The U-Boat Stink
from Subject to Change Hosted by Russell Hogg
At the start of WW2 the U-Boat threat gave the British sleepless nights. But even during the Happy Time (of which there were two) when ships were being sunk at a terrific rate the German effort was too little, too late. And then the war in the Atlantic turned against them and their casualties soared and successes became rarer. Roger Moorhouse has written a terrific book discussing all this (and much more), 'Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-Boat War' where he looks the campaign from the German point of view, using diaries, letters and other records from the time. We got through a lot in this episode. Amongst the horrible waste of it all there were some grimly amusing moments, not least the sinking of a U-Boat thanks to a malfunctioning toilet. Very interesting to me was how the U-Boat men generally tried to fight an 'honourable' war. That was very different to what I had understood to be the case and certainly very different to how the war was conducted on other fronts. And above all the stink. The terrible, terrible U-Boat stink.
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What this episode covers
At the start of WW2 the U-Boat threat gave the British sleepless nights. But even during the Happy Time (of which there were two) when ships were being sunk at a terrific rate the German effort was too little, too late. And then the war in the Atlantic turned against them and their casualties soared and successes became rarer. Roger Moorhouse has written a terrific book discussing all this (and much more), 'Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-Boat War' where he looks the campaign from the German po...
Chapters
- 0:00 Welcome And Why This Story Matters
- 1:20 Inside a Type VII U-Boat
- 3:40 Heat, Cold, Filth And Disease
- 10:22 Toilets Batteries And Deadly Mistakes
- 12:34 The U-Boat Stink And Shore Leave
- 15:20 Depth Charges And The Sound Of Fear
- 20:43 Combat Stress And No Way Out
- 25:22 Brutality Myths And Prize Rules
- 33:57 Dönitz And The Tonnage War
- 40:44 Radar Air Power And The 1943 Shift
- 46:09 Three Quarters Die And Why
- 51:43 Operation Hannibal And Baltic Tragedy
- 56:09 Surrender Orders And The Black Flag
- 59:03 U-234 Japan Cargo And Suicide
- 1:02:56 Dönitz At Nuremberg And Final Thoughts
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