chase<\/em>, is intriguing in that the differences between the historical record and the 1948 novel of that name by Andrew Geer, and between the novel and the film, are all worthy of analysis:<\/p>\n

\"Blockade-running<\/a>

The Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer Erlangen, whose blockade-running exploits were the basis for the Andrew Geer novel and later, the movie, The Sea Chase. Copyright; John H. Marsh Maritime Collection, Iziko Maritime Centre Cape Town.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"HMS<\/a>

HMS Newcastle, which intercepted Erlangen outside Montevideo harbor, July 25, 1941. www.wartimememoriesproject.com\/ww2\/ships\/ship.php?pid=77 HMS Newcastle in the Second World War, The Wartime Memories Project.<\/p><\/div>\n

The history is only partially preserved. The facts as we know them are as follows: The 6100-ton German steamer, Erlangen<\/em>, built in 1929, and owned by Norddeutscher Lloyd<\/em>, was in the port of Dunedin, New Zealand, in late August, 1939 under its master, Captain Alfred Grams, with a crew of German officers and Chinese sailors. It left port on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities, Captain Grams having received orders from Berlin to make for a neutral port. The goal was to rescue the ship from being impounded and its German officers from internment as enemy aliens. Erlangen<\/em>\u2018s stated sailing plan was to go to Port Kembla on the south- eastern coast of Australia to take on coal. It was known to port authorities that Erlangen<\/em> had 175 tons of coal in her bunker, insufficient fuel to reach Valparaiso, Chile, the closest neutral port. But Erlangen<\/em> did not arrive in Port Kembla. Captain Grams had taken her not northwest, to Australia, but south, to the Auckland Islands, to take on food and to cut wood. After the fact, it became clear that he had put into the Auckland Islands\u2019 Carnley Harbor. While hidden there, for over a month, his crew deforested a six-acre region of that island, harvesting wood to burn in his ship\u2019s boilers. The wood of that region was a kind of ironwood, very dense and suitable for use as fuel. On 5 October, 1939, he steamed from his hiding place and arrived in Pierto Mott, Chile, on Nov. 11, 1939, having burned all the harvested wood, as well as the lifeboats and other wooden furnishings on board the ship, and even hoisting sail, all the while successfully eluding British capture. In Chile, he received a friendly welcome from the largely German local population. Grams dismissed the 50 Chinese seamen of the ship\u2019s company, sending them back to Asia, and remained in Chile with 12 German officers, engineers and assistants until mid-1941. Then, German authorities ordered Captain Grams to take Erlangen<\/em> to the port of Montevideo. His replacement crew was from the German training vessel Priwal<\/em>. He successfully rounded Cape Horn and entered the Atlantic, but was intercepted by the British naval cruiser HMS Newcastle<\/em> off the coast of Montevideo on 25 July, 1941, and scuttled his ship to avoid its capture. The Captain and crew were interned for the duration of the war, and freed in 1946.<\/p>\n

All this is dramatic enough in its own right, but the 1948 novel changed numerous details, added a love triangle and other conventional plot elements, and supplied characterizations of the captain and key members of his crew, all for the purposes of creating a still-more dramatic tale:<\/p>\n

The steamer, renamed Ergenstrasse<\/em>, was made much older, having been launched in 1896. The ship herself bears the marks of an eventful history\u2014a bloodstain on the floor of the shipmaster\u2019s cabin, where the crew murdered him during the lawless days of the German revolution, October 1918; and a 5-year stint surreptitiously flying the Danish flag, to avoid being given to the French as war spoils. The point of these changes is to make the ship herself partly the heroine of the story. Ergenstrasse<\/em> emerges as a gallant old lady, listing but full of spirit\u2014in the tradition of sea stories, in which the authors anthropomorphize their vessels.[xvii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unlike the historical record, in which Erlangen<\/em> goes down in the South Atlantic and her captain is arrested, in 1941, in both novel and film, the denouement<\/em> of the plot is advanced to the end of 1939, and the locale is changed to increase the dramatic effect. Using plywood obtained in Chile, Ehrlich gives Ergenstrasse<\/em> an altered silhouette and disguises her as a Panamanian freighter. By means of that stratagem, he successfully steams the entire Atlantic from South to North, only to be intercepted off the coast of Norway, on the verge of pulling off a major propaganda coup on behalf of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

Whatever may have been the character of the real Captain Grams, the novelist gave the fictional captain, Karl Ehrlich, a vivid and unattractive character, essential to the plot of the novel.\u00a0 Ehrlich is a battle-scarred veteran of the German imperial navy, having commanded a German destroyer squadron at the World War I Battle of Jutland. He is hard-driving, \u201cfilled with animal energy\u201d, feared by his men. \u00a0He administers harsh discipline, including physical abuse, but\u2014Hitler-like– is capable of inspiring oratory. Ehrlich\u2019s back story is one of frustration. While in command of a naval stores depot in the chaotic days of late 1918, with revolution and mutiny in the air, he had refused a colleague\u2019s undocumented request for supplies. The colleague rose in the navy and had his revenge; Ehrlich fell out of favor and was discharged; hence his unhappy career as a merchant ship captain. His zeal to return and receive a Kriegsmarine<\/em> command is his main driving force.<\/p>\n

He must get back to Germany\u2026 The press would praise him\u2026
\nThey would restore him to his commission\u2026 Only in Germany
\ncould he hope to regain his lost rank. All other desires, thoughts,
\nbecame subservient to this purpose. He would drive his crew,
\nkill any or all if he must, but he would see success crown his
\nenterprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ehrlich is a racist. He fully subscribes to Uebermensch<\/em> ideology. British women are as unappealing as British food, in his opinion. As for Americans, he dismisses them as a \u201cmeteor of nations\u201d, flaring brightly but not for long. Asians are untermenschen.<\/em> When his crew grumbles about his order to ram a canoe and kill the eight Pacific Islanders on board, he asks his men, already suffering from hunger,<\/p>\n

\u2026who has so much food that you\u2019d want to share it with a
\nyellow-skinned degenerate who, for thirty pieces of silver,
\nwould betray us?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He flatters a German woman whom he is seeking to woo by discoursing on the racial superiority of the Germans, which owes as much to German women as to German men:<\/p>\n

In all history, Germany\u2019s is the only nation that\u2019s been able to
\ncome through countless bloody wars without losing its virility…
\nOnly the Germans are able to go on and on, losing their finest in
\nwar but rebuilding an ever sturdier race, physically and mentally,
\nand, in large part, it\u2019s the German woman who\u2019s responsible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of these negatives, except for Ehrlich\u2019s hard-driving nature, disappear in the 1955 movie. The captain, played by the redoubtable John Wayne (who does not even attempt a German accent), is portrayed as a decent and principled, if rough-edged, man of the old school.\u00a0 He is a German patriot, but no Nazi.<\/p>\n

This fundamental recasting of Ehrlich\u2019s character is the mainspring for many other changes in the story: The reason for his dismissal from the Kriegsmarine<\/em> is altered. In the film, it is due to his having expressed anti-Nazi opinions. This necessitates another change: Ehrlich\u2019s reason for wanting to return to Germany is altered to reflect, not personal ambition to serve the Nazi regime, but rather \u00a0a commendable quality: solicitude for his German crew.<\/p>\n

When, at the climax of the film, his ship is intercepted by a British corvette, Ehrlich again shows his true, and non-Nazi, patriotism. He hoists the old, imperial naval flag instead of the Nazi banner and, under that flag, attempts to ram the Britisher. This is a more heroic action than the final encounter in the novel, where Ehrlich is surprised by Lieutenant Napier, the British officer who has been hunting him around the globe. Napier, not commanding a corvette in the novel\u2019s iteration of the story, is instead the leader of an away team based on a small, although armed, fishing trawler. Finding Ergenstrasse <\/em>off the coast of Norway, Napier uses a boat to board and commandeer her.<\/p>\n

At the end of novel, Napier kills Ehrlich. The British officer had tried to arrest him, but Ehrlich rushed him and struggled, remaining on his feet even after absorbing twelve(!) bullets, until he collapsed\u2014an end corresponding to the \u201canimal energy\u201d of the German captain. In the film, we do not see him die. Perhaps he went down with his ship\u2014appropriate enough for a good captain\u2014but the audience is left with the tantalizing possibility that Ehrlich and his lady love interest have escaped together to neutral Norway. In 1950\u2019s Hollywood, amor vincit omnia<\/em> (\u201clove conquers all\u201d) was the rule.<\/p>\n

Other classic 1950\u2019s movie tropes abound in this film: the rehabilitation of a ne\u2019er do well sailor under the stern but fair guidance of the captain; a love triangle in which the captain and the female passenger on board Ergenstrasse, <\/em>played by the \u201cbombshell\u201d actress Lana Turner, belatedly express their love for each other, and the reformation of character of the passenger herself, at first a Mata Hari type, using her sexuality for German intelligence purposes, but at the end a woman capable of true love.<\/p>\n

A conventional movie of that era, especially a John Wayne movie, typically had an unambiguous villain. With Ehrlich no longer available for that role in the 1955 film, the true villain is the First Officer, Kirchner (who had been the Second Officer in the book). In both novel and movie, Kirchner is guilty of murder, but in the film, his character, already bad, absorbs all the evil in the novel\u2019s depiction of Ehrlich. In the film, Kirchner is the vile Nazi.<\/p>\n

In sum, the true Nazi in the film version of The Sea Chase<\/em> remains the villain, but the film has taken a significant step in rehabilitating the German naval officer as a character type.\u00a0 Captain Ehrlich represents the finest traditions of the old, pre-Nazi German navy. He is a German whom Cold War America could imagine as being in command a naval vessel in the newly resurrected German navy\u2014and who wouldn\u2019t trust John Wayne?<\/p>\n

The next step in the rehabilitation process was to tell the story of a veteran of the imperial navy and the Weimar Reichsmarine<\/em> who did serve in Hitler\u2019s Kriegsmarine<\/em> and yet who could be depicted as a man of honor, an enemy deserving of respect.\u00a0 This was the theme of Powell and Pressburger in their 1956 film, The Battle of the River Plate<\/em>. That film is a retelling of the first British naval victory of the Second World War, the destruction of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Pursuit<\/a>

Movie poster, The Pursuit of the Graf Spee (alternate title of The Battle of the River Plate). Source: www.doctormacro.com\/Movie Summaries\/B\/Battle of the River Plate<\/p><\/div>\n

The history of the battle, on 13 December, 1939, and the scuttling of his ship by its Captain, Hans Langsdorff, three days later, was widely reported in Great Britain, being the first good news for the British since the start of the war that September. Graf Spee<\/em> had put to sea shortly before the start of hostilities, and had sunk 50,000 tons of merchant shipping in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. The British had sent several groups of warships in pursuit of her, and on 13 December, one such group, consisting of three naval cruisers, found and attacked her.\u00a0 The battleship was more heavily armed than the cruisers, but the British forces attacked from two directions, forcing Graf Spee<\/em> to divide her fire.\u00a0 Even so, Graf Spee<\/em>\u2019s gunfire damaged all three of the attackers, one of them, Exeter<\/em>, severely enough to compel her to retire to the Falkland Islands.\u00a0 But the gunfire from the British ships had done damage too, including one shot from Exeter<\/em> that destroyed a key component of Graf Spee<\/em>\u2019s fueling system. Kapit\u00e4n<\/em> Langsdorff headed for the port of Montevideo in neutral Uruguay to repair his vessel.\u00a0 He needed more time than the 72 hours granted, however, and, low on ammunition and believing that a large British force had assembled outside the harbor, he scuttled his vessel at the limit of Uruguayan territorial waters, after first having ferried his crew to safety. He subsequently committed suicide in a Montevideo hotel room, lying on his ship\u2019s battle flag and leaving a note reading, in part,<\/p>\n

I can now only prove by my death that the fighting services
\nof the Third Reich are ready to die for the honour of the flag\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Nazi footage preserved in Victory at Sea<\/em>, Langsdorff is seen being honored by Hitler on the eve of his 1939 mission. But subsequent events raised the tantalizing possibility that Langsdorff was not a typical Nazi.\u00a0 Perhaps he was, rather, an old-school warrior, a man of honor? The circumstances of his death suggested an air of pre-Nazi chivalry attached to the German officer.\u00a0 His character was further burnished by Langsdorff\u2019s solicitude for the lives of the merchant crews whose ships he had hunted.\u00a0 He brought all the civilian mariners to safety aboard his ship, before sinking their vessels.<\/p>\n

Langsdorff had served with distinction in the Imperial Navy, taking part in the Battle of Jutland. and receiving a decoration for his valor. After the First World War, he served the Weimar Republic\u2019s Reichsmarine.<\/em> When Hitler had taken power, Langsdorff requested sea duty— was he trying to get away from Berlin so as to be farther from the Nazi leadership? Granted, his suicide note contained a declaration of respect for the Fuehrer.\u00a0 He himself was beyond the reach of retribution, but was that intended to protect his family? It was at least possible to see in Langsdorff an echo of an admirable, pre-Nazi military ethos that the British, albeit enemies of the Germans, could respect.<\/p>\n

The captain of one of his last merchant ship victims, Philip Dove of the Africa Shell<\/em>, developed a grudging admiration for Kapit\u00e4n<\/em> Langsdorff. After his release, Captain Dove authored a memoir of his experience, I was a Graf Spee\u2019s Prisoner<\/em> (London, 1940). In his memoir, he recounted numerous acts of kindness and courtesy shown to the prisoners by Captain Langsdorff. When captured, Captain Dove was wearing the short pants of a summer uniform. Knowing that Graf Spee<\/em> was bound for sub-Antarctic waters for a replenishment rendezvous with her supply ship, Altmark<\/em>, Kapit\u00e4n<\/em> Langsdorff had the ship\u2019s tailor make a woolen uniform for him.<\/p>\n

In 1954, Powell and Pressburger, who had continued to collaborate since their 49th<\/sup> Parallel<\/em> days, were in Argentina attending a film festival. From there, they went to Uruguay to do research for a film on the famous 1939 naval battle, which they judged would make a suitable topic for a commercially successful film. But they were eager to frame the story from a human interest perspective, and when given a copy of Captain Dove\u2019s memoirs, they resolved to use it as the basis for the story. They completed the film in 1955. Dove served as a technical advisor to the film, and another captured merchant ship master, Captain Bernard Lee, played the role of Dove.<\/p>\n

Langsdorff\u2019s gentlemanly ways are further highlighted in the film by a contrast with the brutish behavior of other German naval captains. Some of the British prisoners had been held on Altmark<\/em> and were transferred to Graf Spee<\/em> during the replenishment. One remarks bitterly on the contrast: now they were being given clean and spacious quarters, but on Altmark<\/em> they had been confined in a stinking hold. Their conversation is interrupted by a group of German officers and men coming into their room and presenting them with Christmas decorations. Germans and British alike celebrate amiably until the battle alarm sounds and the Germans leave. The lights from the Christmas ornaments allow the British to continue to see even when British gunfire destroys Graf Spee\u2019s<\/em> lighting system.<\/p>\n

By combining the thrill of a naval battle, for which they were allowed to film on actual warships, with the story of growing friendship and respect between Dove and Langsdorff, Powell and Pressurger created a film that succeeded on several levels.\u00a0 The British movie-going public, coping with lingering post-war austerities and the decline of their overseas Empire in real life,[xviii]<\/a> was eager to relive the historic victories of their nation during its \u201cfinest hour\u201d. The Rank Organization, Powell and Pressburger\u2019s corporate backers, decided to hold back the film\u2019s release for one year so that it could be part of the 1956 Royal Film Performance.\u00a0 The film opened to critical acclaim and also garnered high box office receipts.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>

Cover of 1956 novel, The Enemy Below. Source: dfordoom-movieramblings.blogspot.com\/2015\/07\/the-enemy-below-1957.html<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

Movie poster from 1957 movie of the same title. Source: dfordoom-movieramblings.blogspot.com\/2015\/07\/the-enemy-below-1957.html<\/p><\/div>\n

In The Sea Chase<\/em>, the captain had been cashiered from the German Navy and, while a German patriot, was not serving in a military capacity. In the Battle of the River Plate<\/em>, the captain was not a submariner, but rather the commander of a battleship. With the U-Boats widely identified in the public consciousness as the main threat to Allied survival, the full transformation in recognizing the human face of the enemy would involve humanizing a German submarine commander. This development took place a year after the release of Powell and Pressburger\u2019s film, in the American movie, The Enemy Below<\/em>. In that film, the U-Boat captain himself is shown to be a German patriot, weary of war but still willing to defend his country, and decidedly, if carefully, contemptuous of the Nazis.<\/p>\n

The Enemy Below<\/em> was adapted for the screen from a novel by Denys Rainer of the same title. Like Monsarrat, Rayner had spent the war in command of a variety of Royal Navy anti-submarine vessels. Shortly before publishing his novels\u2014The Enemy Below<\/em> was one of two based on his experiences\u2014Rayner had published Escort<\/em>, a memoir of his wartime experiences in the Battle of the Atlantic. His first-hand experience is reflected in the details of his novels.[xix]<\/a><\/p>\n

However, The Enemy Below<\/em> is a tale of an encounter that seldom happened in actual wartime, the duel of a single submarine with a single anti-submarine surface ship.\u00a0 More commonly, once sufficient warships became available to the Allies, two or more of the escort ships would cooperate in hunting the submarine, the one using its \u201cAsdic\u201d or Sonar underwater acoustical equipment to help guide the other to the submerged U-Boat. As such, the duel of one vessel against another was an apt subject for dramatic treatment in film.<\/p>\n

In keeping with the dramatic device of presenting the encounter as a duel, the film establishes a narrative rhythm, going back and forth between the point of view of the German submarine commander, Peter von Stolberg, and the Allied destroyer escort captain, John Murrell. (The film switches the nationality of the Allied vessel from British to American, doubtless for market-driven reasons.)<\/p>\n

The reinterpretation of the U-Boat commander\u2019s image, includes lines given to his adversary, the Allied captain. One of the popular conventions of naval tales is that the captain escapes the loneliness of command in conversations with a trusted confidant, the ship\u2019s surgeon. In The Enemy Below<\/em>, Captain Murrell\u2019s conversations with the doctor are a vehicle for the exposition of the Captain\u2019s back-story, one of personal grief he holds out of view under the surface of his persona as a competent, unruffled commander. These conversations reveal Murrell\u2019s view of life. In one such conversation, where the captain and the doctor muse about what life will be like after the war, Murrell acknowledges that the ultimate enemy below is not only the enemy below the surface of the waves, but rather the enemy below the fragile crust of civilized behavior. Whereas the doctor looks forward to a return to normalcy, the captain is more pessimistic:<\/p>\n

Murrell: Yes, but it won\u2019t be the same as it was. We won\u2019t have that feeling of permanency that we had before. We\u2019ve learned a hard truth.<\/p>\n

Doctor: How do you mean?<\/p>\n

Murrell: That there\u2019s no end to misery and destruction. You cut the head off the snake; it grows another. Cut that one off; you find another. We can\u2019t kill it as it\u2019s something within ourselves. You can call it the enemy if you want to, but it\u2019s part of us. We\u2019re all men.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The inference of this revelation is that Murrell recognizes, in the universal human propensity for evil, a link between himself and his German foe.\u00a0 Later in the same scene, he gives explicit expression to that recognition:<\/p>\n

Murrell: I\u2019m just doing what I have to do, like that German captain out there. I don\u2019t like the job but maybe he doesn\u2019t, either.[xx]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naturally, the film\u2019s main work of reinterpreting the image of the German U-Boat commander is not in oblique inferences from the words of the American captain, but in scenes involving the German commander directly. The Enemy Below <\/em>focuses even more attention on the character of von Stolberg than had been given to Kapit\u00e4n<\/em> Langsdorff in The Battle of the River Plate<\/em>. The screenwriter, William Mayes, endowed his U-Boat commander with a fully three-dimensional personality.<\/p>\n

In an early scene, when the film is still establishing the character of each of its protagonists, Von Stolberg barely conceals his scorn when one of his younger officers, Leutnant<\/em> Kuntz, displays Nazi ideological fervor. Later, alone with his trusted executive officer, Korvettenkapit\u00e4n<\/em> Heine Schwaffer, von Stolberg expresses contempt for the overgrown Hitler-Jugend<\/em> type of zealot sent to his crew. This scene merits close analysis:<\/p>\n

(Setting: The command area of the U-Boat)<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg (toweling himself off after having been topside in the foul weather): Whose watch is next?<\/p>\n

Von Holem (a subordinate officer): Leutnant<\/em> Kuntz, Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg (over intercom): Leutnant<\/em> Kuntz report forward.<\/p>\n

(Von Stolberg looks up and sees a sign posted on an overhead bar. He looks surprised and displeased. The sign reads, \u201cFuehrer befiehl und wir folgen<\/em>\u201d\u2014The Fuehrer commands and we follow.\u201d Apparently, it has just been put in place by Kuntz, the ardent Nazi.)<\/p>\n

Kuntz: You wanted me Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: Yours is the next watch topside. We have a signal on the FMB. I think it\u2019s a false echo. But to check its reaction you will zigzag twice an hour until daybreak. If it moves in closer, you will awaken me immediately.<\/p>\n

Kuntz: Jawohl Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>! (salutes)<\/p>\n

As von Stolberg walks off, he passes the newly-posted sign.\u00a0 Von Stolberg\u2019s body language (he is seen from behind) suggests irritation, and he throws his towel over the word Fuehrer, as if to efface it. Then he goes into his cabin and invites his executive officer to join him.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: Schwaffer!<\/p>\n

Schwaffer:\u00a0 Mm?<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: Come in Heini.\u00a0 (Schwaffer enters)<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: Ah, that Kuntz annoys me. Remind him that we do not salute at sea.<\/p>\n

Schwaffer: He\u2019s new here, Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>. He will tire of it.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: He\u2019s new\u2026 like our new Germany: a machine.<\/p>\n

Schwaffer (looking a bit uncomfortable): Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>, do you think we are wise in risking that image to be a false echo?<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg (pouring a drink): Wise? Expedient. Time is important, and we would travel too slowly under water.\u00a0 In 48 hours we rendezvous with Raider M<\/em>. We take the captured British code book and we go home with it.\u00a0 And this is the important thing. Not the code book. But because when we have it, we can go home. (He lifts his glass in a toast) Auf dein Wohl<\/em> (drains his drink).<\/p>\n

Schwaffer (drinking with him): Zum Wohl, Herr Kapit\u00e4n.<\/em><\/p>\n

Von Stolberg (making a face) Tastes like oil and bilge and green mold. Sit down Heini. Tastes like a U boat. I\u2019ve been in the U boats too long. There was a time I went to sea with a fresh heart. But that was many years ago. Now I can only thing of going home. (Offers another drink) You want more?<\/p>\n

Schwaffer (Covering his glass in a polite gesture of refusal) No more, Herr Kapit\u00e4n.<\/em><\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: You think I take too much. Just enough to sleep. I cannot rest without it. I think too much. \u00a0(Raises his glass in a toast) Never think, Heini. Be a good warrior, Heini, and never think. You pay a penalty for thinking. You cannot rest. (Drains his glass, puts it down, and takes a framed photograph from his shelf.) I taught these sons of mine to be good warriors. Country, duty, ask no questions. (Shows Heini the photograph.)\u00a0 One of them is at the bottom of the sea, this one is a cinder in a burned airplane. And I am glad, that is the way for warriors to die, young and with faith. I have lived too long\u2026<\/p>\n

We\u2019re friends, Heini?<\/p>\n

Schwaffer (looking non-plussed): I\u2019ve been with you since I was a cadet.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: That\u2019s not what I asked you.<\/p>\n

Schwaffer: I do not know. Sometimes I\u2019m afraid of you. Many times I do not understand you. I\u2019m not certain we are friends.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg (animatedly): We are friends. Believe that. We are friends. Because we are friends, I tell you something: (lowers his voice) I\u2019m sick of this war. It\u2019s not a good war. You don\u2019t remember the first one. I was a Faehnrich<\/em> in the U-boats and, oh, how proud I was! We went out in those little sardine tins, and if we submerged, we couldn\u2019t always be sure we\u2019d come up again. Oh it was a good game we played. The captain would look through his periscope and sight a target , and then he did arithmetic in his head\u00a0 and said, \u201cTorpedo los<\/em>\u201d!\u00a0 And you know something: sometimes the torpedo wouldn\u2019t even leave the tube! And if it did, we were most lucky to hit something. And now, I look in the periscope and it gives me the distance and the speed. I pass this information to the attack table. The machinery turns, the lights flash, and we get the answer. The torpedo runs to its target.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no human error in this. They\u2019ve taken human error out of war, Heini. They\u2019ve taken the human out of war. (pause)<\/p>\n

War was different then. It put iron in the country\u2019s backbone. It gave the brave memory, and even in defeat, it gave them honor. But there is no honor in this war. The memories will be ugly, even if we win.\u00a0 And if we die, we die without God. Do you know that, Heini?<\/p>\n

Schwaffen: (after a beat) I listen to what you say, Herr Kapit\u00e4n<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Von Stolberg: (lying down on his bunk): It\u2019s a bad war. Its reason is twisted. Its purpose is dark. It\u2019s not for a simple man.<\/p>\n

(Von Stolberg closes his eyes. Schwaffen ponders for a moment, then gets up and covers the sleeping captain with his blanket, turns off the light, leaves and closes the curtain behind him.)[xxi]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This scene encapsulates the difference between a wartime depiction of a German Kriegsmarine officer and the new approach of the 1950\u2019s:<\/p>\n