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German U-boat Crews in World War II: Sociology of an EliteAuthor(s): Timothy P. MulliganSource: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1992), pp. 261-282Published by: Society for Military HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1985799 .Accessed: 24/10/2011 14:09

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German U-boat Crews in World War II: Sociology of an Elite

Timothy P. Mulligan

THE occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War provides an appropriate opportunity to reexamine that conflict,

using new evidence or reworking existing evidence with new tools. One area of research that incorporates both of these approaches concerns the social composition of the armed forces that fought the war. Such a preliminary analysis of one of the war's elite corps, the German U-boat crews of Grossadmiral Karl Donitz, is the focus of this essay.

The select quality of these men alone merits examination: a total of approximately 41,500 men manned Nazi Germany's submarines throughout the war, out of a total of nearly 17.9 million called to arms.' The cohesion of this force in the face of losses of nearly 80 percent of its total strength (28,000 killed, 5,000 captured) testifies to the success of the selection process employed by the German Navy (Kriegsmarine). This is all the more significant in view of the Navy's heritage as the seedbed of revolution in 1917-18, when mutinies aboard the High Seas Fleet precipitated the collapse of the monarchy and Germany's surrender.

Significantly, the 1917-18 mutinies have often been seen in terms of the antagonism between the naval officer corps, middle-class in origin but partly feudalized in outlook, and class-conscious sailors from Germany's industrial centers who increasingly came under the influence of radical socialist ideology. Impressive evidence for this thesis has been

1. The figure on U-boat personnel is taken from the letter of Horst Bredow, Director of the Stiftung Traditionsarchiv Unterseeboote (Cuxhaven) to the author, 28 February 1990 (the exact total is subject to variation as some U-boat crews assembled late in the war never put out to sea); for the total number of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel, see Burkhart Muller-Hillebrand, Das Heer, Bd. III: Der Zweifrontenkrieg, 3 vols. (Frankfurt/M.: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1969), 253-54.

The Journal of Military hfistory 56(April 1992): 261-81 0 Society for Military llistory * 261

TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

produced concerning the officers, although the social composition of the mutinying sailors remains murky.2 If this analytical framework is valid, then the question of the composition and cohesion of World War II U-boat crews-and their place within the social organization of Nazi Germany-gains greater significance.

Except for officers,3 little research in this field has been attempted; much of what has been done had been either unsystematic or conducted in the context of controversy. Lothar-Gunther Buchheim, a former war artist who periodicially accompanied U-boats on patrol, sparked a major debate with his 1973 novel Das Boot (The Boat), which indicted Grand Admiral Karl Donitz for sacrificing so many young U-boat sailors in a hopeless cause.4 The heated exchanges that ensued between Buchheim and his critics generally focus on the role and significance of D6nitz,5 but Buchheim's emphasis on the extreme youth of German submariners

2. Contrasting views of this conflict are provided by Daniel Horn, The German Naval Mutinies of World War I (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 9-12, and Ernst Legahn, Meuterei in der Kaiserlichen Marine (Herford: Koehlers, 1970), 16-17. Holger Herwig, in his Das Elitekorps des Kaisers: Die Marineoffiziere im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (Hamburg: Christians, 1977), details the sociological background of the 1907 class of officer cadets from the Marineschule Murwik (39-41) but offers only generalizations about the sailors (e.g., 159). The pertinent literature is reviewed in Keith W. Bird, German Naval History: A Guide to the Literature (New York: Garland, 1985), 200-203, 344-46, 406ff., 476-89.

3. The best studies are Eric C. Rust, "Crew 34: German Naval Officers Under and After Hitler" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1987), a detailed portrait of the group of officers who entered the German naval academy in 1934; and the more general work by Charles S. Thomas, The German Navy in the Nazi Era (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1990). An invaluable contemporary analysis was prepared by Korvettenkapitan (Ing) K6nig in June 1942 ("Erziehung desjungen Offiziers und des Offizier-Nachwuchses unter Beriicksichtig- ung des Reserve-Offizier-Nachwuchses und der Kriegsoffizieranwarter"), a copy of which is located in the Nachlass Brickow, Bestand N 582/v. 3, in the Bundes- archiv/Abt. Militararchiv, Freiburg/Br. See also the literature review by Bird, Naval History, 571ff.

4. Lothar-Gunther Buchheim, Das Boot (Munich: R. Piper und Co. Verlag, 1973), trans. by Denver and Helen Lindley as The Boat (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975). The controversy is reviewed in Michael Salewski, Von der Wirklichkeit des Krieges: Analysen und Kontroversen zu Buchheims 'Boot' (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1976).

5. See Buchheim's follow-up trilogy, U-Boot-Krieg (Zurich: R. Piper und Co. Verlag GmbH, 1976), trans. by Gudie Lawaetz with an introductory essay by Michael Salewski as U-Boat War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); Die U-Boot- Fahrer (Munich: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1985); and Zu Tode Gesiegt: Der Untergang der U-Boote (Munich: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1989). For a response, see Karl- Friedrich Merten and Kurt Baberg, Wir U-Bootfahrer sagen: "Nein! So war das nicht!" Eine "Anti-Buchheim Schrift" (Grossaitingen: J. Reiss Verlag, 1986).

262 * THE JOURNAL OF

German U-boat Crews in World War II

has introduced the use of quantified, or quantifiable, data in the study of the character of the U-boat service.

As with the kaiserliche Marine, more statistical information is available for the officers. Historian Michael Salewski asserts that U-boat commanders for the 1943-45 period were only twenty-one to twenty- two years old, apparently relying upon a Donitz speech of December 1943.6 Another historian's survey of 115 surviving submarine captains in 1981 reveals an average age of 24.5 in 1943.7 A more systematic analysis of captains' ages establishes an average of twenty-six to twenty- eight during 1944 and 1945, but relies upon a secondary source for its data.8

Data for the noncommissioned officers and enlisted crewmen is much more fragmentary. Buchheim asserts, without citing sources, that "the majority of submariners in the later war years were little more than children."9 By contrast, U-boat ace Wolfgang Luth observed in autumn 1943 that his petty officers were twenty-three to twenty-five years old and his crewmen twenty to twenty-two; he further noted that roughly 20 percent came from the Rhineland while each of the other major regions contributed about 10 percent.10 A recent American study offers the intriguing view that the majority of U-boat crewmen originated in central and southern Germany, because natives of the coastal regions knew the risks of U-boat service and deliberately avoided them; the

6. Salewski, Von der Wirklichkeit des Krieges, 29. The uncited but probable source is: "Grossadmiral Donitz, Schlussansprache auf der Tagung fur Befehlshaber der Kriegsmarine in Weimar am Freitag, dem 17. Dezember 1943," Document 443-D, published in Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, 42 vols. (Nurnberg, 1947-49), 35: 105-16.

7. Gottfried Hoch, "Zur Problematik der Menschenfuhrung im Kriege: Eine Untersuchung zur Eisatzbereitschaft von deutschen U-Boot-Besatzungen ab 1943," in Die Deutsche Marine: Historisches Selbstverstandnis und Standortbestimmung, compiled by the Deutsches Marine Institut/Deutsche Marine-Akademie (Herford: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1983), 191-216.

8. See Rolf Guth and Jochen Brennecke, "Hier irrte Michael Salewski: Das Trauma vom 'Kinderkreuzzug' der U-Boote," Schiff und Zeit 28(1989): 43-47, refuting Salewski's statement (in Wirklichkeit, 29), that commanders in the last war years averaged only 21-22 years. Guth and Brennecke relied upon the work by Walter Lohmann and H. H. Hildebrand, Die Deutsche Kriegsmarine 1939 bis 1945, 3 vols. (Bad Nauheim: Podzun-Verlag, 1956-60).

9. Buchheim, Tode, 56. Buchheim continues with a reference to a sixteen-year- old he knew on board U-96, a curious example as that submarine retired from front-line duty in February 1943: Can this date be considered as "late" in the war?

10. Korvettenkapitan Wolfgang Luth, "Menschenfuhrung auf einem U-Boot, 1943," in Harald Busch, So War der U-Boot-Krieg (Bielefeld: Deutscher Heimat- Verlag, 1952), 340-42.

MILITARY HISTORY * 263

TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

observation is not documented, but apparently reflects the impressions of one crewman.11

In the absence of a systematic study of the U-boat service's recruitment policies to test the relative validity of these views, several threads of research suggest the final pattern. First, some basic characteristics of German submarine crewmen should be noted. Most were volunteers, but by mid-1941 engineering and technical personnel were simply assigned to submarine duty as needed.12 U-boat crews were roughly equally divided between seamen (Seemanner), responsible for the vessel's combat functions, and engineering and technical crew (Techniker) who maintained the submarine's seagoing capabilities. 13 According to one officer who worked in the U-boat personnel department, the technical crewmen were generally selected on the basis of background training; seamen represented all manner of backgrounds, and usually came to the U-boats from previous duty with minesweepers, patrol boats, and other light surface forces. 14

Secondly, some consistent personnel policies of the prewar German Navy have been identified. The Reichsmarine of the pre-Hitler period, limited by the Versailles Treaty to 15,000 officers and men, was rigorously selective in recruitment: from 1926 through 1931 less than three percent of all applicants were accepted. A survey of the 13,436 noncommissioned officers and enlisted men of the 1931 Navy revealed that nearly half had prior vocational training in technical and industrial fields, and that 70 percent were natives of the state of Prussia (including, of course, such provinces as Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau).l1 Throughout this period,

11. Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 109-12; no source is cited, but the impression may be that of an interviewed submariner.

12. Hoch, "Menschenfuhrung," 197. 13. See Jak P. Mallmann-Showell, U-boats Under the Swastika, 1st ed. (New

York: Arco, 1973), 131-32; and Buchheim, Boat, passim (e.g., 131-32). 14. Letter to the author from Wilhelm Muller-Arnecke, former Kommandant

of U-1 9 and Personalreferent with the Organization Department of the U-boat Command, 12 December 1990.

15. See Kurt St6ckel, "Die Entwicklung der Reichsmarine nach dem ersten Weltkriege (1919-1935): Ausserer Aufbau und innere Struktur" (Ph.D. dissertation, Georg-August-Universitait zu G6ttingen, 1954), 94-95. The occupational background, given only in general categories, included 289 individuals from seafaring livelihoods, 2,119 craftsmen, 415 farmers, 6,539 technical/industrial workers, 1,212 merchants and businessmen, and 2,862 unspecified. The geographical representation broke down as follows: Prussia, 9,393; Saxony and Thuringia, 1,314; Hanseatic cities, 335; Oldenburg and Mecklenburg, 532; south German states, 1,311; and unspecified, 551.



family background and political affiliation served as major considerations in recruit selection.16

The Navy's steady expansion through the 1930s and its rapid growth after 1939 compelled changes in recruitment and taxed to the limit its capacities for adequately training sufficient officers and noncommissioned officers.17 Certainly throughout the 1938-41 period the Kriegs- marine pitched an intensive recruiting campaign toward "craftsmen of all types, above all from the metal industries, such as Schlosser (nonspecialized metalworkers), electricians, precision mechanics, smiths, coppersmiths, (and) plumbers." 18 Such recruits may have offered not only very practical advantages to a technological navy, but a means of preserving selectivity on a mass basis. In addition, they would have provided the qualified individuals required for U-boat engineering and technical crewmen. But did this in fact occur?

The German Navy personnel records that might quickly answer this and other questions are largely unavailable. Most personnel records maintained by the U-boat Command were apparently destroyed at war's end in Neustadt. 19 Privacy restrictions limit access to original and restored naval personnel records from the World War II period to immediate family members.

Crew lists for individual U-boats, maintained by flotilla headquarters at the principal French ports, were often destroyed with other flotilla records to prevent capture; those that survived often provide no other information on individual crewmen than the addresses of next of kin or length of previous submarine service. A review of the available crew lists preserved at the Stiftung Traditionsarchiv Unterseeboote in Cuxhaven

16. See Keith W. Bird, Weimar, The German Naval Officer Corps and the Rise of National Socialism (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner Publishing Co., 1977), 150-54.

17. Ibid., 115-33; Bernhard R. Kroener, "Die personellen Ressourcen des Dritten Reiches im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wehrmacht, Burokratie und Kriegswirtschaft 1939-1942," in Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Muler, and Hans Umbreit, Organi- sation und Mobilisierung des Deutschen Machtbereichs, Erster Halbband: Kriegs- verwaltung, Wirtschaft, und personelle Ressourcen 1939-1941, Band 5/1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, compiled by the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 5 vols. to date (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988), 966-80.

18. See Hermann Franke, Handbuch der neuzeitlichen Wehrwissenschaften, Dritter Band: 1. Teil, Die Kriegsmarine (Berlin/Leipzig: Verlag von Walter de Gruyter und Co., 1938), 306. See also the letter of the U.S. Naval Attache in Berlin to the Chief of Naval Operations, enclosing a translation of a newspaper recruiting advertisement, 19 May 1941, file EF 30/223, General Correspondence of the Bureau of Navigation and Personnel, Record Group (hereafter RG) 24, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NA), Washington, D.C.

19. Paul Heinsius, "Der Verbleib des Aktenmaterials der deutschen Kriegs- marine," Der Archivar 8 (April 1955): 82-83.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

reveals that detailed personal data are available only for three boats among submarines U-1 through U-300.20

Answers to many questions could be obtained from U-boat veterans themselves. The author has begun a questionnaire survey for this purpose, which will include background data on fathers' occupations and postwar veterans' careers. The survey's completion and collation of the data will, however, require some time.

In the interim, a major data source already exists in the records of U-boat survivors taken prisoner by the Allies. The largest collection of material lies in Great Britain, with data on over 3,800 U-Boot-Fahrer who ended the war in British captivity-more than three times the number held in the United States, reflecting Britain's longer and closer involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic.21 British intelligence authorities began the earliest sociological study of U-boat crews, compiling background information on captured German submariners from the beginning of hostilities. The Admiralty's Naval Intelligence Division (NID) and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) focused upon technical, operational, and tactical questions in the interrogations of their prisoners, but always probed for vulnerability in morale.22

These investigations produced a number of reports that were for- warded to American military and naval intelligence, and are now located in American archives. Several studies traced the trends in ages of prisoners, suggesting an increased reliance on younger personnel. Of 129 U-boat petty officers and enlisted men captured from September to December 1939, 73 percent were aged twenty-one to twenty-five, less than 7 percent twenty or younger, affording a partial glimpse of the composition of the truly hand-picked crews of the prewar Navy. By the first half of 1941, the proportion of twenty and younger crewmen taken prisoner had risen to 28 percent and the twenty-one to twenty-five category had slipped to 40 percent.23 A study of January 1944 detailed

20. The three boats were U-125, U-155, and U-185. In the case of the last two, the lists were undated, duplicative, and incomplete in many personal details.

21. Report NID 1/CP/6, "German U-boats from which Prisoners were taken during Hostilities by British and American forces," n.d. (ca. May 1945), Records of the Special Activities Branch (Op-16-Z), Subject Files, in Records of the Office of Naval Intelligence, RG 38, NA.

22. See Donald McLachlan, Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action, 1939-45 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 163-81; F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, 3 vols. in 4 parts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979-88), 1:333-35; 2: 231, 683-85.

23. Office of Naval Intelligence, Branch Op-16-Z, "Age Study of the Crews of German U-boats from the Outbreak of the war in 1939 to the end of 1942," 22 February 1943, in Op-16-Z Subject File, Records of Office of Naval Intelligence, RG 38, NA.



differences in the age structure of officers and other ranks for U-boat and Luftwaffe prisoners-of-war captured during the 1942-43 period. The samples revealed that roughly half the U-boat prisoners were aged twenty-one or younger, while three-quarters of the aircrewmen fell into the twenty-two-to-twenty-eight-year-old category. The trend for both, however, favored younger personnel over the course of the period.24

In February 1944 a more general analysis treated the same samples in terms of civilian occupations, education, and regional origins. Some 165 U-boat petty officers and 351 enlisted men were compared against 200 Luftwaffe noncommissioned officers and enlisted personnel, captured between September 1942 and November 1943, and against the 1938 German population at large. In education, only five per cent of the U-boat sample had received a secondary education beyond the eight years required for primary schooling, compared with nearly 11 percent of the general population and over 33 percent of the aircrewmen. Regionally, northern Germany, the port cities, and the Rhineland and Westphalia were over-represented among submariners, while Bavaria and Austria claimed disproportionately small numbers; Luftwaffe personnel were more evenly drawn from all parts of Germany. Finally, "skilled and semi-skilled manual labor" (not further defined) dominated civil occupations of U-boat men, covering 66 percent of petty officers and 55 percent of enlisted men; only 26 percent of German air force personnel fell into the same category. Nearly 35 percent of the latter had formerly been "tradesmen and clerks," double the proportional representation among submariners, but 32 percent had not previously held a civilian occupation. By contrast, less than 3 percent of the sailors had not entered a vocational field prior to service.25

These findings are provocative but very inconclusive. How representative are these small samples? What occupations are included under such categories as "skilled and semi-skilled manual labor" and "tradesmen and clerks"? To what extent do the findings reflect wartime assumptions and biases of British interrogators? Answers to these and other questions require access to the original prisoner-of-war data and a systematic reworking of the material. The interrogations in the custody of the Public Record Office, however, either do not provide such background

24. "The Age-Structures of the U-boat Arm and the G.A.F. (British source, 10 January 1944)," Report No. B-578,3 February 1944, Records of the G-2 (Intelligence) Division (MIS-Y Branch), Records of War Department General and Special Staffs, RG 165, NA.

25. "Social Structure of U-boat Arm and of the GAF Air Crews (British source, 26-27 January 1944)," Report No. B-595, 17 February 1944, Records of the G-2 Division (MIS-Y Branch), RG 165, NA. The report includes additional data on officers not treated here.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

data or are closed to research for seventy-five years; it is possible that the pertinent records were routinely destroyed at war's end.26

There remains one other body of source material regarding U-boat personnel, the records of U.S. Navy and Army intelligence. Though quantitatively the most limited, the data represent that most accessible for research, and provides a good foundation for statistical study.

Now in the custody of the National Archives, pertinent American intelligence records are scattered, incomplete, and inconsistent. In essence, the records reflect the processes experienced by U-boat prisoners of war at different stages of captivity. After arrival in port and a temporary stay in a "holding" facility, they were first interrogated by members of the Office of Naval Intelligence's Special Activities Branch (Op-16-Z), the rough notes and final interrogation reports of which are located among Op-16-Z's office files (in National Archives Record Group [RGI 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations). These interrogations usually occurred at Fort Hunt, an interrogation center jointly operated by the Army and Navy in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Some prisoners remained for further questioning by Army intelligence officers for general military, economic, and morale information: these interrogations are located among the records of the War Department's G-2 Division (in National Archives RG 165, Records of War Department General and Special Staffs). All prisoners wound up in Army custody under the authority of the Provost Marshal General, and were distributed to general prisoner-of-war camps throughout the United States.27

26. Most interrogations are located in Public Record Office (PRO) collection War Office (WO) 208; a number of German Navy and U-boat prisoner interrogations are also found in Admiralty files (e.g., ADM 1/17556, 17658, and 17660). A review of these record groups in January 1991 revealed only individual interrogations rather than general background studies. The closest correlation occurred with a listing of prisoners recovered from U-541 and U-485, including the birthdate, place of birth, religion, and address of next of kin (file ADM 1/17660): as these submarines surrendered at Gibraltar in May 1945, their crewmen could not have been included in the earlier studies. Such data may yet be found among the CSDIC materials in WO 208 that are closed for seventy-five years: as PRO officials may not themselves review these documents during this period, however, this remains speculation (letters to the author from G. L. Beech, Head of Search Department, PRO, 12 September and 1 October 1990). The author is greatly indebted to Dr. Bradley F. Smith, who kindly reviewed these files at the PRO.

27. For general information, see John Hammond Moore, The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape (New York: Random House, 1978), esp. 28-54; also Richard Whittingham, Martial Justice: The Last Mass Execution in the United States (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1971), 23-24, 53. On the organization of Naval intelligence, see the (formerly) classified manuscript history, "United States Naval Administration in World War II: Office of Naval Intelligence," 860-83, in the World War II Command Files, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.



American interrogators grew more systematic in the collection of intelligence as they acquired experience. For the earliest German submariners captured during the summer and autumn of 1942, the Army was more regular in collecting and recording background data on the prisoners, and the amount of such information varied with each individual. By 1943 the Navy had introduced a "Basic Personnel Records" form for each U-boat prisoner-of-war upon arrival in the U.S.: these included facial photographs, physical descriptions, fingerprints, and background data (date and place of birth, current home address, civilian occupation, education, and religion). Similarly, the Army developed "Basic Personnel Records-Work Sheets" that duplicated the physical description and background information for those prisoners detained for further questioning.

All of these records furnish the source material for our study. In addition, the crew lists of U-125 and U-515, obtained in Cuxhaven, provide supplemental data and greatly elucidate terminology used in American reports. The composition of our sample is as follows:

(1) crew data for sixty-two crewmen of U-125 for the period March 1941-July 1942, and for fifty-four crewmen of U-515 as of 1 October 1943, supplemented by "Basic Personnel Records" (RG 38) for seven new crewmen captured 15 April 1944;

(2) indexes to German prisoner-of-war "201" files in War Department G-2 Division records (RG 165), consisting of "Basic Personnel Record Work Sheets" for 239 prisoners (representing roughly half of the recovered survivors) from twenty U-boats sunk between 6 August 1943 and 20 August 1944;

(3) data from "Basic Personnel Records" forms for 158 survivors (roughly two-thirds of the total survivors) from seven additional U-boats sunk or scuttled between 12 June 1943 and 20 August 1944, located among office files of Op-16-Z (RG 38); and

(4) data taken from detailed Army interrogations of ninety-nine crewmen recovered from five U-boats sunk between 9 May and 15 November 1942, also located among G-2 Division records (RG 165).28

The sample thus totals 619 crewmen from thirty-four submarines, representing more than 50 percent of all U-boat prisoners in American

28. Army interrogations of U-boat crewmen are divided between two subseries, the "201" files (for all German prisoners regardless of service branch, dating from about the beginning of 1943), and "U-boats and other naval vessels" (arranged by vessel and most useful only for the 1942 period).

29. For a description of these categories, see Franke, Handbuch, 265-70.

30. See the excellent summary in Jak P. Mallmann-Showell, U-boats Under the Swastika, 2d ed. (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 16-22.

31. See H. W. Koch, The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development, 1922-1945 (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 101-13.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

custody and more than 10 percent of all U-boat survivors taken prisoner during the war. The thirty-three U-boats represent 18 percent of the average monthly strength of front-line submarines during this period.29 Captured officers, including the ranks of ensign (Leutnant zur See) and midshipman (Fahnrich zur See), are excluded from the sample. Roughly one-third of the sample had attained petty officer (i.e., noncommissioned officer) rank at the time of capture, generally associated with specialized functions. The remainder constituted ordinary seamen, though these too had already entered specific technical categories that determined their advancement.30

Allied fortunes in the war at sea necessarily bias our sample toward prevailing conditions in the period June 1943-August 1944, when the Battle of the Atlantic had already been decided but while U-boat operational strength remained close to its peak level.31 The personnel data, morever, reflect characteristics and policies in place for up to two years prior to the time of capture. Thus, the U-boat crewmen most conspic- uously absent from our sample represent submariners of the early war period, who merit separate study in the context of the prewar Kriegs- marine, and of the end of the war, when improvisation ruled in place of policy. Most significantly, the crewmen of 1943-44 should more directly reflect D6nitz's own personnel policies following his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in January 1943.

The data for these prisoners are given below in terms of age, geographic origin, and civilian occupation, background elements most consistently maintained by American intelligence.

Age

This field of data is the most factual and least prone to methodological error or misinterpretation. The ages indicated are those at the time of the U-boat's sinking (excepting U-125 and U-515).

In general, the data support the studies cited earlier regarding older ages of U-boat personnel than previously believed. That nearly 60 percent of the sample was age twenty-one or over refutes Buchheim's view that the majority of submariners in the late war years (presumably 1943-45) were little more than children. A number of sailors probably lied about their ages, but the data confirm that, in terms of personnel policy, eighteen remained the standard minimum age for combat service during the period of our study. This tendency holds at least through the summer of 1944, as 73 percent (forty-eight of sixty-seven) of the sample

30. See.the excellent summary in Jak P. Mallmann Showell, U-boats Under the Swastika, 2d ed. (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 16-22.

31. See H. W. Koch, The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development, 1922-1945 (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 101-13.



Table 1. Ages of Crewmen

Age No. of Crewmen Sample %

17 1 18 17 2.7 19 92 14.9 20 136 22.0 21 97 15.7 22 74 12.0 23 50 8.1 24 46 7.4 25 22 3.6 26 19 3.1 27 15 2.4 28 11 1.8 29 18 2.9 30+ 21 3.4

TOTAL 619 100.0

members captured between June and August 1944 fell into the twenty to twenty-four age category. A separate examination of crewmen killed or captured from January to May 1945 might yet, however, bear out an excessive reliance on youth for the last months of the war.

The evidence rather compels a shift of focus to the twenty to twenty- four age group, who constitute almost two-thirds of our sample. Regardless of geography or occupation, the men born between 1920 and 1924 shared the unique experience of attaining maturity in National Socialist Germany. Although all would have been thoroughly exposed to Nazi propaganda as teenagers, their relative indoctrination would have varied: the compulsory entry (after 1936) of the youngest into the Hitler Youth would have occurred when the oldest had already entered vocational training.32 All would have entered, or been about to enter, their chosen vocations when war broke out. The attitudes of this generation perhaps

32. Taken from: Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Navy Department, Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Navy, to the Secretary of the Navy Concerning Statistics of Diseases and Injuries in the U.S. Navyfor the Calendar Year 1945, 16. The lack of additional data for enlisted men detailed to active duty vs. those relegated to training and support activities indicates the need for further study.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

deserve much closer study, particularly in view of their applicability throughout the German armed forces.

It is also instructive to compare the ages of the sample against those of all U.S. Navy enlisted men in 1945:33

Table 2

Ages % U-boat Sample % U.S. Navy

18-19 17.8 24.9 20-24 65.2 41.0 25-29 13.8 17.3 30-34 2.9 9.6 35 + 0.3 7.2

The U.S. Navy thus contained proportionately younger enlisted men than did Donitz's crews; conversely, German submariners were more tightly clustered around the twenty to twenty-four age group and less representative of a broad range of life experiences.

Geographic Distribution

This field of data, unfortunately, suffers from several limitations. A methodological hindrance concerns the variable definition of "hometown." Except for U-125's and U-515's crew lists and the detailed 1942 interrogations, the place of birth is unclear. Prisoner data sheets provided separate entries for "date and country of birth" and "permanent residence." In some cases, prisoners furnished their birthplace in the first entry, but most simply entered "Germany." For these, the only geographic location available is that of their permanent residence, obviously not always synonomous with place of birth. The latter is always used when available, but otherwise the "permanent residence" serves as the individual's "hometown."

In addition, many place names provided cannot now be identified. They are too small to appear on an atlas, or share a name with other locales without further means of identification, or-in the case of eastern provinces subsequently ceded to Poland and the U.S.S.R.-the names have been changed and cannot be traced. Consequently, data could only be verified for 534 (86 percent) of our sample. This should

33. Two prewar atlases were consulted for this study: Stielers Hand-Atlas, 10th ed. (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1939), and Herders Welt- und Wirtschaftsatlas (Frei- burg/Br.: Herder und Co. GmbH, 1932).



be fairly evenly distributed throughout the sample and should not affect regional representation.34

The group drew its members from all corners of "Greater Germany," including Austria, the Sudetenland, and the West Prussian areas surrendered to Poland in 1919. Their urban origins slightly exceed those of the population at large: where 23.2 percent of all Germans lived in cities of 250,000 or more inhabitants in 1939, 25.3 percent of our sample claimed the same cities as home. No correlation exists, however, between city size and representation among crewmen:

Table 3 Population No. in

City (100,OOOs)35 Sample

Berlin 43.3 14 Vienna 19.3 1 Hamburg 17.1 24 Munich 8.3 4 Cologne 7.7 7 Leipzig 7.1 11

That the port metropolis of Hamburg contributed so many men is not surprising. More unexpected are the areas of greatest concentration, the industrial regions of the Ruhr and central Germany. Both regions were densely populated and heavily industrialized, yet each retained a distinct identity. The largely Catholic Ruhr, and more generally the entire area of the Prussian provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia, constituted the preserve of German big business, the giant iron, steel, coal, and chemical corporations that have dominated German industry in this century. The Ruhr's great factory cities of Essen, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, and Wuppertal alone contributed 70 members of our sample. Protestant Saxony and Thuringia, by contrast, featured numerous smaller manufacturers in more diverse industries, but lacked the financial resources and political clout of the cartels to the west. This region, the rough quadrilateral defined by the Elbe, the Erzgebirge, the Thuringian Forest, and the Harz Mountains, including

34. Data for May 1939 in Statistisches Reichsamt, Statistisches Jahrbuchfur das Deutsche Reich 1939/40 (Berlin, 1940), 17-21.

35. On the economic differences between the Ruhr and Saxony-Thuringia, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), xviii, 192-96. The character of the Saxony-Thuringia region is detailed in the study by the Office of Strategic Services' Research and Analysis Branch, R&A No. 1757, "Central Industrial Region of Germany," 4 August 1944, Records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), RG 226, NA.


TIMOTIIY P. MULLIGAN

the cities of Magdeburg, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Dresden, provided 109 sample members. Combined, the two regions accounted for nearly 30 percent of the men later captured.36

This disproportionate representation at least partly reflects the heavy density of population in those areas.37 When the sample is analyzed solely on the basis of proportional representation, a distinctly northern bias emerges. A breakdown of our sample per 250,000 inhabitants of selected states and provinces reads almost as a road map from north to south; for the Ruhr, it also emphasizes the contrasting significance of large cities and districts outside of the urban centers (see Table 4, below).

The geographic concentration in central and northern Germany thus reinforces the cited British findings regarding noncommissioned and enlisted personnel. But without further information, it is impossible to determine whether these regional differences index general interest in the U-boat service (the majority of crewmen, as already noted, volunteered for duty), biases in Kriegsmarine personnel policy, or some combination of the two in selecting applicants. The unusually limited

36. In 1939 the number of inhabitants per square kilometer in the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and the Rhine were 257.7 and 312.6, respectively, while Land Sachsen held 348.9; for Bavaria, by contrast, the number was 105.6 (Statis- tisches Jahrbuch, 7).

37. See, for example, the interrogations of Helmut Krosse ("U 162") and Walter Godde ("U 616") among the Records of the G-2 Division (MIS-Y Branch), RG 165, NA.

Table 4: Geographic Distribution'

Population No. in Per 250,000 Area (millions) Sample inhabitants

Bremen 0.45 7 3.89 Hamburg 1.71 24 3.50 Mecklenburg 0.90 12 3.33 Oldenburg 0.58 6 2.60 East Prussia 2.19 22 2.52 Schleswig-Holstein 1.59 15 2.36 Pomerania 2.39 21 2.19 Hanover 3.48 18 1.29 Brandenburg 3.01 11 0.91 Berlin 4.34 14 0.81

TOTAL, North Germany 20.64 150 1.82



Rhineland: Ruhr cities2 4.18 48 2.87 Westphalia 5.21 51 2.45 Saxony/Thuringia3 11.61 109 2.35 Silesia 4.87 34 1.75 Hesse4 4.14 26 1.57 Rhineland (rest) 3.80 15 0.99 Sudetenland 2.94 8 0.68

TOTAL, Central Germany 36.75 291 1.98

Saar/Pfalz 1.89 11 1.45 Baden/Wurttemburg 5.40 26 1.20 Bavaria 7.17 32 1.12 Austria 6.97 11 0.39

TOTAL, South Germany 21.43 80 0.93

1. Population data (as of May 1939) taken from the Statistisches Jahrbuchfur das Deutsche Reich 1939/40. Additional home areas identified include Danzig (for 6 sample members), Poland or West Prussia (5), the Netherlands (2), and the Soviet Union (1).

2. I.e., Regierungsbezirk Dusseldorf of the Prussian Rheinprovinz. 3. Including the States of Saxony, Thuringia, Brunswick, Anhalt, and the Prussian

province of Saxony. 4. Including the State of Hesse and the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.

representation of Berliners, for example, suggests that more than chance was involved. Much more research is necessary to address this question, which again could be expanded to all branches of the Wehrmacht.

Civilian Occupations

Our final category concerns prewar civilian occupations of our sample. As we have seen, two-thirds of 619 crewmen fell into the twenty to twenty-four age group: i.e., men who had entered their vocations, at least as apprentices. Moreover, the greatest numbers hailed from the Ruhr and Saxony, industrial areas where coal, iron, and steel production predominated. Granted that the prewar Kriegsmarine actively sought "craftsmen of all types, above all from the metal industries," can any correlations be established?

Again, a methodological flaw must first be noted. Though U.S. cryptanalysts consistently broke sophisticated German naval cyphers after late 1942, American interrogation officers nevertheless encountered difficulties with routine German occupational terminology. While entries


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

Table 5. Main Civilian Occupations of Sample'

Percent of Number in Percent of Occupation Work Force Sample Sample

Agriculture 28.5 20 3.2

Commerce/Banking 11.7 32 5.2

Administration & Services2 6.8 17 2.7

Industry: Basic Materials3 5.6 22 3.6

Industry: Construction4 3.6 29 4.7

Industry: Metalworking5 9.5 346 55.9

Other Industries6 9.1 82 13.2

Transportation7 5.4 38 6.1

All others8 19.8 33 5.3

1. Data follow the employment categories and job classifications defined by the German Statistisches Reichsamt in their survey of the German labor force as of 31 May 1939, a total of 39,414,600 individuals. Sources: Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf- Dieter Muller, and Hans Umbreit, Organisation und Mobilisierung des Deutschen Machtbereichs, Bd. 5/1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, comp. Militirgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (5 vols. to date; Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988), tables on 81 OA; Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich, 1939/40 (Berlin: Statistisches Reichsamt, 1940); and United States Strategic Bombing Survey, "The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy" (October 1945), 210.

2. For U-boat sample, this includes 1 dentist, 1 druggist, 4 barbers, and 11 university students.

3. For U-boat sample, includes 12 miners and 10 factory workers (not further identified).

4. For U-boat sample, includes 8 masons, 10 laborers, 3 contractors/consultants, and 8 painters/paperhangers.

5. Includes: 129 mechanics and locksmiths (including Schlosser), 24 specialist mechanics (e.g., auto mechanics), 37 machinists, 39 electricians, 30 lathe-operators, 19 machine toolmakers, 24 blacksmiths and metalsmiths, 14 plumbers, 10 shipyard workers, 6 iron- and metalworkers, and 14 others (stonecutters, riveters, molders, steel technicians).

6. Includes: 24 carpenters, joiners and other woodworkers, 30 bakers, 12 butchers, 6 cooks, 3 confectioners, 2 brewers, 2 weavers, 2 shoemakers, and 1 textile designer.

7. For U-boat sample, includes 27 merchant marine sailors, 5 Reichsbahn (state railway) employees, 3 truck drivers, 2 radio operators, and 1 streetcar conductor.

8. Includes: 7 draftsmen, 4 artisans, 3 career navy men, 2 waiters, 2 typesetters, and 5 miscellaneous occupations. Ten men in the sample did not indicate employment.



under "civilian profession" on prisoner data sheets sometimes appear in German, they are usually translated-as will be seen-with varying degrees of success.

The methodological problem concerns the definition of the term "mechanic." The German term Schlosser is commonly translated as "locksmith" or "mechanic," but more commonly defines nonspecialized metalworkers, particularly those in the entry levels of their careers. A Mechaniker by contrast connotes formal training as a mechanic. For eighteen sample members, U.S. interrogators entered the term Schlosser (including Bau- and Maschinenschlosser) under occupation; more than a dozen others were identified as "locksmiths," even with qualifying descriptions of their work in construction or in welding circuitry.38 It must be assumed that the majority of the sixty-nine "mechanics" in our sample represent Schlosser, and the remainder join the eleven identified Mechaniker.

With a staggering 56 percent reliance on the metalworking industries for recruits, the German Navy's targeting of this group obviously provided the foundation for manning the U-boats. This percentage also matches the general breakdown of engineering personnel to seamen in a typical U-boat crew, as already noted. Yet the correlation between geographic origin and civilian occupation remains imprecise: of the 109 sample members from the central industrial area, for example, only 67 held previous occupations in the metal industries.

The disparity in metalworkers, and the absence of any cross-section representation of German vocations, reflect the delicate juggling act performed by the German war economy in balancing labor needs against military manpower requirements. From the time of their regis- tration for military service, German men were classified according to background skills, training, and occupational indispensability for the economy: upon mobilization, the Wehrmacht called up enough individuals to fill the ranks but deferred skilled workers in key industries. The disparity between the conscription of different vocational groups can be seen in the extreme examples of barbers, who surrendered 66 percent of their number to military service (though only four to our sample), and skilled miners, only 9 percent of whom saw combat. Agriculture also received a generous exemption during the first half of the war, until Germany's deteriorating situation and an increased reliance

38. See the postwar manuscripts by Generalmajor Hellmuth Reinhardt et al., "Personnel and Administration Project #2b (Part III)" (Historical Division, U.S. Army Europe, 1949), Foreign Military Studies (FMS) Mss. No. P-008, 23-31, and ibid., "Personnel and Administration Project #2b (Part II)" (Historical Division, U.S. Army Europe, 1949), FMS Mss. No. P-012, 137-53. Both studies are located among the collection of Foreign Military Studies, Records of U.S. Army Commands, RG 338, NA.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

on foreign labor and prisoners of war brought over half this category into military service.39

Also noteworthy is the contrast between Army and Navy recruitment. The Wehrmacht continued to rely upon regional organization for its units, so that Saxon metalworkers, farmers, and tradesmen fought together as a Saxon formation.40 By drawing upon specific professions from all regions, the Kriegsmarine established itself as truly national in character.

For metalworkers, the 1933 vocational census (apparently the last taken before the war) reveals how specialized these skills were in relation to the overall economy. The occupations involved in the extraction and working of metals numbered roughly 2,650,000, with another 116,000 classified as "machinists." Together, they accounted for less than 8.5 percent of Germany's 1933 labor force. Over the next six years the metalworking industries experienced rapid growth, and by war's outbreak employed approximately 3,748,500 workers (roughly 9.5 percent of the labor force).4l With allowance for machinists, roughly 10 percent of the 1939 labor force provided nearly 50 percent of the U-boat crews.

Even this figure, however, is somewhat misleading in that most of our sample's metalworkers represented entry-level workers, rather than such specialists as watchmakers, molders, and founders. A focus upon only the occupations that may be designated as "mechanics" or "machinists" reveals 1,411,000 such workers in the 1933 census. Conceding the same rates of increase noted for the 1939 data (41.45 percent), less than two million workers-or 5 percent of the total labor force- furnished nearly 30 percent of the submariners sampled.

Nor were the U-boats the only service making demands upon metalworkers. The Army preferred mechanics, craftsmen, and lathe operators to man and maintain the armored and mechanized formations, the mainstay of the Wehrmacht's fighting power.41 Their colleagues who remained at home constituted a different elite: insufficient in numbers to meet all the demands of German armament industries, skilled metalworkers received extensive draft exemptions to continue their critical tasks. By 31 May 1942, 29 percent of all metalworkers had been called to the colors, while 43.2 percent were exempted as essential to the war

39. See Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Perform- ance, 1939-1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 45, 75.

40. See the invaluable data in Kroener, "Die personellen Ressourcen," in Kroener et al., Organisation und Mobilisierung, especially the tables on 810a. Additional data provided by Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1939/40, 34, and Gerhard Bry, Wages in Germany 1871-1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960), 24-29. Another reason for the growth in number of metalworkers is discussed below.

41. Reinhardt et al., "Personnel," FMS Mss. No. P-012, 95-100.



effort. Only the transportation sector, with its operation of the crucial railways, enjoyed a higher exemption rate among the major economic groups.42 Whether manning U-boats or tanks, or shaping the tools of war, German metalworkers fully bore their share, and more, of the war effort.

The significance of metalworkers among U-boat crews raises some intriguing questions regarding the place of metalworkers within the Third Reich's social structure and their attitudes toward the regime. As reflected in voting patterns, Nazi Party membership, wage rates, and business trends, German metalworkers neither exhibited consistent patterns of behavior nor experienced uniform economic conditions; this is hardly surprising, as a metalworker might operate his own business or work in a factory.43 Granted the ages of the metalworkers in our sample, it is more appropriate to consider the widespread interest evinced in a national apprenticeship program initiated in 1936 by the regime for both economic and ideological purposes. Applied to all industrial fields but with special emphasis on metalworking, the program produced a tremendous growth in vocational training: employment in the metal industries increased by over 150 percent between 1933 and 1937, by which time a quarter of all workers in the field were apprentices. So great was the interest in this area that by the beginning of the war Nazi authorities attempted (unsuccessfully) to curtail the number of metalworking apprentices. Beyond material contributions, the vocational training program served as a vehicle of social mobility for its beneficiaries and an index of their rising aspirations.44

The attitudes of specific groups provide indications for further investi- gation. Granted the significance of the twenty to twenty-four age group,

42. Kroener, "Personelle Ressourcen," Deutsche Reich Bd. 5/1, 810-17; Timothy W. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich: Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft, 2d ed. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978), 220-23.

43. See, for example, the discussions in the following works: Michael H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 6-7, 76, 85-87, 119-21; Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 107-10, 151-59, 185-88, 211-15, 253-57, 274-76; David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1966), 71n, 136-39; and Bry, Wages, 110-11, 249-51.

44. See John Gillingham, "The 'Deproletarianization' of German Society: Voca- tional Training in the Third Reich," Journal of Social History 19 (1986): 423-32; also, Schoenbaum, Social Revolution, 96-100. For a general discussion of recent research in German social mobility, see Hartmut Kaelble, "Soziale Mobilitat in Deutschland, 1900-1960," in Hartmut Kaelble et al., Probleme der Modernisierung in Deutschland: Sozialhistorische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978), 235-327.


TIMOTHY P. MULLIGAN

adolescent exposure to Nazi propaganda and ideology may have contributed to high volunteer rates for hazardous duty. The occupations of U-boat crewmen's fathers-an information element not regularly col- lected by American intelligence-might reveal predispositions toward military or naval service, or perceived upward mobility through metalworking vocations. The exact place of background characteristics in selecting personnel over the course of the war adds another dimension of exploration. Finally, the social policies and plans of the National Socialist regime in reordering German society within the framework of a "total war" mobilization of the German population deserve more detailed examination.45

Summary

Our sample is too small, and our focus of inquiry too limited, to attempt far-ranging conclusions as to the nature of U-boat crewmen in World War II. Within these limitations, however, the data indicate specific patterns of characteristics that might facilitate more definitive research.

The evidence indicates that submariners were not principally teenagers, but men more commonly aged twenty to twenty-four years. They were largely native to northern and central Germany, with the greatest numbers originating in the industrial regions of the Ruhr and Saxony, although the strongest proportional representation came from the coastal areas. Finally, a disproportionately large number had previously served civilian vocations in the metalworking industries, in which most had not yet acquired specialized skills prior to their military service.

These shared characteristics suggest a homogeneity of backgrounds and interests that contributed to the cohesion of the U-boat service. If selection to submarine duty and the attendant hazardous combat conditions conferred elite status upon German submariners, this may have rested upon a broader foundation of common social (and often geographical) origins and mutual vocational interests. The severe conditions of U-boat life-the physical confinement and isolation of protracted patrols, the endless tedium of routine interrupted by moments of terror-may have been made more bearable by the facility of "talking shop," of exchanging knowledge and experience for current and future use. The ceaseless maintenance and operation of U-boat engines and

45. For an example of an early study in this areas, see Ludolf Herbst, Der totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft: Die Kriegswirtschaft im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Ideologie, und Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags- Anstalt, 1982).

280 * MILITARY HISTORY


machinery offered the opportunity of learning and experimenting with the best tools their government could furnish.

Thus, a symbiotic relationship developed between the U-boat service and its crewmen. By recruiting so many metalworkers, Donitz gained several advantages: above all, an enhanced facility for submarines to effect repairs and improvise needs at sea and reduce dockyard layovers; greater homogeneity among his crews; and considerable economy in training crewmen on mechanical aspects of their duty. In return, metalworkers received the material benefits of their branch-higher pay, better food, and greater opportunity for advancement-as well as the prestige and publicity accorded a combat elite. This remained an equitable balance through 1942, but thereafter Allied technological supremacy and material superiority negated the efforts and capabilities of individual crews. The prisoners of war considered here were very fortunate, for the great majority of their comrades never returned home. Germany's leadership proved well-served in entrusting the Battle of the Atlantic to metalworkers from Essen and Leipzig. That the reverse cannot be said stands as the U-Boot-Waffe's epitaph.

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