U-Boote Crews: The Day-to-Day Life Aboard Hitler's Submarines
Jean Delize. Paris: Histoire & Collections, 2007. 128 pp. Illus. Bib. $42.95.
Reviewed by Captain Frederick H. Hallett, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
For serious students of submarine warfare, this odd volume provides a very different slant on the history of Germany's Kriegsmarine submariners. It is odd for at least two reasons. The author clearly is not a submariner himself, sometimes explaining at length (and not always correctly) things that one learns in the first weeks of submarine training. Second, a good technically qualified English-speaking editor would have made many changes.
That said, this large-format book is still worthwhile. It features an extensive collection of photographs and illustrations of U-boats, German officers and crew members, unit insignia and badges, training facilities, and combat snapshots.
More than that, the author has heavily researched Kriegsmarine officer training programs between the world wars and their importance in creating a very capable 1939 crop of submarine commanders. He has also chronicled the startling decline in training and experience levels as a consequence of combat losses as well as training accidents. While navy planners intended to rotate submariners back to training billets after 12 patrols, these plans were derailed by the reality that few survived that long. Also, the continually evolving antisubmarine warfare training, equipment, and tactics of the Allies kept grinding away at the initial margin of superiority enjoyed by the U-boat fleet of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.
With a few exceptions, World War II U-boats had very limited capabilities compared to U.S. fleet submarines of the day. They were less than two-thirds as big (about the size of American S-boats designed in the '20s) with limited fuel, water, and torpedo capacity and even more limited creature comforts. The average U-boat patrol was 36 days, while U.S. fleet boats were designed for 75-day patrols. German submarines were very hard on people, and most experienced Kriegsmarine sailors knew it. One result was a constant shortage of volunteers.
U-boat recruiters finally began drawing highly ideological but very inexperienced boys directly from the Hitler Youth. Junior officers could look forward to fast promotion to command. By 1944, surface and staff officers with two months of submarine training became U-boat commanding officers.
Returning submariners enjoyed very special status in the Third Reich. Many U-boat officers were nonconformist, some almost overtly anti-Nazi, but even the Gestapo was told to lay off; most crews grew beards, wore non-regulation uniforms, and were treated to special holidays with unusually good food between patrols.
Despite some obvious translation errors, the most interesting parts of the book are direct quotes from German essays and operating directives on U-boat tactics. The situations are familiar to every submariner; the instructions to German skippers are aggressive to the point of foolishness, considering development of ship and airborne radars, radio direction finding, and sonar. The evidence? Three-quarters of them never came back.
Captain Hallett, a 1951 Northwestern NROTC graduate, served in the Korean War on board the USS Rochester (CA-124), graduated with distinction from Submarine School and earned his dolphins on board the USS Tiru (SS-416). He commanded Naval Reserve Submarine Reserve Division 3-11 at New London while working on SSNs and SSBNs at Electric Boat Division.
Down to the Sea
Bruce Henderson. New York: Smithsonian Books, Collins, 2007. 368 pp. Illus. Map. $29.95.
Reviewed by Thomas B. Allen
On the morning of 18 December 1944, three U.S. destroyers sank in the Philippine Sea with the loss of nearly all hands. Admiral of the Fleet Chester W. Nimitz, speaking in the cold mathematics of war, noted that the disaster was "without compensatory return," meaning that 776 men died, not in a battle against the enemy but in a typhoon of 90-foot seas and 160-mph winds. The destroyers of Task Force 38 could have survived if the force commander, Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., had ordered what he called a "retreat" from the storm. The finest passages in this book enshrine heroic moments when men died saving other men, when rescuers risked their lives to snatch others from the sea. The story of the typhoon has often been told. But what stands out in Down to the Sea are those moments that transform the disaster into an epic of courage and sacrifice. This is a book for anyone who wonders what happens when a ferocious sea attacks a ship and her crew.
The book is not all about heroism. Before describing how the typhoon sank the USS Hull (DD-350), USS Spence (DD-512), and USS Monaghan (DD-354), the author tracks the events leading up to their capsizing. They go back to decisions much earlier than Halsey's.
After the Hull's shakedown cruise in 1935, for instance, all but one of the chiefs in her crew put in for transfer because they believed she was "too top-heavy." She and the other Farragut-class destroyers became even more so in wartime, after they were fitted in overhaul with weighty additions, including more antiaircraft weapons and automated fire-control systems. The Spence, launched in 1942, was a Fletcher-class destroyer larger than the Hull and Monaghan.
The three were among about 50 destroyers assigned to Task Force 38, whose ships included 7 fleet carriers, 6 light carriers, 8 battleships, and 15 cruisers. Halsey, criticized for his actions in the Battle of Leyte Gulf two months before, was returning to the Philippines to cover the invasion of Mindoro and recover his reputation. On 13 December his carriers launched attacks against Japanese airfields on Luzon to prevent strikes aimed at the invasion ships.
The task force was preparing to continue its support of the invasion when, on board the New Jersey (BB-62), Halsey's flagship, the weather officer reported a "very weak" storm ahead. A U.S. Army Air Forces captain on Saipan called it a typhoon and, in a teletype warning to his Navy counterpart, said it was "on a track toward the fleet." Back came the Navy reply: "We don't believe you."
On board the ships, there was little doubt. Chief Quartermaster Archie G. DeRyckere, following the instructions in Bowditch's American Practical Navigator for fixing the bearing of a typhoon, went on deck of the Hull, faced the wind, and looked 10 points (112 degrees) to the right. If Bowditch was right, the fleet was steaming toward the typhoon.
Halsey, resisting suggestions to turn away from the storm, ordered the task force to rendezvous with oilers and other replenishment ships about 400 miles east of Luzon. As the weather worsened, fuel lines parted. Their tanks dangerously low, destroyers rode high on the sea. Halsey called off the replenishment until the next day, when seas and winds were higher and his ships were in even greater peril.
Down to the Sea, then focusing on the three destroyers, moves rapidly from one to the other, describing in heart-rending detail the horror and the heroism as one by one, each capsized and sank. Men leaped into the sea only to be battered to death when mountainous waves pound them against their ship's upturned hull. Others, saved from drowning by valiant shipmates, were eaten by sharks. Some slipped away from life rafts and were never seen again. In scattered groups, the strong aided the weak, keeping hope alive as the day ended.
On the night of 18 December, the battered destroyer escort Tabberer (DE-418), her mast and radio antenna swept away, spotted a light and headed for what turned out to be a survivor of the Hull. Through the night and into the next two days, Tabberer's rescuers plunged into the sea to save 55 Sailors of the three sunken destroyers. Her brave deeds end Down to the Sea's human story. The book closes with the official tale, the conclusions of a court of inquiry.
The court found that the Third Fleet had sailed "unknowingly into or near the path of a typhoon under a false sense of security and a belief that danger did not exist until too late." The "preponderance of responsibility" was Halsey's, the court said, diluting the blame by concluding that his "mistakes, errors, and faults" were "errors in judgment under stress of war operations."
Mr. Allen is a prolific author with more than 30 books, 11 National Geographic Magazine articles, and dozens of others to his credit. His most recent book, Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent, was published by the National Geographic Society in October.
Storm and Conquest: The Clash of Empires in the Eastern Seas, 1809
By Stephen Taylor. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. 288 pp. Illus. Maps. $25.95.
Reviewed by Alice A. Booher
South African native Stephen Taylor has made his home in Great Britain since 1970 as a foreign correspondent for London's Observer, Times, and The Economist. Taylor is clearly comfortable in international venues, but brings special skills to describing environs, persons, and events of Africa—for example, The Mighty Nimrod (HarperCollins, 1989), Shaka's Children (Wildside Press, 1996), Livingstone's Tribe (Trafalgar Square, 2000), and The Caliban Shore (Faber & Faber, 2004).
Storm and Conquest recalls the final battleground for Horatio Nelson's navy and France in the Indian Ocean through historical data mingled with intriguing Indian Ocean lore. The recorded facts are widely available in naval or other annals, and many of the key players are conspicuously found elsewhere, in both factual and fictionalized versions. But Taylor's extra focus, accountability, and concomitant credibility come from taking the historic detail, backed by meticulous research into ship log books, naval records, personal letters, and the like, and inserting them into an eminently readable narrative. Some of the insightful personalized anecdotes are not only fascinating but reflect what must have been bone-numbing time for Taylor in the dankest of archives.
Fortunately for even the most intrepid reader, the author includes a who's who listing, a dramatis personae, for those participants emanating from or in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, at Ile de France (present-day Mauritius), and captains of Indiamen, British, and French ships. Many of these men (and a few women) are noted/notorious via accounts by themselves or others, such as Rear Admiral Sir Edward Pellew and his family; Sir George Barlow and his replacement, Lord Minto; and the brutal but skilled Captain Robert Corbet. Even the English, French, or Indiamen vessels that sailed and/or were lost during that 1809 season are included. But some of Taylor's most interesting and poignant characterizations are, at least in this context, of lesser-known figures.
The "Storm" part of the title is a bit laborious, as rolling waves and breaking masts seem endless. But since these upheavals are fact, not fiction, Taylor could not jettison them from the text. With tumultuous times, captains, and storms came intrigue, mutinies, and huge loss of ships, life, information, and precious cargo.
The "Conquest" portion of the book focuses on the Nelsonian navy and France's and Britain's commercial lifelines. Its military history aspects encompass modest battles—closer to skirmishes—as they primarily relate to minimal bloodshed and small parcels of land. However, accepting the special premise herein of intimate interaction between navies and armies, in practice or prototype, the Conquest factors become more fascinating, and stand up to the impact of their historical worthiness.
The telling is fascinating, from the "defeat by grounding" at the unfortunate Battle of Grand Port, to the somewhat anticlimactic taking of the last remaining ports in the Indian Ocean, tiny Bourbon (now Reunion) and the Ile de France. Taylor presents a most readable drama of an eccentric mishmash of veritable theater wearing a handsome historical cloak.
Ms. Booher, a lawyer with more than 40 years' experience with the departments of State and Veterans Affairs, is a frequent writer and reviewer on a variety of subjects including intelligence, veterans, law, military women, medicine, and POW/MIAs.
The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow
Andrew Nagorski. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 384 pp. Illus. Maps. Notes. Index. $27.
Reviewed by Robert Fahs
Since the wartime dispatches of American and Italian journalists Harrison Salisbury and Curzio Malaparte, writing about the eastern front in World War II too often focuses on the battles of Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd) at the expense of Adolf Hitler's initial attack on Moscow in 1941. Exceptions include the 1991 Josef Stalin biography by former Red Army propaganda chief Dmitri Volkogonov. It raised neglected issues concerning Soviet leadership during the Battle of Moscow, but only as one phrase in a litany of errors that spanned Stalin's entire career. In 2006, the belated translation of Red Army correspondent Vassily Grossman's battlefield notebooks and a study of Moscow at war by Rodric Braithwaite (the last British ambassador to the Soviet Union) contributed fresh ground-level views of what happened as the Germans advanced in 1941. However, no scholar since the Soviet breakup accomplishes so much to flesh out the implications of this long-neglected battle for understanding the larger war and its outcome as Andrew Nagorski in The Greatest Battle.
A correspondent with experience covering Poland and Russia since the 1980s, Nagorski weaves together newly disclosed archival sources, interviews with Moscow survivors, and current academic scholarship on Soviet-Nazi relations. He argues that the Battle of Moscow illustrates profound flaws in the leadership of both Stalin and Hitler at a juncture that marked an unheralded first step toward the defeat of Nazi Germany. By stressing the maligned affinities between these "totalitarian giants," Nagorski concurs with recent analyses by historians Alan Bullock and John Lukacs. Among other parallels, both leaders consistently second-guessed their generals, with disastrous results for soldiers, while undermining their own power through policies of terror against civilians.
Based on interviews with survivors, Nagorski's text reveals to a greater extent than other scholars just how deeply Stalin's control over Moscow residents wavered in the face of approaching German troops. He judges that by 16 October, the evacuation of Moscow resulted in "a sudden breakdown of law and order, which included looting, strikes, and . . . outright defiance of the regime." Stalin himself wavered on whether to abandon the city until 19 October, when according to one survivor interviewed by Nagorski, the Soviet leader paced the platform at Kursky station before returning to the Kremlin. Nagorski credits Stalin for inspiring public confidence by staying and going through with the customary military parade that celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution on 7 November. But it was a confidence typically fortified by security police ordered "to shoot spies and deserters on the spot."
If Hitler failed to win Moscow, partly because he diverted German troops to Stalingrad against the best advice of generals including Hans Guderian, and if Stalin grasped control more by inspiring terror than loyalty, American credulity also abetted the endurance of Soviet power. Nagorski supplements academic studies with published and unpublished diplomatic memoirs to show how, even as the Germans threatened Moscow, Stalin gained concessions by exploiting the rift between seasoned diplomats skeptical of his motives. These included Franklin D. Roosevelt's favored envoy Harry Hopkins and the military attache Colonel Philip Faymonville.
While Nagorski cites most of his narrative accurately, he commits a rare gaffe in suggesting that Soviet troops seized a controversial defector, former Red Army General Andrei Vlasov, outside Prague in 1945. As Nagorski correctly recounts, Vlasov did fight against Stalin with German arms after he fell prisoner to the Nazis near Moscow in 1941. However, in 1945 Vlasov surrendered to Western Allied officials, who forcefully returned him to the Soviets under a repatriation treaty signed at Yalta. In fact, Vlasov's involuntary repatriation and perfunctory execution resulted from the same American credulity that already, long before Yalta, produced unconditional agreements with Stalin during the Battle of Moscow. Still, by exposing the flaws of leadership on all sides, Nagorski opens a long-closed window on how "the most important battle of World War II" began the defeat of Nazi Germany.