Neither Sharks Nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany's U-Boat Arm, 1939-1945

Rating:
Summary: Very good behind-the-scenes look
Review: A very informative, in-depth look behind the scenes at the men who made up Germany's U-Boat arm. Mulligan has done his homework in researching educational backgrounds, regions where these men came from, training time, ages when they became captains, and a whole array of facts and figures put together in a way that is not boring, but rather enlightening.

Party affiliations are also discussed in great detail. Some commanders were fanatical Nazis, others started out that way only to change when they saw what it was doing to their homeland, and others were just there doing their job.

Admiral Donitz is also thoroughly discussed in this book, looking at his ideaologies at conducting the war, his strategies and his loyalties to his men and to Hitler. It makes me want to buy his book, "Memoirs" and read further.

A well-done, in-depth book. A lot of facts and figures put together in a nice package.

Rating:
Summary: Can the Question Posed Be Answered?
Review: First of all, anyone interested in submarine warfare will find this a well-documented and constructed account of the development and use of submarines within the Kriegsmarine (KM) by the Germans during World War II. Like most books from the Naval Institute Press, among them the highly-sought first edition of Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October", one would be hard put to find flaws in the presentation.

The author does opine from the gathered data, much of it in the National Archives, that helps the reader track from year to year the rise and fall of the effectiveness of U-Boot (U-Boat) warfare, the reasons (especially increasingly effective Allied detection and bombing) for the end of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the failure of the unleashing of "total war" by Admiral Donitz. The book is rich with German terminology, which will facilitate reader understanding of other books, and films such as "Das Boot". For example, the term L.I. (pronounced el-ee in German) occurs frequently in that film, referring to the Chief Engineer (Lieutenant Engineer, on the Engineer track within the KM).

I find somewhat astounding one conclusion of the author, that most U-Boot sailors were German patriots and relatively unaware of the genocide occurring within the Reich. Although there is dictum that der Fuehrer compained of having a "Christian Navy", frequent trips back to the Fatherland when on leave, trips to Berlin for decorations, and so forth would seem to make it incredulous that these men did not know what was happening within the Reich. The author does not identify how many sailors in the U-Boot Waffe were NSDAP (Nazi Party) members, which would be a telling statistic. He states that Germans at home were more concerned with obtaining food during the Allied bombing campaign, which has come under some revisionist criticism ("German's Revisit War's Agony, Ending a Taboo", Richard Bernstein, New York Times, Vol. CLII, No. 52423, March 15, 2003, p. A3). However, this reviewer has studied the period 1918-1950 fairly extensively, and viewed in German newsreels shown in German theatres as early as 1940 which demonstrated the persecution of Jews and other "undesireables" and the unfolding of the plans stated in the book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), available in English in 1939.

Films such as "Das Boot" and "Stalingrad" do go a long way toward viewing the common soldier or sailor as somewhat of a victim of birth and citizenship. Standards both mental and physical for U-Boat personnel were astoundingly stringent (even volunteers with dental caries were rejected). These men fought in unimaginably deplorable conditions (no heat, one commode for a crew averaging 50, frequent exposure to the exhaust of diesel engines). However, this book doesn't convey that kind of feeling, compared to, say, Werner's "Iron Coffins" (the recollections of a U-Boat commander). Nonetheless, its statistical analysis is important--suggesting that upwards of 50,000 rather than the commonly accepted 40,000 sailors may have served on U-Boats. The casualty rate (75% or so killed) belies grand fealty to a doomed and errant cause, but as with our own Confederates, we can nonetheless appreciate the valor and sacrifice with which they served "their" country.

Rating:
Summary: The Men Behind the Machines
Review: This thoroughly engrossing book by Timothy Mulligan is the first work to portray the officers and men of Germany's U-Boat arm in an attempt to understand not only why they fought, but what motivated them to continue to take their vessels to sea after 1943, when the loss rate in combat grew to an incredible level and each new mission grew increasingly suicidal. Mulligan's book goes far beyond a statistical tabulation of data, and the many nuggets of information he gleaned from his in-depth research refute most of the myths and legends of the U-Boat men popularized in the immediate post-war years in books and movies. The book overturns the common images of Germany's U-Boat men as being either fanatical killers or baby-faced sacrifices to Hitlerian ambitions. This is not a chronological history of the war at sea in WW2, although the author does describe in detail the major trends of the Battle of the Atlantic, the struggle for technological superiority, and the effects these had on recruiting, morale, combat performance, and motivation of the German submarine crews. All in all, this is an excellent book that puts a human face on a much-feared enemy, cuts through the stereotypes and propaganda images, and shows that the UBootfahrer were truly "neither sharks nor wolves"...nor sheep.