TRIGGERnometry - The True Story of Hitler's U-Boat War - Roger Moorhouse

00:00:01.000 What was Hitler's thinking about U-Boats?

00:00:04.000 There's a moment where he sort of realises the strategic potential of the U-Boat,

00:00:09.000 but by that stage it's really too late.

00:00:11.000 Horror of horrors, a British boarding party comes out to U-110

00:00:14.000 and starts pulling out the Enigma machine, pulling out all the code books.

00:00:18.000 This is a huge boon for the British, absolutely huge.

00:00:21.000 It's been lauded as, you know, one of the great British naval victories,

00:00:25.000 you know, up there with Trafalgar.

00:00:27.000 The conditions on a wartime U-Boat just have to be, you know, scarcely believed, frankly.

00:00:33.000 I mean, they're astonishing.

00:00:34.000 From 1943 to the end of the war,

00:00:36.000 only 16% of them actually succeed in sinking anything at all.

00:00:40.000 By 1945, statistically, the U-Boat crew has a lifespan of less than one mission.

00:00:46.000 So it literally is, statistically, a suicide mission.

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00:02:03.000 Roger Morehouse, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:02:05.000 My pleasure, thanks.

00:02:06.000 Great to be here.

00:02:07.000 Oh, it's great to have you back.

00:02:08.000 I mean, you're one of our favorite historians,

00:02:10.000 one of our favorite writers.

00:02:11.000 You just really, really managed to bring history alive.

00:02:14.000 Delighted to have you back to talk about your new book,

00:02:16.000 which is, of course, about U-Boats.

00:02:18.000 Yes.

00:02:19.000 Wolfpack.

00:02:20.000 Yeah, brilliant.

00:02:21.000 Looking forward to that.

00:02:22.000 But we were joking around before we started.

00:02:24.000 It's sort of saying, let's also aim for a non-autistic audience.

00:02:27.000 Which, to be fair, most of Trigonometry's audience is autistic, so that's brilliant. 1.00

00:02:31.000 But beyond that, non-male, non-nerdy autistic audience. 0.71

00:02:34.000 So we'll talk about a bunch of things related to that.

00:02:37.000 But I've just finished actually reading Churchill's Diaries of World War II.

00:02:42.000 And he talks about the fact that in the early phases of World War II, the threat that U-Boats posed was just colossal.

00:02:50.000 And British shipping and American shipping, but particularly British shipping, just took huge losses.

00:02:55.000 How powerful a force was the U-boat in the early phases of World War II?

00:03:01.000 Yeah, it's a very good question.

00:03:02.000 You've kind of come to the heart of it there, Constantine.

00:03:05.000 I think this is one of those elements that's actually a bit overplayed in the historiography.

00:03:10.000 Oh, really?

00:03:11.000 I do, and I make this argument in the book.

00:03:14.000 I think when Churchill makes that, or when he's talking about that, obviously he's writing in his memoir, but he's talking about the period, what the Germans used to call the happy time.

00:03:24.000 That was their first period of scoring really, really high sinking rates against Allied convoys and so on.

00:03:33.000 So it's kind of the second half of 1940 up until maybe early 1942, that sort of period.

00:03:40.000 And crucially, it's the period before the Americans come into the war.

00:03:43.000 The Americans come into the war in December of 1941, and they really sort of come on stream with Liberty ships and all of that through 1943.

00:03:52.000 So it's crucially before that period.

00:03:54.000 That turns the tide, really.

00:03:56.000 It begins to turn the tide.

00:03:58.000 So in that first happy time, there was a genuine concern in Allied circles that this could strangle Britain. 0.73

00:04:07.000 And that was the intention was to, you know, essentially knock out Britain's supply lines, take Britain out of the war, at least force London to negotiations.

00:04:16.000 So that's always the intention.

00:04:18.000 And I think there was a genuine fear and there was a concern in that period that if you sink enough ships, then, you know, Britain would be forced to, you know, at least sort of tighten belts that are already tight by that stage and restrict rationing and all that sort of thing.

00:04:33.000 So I think there was a concern that was genuine, but it was fairly short lived.

00:04:39.000 And by the time the Americans come in, that sort of evaporates. 0.91

00:04:42.000 And then really from 1943 onwards, you know, the tables turn enormously against the U-boat arm.

00:04:48.000 So the U-boats are effectively, you know, sitting ducks really from 1943 onwards.

00:04:53.000 And you don't really see that, I think, unless you kind of see it from their perspective, which is what I tried to do with the book, trying to sort of shift that perspective.

00:05:02.000 And, you know, that the idea of us being under genuine threat for the full maybe six years, five, six years of the war, I think is overblown.

00:05:13.000 There was a small moment when it was a threat.

00:05:16.000 And during that period, the Germans didn't have the numbers to make it count.

00:05:20.000 By the time they had the numbers, the moment had gone.

00:05:22.000 So I think that that quote has been used like way too much.

00:05:26.000 I know they use it on the book as well, but it's been used way too much.

00:05:29.000 And I think it's kind of nudged the debate in a direction that has become a little bit sort of stereotypical.

00:05:36.000 Well, that's interesting. And so you talk about seeing things from from the Germans enemies perspective.

00:05:42.000 What was Hitler's thinking about U-boats?

00:05:45.000 Was he thinking this is our wonder weapon?

00:05:48.000 He had a lot of those. We'll talk about them later on.

00:05:51.000 That's going to strangle the Englanders or was it just part of the arsenal?

00:05:57.000 What was his thinking about?

00:05:58.000 Yeah, he doesn't really think about the U-boats much at all, actually, until late 1941 really.

00:06:03.000 There's a moment where he sort of realizes the strategic potential of the U-boat much too late.

00:06:10.000 Dönitz, who was the head of the U-boat arm, had been arguing for a large U-boat force and for the reallocation of material and resources to the creation of U-boats for years before the war even.

00:06:25.000 And had struggled, as everyone else did within the Nazi hierarchy, to get Hitler's ear and to get those raw materials.

00:06:34.000 Hitler didn't really have much of an interest in the U-boat arm as a weapon of war.

00:06:41.000 He was much more continentally minded. He wanted to build tanks.

00:06:44.000 He wanted to build surface ships as well, of course, so lots of money into those.

00:06:49.000 Ultimately, it proved to be pretty much a waste of money, but U-boats wasn't really on his agenda.

00:06:54.000 Until 1941, when after that period I talked about, you know, the happy time, Churchill... 0.95

00:07:01.000 Excuse me.

00:07:03.000 It's easy to get them confused nowadays.

00:07:05.000 It is easy sometimes.

00:07:07.000 Having a Biden moment.

00:07:09.000 Yeah, so Hitler then, you know, suddenly becomes a sort of convert for, you know, for sending all his resources to the U-boat war. 0.82

00:07:16.000 But by that stage, it's really too late.

00:07:18.000 And it's so fascinating you say that because a Russian-Ukrainian historian that I follow, he talks about the fact, obviously, as you know, in the Soviet Union,

00:07:24.000 the former Soviet Union, everyone thinks that the Soviet Union won World War II alone.

00:07:28.000 British people, as I've discovered, tend to think the same about Britain.

00:07:31.000 Americans tend to think this.

00:07:32.000 Yeah, sure.

00:07:33.000 Everyone thinks that.

00:07:34.000 But one of his counter arguments to that is actually the total tonnage of the U-boats produced during World War II was greater than the total tonnage of the tanks that were produced by Germany in World War II.

00:07:43.000 So the resource investment was immense, comparatively speaking.

00:07:47.000 Yeah.

00:07:48.000 But it came too late.

00:07:49.000 But it came too late.

00:07:50.000 This is your point.

00:07:51.000 Yeah.

00:07:52.000 That's the point.

00:07:53.000 So, you know, Dönitz always argued, even pre-war, he argued for a force of 300 U-boats, which meant that he could keep 100 in the field at any one time.

00:08:04.000 You know, you'd have 100 refitting or resupplying.

00:08:06.000 You'd have 100 basically going to and from, but you could keep 100 in theatre.

00:08:10.000 That was the logic.

00:08:11.000 He goes to war in 1939 with 27 combat ocean-going U-boats.

00:08:19.000 There's nothing like the force that he wanted.

00:08:22.000 So, you can see the shortages that he faced.

00:08:25.000 He didn't get his 300 U-boat force until the end of 1942, by which time it's too late.

00:08:31.000 You know, because the countermeasures developed much more effectively on the Allied side.

00:08:37.000 You know, by 43, you've got the, you know, closing the Atlantic gap.

00:08:41.000 So, there's nowhere for U-boats to hide in the Atlantic.

00:08:43.000 So, the game's effectively over by early 43.

00:08:46.000 So, you know, by that time it's too late.

00:08:49.000 And let's just, because in the book you talk about there's three main sections to the U-boat war during World War II.

00:08:56.000 Let's focus on that first section, because it was very interesting reading about it.

00:09:00.000 Because these U-boat commanders and the servicemen who were working were very well trained.

00:09:07.000 In fact, some of them were celebrities, weren't they?

00:09:09.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:10.000 So, those that scored the sort of biggest figures, you know, came back home with their, you know, cheekbones glistening in the sunlight and the victory pennants flying.

00:09:22.000 And they were treated as celebrities, absolutely.

00:09:24.000 They were sent on lecture tours.

00:09:26.000 There were articles about them in the newspapers.

00:09:28.000 You know, they were huge, those characters.

00:09:30.000 So, people like, you know, Gunter Prien, Joachim Schepke, for example.

00:09:35.000 These are absolutely Nazi heroes. 0.88

00:09:37.000 They were printing postcards to be distributed to the Hitler Youth Boys.

00:09:42.000 You know, the next generation of U-boat sailors, really.

00:09:45.000 And that's the intention, is to, you know, obviously you're lording your own successes in a way, but at the same time you need to get the next generation to sign up for the Navy.

00:09:56.000 But that also posed a real challenge for Goebbels and the rest of the propaganda department, because when the war started to turn and a lot of these men were starting to die and the U-boats were being sunk, all of a sudden that presented a real challenge, didn't it?

00:10:13.000 Yeah, and it is a genuine problem.

00:10:16.000 So, you've got a generation of boys and, you know, by the middle of the war onwards, it is sort of 18-year-old boys who are going to war.

00:10:24.000 The average age of those killed in the U-boat army during World War II is 22, which is quite astonishing. 0.99

00:10:31.000 Is that different to other services, though?

00:10:34.000 I think it's probably pretty similar, given, you know, especially the huge death tolls from the middle of the war onwards.

00:10:40.000 And you see the same thing in the land war.

00:10:42.000 You know, I remember seeing a stat about, you know, the German losses particularly after the summer of 44, in that last almost year of the war.

00:10:52.000 And they're astonishingly high.

00:10:54.000 And again, the age profile is coming down all the time, because they're using ever younger soldiers, you know, to conscript.

00:11:01.000 So, I think it's probably similar.

00:11:03.000 But still, you know, I mean, it's a remarkable, you know, rather hideous fact.

00:11:09.000 But yes, you've got a generation of boys who have been fed that propaganda of, you know, this sort of, you know, glorious experience of sinking shipping.

00:11:20.000 And they're going out to conditions that are absolutely, you know, unthinkably hideous.

00:11:27.000 And the more I sort of researched this and looked into these first-hand accounts, the conditions on a wartime U-boat just have to be, you know, scarcely believed, frankly.

00:11:37.000 I mean, they're astonishing.

00:11:38.000 Tell us about that.

00:11:40.000 You know, incredibly cramped.

00:11:43.000 So, your standard wartime U-boat was what was known as a Type 7.

00:11:47.000 It's about 60, I think, 60 odd, 66 meters long.

00:11:51.000 But in terms of habitable space, if you imagine two underground carriages, it's about that.

00:11:58.000 That would have a crew of 50, right?

00:12:02.000 Plus engines, you know, all the control mechanisms, all of the rest of it.

00:12:07.000 And, of course, torpedoes, probably 14 torpedoes.

00:12:10.000 So, the ordinary men kind of sleep amongst the torpedoes, you know, in hammocks and bunks and so on.

00:12:15.000 So, they're all on top of each other all the time, constantly.

00:12:18.000 They're out for a single patrol would be anything up to about eight weeks, usually.

00:12:24.000 In that period, they had fresh food for probably about two weeks and they had tinned food, which brought with it challenges, not least scurvy.

00:12:33.000 So, that became a problem for them.

00:12:36.000 And they essentially didn't wash.

00:12:39.000 So, the crew would, you know, fresh water was rationed, so you could wash with seawater if you wanted to.

00:12:45.000 Most people didn't.

00:12:46.000 So, this sort of image that we have, this sort of romantic image, which you see in Das Bort, for example, of this sort of luxuriously bearded U-boatman.

00:12:55.000 That came with a stink because they basically stank.

00:13:00.000 They'd been away for eight weeks, perhaps.

00:13:02.000 One change of underwear was permitted.

00:13:05.000 So, you could smell them before you saw them, right?

00:13:09.000 So, the beard was a sort of a signifier of the fact, basically, they hadn't washed and hadn't shaved, probably for eight weeks.

00:13:16.000 So, this U-boat stink is a thing.

00:13:19.000 And you can see that comes across in many of the accounts.

00:13:22.000 And it's an unholy combination of BO.

00:13:26.000 Halitosis, scurvy brings on, you know, gingivitis and the rest of it.

00:13:31.000 That brings on pretty horrible halitosis.

00:13:33.000 Diesel, diesel is everywhere in a U-boat.

00:13:37.000 You've got two massive diesel engines going pretty much all the time.

00:13:40.000 And, of course, mould.

00:13:42.000 So, you've got mould from everything is damp all the time.

00:13:45.000 There's no facilities for drying anything.

00:13:47.000 So, everything is wet all the time.

00:13:49.000 And, of course, vomit, seasickness.

00:13:51.000 So, if you imagine that as one entity, that's the U-boat stink.

00:13:56.000 And, you know, there are examples of U-boats coming into port and sort of flipping the conning tower and hatch.

00:14:02.000 And the shore crew actually recoiling in horror because of the stench that comes out of the thing.

00:14:08.000 So, it's a pretty grim story.

00:14:10.000 And there's also, as well, there's a very funny moment in the book where it talks about venereal disease.

00:14:15.000 Yeah.

00:14:16.000 And, in particular, the different ways certain captains approach that particular issue.

00:14:21.000 Yeah.

00:14:22.000 Yeah, I mean, of course, it was a common thing.

00:14:23.000 I mean, it was particularly after the Fall of France.

00:14:26.000 If you're having lunch while listening to this, I apologise.

00:14:28.000 So, after the Fall of France, 1940, you know, the Germans have access to the Brittany ports, plus Bordeaux.

00:14:38.000 Much quicker access to the Western approaches.

00:14:40.000 So, for them, it's win-win.

00:14:42.000 But, of course, you've then got a generation of young U-boatmen coming back from patrol with their, you know, wages burning a pocket, a hole in their back pocket.

00:14:52.000 Going and visiting, you know, the young ladies of Lorient or Saint-Malo or wherever it would be.

00:14:58.000 A result of that, of course, is venereal disease of various sorts.

00:15:03.000 And that's something that has to be very strictly controlled, of course, because, you know, as always in a Navy, it's a rather profound problem with morale and everything else and hygiene, you know, to sort of keep everyone safe and well.

00:15:17.000 And they have various methods of dealing with very strict punishments, incidentally, for contracting venereal disease in the German Navy.

00:15:25.000 And no less strict where they track down the source of the infection.

00:15:29.000 So, the ladies themselves would usually be tracked down and punished as well. 1.00

00:15:33.000 But there's a couple of examples of people being inspected on the U-boats and being discovered to have whatever.

00:15:40.000 I mean, even of the most, you know, the benign end of the spectrum, stuff like pubic lice that, you know, if you're found to have pubic lice,

00:15:47.000 you could expect to be stuck in a storeroom, you know, for an extended spell just to keep you out of circulation because everyone's hot bunking.

00:15:56.000 So, as soon as that gets amongst a crew, you've got a problem.

00:16:01.000 It'll spread like wildfire.

00:16:02.000 So, yeah, PTSDs, absolutely.

00:16:07.000 Sorry, that's wrong.

00:16:08.000 STDs, absolutely.

00:16:09.000 It was a profound problem.

00:16:11.000 But I'm actually glad that you mentioned PTSD because this is a thing that we don't talk about enough,

00:16:16.000 is that the human suffering for those U-boat men, not only physically, not only the ones who lost their lives,

00:16:23.000 but psychologically and mentally, just talk a little bit about how long you could be under the water.

00:16:29.000 What impact did it have on the people?

00:16:31.000 Yeah.

00:16:32.000 PTSD is one of those aspects, I think, that has not been talked about in this context, I think, at all, really.

00:16:39.000 And it's one that sort of struck me when I started looking in the archive at, you know, contemporary medical records.

00:16:46.000 And there were a few German Navy doctors who started looking into this.

00:16:53.000 They had no support from above because, you know, the Nazi regime wasn't interested,

00:16:58.000 didn't want to, in a sense, damage the sort of heroic image of the, you know, the German military man and military Hélène.

00:17:07.000 So, it wasn't interested in sort of pursuing this as an idea and as a subject of research.

00:17:14.000 And most of the men didn't want to admit to it either.

00:17:17.000 So, you can see that these doctors were really sort of, you know, had a somewhat Sisyphean task in trying to research it.

00:17:23.000 But they say themselves, this is the tip of an iceberg, what they found was the tip of an iceberg.

00:17:28.000 And they estimate that about half of U-boat men are suffering from some form of PTSD,

00:17:34.000 all the way from, you know, the shakes or sleeplessness or, you know, nervous agitation, all the way to sort of suicidal thoughts.

00:17:42.000 There is a case of a commander who commits suicide during a death charge attack, for example.

00:17:47.000 That's one end of the spectrum.

00:17:49.000 But the stress that they're under, I think it's more so than any other branch, really, of the military,

00:17:57.000 because of the confined nature of what they're doing.

00:18:00.000 So, you can imagine the stress of being an infantryman, for example, must be considerable during those periods when you're under attack or if you're attacking.

00:18:08.000 But then you have long periods of essentially doing not very much.

00:18:13.000 You know, there's that old line about warfare being 90% boredom, 10% terror.

00:18:17.000 You know, in that 90% period, you can kind of, you can relax a bit, you can allow that mental toll to dissipate somewhat.

00:18:26.000 I think in the U-boat war, because, and particularly from the middle of the war onwards, when it becomes much more intense,

00:18:32.000 and they become very much the hunted rather than the hunters.

00:18:37.000 The Allied tactic at that point was what they called hunting them to exhaustion.

00:18:41.000 So, you would have a U-boat would try and, perhaps in a wolf pack, would try and attack a convoy.

00:18:47.000 Very often, they'd be, you know, pounced on by the escorts.

00:18:51.000 And the escorts would not let them escape.

00:18:54.000 So, they had Aztec, so they could, you know, basically keep contact with them at all times.

00:19:00.000 They would force them down below, below the surface.

00:19:04.000 They'd be depth charged.

00:19:05.000 They could be depth charged for 24 hours, at which point the U-boat is at the limits of what it can, of how long it can dive.

00:19:14.000 So, it has to surface to, you know, allow some air into the boat for one thing, but also to run the engine so it can charge its own batteries.

00:19:23.000 So, if it can't get away, it's going to have to come up and then it's going to be shot to pieces and be forced to scuttle and surrender.

00:19:29.000 So, that's the kind of the standard format of it.

00:19:32.000 But very often, you know, that 24 hours of being constantly depth charged, perhaps by two or three destroyers, the mental toll of that and the feeling of helplessness that I think they had of being in this steel tube,

00:19:48.000 when you know that, you know, any impact closer than perhaps 15, 20 metres from the hull would be sufficient for, you know, catastrophic damage.

00:19:58.000 And then there's only one way they're going, they're going down.

00:20:01.000 The sort of the horror of that and the protracted nature of those attacks, I think that was enough to trigger, you know, profound psychological damage in a lot of these individuals.

00:20:14.000 And actually, in this boat, you see that there is that scene, isn't there, when the captain nearly shoots one of the guys who he thinks is being a mutineer or whatever is failing to obey orders.

00:20:24.000 But there's a few examples of, you know, during depth charge attacks, you know, even officers kind of, you know, wide-eyed in terror, kind of running through the boat, you know, and not knowing what to do.

00:20:36.000 And that spreads very quickly throughout the crew because the crew naturally looked to the officers for leadership guidance, all of that.

00:20:43.000 And if the officers are panicking, then that spreads very quickly.

00:20:47.000 So, you know, once you accept, as I did from having read the archival investigations in this, once you accept that PTSD is a thing, then you start to see it in a lot of the memoirs.

00:21:02.000 And you can see it, you know, there's cases, you know, radio operator who loses the ability to speak, for example, after a depth charge attack, you know, that there are so many examples where, okay, that's what that is.

00:21:14.000 That's what that is.

00:21:15.000 And you can piece it all together.

00:21:16.000 There was one commander, for example, that, you know, used to avoid contact at every opportunity, which is not cowardice because he'd already sort of proven that the fact that he could do the job of a U-boat commander earlier in the war.

00:21:31.000 But by that stage, you know, he's avoiding, actively avoiding contact with enemy shipping.

00:21:36.000 He's asking to be transferred out of the U-boat arm.

00:21:39.000 Eventually, he's shot for his troubles.

00:21:42.000 But, you know, it's a clear case of PTSD in retrospect.

00:21:46.000 If you've been following the immigration debate, you'll know how different the headlines can look depending on where you get your news.

00:21:54.000 We use Ground News to help us step outside the echo chamber.

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00:22:28.000 We can see CNN, which is firmly on the left, highlighted that nearly 500 workers were taken while Fox News on the right framed the raid as bold action.

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00:23:27.000 Some say the bubbles in an arrow truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

00:23:33.000 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.

00:23:36.000 Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle.

00:23:40.000 Feel the arrow bubbles melt.

00:23:42.000 It's mind bubbling.

00:23:44.000 Why does, you mentioned the three sections, the happy days, then it turns, then it turns again.

00:23:51.000 What makes that first turn happen?

00:23:53.000 Why do the U-boats not prove to be as successful as might be hoped, certainly for the Germans? 0.76

00:23:59.000 Why does that pivot happen?

00:24:01.000 Well, the first failure, if you like, to capitalize is numbers, as I said before.

00:24:06.000 The Germans just do not have the numbers to maximize that opportunity that they're given. 0.97

00:24:12.000 They have the opportunity.

00:24:13.000 British Institute convoy operations already at the beginning of the war.

00:24:18.000 They had done so at the end of the First World War, so there was nothing necessarily new about that.

00:24:23.000 But it didn't really, in terms of the defensive operations, it didn't really get into its swing properly, probably until late 1941 maybe.

00:24:31.000 So there was a window when the British are not quite yet up to speed.

00:24:36.000 You don't have, for example, the benefit of reading German cipher traffic, which comes in later on as well, after sort of late 40, 41.

00:24:47.000 You start to get German cipher traffic being read by Bletchley Park.

00:24:50.000 So you've got that. There is an opportunity. The Americans are not yet in, as I explained earlier on.

00:24:59.000 But the Germans don't have the numbers to realize it, to make that work. 0.89

00:25:02.000 So that's sort of the initial failure.

00:25:05.000 So yes, they score high figures, but they're not able to score high enough figures to do what they want to do, which is effectively to knock Britain out of the war.

00:25:14.000 So then you get to 1942 onwards, effectively that sort of pivot moment, 1942-43, which is where the Allied game improves drastically.

00:25:25.000 So the Americans come in, you've got more in the way of manpower, you've got more in the way of escorts.

00:25:31.000 And Enigma traffic is coming on stream much more consistently by that stage.

00:25:36.000 And tell us about that, because I didn't know this, but that actually came from a U-boat.

00:25:39.000 Yes, it did.

00:25:40.000 The machine.

00:25:41.000 From U-110, yeah.

00:25:42.000 Tell us about what happened, because most people haven't heard about it.

00:25:45.000 Yeah, as I said before, you know, the standard practice, at least in the early phase of the war, was that, you know, a U-boat, if it was discovered by a destroyer, would be, you know, forced below the surface, of course.

00:25:57.000 Depths charged.

00:25:58.000 If they were damaged in the process, or if they were just, you know, exhausted their air, then they were forced to surface at some point.

00:26:04.000 At which point, you know, they would either try and fight it out on the surface, which they could do.

00:26:10.000 They had a deck gun and so on.

00:26:11.000 Some of them did.

00:26:12.000 A bit of a suicide mission against the destroyer, but some of them did.

00:26:16.000 What was more usual was that you would surface, you'd kind of, you know, white flag and you'd evacuate the crew, and then the ship would, the U-boat would be scuttled.

00:26:24.000 So they'd pull the seacocks and the U-boat would be scuttled. 0.87

00:26:28.000 So that was kind of normal practice.

00:26:30.000 And you can see that in a lot of the early engagements with the Royal Navy, you can see that from the archival record, was that death tolls are actually pretty minimal.

00:26:39.000 But it's always that the, you know, maybe a small proportion of the crew are killed.

00:26:45.000 Most of them survive, go into British captivity, and the U-boat is scuttled.

00:26:49.000 And it's scuttled to prevent sensitive equipment being captured, the boat being captured, etc.

00:26:54.000 Precisely.

00:26:55.000 Yeah, precisely.

00:26:56.000 The example of U-110 is different in that respect because everything worked the same way, so they were forced to the surface.

00:27:06.000 The captain decided to try and scuttle it, got his crew off, but for some reason it didn't work.

00:27:11.000 Either the order wasn't carried out to, you know, pull the seacocks or, you know, you had to open various levers to sort of let the seawater in and so on.

00:27:20.000 For some reason that didn't happen.

00:27:22.000 So the crew are all kind of floating away from this U-boat, which he's expecting to see, you know, sink beneath the waves, and it doesn't.

00:27:29.000 And then there's a, you know, horror of horrors.

00:27:32.000 The British boarding party comes out to U-110 and starts, you know, rifling through everything, pulling out the Enigma machine, pulling out all the code books.

00:27:40.000 This is a huge boon for the British.

00:27:42.000 Absolutely huge.

00:27:43.000 I mean, it's been lauded as, you know, one of the great British naval victories, you know, up there with Trafalgar.

00:27:50.000 And in terms of the significance for what comes later on, I think that's probably not mistaken.

00:27:55.000 That's not misplaced.

00:27:57.000 And how come the Germans didn't realize this, the Germans back home, I mean, hadn't realized that this had happened?

00:28:02.000 It was kept pretty secret.

00:28:04.000 And they had the whole thing that there's a huge operation on the British side to prevent the Germans from realizing that Enigma was being read all the way through the war and in all theaters.

00:28:15.000 So there's an interesting example, I think, in the Mediterranean where Enigma had told them that a certain German ship was, you know, in a certain place in the Eastern Mediterranean.

00:28:29.000 And it was duly sunk.

00:28:31.000 And then so as to make sure that the Germans kind of didn't realize that we knew what was going on, where this was going to be, they sent out reconnaissance planes just so that from the German side, the narrative was, okay, it was spotted by the reconnaissance planes.

00:28:45.000 So all the way through, there was always this maximum effort given to trying to sort of, you know, shield the reality of ultra, of ultra intelligence.

00:28:57.000 And talk to us about the Enigma machine, because people know the term, but might not understand the significance of it.

00:29:04.000 Just tell us the story of that from the beginning.

00:29:06.000 What is it? What was it used for? Why was the discovery of it so significant and the impact it had?

00:29:11.000 Well, the Germans had been experimenting with this. Initially, it was a commercial enterprise.

00:29:16.000 They produced this cipher machine. And there are many similar machines going around in the 1920s and 30s.

00:29:23.000 The Germans developed one, which was initially on the open market in the 1930s.

00:29:28.000 It had been essentially, you know, deconstructed and broken by Polish engineers and mathematicians before the war. 0.99

00:29:38.000 And in the summer of 1939, so just before the outbreak of war, they handed over everything that they had worked out on the Enigma machine, which by then was the sort of standard encryption machine of the German military.

00:29:50.000 This is basically a way of preventing other hostile forces from getting your communications and knowing what's going on.

00:29:57.000 So we have now end-to-end encryption. It's kind of a common phrase these days.

00:30:03.000 That was a good example of end-to-end encryption. It was considered to be unbreakable.

00:30:08.000 So it would encrypt the message that was typed into it. It looked like a typewriter, essentially, with a sort of plug board in the front of it.

00:30:17.000 And you had a number of settings and a couple of dials that you had to set. So when you're setting it up for that particular day, you have a number of settings you're supposed to follow.

00:30:27.000 Then it broadcasts basically nonsense, what looks like nonsense, but at the other end, with the same settings, you can decrypt it at the other end.

00:30:36.000 So all that anyone is intercepting if they're intercepting the message is nonsense, is a series of letters.

00:30:44.000 So it was considered unbreakable, and it was absolutely crucial for the British and others to make sure that that assumption was never challenged by the Germans, and it wasn't, crucially. 0.84

00:30:56.000 Interestingly, Dönitz, in his memoir, which came out in 1957, after he'd spent 10 years in prison, he talks in his memoir about we still don't know if the British broke Enigma.

00:31:10.000 So he's still ignorant about it in 1957, which is kind of remarkable. So it was the great secret, even post-war. 0.70

00:31:17.000 I think the story broke in the 70s in the end, which is remarkable. So the breaking of that, and it wasn't a sort of a one-hit thing where you break Enigma and then you're in forever.

00:31:28.000 Because of the different models, so the German Navy, for example, had a four-rotor model, which was another level of encryption, for example.

00:31:39.000 Because the codes would change at regular intervals, it was quite possible for Bletchley Park, where all of this was done, to be locked out for a period and have to sort of re-break with the new codes.

00:31:50.000 But they were always on top of it. So increasingly, as the war went on, those gaps where they were locked out grew less and less and have less duration.

00:31:59.000 So, I mean, crucially for the Allies in the U-Boat War, the knowledge of where the German Wolfpacks were, for example, meant that they could direct convoys around them.

00:32:10.000 So initially, in a defensive capacity, you could use Enigma traffic in that way. And then later on, in a much more offensive capacity, you could actually target individual vessels or target individual Wolfpacks.

00:32:24.000 And there's a great example of a supply ship. They had these things with Type 14, which was a supply U-Boat, which is much bigger than the Type 7.

00:32:33.000 And it would patrol the Atlantic, basically, and liaison with its attack U-Boats, and they would get fuel, they would get torpedoes, they'd get food, and then they'd go for another two, three weeks.

00:32:49.000 So actually, meaning that they didn't have to cross back across the Atlantic back to France to be resupplied.

00:32:55.000 So, brilliant piece of logistics and brilliant piece of technology.

00:33:00.000 When the British realized that that's what the Germans were doing with these Type 14s, they started targeting the Type 14s. 0.82

00:33:07.000 And there's one example, I think it was the U-489, on its maiden voyage, comes out of port, goes through the North Sea, down through the mid-Atlantic.

00:33:16.000 It's being watched all the way via Enigma.

00:33:19.000 And it's destroyed within a couple of weeks of leaving port, never has a rendezvous with any of its attack U-Boats. It's on its maiden voyage.

00:33:27.000 It's maiden voyage. This is kind of, this is indicative of how the war had turned, was that in some instances like that, we could literally know where it was at all times and attack it accordingly and destroy it.

00:33:39.000 So, they didn't have a chance.

00:33:41.000 That's incredible. I mean, the impact of Enigma must have been so big because you literally got access to the enemy's communications.

00:33:48.000 It's an extraordinary achievement.

00:33:49.000 Effectively. And it's not, like I said before, it's not perfect.

00:33:51.000 Yeah.

00:33:52.000 And it is sometimes halting and sometimes you get locked out. But yeah, absolutely, you have access to their communications, quite right.

00:34:00.000 And it also had a devastating effect on German and U-boat morale, didn't it?

00:34:04.000 It did. And that, I mean, that, I mean, more so actually, you know, in that respect, you know, the Germans never knew that Enigma had been broken, as I said before.

00:34:13.000 But the fact that they're being destroyed in such numbers and kind of inexplicably as well. 0.98

00:34:18.000 It's probably even worse for morale because you don't know why, but you're suddenly getting your ass handed. 0.57

00:34:22.000 So, you get all of these, you know, sort of conspiracy theories going around. One interesting example in this… 0.97

00:34:28.000 Was it about the Jews?

00:34:30.000 Not that one.

00:34:32.000 So, you don't have the machine? Oh, nein!

00:34:36.000 No, there's an interesting story of, you know, one of the other innovations that really changed the game is the advent of airborne radar for the British.

00:34:47.000 So that, you know, you know, bombing vessels, bombers, for example, armed with aerial radar, you can read where a U-boat is from about sort of, you know, five, six miles out.

00:34:59.000 You could be on top of it and bombing it within, you know, but they will spot you, they've got 30 seconds to dive.

00:35:05.000 You know, a good U-boat crew can dive in 25 seconds, so it's touch and go.

00:35:09.000 That's much more effective than, you know, trying to track them and attack them via a destroyer, right?

00:35:15.000 Because you can see them on the horizon, you can travel pretty much as fast as they can in a U-boat, so that's, you know, it's quite easy to get away.

00:35:23.000 You can't escape, you know, attacking aircraft.

00:35:26.000 So they had these radar detectors on the U-boats, which would sort of ping when they'd been spotted on radar, they would ping.

00:35:35.000 But then when the radar set was updated by the British and changed to a different frequency, then it stopped pinging.

00:35:42.000 So then they're going, well, how are we still being detected and this isn't working?

00:35:47.000 So then they come to the conclusion that their machine must be actually betraying their presence to the British, right?

00:35:55.000 So this becomes the narrative for the U-boat crew.

00:35:58.000 So they start switching them off entirely, which is kind of suicidal because then, you know, they don't know when they're being read at all.

00:36:06.000 So it's really, you know, again, as a conspiracy theory, it's really kind of catastrophic for the U-boat crews.

00:36:11.000 And that's one of the ways that, you know, the stress of that situation, how it manifests itself in irrational decision making.

00:36:18.000 So you've got individual commanders going, so you turn the bloody thing off, it's betraying our position.

00:36:22.000 This is the commander saying that.

00:36:24.000 So it's the stress we were talking about earlier.

00:36:26.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:27.000 And one of the things that it did is that it meant that so many U-boats got wiped out.

00:36:33.000 So many U-boat commanders got wiped out.

00:36:35.000 And this is obviously catastrophic because of the loss of life.

00:36:38.000 But more pertinently, it's the loss of experience that the U-boats, the loss of experience, it was catastrophic, wasn't it really?

00:36:48.000 Because you have at least three generations of U-boat crews and commanders.

00:36:56.000 The first phase that we talked about earlier when, you know, they actually are pretty competent, they're doing what they have to do.

00:37:02.000 They're short on numbers, they're short on U-boats, they're short on crew, but they're pretty competent.

00:37:07.000 That's the first happy time.

00:37:09.000 That generation, very often they had pre-war naval experience, both the men and the commanders.

00:37:16.000 And the technology that you talked about in the book, there was a U-boat from 1935.

00:37:22.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:23.000 So, you know, they're pretty long in the tooth, a lot of them.

00:37:26.000 Someone like Gunter Prien that sank the Royal Oak in 1939, you know, he'd been in the German Merchant Marine in the early 1930s, right?

00:37:34.000 So he had been a sailor for a long, long time.

00:37:37.000 Tremendous amount of experience.

00:37:39.000 By the time they're killed off, and like Gunter Prien is killed in March of 1941, by the time they're killed off, you've got their deputies and their sort of officer corps become the next commanders.

00:37:53.000 And they're reasonably competent, but they don't have the same degree of experience, nowhere near.

00:37:57.000 So already in that, already in about 1941, a lot of the interrogation reports from the British, and the British, as I said before, when they capture these crews, really extensive interrogation procedure that they go through.

00:38:12.000 And they're saying in many cases already in 1941 and beyond that, you know, they're astonishingly inexperienced.

00:38:19.000 Some of them had only been in the U-boat force, you know, for a couple of months.

00:38:23.000 Their training had been perfunctory.

00:38:26.000 You know, their morale was really low.

00:38:28.000 This is only in 1941, like really early, when you'd think that, you know, Germany is still in the phase of, you know, sweeping all before it, certainly in the land war.

00:38:37.000 But morale is really fragile in the U-boat arm, and it's partly because of that inexperience.

00:38:43.000 It's partly because these young men, you know, have not got that long tail of experience.

00:38:50.000 By the time you get to the end phase of the war, you've got commanders who are, you know, 22, 23 years old, commanding a U-boat, who weren't even in the Navy at the beginning of the war, right?

00:39:02.000 Who have had a really shortened, of necessity, a shortened training regimen for themselves and their crews.

00:39:10.000 And essentially, the question is, do they actually know what they're doing?

00:39:14.000 And the figures for that period, I mean, it's obviously, this is one factor among many, but the figures in terms of sinkings for the second half of the war are catastrophic for the Germans.

00:39:24.000 From 1943 onwards, of the 400 vessels launched from 1943 to the end of the war, only 16% of them actually succeed in sinking anything at all.

00:39:35.000 84% don't sink anything.

00:39:37.000 Wow.

00:39:38.000 From 1943 onwards.

00:39:39.000 So you can see how the game shifts.

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00:40:37.000 That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger.

00:40:41.000 And the game also shifts as well because the technology, it's not very good.

00:40:47.000 No, no.

00:40:48.000 I think there was a stat, 30% of torpedoes failed to launch.

00:40:52.000 Yeah.

00:40:53.000 That's the, that's the, uh, 1940, they have the torpedo crisis in the, in German military, in German Navy.

00:40:59.000 Um, this is made manifest particularly in the Norwegian campaigns in spring of 1940.

00:41:04.000 Uh, and yeah, you're right.

00:41:05.000 So, you know, one in three torpedo firings fail.

00:41:08.000 Uh, which means, you know, you might hit the target, but you'll just hear this sort of clunk as it hits the hull of the, of the target, target ship when it actually explode.

00:41:16.000 Um, and it actually took, that was only solved by, you know, capturing a British submarine and then retroengineering the, the detonators on the, on the British, uh, torpedoes and then refitting those to, to German torpedoes.

00:41:31.000 But yeah, they had, the technology is really quite primitive.

00:41:34.000 The type seven, as I said, the backbone of the fleet is essentially an updated version of the U-boat from the end of the first world war, which is called the UB3, right?

00:41:43.000 Various technological advances have been made, but it's essentially the same thing.

00:41:47.000 So really quite primitive, mass produced, did the job.

00:41:51.000 It's a submersible rather than a submarine.

00:41:53.000 It spends most of its time on the surface, you know, only release, only dives to, to either attack or, or to avoid attack.

00:41:59.000 Um, so it's a, it's a, it's a very primitive vessel.

00:42:02.000 And again, the, the, the example of the, um, the torpedoes is, is a good one that, that shows as well how, how primitive they were and how, how, um, fallible they were as well.

00:42:12.000 That's quite unusual, isn't it?

00:42:13.000 Because especially towards the end of the war, Hitler in particular is staking a lot of, of his resources on super weapons.

00:42:22.000 The idea that we're going to build something that's going to fundamentally shift the course of the war, which we're clearly at this point losing.

00:42:27.000 Yeah.

00:42:28.000 Uh, I don't know why I'm speaking for we, the Germans.

00:42:31.000 Freudian, mate.

00:42:32.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:42:33.000 Hopefully I can get away with that.

00:42:34.000 But you know what I mean?

00:42:35.000 But you, what you're saying is they really didn't do that with the U-Boats.

00:42:39.000 They, well, they did.

00:42:40.000 They did.

00:42:41.000 Um, so the, you know, the, the core of the U-Boat fleet, which is these type sevens, about 70%, and then type nines is a, was a larger vessel, which also pretty primitive, but worked very well.

00:42:52.000 Um, so they did from, uh, 43 onwards, there's this very, very analogous actually to the wonder weapons that you just mentioned.

00:42:59.000 You know, the V1s, V2s, and everything else.

00:43:01.000 They started looking at the next generation of submarines of U-Boats.

00:43:07.000 Um, and what should it look like?

00:43:10.000 What propulsion systems, for example, should it have that would enable it to stay beneath the surface either for longer periods or even indefinitely?

00:43:18.000 Um, and the conventional form of having diesel engines, you know, and electric batteries and so on, you know, that was considered old hat.

00:43:24.000 Let's not do that because that means we have to surface, which means we're vulnerable.

00:43:28.000 So they start looking at various propulsion systems.

00:43:31.000 There's a German, um, engineer called Walther, who, who was like the, um, not really a charlatan because he was a bit brilliant, but, you know, he, he led them down a number of dead ends in terms of things like, you know, the propulsion systems that were, um, independent of air, essentially.

00:43:48.000 So, you know, creating propulsion systems that would work perpetually underwater.

00:43:53.000 Um, so they put an awful lot of money into that.

00:43:55.000 And then there's, there's, there's two, two generations of U-Boats at the end.

00:43:58.000 This is, um, electrically, electrically powered.

00:44:02.000 So huge battery packs underneath them.

00:44:04.000 A bit like you can, you know, your, your electric vehicle today.

00:44:08.000 Um, type 21s, type 23s, which they produce essentially from, you know, 44 onwards exclusively, right?

00:44:16.000 So all the, you know, the, the order book for the, for the type sevens is kind of, okay, we won't build those anymore.

00:44:22.000 We're going to build these ones.

00:44:24.000 And that's very, they, they're radically different, particularly the type 21s, which is the, you know, the ocean going version.

00:44:31.000 It points in many respects, it points to a lot of the technology and the technological developments that you'll see in the Cold War.

00:44:38.000 Um, so a really, you know, fascinating vessel, but it consumed huge amounts of manpower, man hours, raw materials, steel, all the rest of it.

00:44:49.000 Um, they had more than a hundred of these built at the end of the war.

00:44:52.000 Not one of them saw combat.

00:44:54.000 Right.

00:44:55.000 Because they're constantly, you know, fighting teething troubles and difficulties to actually get them, you know, up to speed.

00:45:01.000 Um, so for the second half of the war, you've got the same thing.

00:45:04.000 You've got these sort of wonder weapons and all of the faith being put in the wonder weapons.

00:45:08.000 And there's a, um, Goebbels diary entry, which I quote, where he talks about, you know, if we can get these on stream, you know, by June 1945, he's talking about June 45, you know, this is going to change the war.

00:45:20.000 It's a very similar story to the V2s, except the V2s actually were used in anger.

00:45:25.000 The Type 21s never were. 1.00

00:45:27.000 Um, but in a sense, you know, it's difficult with a counterfactual, but you almost sense, had they put all of that effort into just producing more Type 7s or more Type 9s that, you know, the tried and tested vessels that they had, um, they might have, uh, done better, should we say, in the latter half of the war.

00:45:47.000 Well, I was going to ask you about the done better thing is a really interesting point because, uh, I mean, Churchill talks about this as well.

00:45:52.000 I mean, Hitler made a hell of a lot. 0.98

00:45:54.000 Look, everybody makes mistakes, especially in, you know, in that sort of situation, particularly when you look back at it with full knowledge of everything.

00:46:01.000 But do you think that if the Germans hadn't obsessed about making these, it's interesting.

00:46:06.000 I mean, I am, I think, confessing to being both a nerd and autistic in this conversation, but, you know, I watch like people restoring World War II weapons on YouTube.

00:46:14.000 There's some channels that do way bigger numbers than us, by the way, mate.

00:46:17.000 But, uh, a lot of them talk about the fact, you know, this is a German submachine gun and it's like way more complicated than a Russian one or an American one or a British one.

00:46:27.000 Do you think if the Germans had focused more on mass production?

00:46:30.000 Yeah.

00:46:31.000 They would have, I probably wouldn't have won, but do you think they would have had a much better chance in the world?

00:46:37.000 Uh, yes, I don't think it would necessarily change the end result.

00:46:40.000 Yeah.

00:46:41.000 Because of what you're facing, certainly after 41, you're facing the industrial might, not only the United States.

00:46:47.000 And the best example there is Liberty ships in this context.

00:46:50.000 You know, they're producing Liberty ships, you know, almost by the week in US shipyards.

00:46:54.000 So they're more than replacing what's being lost in the Battle of the Atlantic.

00:46:58.000 And on the other side, you've got the Soviet Union, which is very good at this stuff and actually no mass production.

00:47:03.000 You know, look at the T-34, they concentrate on one model of tank effectively for most of the war until the end of the war when you've got some others, JS-1, for example, JS-2s.

00:47:12.000 But most of the war, they're producing T-34s and they, and it's pretty primitive.

00:47:17.000 It's very effective, but pretty primitive in its, if you ever, if you want nerdery, you know, go to Bovington, uh,

00:47:24.000 Oh, I've been to the T-34, it's not comfortable.

00:47:26.000 No.

00:47:27.000 And if you, I mean, when I, back in the day, you know, I, I've done a bit of welding in my time, Constantine.

00:47:32.000 You might, you might, I might surprise you.

00:47:34.000 If you look at the welds on a, on a, on a German Panther, like they're perfect. 0.83

00:47:38.000 Yeah.

00:47:39.000 And bearing in mind, you know, the thickness of the steel, it's very tough to actually get a decent weld.

00:47:43.000 The welds are all perfect.

00:47:44.000 If you look at the welds on a T-34, they're catastrophically bad, but they used it basically as a throwaway weapon.

00:47:50.000 And you've, you've always got another one.

00:47:52.000 The Germans never had another one. 0.93

00:47:53.000 They never had another Panther.

00:47:55.000 They couldn't throw them away in the same way.

00:47:57.000 So, um, absolutely.

00:47:59.000 I think that, that, you know, that could have maybe prolonged the war from a German perspective.

00:48:04.000 Um, I don't think it would have changed the result because of the, you know, the sheer difference.

00:48:07.000 The, you know, the sheer disparity in the economic potential of the, of the, of the two partners.

00:48:12.000 But it was when you were talking about towards the end of the war, where they were still building U-boats and the Nazi leaders were going, look, well, we can't just focus this on one factory because we're getting, we're getting killed out here.

00:48:25.000 So we've got to do it in two or three factories.

00:48:27.000 So then what would happen is then you stuck it all together.

00:48:29.000 And it doesn't fit.

00:48:30.000 Yeah.

00:48:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:32.000 I mean, that's the story of the type 21 effectively.

00:48:34.000 That's why the type 21 spent, you know, the first type 21 is actually launched in the summer of 1944.

00:48:40.000 So it could have potentially made a difference.

00:48:43.000 Um, but it spent so long in, in sort of troubleshooting and, and, you know, trying to find out why it leaks and why it does this and the other.

00:48:51.000 And it's exactly what you said is because of the aerial campaign against Germany, against German factories, they had basically kind of dissipated production and said, okay, well, you know, this factory over here is going to do the tail sections.

00:49:03.000 There's eight sections, I think, to a type 21.

00:49:05.000 So, you know, each section was going to be built at a different place.

00:49:08.000 And then they pull them all together and they, and they essentially assemble the finished article.

00:49:13.000 Um, and the intention obviously is that, you know, with the bombing campaign, if, if one of those, you know, gets temporarily knocked out, it doesn't knock out the whole thing.

00:49:21.000 So you can kind of work around the bombing campaign.

00:49:24.000 Um, but the end result, and of course you're using slave labor, using concentration camp labor.

00:49:29.000 So, you know, they're not bothered what the tolerances are.

00:49:32.000 Um, they're too busy, you know, worrying about where the next meal is coming from and they're not going to get beaten to death by God. 1.00

00:49:38.000 Also, they fucking hate you. 1.00

00:49:40.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:49:41.000 And they hate you.

00:49:42.000 Yeah.

00:49:43.000 Yeah.

00:49:44.000 So there's that.

00:49:45.000 Um, so the sections that are built are very often built not to tolerances and they don't find out until, you know, they try and put them back, put them all together.

00:49:51.000 And they actually try and go and float it in the Baltic and it doesn't work.

00:49:54.000 So this is why they spent, you know, more than a year very often in, in troubleshooting, never saw action.

00:50:00.000 Was there ever a conversation, you talked about the stats, 16%, never, never sank anything.

00:50:06.000 Um, was there ever a conversation of like, boys, this isn't working.

00:50:10.000 How about we look at this point?

00:50:12.000 We're getting absolutely smashed here.

00:50:14.000 Let's put this steel into anti-aircraft guns so that our cities don't get flattened.

00:50:18.000 Let's actually redistribute these resources to something that's going to defend our country as opposed to like trying to win the war that's no longer winnable.

00:50:27.000 Was there ever, or was Hitler just too deranged by this point?

00:50:30.000 And he was like, you know, we're going to win.

00:50:32.000 Yeah, I think, well, 43 is a, is a, you know, the more you look at the progress of the war, 43 is the sort of tipping years, the tipping point of the war.

00:50:42.000 Uh, the summer of 43, essentially Germany comes to the same position that it was at the end of the First World War, which is that, you know, sane heads would have told them that we could, we may not yet have lost, but we can't win.

00:50:56.000 So you've got, you know, the Battle of the Atlantic is effectively lost May 43.

00:51:02.000 Um, North Africa is lost May 43.

00:51:05.000 You've got Italy falling out of the war in September.

00:51:07.000 Um, Battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front is huge.

00:51:10.000 Um, bombing of Hamburg.

00:51:12.000 Right, well, this is the thing.

00:51:13.000 All of that happens in that summer.

00:51:14.000 Well, this was the point I was going to make, but people don't recognize this because we think of battles as individual things.

00:51:19.000 But while the Battle of Kursk is going on, this great decisive battle, German cities are getting flattened.

00:51:24.000 Yeah.

00:51:25.000 And you're thinking this Battle of the Kursk is miles away from Germany.

00:51:28.000 If you actually care about Germans, you'd be like, let's consolidate, maybe let's sue for peace. 0.99

00:51:32.000 Yeah.

00:51:33.000 You know.

00:51:34.000 But, but my, my point is at the end of the First World War, they got to an analogous situation where they realized, haven't yet been defeated, but they can no longer win.

00:51:41.000 And that's when they sued for peace at the end of the First World War.

00:51:44.000 Um, the difference in the Second World War is that you, you have an ideology which is kind of, you know, fundamentally kind of millenarian.

00:51:51.000 And it's, you know, it's, um, the, the added element of, you know, the, the, the racial element, the ideological element, particularly on the Eastern Front that you can, you can never make terms with the Soviets. 0.74

00:52:03.000 That means effectively they're going to fight for another two years.

00:52:06.000 So by that, you know, essentially by 43, the war's kind of, it's more or less done.

00:52:10.000 The outcome is clear.

00:52:11.000 The outcome is clear.

00:52:12.000 Um, but the, but because of that ideological elements that the derangement, as you put it, I mean, Hitler, you know, he's not technically deranged as in insane, but he's. 0.68

00:52:22.000 But well, ideologically off with the pixels.

00:52:25.000 You know what I mean though?

00:52:26.000 Because when you're making decisions that are not in the interest of your country and your people, by that point, or even tact strategically correct, right?

00:52:35.000 Because if, if say you are the leader of a country and you, if you look at objectively the situation, you know that the war can't be won.

00:52:44.000 And let's say you want to continue fighting, you would at least do everything you possibly can to throw those resources into protecting your country, your people, your cities from being wiped off the map.

00:52:57.000 And instead, what he's doing is telling everyone to stand to the last man and miles away and doing all these crazy things.

00:53:05.000 So that's what I mean by deranged.

00:53:07.000 I just mean someone is making very, very bad decisions.

00:53:10.000 Yes, absolutely. And you can, and you can see that where there is a shift after 43, it's too, it's not in terms of, you know, protecting the homeland at all.

00:53:19.000 It's towards what we said before about, you know, wonder weapons.

00:53:22.000 And that's becomes the focus, which is, okay, we can't win in the conventional form.

00:53:27.000 So we're going to, we're going to try these, you know, novel weapons, whether it be V1s, V2s, or these type 21s, whatever it is.

00:53:34.000 And there are some innovations that you can see in that period, particularly, you know, in the U-boat war as well, which are of note.

00:53:41.000 You know, there's this stuff, Alberich, this sort of covering, this rubber covering that they put on U-boats.

00:53:47.000 So they couldn't, they were effectively immune to, to Aztec and sonar detection, which is kind of, kind of fascinating.

00:53:53.000 And as I said, it, it, it, it, it presages a lot of the developments of the later cold war.

00:53:59.000 So stuff like that is really fascinating.

00:54:01.000 But there's no, it's much more offensive in nature.

00:54:05.000 And I think that comes down to the ideology, that they're still ideologically addled and that you can't possibly, you know, just sort of focus in and protect the people.

00:54:13.000 It's, it has to be offensive all the time.

00:54:15.000 And why, why, why is that, Roger?

00:54:18.000 I mean, obviously there's a more modern context in which sort of someone has been in charge for a very long time, can't get the feedback, et cetera.

00:54:25.000 Is that part, by this point, has Hitler cleaned house of anyone who would tell him, you know, Mein Fuhrer, this might not be a good idea?

00:54:33.000 Yeah.

00:54:34.000 Is that what's happening or is it, or are they all true believers or like why?

00:54:37.000 It's a bit, it's a bit of both.

00:54:38.000 So there's certainly, you know, any of those, you know, dissenting voices or potentially dissenting voices within the high command and the upper echelons of politics have been effectively removed or moved to safety, as it were.

00:54:51.000 And also even those that, you know, there are numerous accounts of generals, for example, who in the field will see a particular scenario, a particular catastrophe, and will say, right, I'm going to go and confront the Fuhrer and tell him,

00:55:07.000 this is how it has to be.

00:55:09.000 Mm-hmm.

00:55:10.000 And they go to Hitler and Hitler does have this weird charisma is the only word for it.

00:55:16.000 Magnetism.

00:55:17.000 Is a magnetism.

00:55:18.000 Mm-hmm.

00:55:19.000 And there are very few people within the upper echelons of the Third Reich that are immune to it. 0.96

00:55:24.000 One of them being Klaus von Stauffenberg, for example, who, you know, he talks about, I think in one of his letters, he talked about going to see the Fuhrer and being mindful that this was the narrative,

00:55:36.000 was that he had these sort of piercing blue eyes and all of this stuff.

00:55:40.000 And he was a very, very, you know, extremely persuasive character, very difficult to contradict.

00:55:45.000 And he said, after that first meeting, he said, you know, I looked into his eyes, I shook his hand.

00:55:51.000 There was nothing.

00:55:52.000 He didn't feel the magnetism.

00:55:54.000 Mm-hmm.

00:55:55.000 Most people, the vast majority did.

00:55:57.000 Stauffenberg, by the way, is the guy behind Operation Valkyrie.

00:55:59.000 Exactly.

00:56:00.000 Who tried to kill Hitler in 1944.

00:56:02.000 Yeah.

00:56:03.000 Yeah.

00:56:04.000 Yeah.

00:56:05.000 Operation Valkyrie, great movie, by the way.

00:56:06.000 Yes.

00:56:07.000 Valkyrie.

00:56:08.000 Absolutely.

00:56:09.000 Yeah.

00:56:10.000 Correct.

00:56:11.000 Sorry.

00:56:12.000 But he's a minority, Stauffenberg, in not feeling that, in not sensing that.

00:56:17.000 The vast majority, even those sort of, you know, reasonably coherent and independent-minded

00:56:21.000 generals who see a problem and say, right, I'm going to go and confront the Führer, they 0.69

00:56:27.000 will come out of their meeting with the Führer saying, the Führer's right, we have to do this,

00:56:31.000 you know, and they're sort of back on stream.

00:56:34.000 So that combination, I think, of, like you said, cleaning house is a good phrase on the 0.55

00:56:40.000 one hand, also just that sheer magnetism that he seemed to have.

00:56:43.000 It was very convincing.

00:56:44.000 Do you know what strikes me about that?

00:56:45.000 It was very convincing.

00:56:46.000 It's so weird, Roger, isn't it?

00:56:47.000 Because when I think of the Germans, particularly in that period, they are an intensely pragmatic

00:56:52.000 people.

00:56:53.000 Mm-hmm.

00:56:54.000 They're hands-on, like we talked about, their engineering is incredible, they're thinking

00:56:58.000 about...

00:56:59.000 And yet, they are so captured by an ideology and also one man.

00:57:04.000 Yes.

00:57:05.000 Isn't it incredible?

00:57:06.000 It is.

00:57:07.000 I agree.

00:57:08.000 It's kind of...

00:57:09.000 The two almost contradict each other, right?

00:57:11.000 Mm-hmm.

00:57:12.000 Because you said there is that tremendous pragmatism and technological now.

00:57:17.000 That base is astonishing in Germany.

00:57:20.000 But at the same time, certainly in the upper echelons, absolute ideological capture, which

00:57:27.000 was impossible to escape, effectively, within the regime.

00:57:30.000 So anyone that dissented, you'd be shuffled out to some sinecurial post or worse.

00:57:38.000 So there was no way to really effect any change within the regime at all.

00:57:43.000 And that's one of the reasons behind the assassination attempts as well.

00:57:47.000 And it was very interesting, because you touched on it in the book, in that there was a little

00:57:52.000 bit more free speech in the U-boats, wasn't there?

00:57:55.000 Yeah.

00:57:56.000 Because you were essentially...

00:57:57.000 You were a crew, you were a team, you were isolated, so people could speak a little bit

00:58:02.000 more freely, couldn't they, about what they thought about Hitler and where the war was

00:58:06.000 going.

00:58:07.000 I mean, this is one of the things that surprised me, actually, was how...

00:58:10.000 I can't really use the word liberal, but comparatively liberal the regime was in the German Navy.

00:58:17.000 And you can see in numerous anecdotal accounts, there's one of the U-boat captain coming into

00:58:23.000 port in France and calling out to the welcoming crew on the quayside and saying, are the Nazis

00:58:30.000 still in charge?

00:58:31.000 And someone shouts back and says, yes, they are.

00:58:33.000 And then he puts the U-boat in reverse.

00:58:35.000 Yeah.

00:58:36.000 And everyone laughs, right?

00:58:37.000 He says, okay.

00:58:38.000 And you think, well, how did he get away with that?

00:58:40.000 But he did, right?

00:58:41.000 And everyone laughed and they moved on.

00:58:44.000 So, once you...

00:58:46.000 And there's numerous accounts similar.

00:58:48.000 I mean, German Navy, of course, like any branch of the military, is a cross-section of

00:58:53.000 German society.

00:58:54.000 So, you've got Nazis, you've got anti-Nazis, and you've got the mass in between that go

00:58:58.000 with the flow, kind of believe, maybe not, you know, whatever.

00:59:03.000 That's reflected in the U-boat arm as well.

00:59:06.000 Where it sort of seems peculiar is when, you know, by the middle of the war, the Nazi regime

00:59:14.000 is tightening up its political control.

00:59:17.000 And particularly after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt in the summer of 1944.

00:59:21.000 You know, you've got essentially political officers being used in the Wehrmacht, for

00:59:26.000 example, like you had in the Soviet Union, in the Red Army, to sort of ensure ideological

00:59:33.000 conformity.

00:59:34.000 That doesn't happen in the Navy, and it doesn't happen in the submarine arm either.

00:59:38.000 And you have to ask why.

00:59:40.000 And Dönitz, who is a Nazi, like he believes, he's one of these guys that believes that 0.60

00:59:46.000 Hitler is infallible, right? 1.00

00:59:48.000 And yet, he effectively blocks the sort of indoctrination measures that the High Command

00:59:54.000 wants to institute in the Navy.

00:59:55.000 And we have to ask why he does that.

00:59:57.000 And I think there was a plausible explanation that I read that said, essentially, he viewed

01:00:02.000 it as superfluous.

01:00:03.000 It was unnecessary.

01:00:05.000 Because his Navy, he'd effectively created the U-boat arm, that was his baby.

01:00:10.000 Um, you know, as far as he was concerned, it was all ideologically on side.

01:00:14.000 You know, all his young men were fine, patriotic, upstanding Germans that wouldn't possibly dissent

01:00:20.000 from the Nazi opinion and Nazi ideology.

01:00:23.000 So, all of this stuff is unnecessary.

01:00:25.000 Not only is it unnecessary, it gets in the way.

01:00:27.000 So, he basically kind of allowed them to have their little indoctrination office, but

01:00:32.000 he didn't allow any of their men to ride along on the boats.

01:00:36.000 He said there was no space, which is kind of true. 0.99

01:00:39.000 Um, so there's a sort of a brick wall.

01:00:41.000 And it's not oppositional.

01:00:42.000 It's basically saying, you guys are superfluous.

01:00:44.000 We don't need you.

01:00:45.000 We're already on side.

01:00:47.000 Right?

01:00:48.000 Um, but the end result is exactly as you describe, is a, I wouldn't say it's a haven necessarily,

01:00:55.000 but it's certainly, you know, less ideologically under the jackboot than perhaps other branches

01:01:03.000 of the German military.

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01:02:05.000 Do you think part of it as well is, and you capture it wonderfully in the book, is a camaraderie

01:02:11.000 between sailors, between the allied sailors and the Nazi sailors.

01:02:14.000 Yeah.

01:02:15.000 I mean, this is, again, a surprise to me.

01:02:22.000 I think there's a crucial point here that you have to make, which is the assumptions that

01:02:26.000 are made on both sides once war breaks out.

01:02:29.000 One of the corollaries of war is that you have to dehumanize the enemy. 0.97

01:02:35.000 You have to be able to portray the enemy as a monster, someone who deserves to be killed, 0.72

01:02:40.000 and it's your duty to do so, because it's a brutal business. 0.81

01:02:44.000 And as soon as you allow that dehumanization to slip, you've got a problem.

01:02:49.000 But it's interesting, in the U-boat war, in the initial phase initially,

01:02:53.000 the opening two years of the war perhaps, there are many more examples of U-boat crews helping those

01:03:01.000 that they've just sunk than any sort of maltreatment or atrocity or anything.

01:03:09.000 There's only one documented war crime, incidentally, by the U-boat arm, which again astonished me.

01:03:14.000 Now, there may be some more that all of the victims were killed.

01:03:20.000 The U-boat crew themselves were sunk later on the mission, so there's no evidence.

01:03:23.000 No one knows.

01:03:24.000 There's no record.

01:03:25.000 It's quite possible.

01:03:26.000 But there's one documented atrocity, which was the machine-gunning of survivors

01:03:30.000 of the Peleus in 1944.

01:03:33.000 There are many more examples of shipwrecked sailors being helped, being given food,

01:03:40.000 being given blankets.

01:03:41.000 There's even one crazy example where a U-boat sank a, I think it was a Greek steamer,

01:03:47.000 off the Irish coast and then towed the lifeboats to the Irish coast, which took 24 hours, right?

01:03:55.000 Which is insane when you think about it.

01:03:57.000 They're in the middle of the war.

01:03:58.000 I mean, they're towing survivors from the ship they just sunk.

01:04:01.000 But it speaks to what you just mentioned.

01:04:03.000 This idea, the phrase I use in the book is the solidarity of the sea, which is a kind

01:04:08.000 of a tradition that's older than Nazism and goes back generations.

01:04:13.000 Even in wartime, the target is the ship.

01:04:16.000 The target is the tonnage and the cargo.

01:04:18.000 It's not necessarily the crew, right?

01:04:22.000 And that idea, I think, permeates even into the U-boat arm, and I think quite a long way

01:04:27.000 through the war.

01:04:29.000 There's a really interesting case in 1942, September 42, of the sinking of the Laconia,

01:04:35.000 which is quite a well-known incident off the West African coast, where a passenger vessel

01:04:41.000 was torpedoed by U-boat.

01:04:44.000 The U-boat surfaces in the aftermath, and they used to do this quite regularly.

01:04:49.000 They'd come to the surface and sort of ask some of the survivors what ship they were from,

01:04:55.000 where they were headed, what the cargo was, et cetera, et cetera.

01:04:59.000 Because they never really knew what the target was.

01:05:01.000 That was normal.

01:05:03.000 And when they did surface, it was U-156, they surfaced, and they realized that all the voices

01:05:08.000 they heard were Italian, right?

01:05:10.000 And they're allies, right?

01:05:11.000 So it's carrying Italian POWs, this vessel, Laconia.

01:05:15.000 So the decision is made to mount a rescue operation.

01:05:18.000 So they start rounding up the floats, the debris, the survivors, pulling them all together.

01:05:24.000 And there's Brits in there as well.

01:05:26.000 They're all ordinary, fair-paying passengers as well.

01:05:29.000 And for four days, this commander of U-156 basically is herding together the surviving lifeboats

01:05:37.000 and survivors from this sinking in Mid-Atlantic.

01:05:40.000 And he's radioing Enclair in English, you know, unencrypted, I would stress,

01:05:48.000 to say, anyone wants to come and help me, you know, I won't fire on you if you won't fire on me,

01:05:53.000 because we're having a bit of a catastrophe here.

01:05:56.000 And in the end, he gets attacked by the Americans. 0.53

01:06:00.000 So he's attacked by American aircraft and has to dive.

01:06:03.000 You know, he has survivors up on his deck and he has to dive, leaves them in the sea.

01:06:09.000 That is a big shock to the German naval community in World War II, right?

01:06:17.000 So Dönitz reports this to Hitler.

01:06:19.000 Hitler rages and says, well, why are they picking up survivors anyway?

01:06:23.000 Right?

01:06:24.000 So this is the ideological gulf. 0.97

01:06:26.000 So for Hitler, it's about tonnage, yes, but it's also, you know, he's saying shoot the crew.

01:06:31.000 That's Hitler's viewpoint. 0.91

01:06:33.000 You can see it, you know, much more brutal.

01:06:35.000 And Dönitz, to his credit, as I said, you know, he doesn't deserve much credit.

01:06:39.000 But in this occasion, to his credit, he pushes back and says, no, we're not going to do that.

01:06:43.000 Because that's not the way naval operations work.

01:06:46.000 The end result is what's called the Laconia order, where Dönitz orders that German crews from then on are not to assist shipwrecked sailors.

01:06:56.000 I'm really glad that you brought up Dönitz because he strikes me as this fascinating character.

01:07:02.000 On the one hand, completely ideologically possessed and artsy.

01:07:05.000 On the other hand, you go, you look at the way he's behaved and he comes across as a man of integrity.

01:07:12.000 He does, yeah.

01:07:13.000 And then at the end of the war, he goes to the Nuremberg trials.

01:07:17.000 And that's another fascinating story.

01:07:19.000 Yeah, it is.

01:07:20.000 He's a really interesting character.

01:07:21.000 And I think he encapsulates it quite well.

01:07:24.000 He combines those two, you know, at first sight, quite kind of contradictory worldviews, if you like.

01:07:31.000 You know, he is a convinced Nazi. 0.78

01:07:32.000 As I said, he adored Hitler. 0.96

01:07:34.000 He thought Hitler was the best thing since whatever the last best thing was. 0.91

01:07:41.000 But at the same time, he's a man from that naval tradition.

01:07:45.000 So in moments like when he issues the Laconia order and he has that argument with Hitler, he's trying to sort of combine those two worldviews in a satisfactory manner to himself and to his traditions.

01:08:00.000 And the Laconia order is an interesting one.

01:08:03.000 You know, as I said, from then on, the German Navy essentially had an order not to assist those that they'd sunk.

01:08:09.000 Prior to 42, that was the norm. 0.64

01:08:12.000 As far as it was possible.

01:08:14.000 Very often, it wasn't possible.

01:08:15.000 But if it was possible, they tended to do it.

01:08:18.000 At least, you know, a couple of blankets landed that way.

01:08:21.000 You know, that would be the sort of, you know, the bottom line.

01:08:25.000 From then on, that tails off very, very swiftly.

01:08:29.000 So what is already a brutal conflict, a brutal theater of the conflict becomes all the more so.

01:08:35.000 Do the Allies reciprocate this?

01:08:37.000 Not particularly.

01:08:39.000 It's, it's, um, no, I think, I mean, there wasn't much in the way of, uh, obviously there's no love lost.

01:08:46.000 There's not much in the way of sort of atrocities committed the other way.

01:08:50.000 Um, there's one I know of in the Pacific war with the Americans, the USS Wahoo.

01:08:54.000 They shot survivors of a, of a Japanese, uh, merchantman.

01:08:58.000 Um, so that, that's kind of interesting in itself.

01:09:03.000 Um, but there's, there's not really the same.

01:09:06.000 If a new boat surfaces.

01:09:07.000 Yeah.

01:09:08.000 They will pick up the crew and, and let them scuttle it still.

01:09:11.000 Uh, as long as it surrenders itself.

01:09:13.000 Yeah.

01:09:14.000 Yes.

01:09:15.000 Yeah. 0.71

01:09:16.000 If it, if it shapes to, you know, to open fire and defend itself, then it's, then it's, it'll be shot at.

01:09:19.000 No, that's a little bit of the target, of course.

01:09:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:09:21.000 And so, so we're sticking with Donance then.

01:09:23.000 So he's the head of the Navy throughout the entire war.

01:09:26.000 He's the head of the, uh, U-boat arm initially.

01:09:28.000 And then from 43, he's the head of the Navy.

01:09:30.000 And, uh, what happens to him at Nuremberg?

01:09:33.000 So he's tried at Nuremberg, um, as one of the principal, you know, war criminals.

01:09:37.000 He's, he's indicted for, you know, um, crimes against peace.

01:09:41.000 And, you know, I think three, three charges at Nuremberg.

01:09:44.000 Um, and brilliantly argued actually by his, by his lawyer.

01:09:49.000 Was he a Jewish lawyer?

01:09:51.000 No.

01:09:52.000 That'd be a hell of a plot twist.

01:09:54.000 It would, wouldn't it?

01:09:55.000 Um, no, he's an old naval, a naval, former naval judge, um, stood as his lawyer.

01:10:00.000 And actually quite effectively argued that the war that Dönitz had been conducting was very, very similar in its nature and its conduct, uh, to the naval war that the Allies had been conducting as well.

01:10:11.000 So, you know, and he had testimony, for example, from the US, um, uh, Admiral Chester Nimitz, uh, essentially saying the same thing.

01:10:20.000 That it wasn't possible to take, you know, shipwreck sailors on board.

01:10:25.000 Um, you know, the best you could do was sort of point them in the, in the direction of land and say, good luck.

01:10:30.000 Um, and unrestricted, you know, submarine warfare was kind of the norm. 0.95

01:10:34.000 Um, so he's basically forcing the prosecutors at Nuremberg to say, well, if you're going to, you know, if you're going to damn Dönitz, you have to damn the Americans as well.

01:10:42.000 Um, he got 10 years at Nuremberg. 0.57

01:10:45.000 Which is a fairly light sentence.

01:10:47.000 Which is, by Nuremberg Sanders, exactly.

01:10:49.000 It's quite light.

01:10:50.000 I mean, he's, he's not someone that deserves sympathy at all because of his political convictions.

01:10:56.000 But I think, as you said before, there's a, there's a degree of integrity as a sort of, as a naval man that, that, that we should probably bear in mind when we, when we make these judgments about Dönitz.

01:11:06.000 And, and one thing I, this is going off script a little bit, but I think it's a fascinating question to ask a historian who's as well informed about that conflict as you are.

01:11:16.000 And a big question to ask too, what do you make of Nuremberg?

01:11:21.000 It's interesting.

01:11:22.000 I think Nuremberg, you know, there's a lot, a lot of complaints made about it being sort of victors justice and so on.

01:11:27.000 Um, there's a, there is a legitimate complaint, um, to be made about the Soviet sort of presence at Nuremberg.

01:11:35.000 Because the Soviets had done a lot of the same things, um, as the Nazis were being, you know, accused of and convicted of.

01:11:42.000 And for them to then be on the, uh, on the, uh, in the ranks of the accusers is, you know, sometimes a little bit hard to swallow.

01:11:50.000 Um, and of course they, they even tried to get, you know, for example, the Katyn massacres onto the German charge sheet, which was a massacre they'd committed against the Polish office class in 1940.

01:12:02.000 Thankfully that, you know, was, was blocked by the, by the, by the allies, but that shows you the kind of the cynicism and the hypocrisy that is going on at some level, um, in Nuremberg.

01:12:14.000 Um, I guess the counter, not that I would defend, I mean, the Soviet atrocities, if you actually read about them.

01:12:20.000 Yeah. Horrific. Horrific. Absolutely horrific. Awful.

01:12:23.000 Um, but I guess, given the contribution that the Soviets made to, to defeating Germany, it was gonna hard, be hard to give them out.

01:12:31.000 Not least. Oh, you call it. Sure.

01:12:33.000 And Stalin's got his bloody troops all over Eastern Europe.

01:12:35.000 Sure. No, it would have been, but it's just that, you know, that, that.

01:12:39.000 On a purely moral principle level.

01:12:41.000 And having, you know, the attempt to put the Katyn massacres on the German charge sheet is pretty astonishing cynicism.

01:12:46.000 Yeah. Um, so that's, that's an angle that perhaps we should, we should bear in mind.

01:12:51.000 Um, this aspect, the wider aspect of sort of Victor's justice, I think you see in Nuremberg the first real, uh, widespread realization of the true horror of Nazism, which for most people wasn't entirely clear before. 0.60

01:13:06.000 Um, you know, you had sort of isolated incidents that they knew about, you know, they knew about the, um, the Holocaust, for example, from really late 41 onwards.

01:13:14.000 Um, but very often in, in sort of piecemeal examples.

01:13:20.000 Um, and the same thing with the horrors of the concentration camps, which is largely a separate issue to the Holocaust.

01:13:26.000 I mean, they're linked, but they're, they're kind of separate.

01:13:28.000 So by the time you get to 45, 46, with the, the Nuremberg trials, people are beginning to put together the, the mass of evidence that has been piecemeal evidence that has been, you know, gathered in the meantime,

01:13:42.000 and put it together into a coherent whole, arguably for the first time.

01:13:47.000 So that realization of the true horror of Nazism, um, is something I think that colors a lot of the decision making.

01:13:55.000 Um, and there's a growing assumption, I think, and on the, on behalf of the, um, you know, the Western, uh, judges and prosecutors as well.

01:14:04.000 Um, that, that just sees, you know, German and Nazi as synonymous as, you know, they're, they're all equally guilted or equally, you know, barbarian. 0.83

01:14:15.000 There's a real, um, uh, I say hatred even that, that, that comes into the proceedings at that point.

01:14:23.000 So that's an element of, of Nuremberg that I think is, is, is, is interesting.

01:14:29.000 It's noticeable when, you know, you had what we might call the lesser Nurembergs, you know, the other trials that go on, you know, the Krupp trial, the, you know, the, the foreign office trial and so on that go, go on into the 1950s.

01:14:40.000 The desire to execute those found guilty diminishes as time goes on.

01:14:46.000 And yet, as we know, you know, you know, the vast majority of those, the defendants at Nuremberg were executed.

01:14:51.000 Um, so I think that's testament to that, you know, uh, realization of that, that horror in 1945, 46, which then sort of dissipates and, and other factors kick in, you know, the, the, the need to sort of rebuild Germany, the need to create, you know, a stable Germany in the heart of Europe.

01:15:11.000 Um, the desire for revenge dissipates as, as time goes on.

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01:15:48.000 So let's look at the end of the war, because the way you talk about it in the book is Hitler's suicide was incredibly sudden and people were taken aback, particularly U-boat commanders.

01:16:00.000 Yeah, it did. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating moment.

01:16:04.000 Um, the U-boats themselves had been, as I said, up against it really since 43.

01:16:09.000 Mm-hmm.

01:16:10.000 So they'd seen, interestingly, sort of seen their horizons shrink, you know, from the point at which, you know, 42, they were going right across the Atlantic.

01:16:17.000 They were attacking the American Eastern seaboard, for example.

01:16:20.000 There were U-boats that, that went to, um, raid Allied vessels in, you know, the Indian Ocean.

01:16:27.000 Um, so they were really, it's a global operation in the middle of the war.

01:16:31.000 And then by the end, you're, you're sort of shrunk back to the point at which, you know, German U-boats can barely exit the North Sea.

01:16:39.000 Right.

01:16:40.000 Um, so there's, there is a sort of growing realization that something's coming.

01:16:45.000 You know, this isn't going to be good, but precisely what shape it's going to take, nobody knows.

01:16:50.000 Right.

01:16:51.000 Um, so yeah, Hitler's suicide when it's announced, um, is a shock.

01:16:55.000 And a lot, a lot of those crews, you know, for, for a lot of them, it's, it's a relief because they think, okay, well, this, this will hasten the end and we might get home.

01:17:02.000 Um, for a lot of them, if they're more ideological, it would, it would be considered tragic, you know, that, that your great leader had died or a disillusion.

01:17:11.000 There's a couple of accounts in there with people saying, well, you know, here's this man that led us up the mountain and he's abandoned us.

01:17:17.000 Right.

01:17:18.000 Right.

01:17:19.000 He's shown himself to not be the heroic figure that we thought he was.

01:17:22.000 So you've got a complete spectrum of opinion and in that moment.

01:17:26.000 But what follows is interesting because the, you know, you've got, Dönitz actually succeeds Hitler as head of state, um, in a sort of, you know, rump Nazi administration.

01:17:37.000 Um, and he gives an order for the U-boat force to, to essentially surrender, um, which to most of those commanders is, is seen as, you know, a sort of dishonorable end.

01:17:49.000 Uh, they don't want to give away their, you know, valuable weapon of the U-boat itself.

01:17:54.000 They don't want to surrender that to the enemy.

01:17:56.000 They'd rather scuttle it. 0.93

01:17:57.000 They'd rather sink it themselves.

01:17:58.000 So a lot of them do.

01:17:59.000 Um, a lot of, you know, there's examples of, of, um, naval recruits, for example, um, you know, running away from training, uh, in that period because, you know, the war's over.

01:18:12.000 Just go home.

01:18:13.000 Yeah.

01:18:14.000 So the, the whole edifice is kind of falling apart.

01:18:16.000 Um, but that, that sense.

01:18:18.000 There are a few, Roger, sorry to interrupt.

01:18:21.000 Excuse me.

01:18:22.000 Take, take the, uh, lovely U-boat, uh, to Argentina, South America.

01:18:25.000 Yeah, there's a couple.

01:18:26.000 A few of those as well.

01:18:27.000 Yeah, there's a couple.

01:18:28.000 I mean, there's a few of these examples, which is interesting because they, you know, this idea of them surrendering, surrendering to the allies sticks in the craw of a lot of commanders.

01:18:36.000 You know, this isn't how it should be done.

01:18:38.000 Um, so they, a lot of them in a curious twist, actually, that they, they actually consult their crews so that it becomes a kind of democratic exercise, which you wouldn't imagine in a dictatorship.

01:18:48.000 Um, but the commanders sort of say, well, you know, what do you want to do?

01:18:51.000 What should we do?

01:18:52.000 Because we've been told to surrender to the allies.

01:18:54.000 Um, that's dishonorable.

01:18:55.000 We don't want to do that.

01:18:56.000 So what should we do?

01:18:57.000 Uh, and there are some that sort of say, well, sail to a neutral country.

01:19:01.000 We'll go to a neutral country. 0.86

01:19:02.000 We might be able to escape the worst effects of, of, um, you know, imprisonment and interrogation or the rest of it.

01:19:08.000 So some of them go to Sweden, some, some try to go to Portugal, for example.

01:19:12.000 Um, and a couple of them, as you say, end up getting to Argentina in the erroneous assumption that they're going to get a favorable reception.

01:19:20.000 Of course, Argentina had declared war on Germany, I think in February of 45, belatedly.

01:19:26.000 So that particular piece of news had not reached them.

01:19:28.000 They thought they were going to a neutral country.

01:19:30.000 Um, and those two, one of them being, I think, U-977 was the last one.

01:19:35.000 It actually arrives in August, 1945.

01:19:38.000 So really late.

01:19:39.000 Um, and it's a remarkable voyage, you know, so they sort of set off and I think they're still in the North Atlantic when they're told to surrender.

01:19:46.000 And they basically say, we're not doing that.

01:19:50.000 So against orders, they basically sail south.

01:19:52.000 No plans, no maps, you know, to, to go for where they would need to get to.

01:19:57.000 Not enough food either.

01:19:58.000 Um, they spend most of the trip submerged, which is horrific.

01:20:03.000 So just to give a bit of detail in that particular account,

01:20:07.000 they talk about watching the mold grow on the inside of the U-boat, um, up the, up the, uh, inside of the bulkheads and so on,

01:20:15.000 because everything's so damp.

01:20:16.000 They're going through the tropics.

01:20:17.000 Everything's so damp.

01:20:18.000 Um, if you're submerged, you can't get rid of feces.

01:20:25.000 So a lot of that is just kind of stored in the boat.

01:20:28.000 So that's an added element to the U-boat stink.

01:20:31.000 So that's a particularly horrific voyage.

01:20:34.000 And when they actually get to Argentina, um, and they are duly, you know, taken into custody by the Argentine authorities, as they should be,

01:20:42.000 the commander sort of says to his crew, you know, now we have, we have to surrender, but you know, just, just pat yourselves on the back effectively for the, for what you've done that you've got here.

01:20:52.000 We, he says we had another three months of freedom.

01:20:54.000 Um, and, and in terms of seamanship, what you've done is astonishing.

01:20:58.000 You know, that's the, I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he says to them.

01:21:01.000 And it is astonishing.

01:21:02.000 Uh, yeah, because there was some, there was some stories that you, you highlighted in the book.

01:21:07.000 The one that I found very interesting was when the German U-boats were told to surrender to the Soviets.

01:21:13.000 Yeah.

01:21:14.000 They, as one went, rather not actually, let's go to the British.

01:21:17.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:21:18.000 I mean, I'm quite aware of what the Soviets would, uh, you know, have in store for them if they surrendered to the Soviets.

01:21:23.000 So they turned around, went the other way.

01:21:25.000 Um, entirely, entirely logical, you know, if you know what the Soviets were going to do to you.

01:21:30.000 Um, and conditions actually for, you know, the British, the Americans were, were pretty good.

01:21:35.000 I mean, the Germans themselves were very worried.

01:21:37.000 A lot of the crews were worried about, you know, what surrender would mean, um, that, you know, they could be, uh, you know, deported to, you know, to, uh, an uncertain fate.

01:21:49.000 That really didn't happen.

01:21:50.000 I mean, most, most of the crews were, um, you know, went through interrogation, went through, you know, whatever processes were deemed necessary by the Allies.

01:21:58.000 Most of them were home by 1947.

01:22:00.000 Um, so, you know, it was actually not a terribly onerous fate for most of them.

01:22:05.000 And then of course, bear in mind on the converse that the prisoners that the Soviets had, most of those either died in captivity or that, you know, eventually returned in the 1950s.

01:22:16.000 Wow.

01:22:17.000 Much later.

01:22:18.000 Um, so treatment of, of certainly of, um, of Ubert Cruz by the Western Allies was, was pretty benign, actually.

01:22:25.000 Roger, it's been great having you on.

01:22:27.000 Congratulations on this book.

01:22:28.000 It's out.

01:22:29.000 Um, we won't know if it's out when this interview is out before or after, but it's out on October 9th.

01:22:33.000 That's right.

01:22:34.000 Uh, so for the, if we are releasing this before, then it's out on October 9th.

01:22:38.000 Uh, can't recommend it enough.

01:22:39.000 Your writing is brilliant as well.

01:22:40.000 I mean, obviously it's hard to read that from a video interview, but I've always enjoyed all the books of yours that I've read and really, really fascinating stuff.

01:22:47.000 Uh, we can ask you some questions from our supporters in a moment.

01:22:51.000 Uh, before we do, as you know, we always end with the last question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be.

01:22:56.000 Before Roger answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack.

01:23:02.000 The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

01:23:05.000 For what reason did the German high command never realise that the Enigma code had been cracked?

01:23:11.000 Can you explain the economic relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union?

01:23:16.000 Was being assigned to a U-boat seen as high status or a death sentence?

01:23:21.000 Yeah, I've thought about this for a little bit the last few days, and it's, um, it's a difficult one because I think, you know, you are doing a great job of airing a lot of these issues that, you know, as you say, should be talked about and are not.

01:23:34.000 Um, the one that sort of struck me, and it struck me just actually driving over here today, seeing how many of the Union Jacks and, and, uh, crosses of St. George are still flying.

01:23:46.000 Now, weeks after that, what was it called? Raise the Colors or whatever that operation was called.

01:23:51.000 Um, and I was speaking recently with a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a few months.

01:23:56.000 And he said, and he was a, he's a sort of standard.

01:23:59.000 He describes himself as a centrist.

01:24:01.000 He votes Lib Dem, for God's sake.

01:24:03.000 Right.

01:24:04.000 Um, and he said, I'm done.

01:24:06.000 I've been, I've been radicalized.

01:24:08.000 He, his, his words, I've been radicalized.

01:24:10.000 Um, so what I just would mention in this context of the thing we're not talking about is the radicalization of the center or the, or the mobilization of the center.

01:24:18.000 You know, I think the British mass of the British people is a bit like a sort of a large cow. 0.90

01:24:25.000 It's kind of bovine.

01:24:26.000 It will put up with a hell of a lot.

01:24:28.000 Um, it will put up with a lot of prodding and provoking.

01:24:32.000 And then at some point it will turn.

01:24:34.000 And I feel like it's kind of turning.

01:24:36.000 Mm-hmm.

01:24:37.000 Um, and you can see that in, you know, in the Epping protests.

01:24:40.000 You could see it last year in, in Southport and so on.

01:24:43.000 I think you can see it with those flag protests the last few weeks or, you know, a couple of months ago.

01:24:48.000 Um, so I think there's something stirring there.

01:24:53.000 And it's, I'm not saying it's worrying, because I think it's kind of on one level, it's maybe a healthy corrective for British politics.

01:25:00.000 Because we've been, you know, under more or less progressive governments really for 10 years to, to a greater or lesser degree.

01:25:07.000 You know, you raise your eyes constantly.

01:25:10.000 I'm coming in 97.

01:25:12.000 I think the last, you know, I think the last Tory government, you know.

01:25:15.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:25:16.000 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

01:25:17.000 You'd go further.

01:25:18.000 I'd go further.

01:25:19.000 Yeah.

01:25:20.000 Okay.

01:25:21.000 Okay.

01:25:22.000 No, fine.

01:25:23.000 Approaching 20 years at this point, I'd say.

01:25:24.000 I think there's a degree to which, you know, ordinary people are beginning to think, well, hang on, you know, this narrative of anyone that sort of raises their concern about the nation being bigoted, you know, neo-Nazi or whatever it might be.

01:25:40.000 You know, they're suddenly going, what, you're talking about us?

01:25:43.000 Like, really?

01:25:44.000 Well, it's one of the fascinating...

01:25:46.000 And they're stirring.

01:25:47.000 And I think politics...

01:25:48.000 Sorry to interrupt.

01:25:49.000 No, no, I'm going to interrupt.

01:25:50.000 But I think politics, it feels like politics a little bit in the last year has shifted almost onto the streets in a way that it wasn't before.

01:25:57.000 Yeah.

01:25:58.000 Which is kind of fascinating and kind of scary at the same time.

01:26:02.000 So I just wonder where that goes.

01:26:05.000 You know, that could be successfully harnessed by maybe a resurgent Tory party or maybe by reform under Farage, but maybe not.

01:26:16.000 And it just seems to me it's a little bit like uncharted territory.

01:26:20.000 Well, the only reason I was jumping in is I wanted to very much emphasize why we love talking to historians.

01:26:28.000 When you came in earlier, you were like, you've had a lot of historians on recently.

01:26:31.000 Is that a strategic thing?

01:26:32.000 It's not.

01:26:33.000 We just love historians. 1.00

01:26:34.000 Because one of the things it does is it makes you immune to all the stupidity. 1.00

01:26:37.000 If you've just listened to a historian talk for an hour about Nazi U-boats, 1.00

01:26:43.000 it becomes quite difficult to call a Gary the white van man who just thinks maybe illegal immigration shouldn't be happening a Nazi or far right.

01:26:53.000 Because you go, what are you talking about?

01:26:55.000 Right.

01:26:56.000 So I think that's definitely the case.

01:26:57.000 Another thing is, you know, I live in a leafy middle class part of Kent.

01:27:00.000 There's an England flag or a British flag on every lamppost right now.

01:27:05.000 You know, so I don't think it was about one moment in time.

01:27:09.000 I just think it's how a lot of people feel.

01:27:11.000 And they're perfectly entitled to feel that way.

01:27:13.000 I agree.

01:27:14.000 And, you know, that's why I don't view it.

01:27:16.000 I'm not necessarily, you know, putting the writing on the wall in any sense and making blunt comparisons to this period.

01:27:22.000 No, of course. 0.80

01:27:23.000 Because that would be daft. 0.98

01:27:24.000 Right.

01:27:25.000 But it just strikes me that, you know, particularly with that element of, you know, increasingly seeing politics playing out on the streets.

01:27:31.000 And we saw that, you know, with the Palestinian protests as well.

01:27:34.000 And then more recently with Epping and stuff that it just strikes me that that is an interesting shift that, you know, just it seems to me like uncharted territory.

01:27:45.000 You know, where does that end up?

01:27:47.000 And I don't know the answer to that, but it's going to be interesting to watch.

01:27:50.000 All right.

01:27:51.000 This is where all the U-boat nodes are going.

01:27:52.000 Talk about welding.

01:27:53.000 Head on over to substack triggerpod.co.uk.

01:27:56.000 We'll talk all about more U-boats.

01:27:58.000 And welding.

01:27:59.000 I heard that a German U-boat got discovered as the captain flushed a loo roll, causing sewage to return inside and force the crew to the surface near the British coast.

01:28:09.000 Is this true?

01:28:10.000 And are there other ridiculous discovery destruction stories of U-boats?

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01:28:30.000 On September 11th through 13th at Arendale Park.

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TRIGGERnometry - October 15, 2025

The True Story of Hitler's U-Boat War - Roger Moorhouse

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