In search of credible cinematic enemies in the post-Cold War era, the movie U-571 returned to the classic Battle-of- the-Atlantic conflict between submarine and destroyer--but with a twist. Inspired by the 1941 British capture of a top-secret Enigma decoder from the German U-110, one of the pivotal events of World War II, director Jonathan Mostow reinvented history and extended plausibility beyond the limits of dramatic license. He also created the most exciting submarine movie Hollywood has ever produced.
Mostow made his most egregious tampering with history in the inspiration for his story. To propel the plot, he transformed the British destroyer Bulldog (which actually captured the cipher machine from the U-110 in May 1941) into an obsolete U.S. S-Class submarine. He then sent this submarine to seize the decoder from a crippled U-boat, now named the U-571.
Do the changes matter? One viewer responded, "If I want truth, I'll watch PBS." A History Channel poll supported that reaction, with 14.2% of the people saying films should be as captivating as possible and 52.2% saying that fictionalizing history was "fine" if the films interested people in history.
Britons saw it differently. While the film still was in production, survivors of the original engagement complained about the liberties Mostow was taking with an event that King George VI described as the most important single action in the war. Lieutenant Commander David Balme, who actually had carried the Enigma machine out of the U-110, expressed outrage at the American usurpation of a heroic British feat. In an effort to assuage the criticisms, the filmmakers promised Balme to put full credits at the end of the movie, setting forth the actual history. Satisfied with the response, Balme reported that the filmmakers "were very sorry that they had upset the British and are trying to put it right."1
Universal Pictures clearly knew how to handle the retired officer. While filming still was going on, the studio flew Balme to Malta to meet with the cast and describe the actual operation. Later on, during post-production in Los Angeles, Universal brought Balme to the United States, filmed interviews with him, and screened the work print for him. Not unexpectedly, his perspective changed. After the film had become a box-office hit, Balme told an interviewer on the ABC Evening News that he "absolutely love[d] it," and pointed out that "they spent $75 million making this film, so there's got to be American action to get their money back."2
Mostow had similar success in handling a member of Parliament. Paul Truswell wrote to Universal Pictures in late 1999, saying that the historical transformation was "a source of great concern" to his constituents whose contributions had paid for one of the ships that had forced the U-110 to the surface. He expressed the hope that the filmmakers would understand that people "are angry at what they regard as a re-writing of the history that they helped to make." In response to Truswell's request to give credit to the "real facts of the engagement," Mostow explained his purpose in making U-571. He claimed that he had no intention "of stealing credit from the courageous men" who captured the Enigma machine. Instead, he clarified, "our film is a fictional account of World War II American submarine sailors." He said the inspiration for the story he had written came from two sources: Operation Drumbeat, Hitler's devastating U-Boat attacks on shipping along the East Coast of the United States in 1942; and the U.S. Navy's capture of the U-505 in 1944.
Mostow recognized that he had "a moral responsibility not to rewrite history. I believe that I am fulfilling that obligation. It is my sincere hope that U-571 will focus public attention on aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic that would otherwise risk slipping into the footnotes of history. I hope that young people particularly will see this fictional movie and be motivated to study about the real-life heroes who fought to preserve world freedom."3
Fictional films certainly can educate people about historical events and they can inspire people of all ages to learn more about what they have seen on the motion picture screen. Stressing that audiences should understand that U-571 remains only an action-adventure movie carries Mostow only so far, however. For most people, what they see on the screen becomes their reality. They have no other frame of reference. They cannot separate fact from fiction, and, contrary to Mostow's hope, not many people run to the library to transplant what they have seen on the screen into the framework of actual events.
Mostow did portray life accurately on board decrepit S-class submarines with their leaking pipes and fittings, but the four obsolete submarines based on the East Coast in World War II served only as training craft. The two combat-ready S-Class boats in the Pacific were lost early in the war. Thus, the mission Mostow creates can in no way inform or educate viewers. If he truly wanted to show "as realistically as possible the psychological and physical effects of submarine combat on the men who served," he should have set his story in the Pacific theater of operations. Many U.S. submariners there experienced action every bit as exciting and dramatic as the fictional events in U-571.
Only in the operational scenes on board the U-571 does the film convey a sense of what life was like on board a German submarine. This resulted from the work of Captain Hans-Joachim Krug, a former U-boat commander who served as one of the German consultants to Mostow, and from two members of the technical staff who, like Krug, had worked in the production staff on Das Boot. According to Krug, U-571 gained its visual accuracy because the set in Rome and the submarine mock-up off Malta were "more or less exact copies of what we had in Das Boot."4
On the other hand, Krug "found the story rather unrealistic and overblown, typical of the Hollywood super action thrillers of today." Nevertheless, he said he had hoped he would be able to rectify procedures and environment. Instead, he "found that Jonathan Mostow showed very little interest in these matters and historical correctness." As a result, Krug said his suggestions for correcting errors in uniform and other matters were not accepted. In particular, he noted that the German destroyer "looked the plump tugboat that it was. No mariner would mistake her for a sleek two-stack destroyer. At least a dummy could have been added for a second stack." Again, Mostow ignored his technical advice.
In light of his experiences working on the production, Krug concluded that Mostow's claim that submarines always had fascinated him "sounds rather superficial to me. Irrespective of historical correctness (not always relevant for a screen play) the plot is to me rather unrealistic." He thought that Mostow "had little idea of the realities of submarine warfare or didn't even want to know. As usual for many war movies, action, suspense, and sensation had more appeal to him than concern for naval and submarine environment."
When questioned about such matters, Mostow's answers remained the same: "My primary goal was to create for the audience the visceral experience of being aboard a World War II submarine. The best way I could make the audience appreciate the kinds of things these submariners went through was to recreate as well as I could, the experience of being aboard one of these antiquated vessels."5
The three torpedo incidents at the heart of the story all raise serious questions about plausibility. Just as the S-33 has completed her heist of the Enigma machine and the away crew is about to return to the ship, a torpedo apparently from the U-boat sent to help the U-571 blows up the U.S. submarine. Given the weather and darkness, audiences might well wonder how the German submarine possibly could see what was happening and decide which submarine to sink.
Worse, after the surviving Americans return to the U-571 and get under way, her new American crew wages an undersea battle with the German rescue submarine. The German U-boat misses while the U-571 scores a direct hit. Before the development of homing torpedoes later in the war, submariners maintain that it was virtually impossible for one submerged submarine to hit another submerged submarine since there was no way to know accurately the depth or precise direction of the enemy.
Then, after the appearance of a German destroyer, the U-571 wages war both on the surface and under the sea against her new enemy. After suffering the longest and loudest depth charging in cinematic history, the U-571 sinks the destroyer with a one-torpedo, "down-the-throat" bow shot. Yes, a U.S. submariner did "perfect" the technique, but by using three torpedoes with a very narrow spread. Initially successful, the captain and his boat did not return from another patrol.
In the end, what does a scholar or a submarine buff say about a film that relies on such chance for its believability? Mostow certainly ameliorates some of the factual and historical criticism thanks to his claim of simply making a fictional action-adventure movie. The closer a film adheres to reality and plausibility, however, the better its ambiance and believability. In Greed, Eric von Stroheim had his actors wear silk underwear, not because the audience ever would know, but because the apparel helped the players submerge themselves into their roles.
Nor is it enough for Mostow or supporters of the movie to say that most people do not know the difference between reality and imagination: that a German single-engine, land-based fighter plane could not make it into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; that German destroyers never ventured into the North Atlantic; and that German destroyers did not have only one stack. Even if only a minority of the audience knew the history of the Battle of the Atlantic, a greater adherence to actual events, procedures, equipment, and plausibility would most likely have produced a better sense of believability than what audiences saw on the screen in U-571—without affecting the excitement Mostow created so well.
1. London Daily Telegram, 13 May 1999.
2. Ibid.; Jonathan Mostow to Paul Truswell, 18 November 1999; ABC Evening News, 8 June 2000.
3. Mostow to Truswell, 18 November 1999.
4. Hans-Joachim Krug to author, 30 May 2000.
5. Author interview with Jonathan Mostow, 14 April 2000.