@@garycameron8167 the book was by the "guest" in the movie (leutnant Werner). Also it is a condensed story of 3 patrols he was on as a guest (or war reporter)
If it is German movie then it is whitewashing movie... the best exmple is "Das Boot" when everyone is clueless what they are doing, why and what is the rel goal of sinking ships full of food for people in some other country... "Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying" is full of good examples of real conversations betwen themselfs when they think that no foreigner is listening to them... 20% of Polish citizens did not survive this war... already from the first year the Poles' daily food rations were limited to about 500 kcal, you don't have to be a dietician to guess that the aim was to starve all those forced to such a drastic restriction of food during all those years of war... And that "anti-war" attitude in German movies after the was is so not Germn when you compre it with bio of the worst German soldiers that survived the war and were never punished for most horrible things that they did during war just because they did it to non-Germans... Go read bio of Heinz Reinefarth if you want to learn "the best example"...
I don't really agree. War itself is anti-war. The best movies just show it as close to reality as possible. Like, instead of perfect hair and uniforms, dirty everything, holes, tears, unshaven. Show those rats and water in the trenches. Show the tightness of inside of a tank. Show the long, slow chaotic decent of a disabled B-17 and wonder what those trapped inside were thinking during that 30 seconds to 1 minute of plunge to inevitable death. Show the man next to you going down or gasping the last breath while you're helpless. Thats not really anti-war, thats WAR and it is inherently anti-war. The minute the adrenaline wears off, its mostly fear from then on... The BAD movies are the ones showing always gung-ho heroes ripping through everything. It's pure fiction.
@@Bialy_1 maybe you are the same kind of "Patriot"....no right....no wrong..MY COUNTRY !!! you did not understand the message from that movie (because it could not be what MUST NOT be?!?!?)
I saw "Das Boot" for the first time at a midnight showing, in German with English subtitles. I was with my father, who was a US diesel submarine officer. I was worried that I would fall asleep because of the late start time. Just the opposite, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Afterwards, my father told me just how accurate the movie was, from food stored in every possible space, to all hands running to the forward compartments during crash dives. One of my best memories of my father from my teen years.
When it was shown in the theatre the age limit for this movie on home soil 🇩🇪 was 16. My brother was 12, I was eleven but my father (b.1938) took us in. It was legal back then. So we could watch it first hand. Thanks dad. 🙂
@@xwind1970 I was 11 when I saw it first on German TV (the 6 episode mini series). I convinced my parents to let me stay up late for it, although my father seemed like I didn’t have to convince him really. And he was born in ‘38, too.
this is the short version cause the real one is that with 6 episodes each 45 minutes long cause this was a cooperation of the german first tv station ARD / Das Erste and the movie producer Rohrbach who had made a deal with both, to create the move and the TV mini series which had been released 4 years or 5 years later.
Oh, also whitewashing again! So the it continues. That was no victim as it is suggested. This term definitely doesn't fit! In in World War I it was the opposite of that and an even a much worse perpetrator in the in World War 2. Yes, there were a lot of dead British soldiers due to the completely unnecessary First World War caused by this nation. In addition, this nation also criminally fought the First World War. This nation attacked the civilians in the cities in this war. The civilians were murdered by bombers and airships. Civilians were also murdered with artillery in the towns. In addition to these many civilian murders, this nation's submarines also sank many British civilian ships and so killed also civilians. Even the navy of this nation murdered the civilians in the britisch towns by firing from the ships with cannons. Then, as if all that wasn't bad enough, this nation introduced the weapon of mass destruction, poison gas, into its warfare. Oh and don't forget, although the infantry of this nation's army did not massacre any British civilians, but this army did massacre civilians of other nations in the occupied areas. By the way, they also massacred Polish civilians. Which also didn't make this nation particularly likeable.
I am a 55 year old German and served 12 years in the Bundeswehr, now living in the US. This was always my favourite movie. When the movie came out i was a teenager and loved playing silent service on the computer. Then i found out my very old neighbour served in a German submarine in ww2. I of course went over and had many questions. I told him how fascinating that must have been and how exciting. He set me straight quick and told me it was an horror he can never forget. I think this movie showed that really good.
I served 20 yrs in the US Navy Submarine Service, on 4 different subs. Das Boot was by far the crew's favorite submarine movie on all 4 of the boats I served on.
@@brentaughe7539 I would LOVE to see a multi-part mini series that just takes all of 'Run Silent, Run Deep' in the novelized form and runs with it. The Gable/Lancaster movie is just way too short and doesn't do it justice. An in-depth movie about the USS Tang's patrols would be excellent as well.
Interesting to note is that all the actors also spoke fluent English and as it was so noisy due to the cameras, the sound was ad libbed afterwards in German and English, by the same actors so really the sound tracks are both correct, though it sounds far more realistic and atmospheric in German.
I am french. 42 yrs old. Sorry for my english. But i saw my grand father cried only two times. The first one was when we saw together Saving Private Ryan ( Spielberg). The introduction scene was too hard for him. The second one was this movie. Das boot. Young i had to learn german speaking. Why? Because my generation had to be friend with our old ennemy, the germany. I was an erasmus student (exchange), i have many friends: germans, polish, spanish, english and swedish... Europe is no only a politic or economic system... It is a will of peace. Some movies as das boot or the german movie Stalindgrad show to all that every soldier in this war, allies or ennemies, was often just a young guy, afraid, which didn't desserve all these horrors. It was a terrible waste.
hallo bandbguitar, die anfangsszene von privat ryan ist, dass ich bis heute vom sessel aufstehe und sage NEIN ! diese jungs hatten keine wahl.. ich bin deutscher ü50, in den 80er jahren wurden wir angespuckt auf klassenfahrt in Frankreich und den Niederlanden.. ich konnte und kann das nachvollziehen... . .ich hatte mit ww2 nix zu tun! schönen gruss nach frankreich..🙂
I'm German, 48 years old and I've got friends from all over Europe. I agree, Europe is SO much more than an economic Union! Besides all differences and everything that doesn't work out well within EU, there is more that unites us, so let's keep that spirit of unity and friendship alive!
@@mrvideostreamer995 I agree with you! You should have spat on their Napoleonic grandfathers and then everyone should split on the English grandfathers from earlier. In the end everyone would be spiting on everyone for every invasion and occupation!. But right now lets hate the Russians........ or Israel i cant remember.
Bonjour mon amie. i am a 52 spaniard. I have traveled trough Europe. I was in Germany 8 times and 9 in France. Is nice to see young european people wants peace here. Vive la France 😊 salutations de Majorque😊
@bandbguitar1791 wir wissen gar nicht, wie gut wir es haben, dass wir (in der EU) über 75 Jahre Frieden haben. We do not know, how blessed we are (in the EU) to live in peace for 75 years.
She probably doesn't even realize that she has said two very important and great sentences. At 45:23 she says "He deserves all the things" At 49:36 she says" After all that they come home just to die" This is war in its true form. No propaganda, no superiority, no escape, just death, misery and shock. Say NO to war!
@@knofi7052 Saying no to war also means to stop aggression. Hitler could have been stopped early in a consequent and collective action. Instead, every country though they could profit from appeasement and maybe they would not be attacked. And soon, it was a world war. Putin is attacking the post-war architecture of peace by attacking other countries to gain territory. We must not let fascism happen again.
French women who dated German occupiers were considered collaborators. They would be publicly shamed by having their heads shaved, etc. That’s why the secret French fiancé was a big problem.
@@Dragonman1OOOya sure, war is hell what men can do to the enemy it is brutal however . It was not german or french soldiers that raped and killed or publicly brutalized...It was the baker and the ladies from the cafe, and the guy that runs the cinema projector.... French Civilians... Doing this shit to women of their own nation. It wasn't part of the war. Even the women and girls forced to work in brothels... trying to survive... Were treated as treasonous. It was disgusting. There are videos of some of what they did, but not the worst of what happened to french women at the end of the war.
@@One_foot_in_the_Grave isn't this the absolute simplistic way of telling history... My grandmother saw her father and two brothers executed when the girl next door ratted them out for being in the Belgian resistance. All because she w as partying with her German lover. You deserve all that's coming for you when you're trading the life of your neighbors so you can have a good time partying during the weekend. Not to mention those neighbors were rescuing Jewish families and getting allied soldiers back to England.
You're used to seeing Hollywood films where the good guys always win. War isn't like that. People go through incredible struggles to stay alive and then die anyway.
It's completely random who lives and dies in a war. Why The Fates pass one man by and take the one next to him is random. There is no fairness in it. Yes, some groups of soldiers and Marines excel in warfare while others don't. I am very anti-Nazi, but they often inflicted 20 X as many enemy KIA and armor destroyed. The main reason they lost was they took on most of the world and that Hitler assumed control of waging the war and he was completely incompetent. Germany had lots of very competent generals who could have prosecuted the war much better. Hitler gave priority to shipping Jewish people to death camps than to the munitions and food direct needed by his troops. That also helped defeat him.
I had a film professor in college who was German, and who had relatives who worked on this film. They built a full-sized U-Boat replica, fully enclosed (no cutaway walls) and filmed with hand-held cameras to accurately capture the claustrophobic feeling of life aboard a WWII submarine.
They also made the cast eat the same food the U-Boat crew would have had and didn't let them go out in daylight, so they got thinner and paler as the mission went on.
The set was also on gimbals to shake, rattle, and roll. They also shot is in sequence and forbid the crew from going outdoors so they would get pale. They also contacted some of the original manufacturers for instrumentation and equipment and many supplied their goods at no charge saying something like "we were proud of our workmanship and want it well represented". Simply an amazing production.
As a submariner, Das Boot is so good. The boredom of the patrol, the excitement of the hunt, the terror of being hunted, the joy of fresh food... The writing is top notch and the performance of the actors was amazing.
All the actors were trained in how to function on a U-boat and had to stay out of the sun to get the right pale skin for the movie. They litterally lived the life of the men they were supposed to portray. This is why the movie seemed so real.
Disgusting! This propaganda movie has nothing to do with reality! The German submarine sailors and especially the captains were heroes to the German Nazi propaganda. They were heroes of Nazi propaganda and they were very happy to be! In this German propaganda movie the opposite is shown and these Nazi soldiers are turned in this movie into heroes who were actually opponents of the German Nazi government. Really evil, mendacious propaganda! If one look closely. One can't see a swastika under the eagles on their caps. If one wonders why. A Swastika on the cap does not suit to a German heroes. There are no swastikas on the caps. Because if swastikas were constantly to be seen in the close-ups, that would disturb the propaganda effect. Because this is a propaganda movie. It is supposed to show that the German submarine sailors were not Nazis. That should then be transferred to the entire German nation. Contrary to historical truth. The historical truth was that the overwhelming majority of the submarine sailors were supporters of the German Nazi government, like since 1936 at the latest was the overwhelming majority of Germans too! But exactly the opposite is suggested in this mendacious propaganda movie. The Nazi submarine sailors and officers played a special role in German propaganda. They were the heroes of the entire nation and they enjoyed the appreciation of the entire Nazi nation. There were especially many honors for them also receptions. They were courted like movie stars. All Germans loved them as heroes! In this movie they are actually also honored. There is also a reception in honor of the officer on a cruise ship. But our German heroes in this mendacious movie are of course only disgusted by the pomp. Propaganda that has nothing to do with reality.
@@GreatPolishWingedHussars You have a point, the political views were deliberately sugarcoated. I believe that late in the war, many Germans were very disilusioned and fought on because of a misplaced loyalty or sense of duty. Also, in a sub or any militayry unit, I think you get to the point where you fight for your survival and for your fellow soldiers without thinking about anything else. I agree with you that it is important to remember that the Wehrmacht fought for an evil government, and that the majority of Germans did support or at least not oppose that government. It terrifies me to think what I might have done if I were born before the war. Let's hope we can do better in our time against european nationalism and dictators trying to impose their will on others.
@@GreatPolishWingedHussars perhaps I should have specified the realism I am referring to is with regards to actual life and war on a submarine. I agree that most Germans, including those in their submarine force, were supportive of the Nazi regime. I agree that during the war, uboot sailors were of tremendous propaganda value and there were numerous propaganda films from during the war featuring them. I disagree, however, with your contention that Das Boot is intended to be pro-Nazi propaganda. The reason there are no swastikas on the German uniforms is that after the war Germany outlawed Nazi symbols. Germany hasn't hidden from their ugly past though, they discuss and teach about WW2 and the holocaust in school, with the intent to demonstrate how awful it was and to hopefully prevent anything like it from happening again. I feel that is the intent of Das Boot. It shows war as horrible and terrifying. It shows how the terrible strain can psychologically break even seasoned veterans. Both of the great escapes are followed by tragedies. The first time they escape depth charging, they come back to the surface so they can commit a war crime and machine gun the sailors in the life boats trying to escape the ship they torpedoed. After their narrow escape with death when they fail to make it through the Straits of Gibraltar, during their celebratory return to home port... Most of the crew and the boat itself are killed in an air raid through nothing more than bad luck. That doesn't strike me as very effective Nazi propaganda. And I also have a different reading of the negative talk about the politicians back home and the scene with the surface sailors. It's a pretty universal thing that almost anyone in the military sees; the people on the front lines think the people calling the shots are idiots. Maybe because they can't see the whole picture, maybe because it sucks being the pawn sent to die, maybe because the politicians and generals (admirals) really don't understand what conditions are actually like... Doesn't matter why, the fact is it's a pretty common feeling across all militaries, especially those on the losing side. And the scene with the surface sailors and the fancy dinner? I don't think the sub people are acting the way they are because of political differences. I think it's mostly a combination of trauma response, bitterness/contempt of these people with pressed uniforms and gourmet dinners while they've been unable to bathe and have been eating canned food for weeks, and anger that they're being sent on a suicide mission and they won't even let them leave behind the reporter and the old chief who is about to retire.
@@zauberlichneo Swastikas are not generally banned in Germany. They could have been used in the movie, if they would have intended to show historical accurate facts. And a movie can be historical accurate and fictional at the same time.
No winners - that was true for us in Central Europe. But not because "thats how war is" or any other such western "gems of wisdom", but because Western Allies, especially that dilettante FDR had botched the peace and thrown us under the bus, from inhuman German occupation to inhuman russian occupation.
@@CzechMirco The US needed the Sovietunion as the war was not one when they promised Stalin eastern/parts of central europe. The fate of a small country like Czechoslavakia was really uninmportant at the time , just chess pieces. They tried to survive (in their mind). As a German I say, Nazi Germany never had a realistic chance to win the war or to win a peace (especially because of that racial superiority nonsense) . FDR did not botch the peace, at the time actually winning the war was more important than what happened to a few small countries. Its different persepective if you live in those countries (I actually grew up in East Germany - so it was kind of the same). The area I am from was traded to the russians for a piece of Berlin. And do not forget that FDR was already dead at the time the Potsdam Treaty was finalized.
@@kavalor6488 Nope, it is exactly as cynical and nonsensual rationalization as when the revisionist british historians now say that Chamberlain was a mastermind who by signing the Munich treaty "bought time" for rearming the UK (and the same is implied for France). Except that there is not a shred of evidence of him having such a plan and of course Germany used the bought time better in rearming. And saying that USA neeeded USSR so much that they were right to promise them everything is an equal nonsense, becasue by that USA created its biggest enemy and actually gave him enough resources to try and almost swallow up the whole world. Not to mention how the US propaganda flip-flopped on USSR throughout the 30s to 50s (and then later in 60s again to a certain degree) with such a vehemence that it again helped only the russians. Potzdam was already only codifying the situation agreed upon in Teheran and Yalta where Churchill specifically warned FDR against russian imperialism but FDR confidently claimed that "he can handle Uncle Joe". Americans always botch peace and always get hoodwinked by enemies that they are even unable to recognize as enemies at times.
@@CzechMirco Oh I agree with you , but that is from todays perspective. And i never said it was right to promise that, just that it was logical from FDR's perspective - different things, but maybe I was not clear enough. I guess things just look different if you are in a position to decide in an actual war. And neither FDR nor Chamberlain were masterminds , and lets face it, America up until that time was so selfcentered, that they were incompetents in foreigh politics, most of the time. Just saying that from the american perspective back then , Czecholovakia and the other eastern europan states were unimportant to winning the war. And yes I know Churchill thought different about that, but Churchill had his own warts, and was dependent of the US as they kept GB Britain afloat economically during the war. FDR was in the area of foreign policy no Woodrow Wilson, but even Wilson could not push his policy at home after World War I. But yeah victors right history and FDR in foreign policy is way overrated. Its a difficult, complex topic though.
About that moment when they didn't rescue the people from the burning torpedoed cargo ship: The German submarines were under orders not to, after something called "Laconia Incident". Which was hell of an incident. A German U-Boat, U-156, had torpedoed a freighter and took the people on her deck and their lifeboats on tow. So many were wounded, the captain decided to cover the U-Boat with a red cross, broadcast his location and intention of saving human lives over achieving war goals and started to tow the survivors to safety, on surface. The U-Boat, clearly marked with Red Cross and towing lifeboats, was spotted by an American B-24 Liberator bomber. The bomber radio'ed for instructions and was told by US Air Force command to attack the U-Boat. They did, attacking with bombs and machine guns, killing multiple people on the U-Boat's deck. The captain tried in vain to signal that his intention was only to get these people to safety, but he was forced to crash dive in order to prevent the submarine from getting destroyed. These actions completely changed the German Navy's attitude towards saving Allied seamen, marine, navy, or otherwise, leading to this scene in the movie and multiple like in real life. The B-24 Liberator crew were never prosecuted for war crimes and received medals for bravery.
I recommend reading the book, the movie doesn't have a scene where they shoot at the lifeboats with survivors. Germans already in Poland (1939) started a war without any rules, without any mercy for civilians. "Laconia Incident" was their heritage of total war, without rules, without mercy.
@@cezarygrad4018 The Poles started the atrocities in the first days. The first massacre on civilians had been by the Polish in Bromberg. An German city occupied by Poland after WW1. They killed a few thousand Germans especially there like the Hutu in Ruanda. When the city was liberated the German Army has an extra portion of anger towards the Polish
@@Freigeist2008 I have never seen a bigger load of nonsense. These Russian trolls are poorly trained. You are exposed, your case officer will not be pleased. Siberia, welcome!
@@cezarygrad4018 its always easy to go after the 'bad guys' but you are prone to repeating the errors that lead to dehumanization and other crimes. Allied forces: french, american, italian (after 43), british and others did mass-rapes, -shootings, -executions of PoWs / Civilians in many different situations, times and locations. (russians were of course much worse). there is a very fat big list of warcrimes committed by allied forces... and it arguably did not even end yet. Kriegsmarine was the least political force and they did try to hold up those rules as long as possible. You can´t say german soldiers in another country did xy and thats why we are allowed to bomb civilians into dust or shoot soldiers that surrendered because they are inherently bad people. (in the case above they bombed their own allied people btw) this is classical revisionist talking points. you have to see and describe ALL crimes or you will repeat history. are we allowed to bomb whole iraq because they are inherently all bad brown terrorist people? should we drop atomic bombs on cities because we 'guess' they wouldn´t surrender soon? thats illogical. you can´t answer warcrimes with warcrimes. especially if they aren´t even remotely connected.
They couldn't outrun them underwater. U-Boats were considered submersible boats. They ran faster 'up top' on diesel power (16 knots, 18mph) rather than underwater on batteries. Destroyers of the time could do 30+ knots (35mph), where a Type VIIc at best speed, could only do about 7 knots (9mph) underwater, and couldn't maneuver worth a damn. So for obvious reasons, you couldn't get away on the surface, were outgunned by anything, so you had to dive, dive deep and try to sneak away. One famous interview of a u-boat survivor said of the depth charging, "It all amounted to being a rat caught by a cat, and it was sheer luck that you got away if they found you." I'm glad you watched it. Without a doubt, the best submarine movie ever made. One of the best war films I ever watched. And honestly? The movie HAD to end that way.
A sub was very manoverable, they often outsmarted the hunters, because a sub basically could turn on a spot. that was their ONLY advantage. Later it got worse, because the allied had Squid and before Hedgehog... so basically they could throw in the front some "missles" who only exploded on contact. So they knew, if something detonated, the sub was toast. With this the killing ratio got up.
@@steffenjonda8283 The point with Hedgehog was that the early ASDIC sonars couldn't "look" downwards below a certain angle, so as the destroyer made a depth charge run, it lost the contact just before it passed over it. U-boat captains learned to wait for that loss-of-contact and then make a last-minute course change which caused the depth charges to miss. The ahead-throwing mortar weapons like Hedgehog and Squid got around that by throwing the bombs ahead of the ship so that they could fire while they still had the ASDIC contact.
Greetings from the Netherlands. The hardest part I feel, is that they don't rescue the people from the ships they sunk. But to be honest, they did rescue them at the start of the war. It stopped when a U-boat got sunk while trying to rescue men from a ship they sunk of the coast of Africa. The allies started destroying the U-boats because they were at their most vunerable at that time. As a result Donitz ordered his U-boat crews not to rescue people from sinking ships anymore. It's the allies who made this happen.
The pilots who carried out the attack on the U-boat carrying the survivors of the Laconia were awarded medals for bravery... and at the Nuremburg trials the allies tried to use the Laconia Order as evidence against Dönitz... that backfired against them
My Dad was a Mountie guarding a prisoner of war camp in Alberta...they were treated well and a lot decided to stay in Canada when the war ended. Sad you would think that about the allies.
@@d.k8746wow. If nazis would just have been nice none of this would of happened. The German people killed so many people and the allies are to blame. Get real
This is a timeless masterpiece. There‘s no heroism in war. Only casualties. Only suffering. Hopelessness. Men dying in vain. This movie depicted all the horrors of war. The madness. The pointlessness. This one is a real treat. You will not soon forget the claustrophobia, the sounds. The ice running through your veins. Sudden flashes of remembrance. Nightmares. This is more than just a movie.
Once the Allies broke the U-boat codes, tracking and killing them became child's play and they were sunk by the score. German sailors assigned to serve on them called their instructions "orders to report directly to Heaven."
@@charlize1253 you do know that breaking the enigma codes required constantly retaking the code books and machines themselves, right? Because one change of the settings of the three discs would create a new code. So no, it wasn't child's play afterwards. The guys with Alan Turning were geniuses working overtime on it. Their work was among the most important in the whole war. Btw: this is coming from a German who is very happy that you guys beat us back then. I don't want to show how high the German shepherd dog jumps with my right hand constantly. Not to mention all the other horrors...
As an officer in the RN, we study the battle of the Atlantic and all of the factors it took to win - weapons, technology, industrial effort, planning and intelligence. No one factor decided it and the battle ebbed and flowed for both sides. Once the allies have all the factors sorted, (around late 1943) then it becomes a losing battle for Germany. We are made to watch this movie at Dartmouth and it still haunts me - a stunning piece of work.
@@ChalkyRN That's cool, that one of my favorite movies has become a teaching material in the RN! :) Do you usually watch the director's cut? And, the dubbed version, or the subtitled one?
Regarding your questions; "wouldnt the ships have moved by then if torpedoes take so long to reach the target" There is alot of math calculations made when launching torpedoes, like the speed of the target and its distance to the uboat, all of that is calculated before firing so that if the calculations are correct, the torpedoes will reach the point of where the target is going to be and will be a hit. "why cant they just leave when the destroyers start attacking" Simplest answer is, because the engines will make alot of noise, alerting the destroyers to your exact location, uboats undewater are very slow, the destroyers will always be faster than the uboats so there is nowhere for them to run. The best way is to stay as silent as possible therefore being invisible to the sensors. "why do they want them to go to the mediterrenean." There are German and Italian forces in North Africa fighting British forces so alot of supply shipping has to go back and forth between southern europe and north africa.
The reason that "pulling up" was futile is due to water hammer. Too much water from flooding creates an overwhelming forward and downward force as all of that water cumulatively sloshes forward. As someone who served in the engine room on a nuclear submarine, it was one of the more terrifying situations that I ever learned about. At least you can fight a fire or a reactor coolant spill, but once water hammer occurs, all you can do is ride that pig to the bottom.
I’ll mention active sonar pinging and depth charges too.. For Cassie and anyone who wants to know.. Sound moves very efficiently in water, so much like radar in the air, active sonar pinging can be used to get a bearing and depth.. And the depth charges dropped from the destroyer can be set to explode at a predetermined depth.. Passive sonar detection is where the listening comes in.. And whispering..
Even more importantly a submarine has a maximum speed of around 20kts surfaced and 10kts submerged, but running at flank speed submerged would exhaust their battery power in about 1-2 hours, where running at a more stately speed of 2-5Kts they may last for over 24 hours, but the destroyer will happily run around at 25Kts or more so there is no escape for a sub once the destroyer has it bracketed. Either the destroyer gives up (because their main job is really to keep the sub from pushing attacks so the convoy can escape), runs out of ammo, or kills the sub. Escape was nearly impossible if they had a good bead on you, or if they had multiple destroyers on you and were really persisting to destroy you rather than drive you off. In one scene you see a man chalk marking the number of attacks the lone destroyer has made so they can estimate it will run out of depth charges. Funny side story, the US Navy noticed that Japanese destroyers tended to set their depth charges shallow, so they intentionally sent transmissions between commands saying the opposite, that they were usually too deep. The Japanese intercepted some of those messages and changed tactics setting them even shallower. This gave a little more safety margin to US subs when they were attacked and the IJN pretty much fell for the ploy.
@@larrybremer4930my understanding of the story about the depth charge setting by the Japanese is somewhat grimmer. From Wikipedia under ‘censorship failures of ww2’: In June, 1943 Congressman Andrew Jackson May disclosed that Japanese depth charges were set too shallow-and resulted in the estimated losses of 10 US Submarines and 800 servicemen.
There are a lot of things to consider if you try to understand what is being shown in the film. For example, the water pressure: the deeper depth charges detonate, the less effective they are because of it, which is helpful for the U-Boat. On the other hand if the pressure hull of the submarine is damaged, higher water pressure is more likely to lead to its total destruction. The commander must therefore weigh up very carefully. He is also helped by the fact that depth charges can also damage the destroyer that drops them if it is too close to the explosion. It must therefore maintain a minimum speed when dropping them, but then its sonarmen can no longer hear the sounds of the sub. When the destroyer begins its approach, its captain can only guess in which direction the submarine will evade. That is why Hinrich, the boat's sonar man, is so horrified in the scene when he detects the propeller noises of a second destroyer that can assist the first in searching for them. What makes this film so outstanding is the enormous attention to detail and the dedication of everyone involved in its creation. The scene in which the sailor goes overboard is a great example. Originally it was not in the script at all, but was actually an accident during filming (and afaik the guy actually broke two ribs). However by this point, all the actors had already identified so strongly with their roles that they reacted exactly as real sailors would have done. The result was so convincing that the scene made it into the movie.
I was born in 1962 in London, UK. It probably wasn't until I was 30 or so that I realized the reason people and things were the way they were (odd) was because everyone 20yrs or more older than me had been through the war. They had either been bombed in their homes, or had the telegram home, or had served on one of the services. Anyone my age from the UK will tell you stories of strange behaviour from adults, very strange and sometimes dangerous behaviour from some adults. At school it was common to have teachers go berserk and attack kids and have nervous breakdowns on the spot. The same was true of people in certain other professions. Although PTSD was never officially recognized, it was very clear that many people were not fit to resume lives in regular society or in the types of jobs they had had before the war. As a result, certain jobs were very much set up to suit a lot of these people. One such job was working for the post office. A mailmans shift typically started at 5am, they did an hour or two in the office and then went out on their deliveries, so that they dropped their first letter around 7:00am. By 11:00am there day was over and they could go home. They had not had to commute during rush hour, they were home before things got busy at lunchtime and were home long before school was let out and the evening rush hour. They could also use their strange shifts to hide from regular family life. They could avoid family visits, neighbourhood events or regular parties by saying they had to be up at 3 or 4am for work. In the '80s I worked at a large rural post office for a couple of years, all of the od guys working there were ex-servicemen and had various degrees of "strange behaviour" that later I would recognize as PTSD. There were guys who had been in many of the services, but the guys who had been in submarines were by far the most fragile. What also set them apart was that if something was dropped or broken that made a loud noise, a number of the ex army, or airforce guys might leap to their feet or jump. The guys from the submarines - and all of them had been through depth-charging - would usually just freeze. They might hold onto the desk they were in front of or a piece of furniture if it was right in front of them. They would go blank and look terrified. - again PTSD was not discussed or acknowledged, but considering the reactions, you'd see that a soldier, sailor, or airman would react to a shock by jumping or ducking or leaving an area quickly. All sensible reactions. But the submariners just froze. Which is probably indicative of their position in the war. If something broke or blew up on your submarine, there was nowhere to run to. There was no escape. You just stood and waited for everything to end
Hello from Germany. I can confirm what you have observed. I was born in 1961 and as a little boy I saw many men who had no legs or only one arm. I was 4 or 5 years old and I didn't know why it was like that. When men survived the war they were mentally broken. Some started to shake and scream in the night. It was only later, when I was 14 or 15, that I realized the horror they had experienced. My grandmother's brother, for example, almost never spoke about the war. Only once did he tell me about some of his experiences and I realized how difficult it was for him. He was scarred for the rest of his life. He said to me shortly before he died that he hoped so much that something like that would never happen again. Unfortunately, his hope was not fulfilled.
@@Toddel1234567 the German people suffered worse than the British. Setting aside questions of responsibility or blame, the bombing of cities like Dresden was horrendous and civilians suffered some pretty horrific behaviour from the allied invasion and occupation. Wikipedia has figures for the number of German women raped by Soviet, American and British troops. Rape being one of the few categories of abuse being officially recorded
@@Toddel1234567 I've never heard that but can easily believe it, what veterans & the civilians during that time went through must have been awful. But that generation I believe was also tough as nails, they were raised in hard times (economically speaking) whereas today's generation is much softer (some say spoiled) and couldn't endure what that generation did.
Amazing observations. My dad and father in law were in WWII not in combat but did witness aerial combat. They were both worried about dying from bombs or accidents. Even though they had it better than others I could tell that those experiences affected them the rest of their lives.
@@harrybirchall3308 Thanks for responding, I left the UK decades ago, and I’m not sure anything has ever really been spoken about there, so my assessment of why things were the way they were is my own unqualified opinion. So it is good to hear that somebody else was able to make the same connections and recognize it for what it was. I have no doubt that the government has a lot of insight into it, but choses not to publish it yet. There is an awful lot of stuff about the war that is never spoken off. They love to paint the “wartime spirit” aspect, but the reality is quite different. In London alone, there were tens of thousands of deserters living, with no income, no ration books etc. they could only live by crime. They weren’t alone in it, but bombed houses were routinely looted as soon as they were hit, even bodies were robbed - some people even joined the firecrews and air raid warden jobs, specifically so that they could commit crime with the cover of the bombing - no lights, and people mostly down in the shelters. Even amongst the death and mayhem, there are theories that a couple of serial killers were operating in the city during the war. Along with the regular citizens damaged with PTSD, you also had more extreme cases. The east end of London became an absolute hotbed of violent crime in the ’60s especially. Gangs like the Krays were violent sociopaths - they had also grown up in the most heavily bombed part of the city and seen some truly terrible things as kids. Some of them talk about how exciting the war was and how it was a great way to make money!
Remember the opening text: Out of 40,000 U-boat sailors that put to sea for Germany, 30,000 of them died. So this crew only had a 1-in-4 chance of living statistically. Pretty sobering. U-Boot was short for Untersee Boot, or "Undersea Boat" - or, a submarine. "Das Boot" translates simply as "The Boat." It was a very uneven fight by this point in the war with the development of ASDIC (early Sonar - the equivalent of underwater radar which used echoing sound waves instead of reflected radio waves.) The problem for a U-Boat was that they typically could do about 20mph when running their diesel engines while surfaced. When they submerged, they had to rely on electric motors and batteries (since Diesels needed fresh air to run and electric did not.) But electric motors had a maximum underwater speed of only about 9mph. So if you did a dive to escape, you were pretty much confined to the area where you went down and could only crawl away at very low speeds. On the surface, you could catch or outrun a cargo ship, which typically traveled at about 12-15mph. But a destroyer? Those could typically do 35-40mph! So they are zipping all around you and you're just stuck where you are. If you are on the surface, you are a big, fat easy target for their guns. If you dive, you are slow and blind and can only wait it out and hope to survive. Your only real tricks were to be super-quiet, to sneak away as best you can, or to hide at a depth where they don't expect you to be so when they set the depth for their explosives to detonate that you won't be there when they go off. AND... There were two types of typical underwater explosives. The first was a small grenade type thing that could be launched in large numbers in a pattern to penetrate the water and sink downwards. They had contact fuses, so if they contacted your hull they would punch a hole in it, you boat floods and you die. The second type (which was most of what they used in the movie) was a canister of explosives set to be rolled off the destroyer and set to go off at a set depth. (Which is why a destroyer directly overhead was VERY bad news!) Later on they had systems to launch these guys off the sides of the ship to make a wider dispersal to not have to roll them off the back. These were big explosives, and they created great pressure underwater (and also underwater voids at the point of the blast.) You saw how delicate the balance of pressure is on the hull to keep the boat from cracking open... A depth charge can tip that balance and crack the sub open with anything that detonates relatively close - it doesn't have to be a direct hit. Crack the sub and it floods. If the sub is cracked so that water comes in faster than it can be plugged up and pumped out, you die. And then, of course, there are the air attacks with planes coming in at multiple hundreds of miles per hour, armed with guns, bombs, depth charges, or rockets. All bad. So that was the life (and death) of submariners of all nations in WWII - but the Germans had the worst of it, and suffered the greatest losses. And, most often when they died at sea, the were just listed as "missing." No bodies, no funerals, no closure. They just simply never came home. War is ugly. Submarine war is REALLY ugly. I hope that helps to explain some of what you saw in the movie.
In 1941 the chance to return was pretty good. In the first years, the U-Boot was more or less invisible at night. They attacked on the surface like torpedo boats. It was even possible to go into the convoy on the surface. The destroyers where inexperienced and the allied didn't even know how deep the U-boots could dive. 200m was done a lot and the depth charges didn't could go that deep in the beginning. The brave commanders got a lot of kills but most of them got killed in 1941 when radar came into play more often. The events in this movie are showing exactly the time when more of the destroyers and also the planes got radar. Suddenly they where detectable at night and needed to dive more often. Later in the war, the hunters got more and more advantages and in 1944 it was almost impossible to survive as soon as the boat got detected. They withdraw from the Atlantic and went to less populated areas in the hope to bind a lot of forces.
You're forgetting the other side of the story Britain alone lost over 30,000 merchant seamen and 2400 ships to the U Boats and surface raiders and many more would have been lost but for the efforts of the Royal Navy and other branches of the armed services.
According to records,at their most successful period they were sinking over 3 million tons of allied shipping a MONTH,thats equivalent to roughly 40 Queen Marys a month!
The ending is one reason why this is one of the best, no THE BEST war movies there is. It doesn't leave you with an illusion of heroism and bravery. It just shows how "reality reigns... with cruelty and grandeur."
The final scene was just put in to make it not look like war glorification. The real people actually fared much better on that patrol. The commander lived until 96 years, and Buchheim (Leutnant Werner) also lived until a couple of years ago. U96 was sunk later with a different commander.
I wouldn't call it the best war film. Sure it's one of the top 5, but there are other very good films that are on the same level: I recommend, for example, the film: "Yamato - The Last Battle"
Disgusting to feel sorry for Nazi soldiers. Because the historical truth was that the overwhelming majority of the submarine sailors were supporters of the German Nazi government, like since 1936 at the latest was the overwhelming majority of Germans too!
The haunting ending to this film has never left me in decades. I can still remember sitting there with my dad and my girlfriend. Jaw just hanging open. They went though all that, made it home, and got sunk beside the pier. Talk about the futility of war. None of us spoke for awhile until my dad said that was the most perfect ending to a war fil he'd ever seen
The ending is also pretty much the only thing that didn't happen. I kind of like that they went with the poetic license to invent it since it strikes so hard, but on the other hand, I don't like it since it _does_ add a fictitious element to an otherwise overally historic movie (all the other stuff happened, just not during one single trip).
But it was a lie. U96 survived the war. But they wanted this, otherwise the end would have glorified it to much (because honestly, these brave guys survived the impossible, gave proof to "superior german mechanics" and overall showed that german soldiers are not always or only nazi criminals).
@@fars8229 That's the first time I've heard or read that interpretation, but I could easily have missed something. But even assuming that it is - it *_still_* adds something that didn't actually happen, not to any of the subs that Buchheim was ever on.
The scenes where the Chief laughs in exhaustion and joy when the motors start and the next one where the Captain yells in defiance, "not yet, kameraden, not yet!" atop the U-boat gets to me every time. Just enough slow moments of character development to set up and amplify the incredible intensity that followed. A great anti-war movie but without beating the audience over the head with the message. The facial expressions of the actors during the pings was as realistically scary as anything I've seen in any horror movie. A perfect film.
When the LI ( *L* eitender *I* ngenieur) falls into this manic laughter, he says a sentence that is unfortunately never translated. "Na wer sagt denn, das Marmelade keine Kraft gibt?!" ("Well, who says jam doesn't give you strength?!")
The Chief of U-96, in real life, died in october 2023 at 107 years, his name was Friedrich Grade. The Captain, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock became Captain of the only nuclear powered German ship, the cargo ship „Otto Hahn“ after the war. He died in 1986.
@@minastaros Exactly, it was decommissioned in January 1945 and sunk during an allied air raid in February 1945 in Wilhelmshaven. The Movie (or the serie) differs also from the book in many small things. And the book differs from the reality in many things. I had the possibility to read the Kriegstagebuch where it’s stored. But you can also find excerpts on the internet.
Hands down, believable and realistic as it gets. You can feel the claustrophobic atmosphere in almost every scene. I can’t praise this incredible masterpiece enough.
Agreed. I used to work as a cabby, often worked at night, and once got called to pick up a group of people at Bavaria Film, where this movie had been made. It was a number of the actors you saw in this movie - they were leaving an anniversary party with the crew. They had a few fascinating stories to tell. One of the interesting things that had happened on the set is that during lunch breaks, the actors unwittingly sorted themselves into tables according to the ranks they held in their roles. No one had forced them to do that. But apparently, they had internalized things so much that they even stayed in their role while not acting.
My granduncle served on a German submarine during WWII. As far as we know, he did not survive the war. I am a mariner as well and have watched the movie several times. It is very authentic. Now, I am watching the lady's reactions and listening to her comments. Petersen’s ending of the movie shows the senselessness of any war.
war is not senseless industrialized war is senseless. war cleanses the gene pool when done correctly; otherwise your society decays into false pride and rainbow chasing.
There is a lot of the political landscape shown if you know the history, how the older soldiers are very aware that they fight a loosing battle and put on the fake smiles around the political officers or secret service. That jazz is played at there parties is borderline too, or listening to enemy radio broadcast. There is a lot of umderlying political commentary, but hidden in double meaning as it would have been then.
Trivia: The "man overboard" scene wasn't scripted. Actor Jan Fedder lost his grip, was thrown into the railing by the water and _actually_ broke a rib! The other actors were so in character they instinctively reacted with "Mann über Bord!"
Yes, to deny the guilt of this nation for the Second World War and to blame other nations for this war suits very well to the whitewash. But this whitewashing doesn't work because only this nation was responsible for the Second World War.
Yes, to deny the guilt of them for the Second World War and to blame other nations for this war suits very well to the whitewash. But this whitewashing doesn't work because only this nation was responsible for the Second World War.
They wanted to conquer these Slavic territories in order to carry out the insane genocidal plan which they called "Master Plan for the East! ("Generalplan Ost"). According to this insane genocidal plan they wanted to exterminate a large part of the Slavic population in the occupied Slavic territories and enslave a small part. In addition, all Jews and Gypsies in these areas were to be murdered.
I first saw this as episodes on the BBC and was hooked instantly. At the time I didn't know it was a film. I have never watched anything like it. Nothing gets close. When some things happen I feel like I am there with the cast. No spoilers but the ending had me in tears yelling "You bastards!!!" and I'm a Brit yelling at my own country for doing what they did. This film is the best. I never get bored of it.
Als deutscher kann ich nur sagen , das es mir unter die Haut ging , was du geschrieben hast . Es sind viele Sachen während der Weltkriege passiert , die in Worte nicht zu fassen sind . Jede Nation hat Grausamkeiten vollbracht , weil der Mensch an sich grausam sein kann , unabhängig von der Nation . Deswegen bin ich froh , nicht dabei gewesen zu sein , obwohl auch ich meinen Wehrdienst geleistet habe . Aber ich denke , wenn man so was erlebt hat , ist man gebrandmarkt und verdammt für den Rest seines lebens ! Damit meine ich immer wieder kerende Albträume durch grausame Erlebnisse des Krieges . Danke für deinen Kommentar , der mich sehr beeindruckt hat .
I"m German and a patient told me about his submarine time 25 years ago. Their "Boot" was hit by a torpedo and they came up to wave the white flag. My patient was the first one to get out, but his friend behind him panicked and so he gave him the first place on the ledder. He was shot in the head. My patient never got over that.
I still VIVIDLY remember seeing this for the first time in the theater with my college friends. None of us were the same afterwards. Harrowing, gut-wrenching, an absolute masterpiece to this day. In my top 5 all-time movies.
We need more people to watch these movies, because right now we have a really big problem. Late german chancellor Schmidt often warned: nowadays politicians who have never experienced the big pile of shit that is war themselves are allowed to decide about war and peace. (You have to know he normally didn't use a language as graphic as that.)
Germans really know how to make war movies from their side during WWII. Das Boot is one of the best war movies ever made. I highly recommend you to watch Der Untergand or Downfall about the last days of Hitler. It is simply mindblowing and the actor, who played Hitler, should have gotten an Oscar for his performance.
From my perspective as a German this has a very simple reason: We were the bad guys. There is no doubt i.e. that German soldiers performed acts of heroism and bravery during the war, but when you are the bad guys you can't just make a patriotic hero story out of that. You have to show war, especially WWII, in a more realistic way and put it into context or you run the risk of glorifying or at least relativize the horibble atrocities that were committed in the context of the war. Imo that makes for better war movies than most American ones, since you can't just wave a flag and have the heros save the day. German war movies are more like "Platoon", I guess. No real heros, just blood and suffering.
@@christianb.1028 germans werent the bad guys, they were simply the badder once at the time, just because youre not the worst in a war doesnt make you a "good guy"
I wish I could agree with you. Unfortunately, however, there are "winners" and by that I don't mean "Nation A" or "Nation B" - I mean the business drivers who profited in the background ON BOTH SIDES in the development TOWARD the war, DURING the conflict and of course AFTER! Take a closer look at the shareholders of the defense companies and international banks and their "owners" - with regard to, for example, the "First and Second World Wars"! Incidentally, the "NSDAP" was MASSIVELY supported by the east coast of the "U.S.A." during the 1920s. promoted! ! ! To portray “the people” as the “culprit” in today’s media outlet is not only inconsistent, but COMPLETELY WRONG! Both of my male ancestors died in the "Second World War" and there was nothing malicious about them - they just "goodly" followed the "call to defend the fatherland" .... supported the "call" that certain "politicians" had issued from a highly efficient media block, the latest acoustic and film technology at the time (just look at the younger generations when the "www" or "smartphone" were introduced - how easy it was to become enthusiastic about this new technology !), the young people, no matter which side, followed the call of "defense", yes even the "Germans" (!!!), because THAT is exactly what they were made to believe - by the "media". But WHO did it help to gain more “power” at the end of those conflicts? AND: have these “power” people GIVEN UP this newly acquired “power” FOR THE FAVOR of all humanity/divided it FAIRLY among the people? No ? No. NO ! So what is the conclusion from this? That these conflicts were ARTIFICALLY planned, pre-organized, pre-financed and finally implemented by willing henchmen! THAT is what is in reality - UNFORTUNATELY! all the best
@@kontrar-der-unwahrheit2032 Dude. Please keep your only slightly disguised antisemitism to yourself. The Germans followed a lunatic into a war of conquest and we killed 6 million Jews in an industrialy organized genocide the world had never seen before and no-one thought possible. Period. And I say "we", because this is part of my history, too. It doesn't matter who profited or what kind of conspiracy theory you believe in. The Germans were the baddies. No revisionist theory of the responsibility of the "globalists" and "bankers" will change that.
submarines in this era ran on batteries while they were underwater and had a maximum speed of about 5 knots. when their batteries ran out, they had to surface to recharge. while on the surface they had access to air so they can run their diesel engines. batteries were not like today and they ran out quite quickly if you didn't use them sparingly. another danger was that if salt water came into contact with the battery acid it would form chlorine gas and poison the crew
Submarines at this time ran on the surface the majority of the time and only submerged when they were under attack or making an attack. The German type XXI that entered service near the end of the war was the first operational submarine that could travel faster underwater than on the surface. It also had snorkel tubes so it could take in air while still submerged although only at a shallow depth. It was the most advanced submarine of WW2.
I am from Germany and my Grandfather served on a german submarine. His sub was sunken by the Navy in 1941. He and only a few survided and spent 7 Years as a POW in Cannada. He said that this Movie is the most realistic film about the war and submarines. With one exeption: The Lamps hanging from seeling in that supmarine...
@hansimuller7494 It so happens that my father's uncle was also a soldier during World War II, and on top of that, he was a sailor and an officer of the Polish Navy. More: as a captain, from September 17, 1939, he commanded the submarine ORP "Orzeł". Unfortunately, he did not survive the war because his ship was mistakenly sunk by an Allied combat unit (by a Dutch submarine). He went down with the entire crew. As you say well, my friend: it's good that those times are long gone and I hope they never come back, and we can enjoy life, the joy of every peaceful day, and if we met anywhere, we would go to the pub with you and I would drink a beer with you . Greetings from Poland from me, to you and your loved ones.
It all happened according to Nazi ideology according to which this nation was the masterrace and had the right to enslave and exterminate all “non-Aryan“ nations. After genocidal ethnic cleansing in the conquered territories the now"free" territories should be populated by them. In total they murdered 6 million in Poland. In all, 40 millions Slavs were murdered by the Nazi nation under this plan. Millions of Jews and Gypsies were also murdered. That was this nation's real reasons for war.
@@47Ginter and the crazy thing about the Story of my Grandfather is, he missed to get on Board for the Sup he supposed to have in the first place because he sleept to long. And he was very scared to get to a military cort for that. An captian managed to put hin on a differend Sub. But that original Sup that he was to server on in the first place was sunken by the navy too, and not a Single soul from that Sub ever came back. Thats what i call destiney or the hand of God . I Would Not be here if he was on that first ship
I’m from germany. In my opinion this is one of THE BEST German productions we have ever got here. This movie was so incredible & soooo realistic. The ending broke me. Great reaction! 🫶🏻🤍
@@JM-gj7de yes! At the beginning of this year I watched it for the first time on Netflix. When I finished it I just looked at my tv and didn’t move for like 10 minutes. I was under Schock or something idk? 😭 after the 10 minutes I realized that it was over and I started crying the whole night. In the next day I rewatched it because it was sooooo good.
Cassie, congratulations! "Das Boot" is 'Advanced Film Appreciation' class for sure. And with subtitles! It's a long, hard watch, but so worth it. You're definitely right in the U-boat with them. This movie is one of the best examples of the struggle and futility of war.
Fun fact : The guy playing Werner is Herbert Grönemeyer a well known singer and Songwriter in germany, even wrote the official fifa world championship song in 06 that took place in germany. Kind of our hometown hero here in Bochum City. Nice guy.
A very long movie about German submarines in WWII is about as far from Cassie's bailiwick as it gets. Bless her for indulging us and I hope she gets something out of it.
Re: Das Boot - the only version to watch is the original 6 hour miniseries as opposed to any movie length cuts. Trust me the full 6 hour version is way, way better.
My father served in the Royal Canadian Navy from October 1939 to August 1945. He served in RCN corvettes, small 1000 ton anti-submarine ships that escorted allied convoys across the North Atlantic. Part of his job was to drop depth charges on attacking German U-boats. 28000 U-boat crewmen were lost in the war, 30000 allied merchant mariners died. My father never expressed any desire to watch this movie.
Bless your father for his service., and I can fully understand his feeling to this movie. I have no love of it myself, I too refuse to watch it. it glorifies an enemy who was merciless to the unarmed crews of the merchant fleets they sunk. which was criminal and nothing to be glorified...
@@cjdavis2684 Thats a blatant lie. Uboat crews are well documented to have treated the crews of sunk ships well and with quite a bit of mercy and well within the requirements of the geneva convention
"Das Boot" was a starting point for a whole actors generation. Many of these young actors became famous, at least tin Germany. The actor Jürgen Prochnow who was the Captain, already was a known actor in Germany but after "Das Boot"" he was able to start a career in Hollywood. The backdrop of the U96 Boat can still be visited at the Bavaria Film Studios in Munich, Germany.
Not only Jürgen Prochnow(who was fameous already - Lynch's Dune) but also Herbert Grönemeyer. I really do admire what Germans achieved with this movie. The realism, the honesty, the message. The best war movie ever made.
When this was first shown in France and the opening stats of how many Germans died in u-boats was shown, the people cheered. No one was cheering at the end of the movie.
Over 90% of all German U-Boats (784 of 863) which gone on a mission were destroyed and nearly 80% of their crewmen died in world war 2. This movie is the best cinematic memorial for them
For three years I've followed you and your channel Cassie. This film is so hard hitting its true horror. We as brits,Americans and Canadiens only normally see films from the Allies point of view. What we learn here is that war was hell for everyone, there aren't any winners. Kudos Cassie watching this and for bringing this masterpiece to everyone's attention
As a US Navy vet whose grandfather served in WWII (Pacific, not Atlantic, Theater), I agree. Though I didn't serve on submarines (I was a destroyer sailor operating the sonar or asdic in the film), the filmmakers nailed life on the boat; they captured the boredom, monotony, and apathy interspersed with moments of horror. As a kid, I watched the "Victory at Sea" series, and it bothered me when the u-boats would sink allied ships. I used to cheer for the Allies and against the Axis powers in WWII films. This movie was so powerful that I empathized with the German crew; though I couldn't root for their cause, I wanted them to make it. We had all the same personalities on board. We even had a guy like Frentzen, whose farts could CLEAR a compartment! Anyway, there will never be another Das Boot; this movie is in a class by itself.
Nah, the problem is, nearly all movies from the "allied" sides gloss over the dirt, the shit, the lies, the war crimes and overblow the numbers of enemies. You know, the final engagement of SPR? All these fancy nazi ss elite troops with tigers and shit? In reality 5 times the numbers of us soldiers fought a weak assault by some untrained germans, who had suffered staggering casulties before, who had 2, repeat 2 of these monsters de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMR_33 No half track vehicles, no Marders, no Stugs. Nothing. That is the main point. If you would show reality, the whole BS heros status would vanish. Vastly superior forces in superior equipment faced hungry, shell shocked untrained crews and hollywood made a "hero mission against all odds" out of it. Audy Murphy had some good encounter in that he fought bravely. That was ONE historical real event. But all the Hollywood BS? Just fantasy with zero contact with reality. Do i really need to throw in "U-571"? Compare it to "Das Boot"
For me this is the greatest war movie ever made.....the shear claustrophobia this generates is amazing, the the way it was filmed was perfect. Eff being on a submarine.
47:54 the lack of sunlight for the entire patrol caused them to turn pale. The crazy thing is none of that is makeup. Wolfgang Peterson was all about accuracy. The cast were not allowed to go outside for the entire filming just so their natural skin tans would eventually fade away like what really happened on actual u-boat patrols.
It's a story from the German perspective, but mainly from the human perspective and more than 40 years later, it's still the best Submarine film. Also, it's one of the greatest war films ever made. Dark, ruthless and realistic.
Didn’t the author of the book dislike this movie? (Doesn’t change the fact that this is, as you say, one of the greatest - if not THE greatest - war films ever.)
@@Daniel-kp9fb Well first of all, being German and even being in the military did not make one a card carrying Nazi. Of all the services the Kriegsmarine was probably the least political and in this movie many of the crew openly mock Hitler. They were men fighting for their country. This movie glorifies their bravery in the face of adversity, not their politics or war itself. There were honorable men on both sides and that is what this film shows you. The Kriegsmarine was woefully under resourced, but they were adamant professionals and how well they actually did in the war was a credit to Admiral Doenitz tactics and organizational skills running the Kriegsmarine. They accomplished a lot with very little.
"Why don't they just zoom away" - Submarines are very slow when submerged. Destroyers are extremely fast. Even if the submarine surfaced to try and run, destroyers are MUCH faster and would just tear the sub to pieces with cannon fire. As there is no running away from them, all the submariners could do was try to hide deep, keep quiet and somehow dodge the depth charges. It was a nerve-racking game of cat and mouse.
Hi, I'm from Germany! You did very well to choose this movie! The movie is based on a book that the real picture taking guy wrote, based on his real expieriences as a war journalist during WW II on a german submarine. It took him more than 25 years of psychological processing before he was able to look at his diaries and writings again and to start writing the book. And I like to say something about that intense scene where the machine guy has the panic attack. They took him out of sight of the others immediately because panic can spread so easily. Especially when they would realizet that it is the machine guy panicking. The one guy who knows best about the state of the boat and the danger they are facing. And if that happens, they would be done. Later the machine guy comes to apologise to the captain. Asking him if he will be reported to court-martial. If so, he for sure would be executed by hanging for desertation. But the captain won't report him. Movies like this are so, so important to show the horrors of war and weapons. We all have to be aware of it, and try everything we can against any violence. At least building knowledge. Wish you all a peaceful time!
As a german I must say that I appreciate that you watched this masterpiece with the original language. I think, your result at the end of this movie is perfect. War is horrible for every side. Long ago, I was able to visit the original inside filming modell and it is indeed very very claustrophobic in there. Fun fact at the end especially for you, Cassie ( the Rocky fan) : Jürgen Prochnow who played the captain was Silvester Stallones voice for the first two Rocky movies here in germany. Greetings
@@unclefester6501 I have watched the dubbed version, and it is the finest dub I have ever seen. Most of the actors dubbed their own voices, which made it feel a great deal more genuine, and maybe it also helps that German is linguistically fairly similar to English, so the lip movements are not too far off from each other. I'm glad Cassie watched the original version, but I can easily recommend the dubbed version for anyone that has trouble reading subtitles.
I had a conversation with an older woman one afternoon at an airshow. She had been looking intently at the B-17 bomber I was 'babysitting' as the plane's commander. She was a child at the time in Germany when we were bombing, and had never seen one of these things that were trying to kill her before, as they were too high up. She had a lot of quiet questions while telling me how they suffered on the ground. I explained to her the hell the men in the planes were also suffering through, and that bit of information let her know she was not the only one. Within 20 minutes I crossed a gentleman about the same age, but from Belgum. As a child he remembered watching a sky full of these planes all heading towards Germany, and was jumping with excitement knowing the destination of all those bombs. Two different ends of the same stick. It was a lot to contemplate and absorb.
There are many sides to each die cast in war. The horrors of it all, the waste, the suffering as survivors... Those who have been through it know the reasons war should only ever be fought as a last resort. Unfortunately those who suffer their experiences are never the ones talking situations into war.
Similarly, when I was a child I went to church with two old women, both of them were born in 1931, both of them were bombing victims, both of them lost their childhood home and family members to aerial bombardment and wartime military service, both of them told me stories about being woken up in the early morning by the sounds of friendly night bombers returning from missions over enemy territory and filled with graphic descriptions of engine fires, gaping holes in the wings and fuselages with mangled bodies hanging out of them... One was named Ruth and was from Dover, England and the other was named Irma and was from Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
My grandma suffered through the bombings. She still has a grudge for the British, because they bombed at night but not for the Americans, because they bombed at day and you had a chance of running away. And I'm not talking about political opinions here. She hates the actual Nazis with a passion, because they led Germany into that accursed war. But subconsciously, if you are a kid and get bombed, you start to hate it, obviously. So yeah, I know someone who lived through it. This isn't any sort of excuse for the bastards who started it or some sort of "the real victims were Germans", but war sucks all around. If anything, it just increases the death toll of this terrible war and should be a lesson for all the mad dictators who want to invade their neighbours for personal gain. In the end, everyone suffers. Shouldn't be a surprise that she loves donating to Ukraine and its defenders.
It`s on repeat since humans discovered the rock and fire. some are happy some are dead. Nothing changed for a million years. It`s out nature. Whoever thinks otherwise has no knowlege of human history or human character. We are predators ...we were and always will be .
Now that you are taking German speaking movies to your selection, have you considered watching Downfall from 2004? It's an unglorified story about the rise and (down)fall of WWII era Germany and its leader. You have watched a lot of war movies from the allied point of view, and it might be interesting to see the war from the German perspective, what led to it, and how it all fell down in the end.
Ich schreibe Dir auf Deutsch, da ich in Englisch nicht gut schreibe. Mein Großvater war ein "grauer Wolf" und ist auf See geblieben.. einer von den 40000.. Es berührt mich sehr wie du auf den Film reagiert hast.. zeigtest Mitgefühl für deutsche U - Boot Soldaten! Das hat mich sehr berührt! Die meisten der Männer wollten keinen Krieg, jedoch hatte Ihnen das Regime keine Wahl gelassen. Nicht alle Deutschen waren schlecht.. Bis heute verfolgt uns die Schuld aus diesem Krieg und es ist auch für mich Balsam gerade von euch zu sehen das Du für unsere Soldaten auch Mitgefühl zeigst. Ich danke Dir dafür!
Der Bruder meiner Großmutter ist 1944 in der Normandie gefallen. Er war bei der Kriegsmarine und liegt dort auf einem der unzähligen Soldatenfriedhöfe. Dieser Film verdeutlicht auf jeden Fall, wie heftig und schwierig das Leben in der Sardinenbüchse war. Der Film ist auf jeden Fall sehenswert und ist sehr realistisch gehalten. Nie wieder Krieg, egal für welche Ideologie.
@@klaus-peterbayr5606 Na ja, ignorieren Sie die Idioten, die nicht einmal einen vollständigen Satz bilden können, um ihren „Unmut“ auszudrücken. Mein Großvater kämpfte gegen seinen Willen in Indonesien. Und es gibt viele ähnliche Geschichten.
I served on 2 US nuclear powered fast attack subs from 1986 to 1992. The best analogy I can give is it was like living on a a large passenger jet with no rows of seats or windows obviously and jammed full of electronics. That’s the closest thing I’ve experienced in civilian life. Modern subs are much bigger and much more comfortable than WWII subs. You still are somewhat cramped but it’s very bright (except for the control room at periscope depth and berthing). There’s adequate bathrooms and showers (most of the time). The foods pretty good but you do run out of “fresh” food fairly quickly and everything is canned, powdered or frozen from there. Yes, modern subs have refrigeration and freezers. Modern subs dive much deeper and are much faster underwater than their WWII counterparts. Being at sea is very monotonous most of the time, you very much fall into a dull routine and that’s a good thing. I went through a flooding incident and 2 different fires while serving both fortunately handled exceptionally by the crew and that’s the kind of excitement you don’t want on a sub. Loved what I did in the Navy but hated being in the military itself. In hindsight I should have stuck it out for 14 more years and retired but I did get to see a lot of the world so it’s a trade off.
While modern USN nuclear subs are much bigger, Diesel subs used by other countries are much smaller. I visited the INS Gal at the naval musuem in Haifa and it is tiny, It is smaller (420tons) than the type VII (769 tons)
@@the_omg3242I just retired myself after 21 plus years. The amount I make now with my retirement check, I get way more than I did if I stayed in. Glad I served but happy that’s it’s over
I think I would be capable of serving on a modern-day USN sub, but WWII subs get a "hell no" from me. I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but they were just so _uncomfortable._ I toured a museum sub, and it was so incredibly cramped -- every piece of equipment on that thing was ready to bruise you or concuss you. Plus, you were guaranteed to be freezing cold or boiling hot, depending on the deployment. The submariners of the past have got my undying respect. (And those of the present as well, that is one hell of a job.)
Submarine sailors are a class unto themselves. Everyone is consummately trained to know EVERY job on the sub, especially in the case of combat or emergencies if people get injured or sick, so there is no need to waste time by delegating and figuring out who does what. Earning those "Dolphins" is definitely something to be proud of.
One of the reasons the movie feels so claustrophobic is that they built a 1:1 model of the submarine and the actors learned how to move around in it. Even the camera had to make its way through the cramped space of basically a real german U-Boot from the Second World War. There were a lot of bruises while filming. You can visit the set at the Bavaria Filstudios near Munich.
Saw this in the theater when it first came out. In those scenes where the submarine was submerged for a long time and the air was thin, I actually heard the audience, completely immersed in the movie, breathing shallowly with quick short breaths. That's the sign of a great movie: one that takes you out of your life and into another. Enjoyed your reaction.
In the US we don't make real anti-war movies. Our movies glorify military heroism. There's almost always a happy ending. This is one of the rare exceptions. It's what an actual anti-war movies looks like. The Germans, having been on the losing end of the largest war in history, and having struggled to work through their past, are uniquely positioned to make this sort of art. From WW2, we Americans took that military violence is a viable solution to geopolitical problems. The Germans learned the opposite, which to this day has a huge influence on both societies.
I wouldn't say that. "Deer Hunter" or "Casualties of war" aren't really glorifying war. WW 2 was/is a german trauma. Vietnam is American's. I don't know an american film, that glorifies the Vietnam war.
@@quietschbaer You make a good and understandable point. Still, there are examples of such films, like "The Green Berets", but that is admittedly an anomaly. However, I'd still say most US war films, even when connected to the Vietnam conflict, are not anti-war films. They tend to focus on the heroism of our soldiers (We were Heroes) and in almost all, the violence serves as the primary entertainment proposition, in and of itself. That strongly undermines any claim of wanting to be an anti-war film. Many of these US "anti-war" films, would leave an extremely bitter aftertaste if presented as WW2 movies to German audiences. There is a difference. The differences are also made visible in how our societies changed as a result of those failures. Germany became almost a pacifist state. We became the opposite, where every problem looked like a nail for our primary geopolitical hammer (the military). In the US, the primary societal concern was how to prevent or suppress such strong anti-war sentiments from developing again. That conern was a big part of why we got rid of the draft. We also noticed a very strong push to never again criticize returning soldiers. During Vietnam, soldiers were still held responsible for the government policies they fought for. Today, that sentiment is entirely gone. We thank all soldiers for there service, no matter how much we disagree with the political agendas they faught for. These societal shifts are all very much pro-war, not anti-war, and the subjective messaging in our films reflects that. The differences can be subtle. I myself only realized after living outside the US for a couple years.
The "man over board" was a real accident when filming this scene. A saftey belt was not working and the actor Jan Fedder fell into the water. Bernd Tauber broke two rips while saving him from drowing.
I know, what kind of music you like... 😉 Thanks for the comment i didn't know that. I just knew, that Herbert Grönemeyer was so in the movie and in this emotions of the claustrophobic feels during the making on set, that he decided to quit acting in movies and focussed on his career as a musician/singer. Greetz from Hamburg.
Fun fact: The actor in the role of Leutnant Werner, Herbert Grönemeyer, left acting shortly afterwards and concentrated on music. He became the best-selling artist in Germany (later overtaken only by Ed Sheeran) with 11 nº1 studio albums in a row.
The finest submarine film ever made. Tense, exciting, and full of excellent acting and writing all around. The ending is indeed cruel (especially after all that) but it really helps communicate the futility of war, especially from the other side.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm from Germany & I still remember how I felt when watching "Das Boot" the 1st time in the 80s ... The end made me very sad. They survived so many terrible situations together just to die in an simple air attack. But that's what war means. There are no winners, only losers. And all the soldiers - American, British, French, Russian & German - they all want to survive & go home to their families & friends. I think: As long as two different persons like you & me watch this "together" and come to these same feelings & results ... there still is hope for human kind & peace on earth!
Sir, I'm a US Navy veteran whose grandparents were alive during WWII; my grandfather served in the US Navy in the Pacific Theater. I was a sonar operator; I was the guy who would be behind the destroyer's pinging. Anyway, the film had a powerful effect on me. I also empathized with the crew here in the film. Though I couldn't root for their cause, I wanted the crew to make it home. I can recall guys like the film characters; we even had our own counterpart to Frentzen, who could CLEAR a compartment with his nasty, noxious farts! Anyway, the German sailors were just like the American sailors with whom I served. As an American, I want to THANK YOU for your countrymen making this unique and powerful film! It's truly in a class by itself. Hollywood would've ruined it. I don't think that a film like "Das Boot" will ever be made again. I'm glad I own a DVD of the director's cut. What a powerful film...
I guess nobody told them that the Germans did far less damage than the "good Allies". Nobody remembers the firebombing or Caen and other cities of France, because DeGaulle didn't want to surrender France to another occupying force and suffer even more. Nobody is aware of the suffering the people of France went though under that second occupation.
@@xXturbo86Xx What are you rambling about? Bombings were considered neccessary to drive the Germans out. Unless you believe the Germans didn't have to be defeated...
My grand uncles father was an engineer on a German U Boot. He survived but he returned broken by PTSD. He became a very violent man. There are only losers in war.
At 31:00 they are shocked when they realize that there is still crew inside the burning cargo vessel. They thought they were just torpedoing an empty wreck. To their horror the brtish had not evacuated the sinking ships of the convoy eventhough they would have had hours to do that. And they feel awfully sorry for the drowning men because they obviously cannot rescue them in the cramped submarine. Thats why some begin weeping.
Do you have any idea why they would torpedo a burning, derelict ship? It's obviously beyond repair, and it seems like an insane waste of a valuable torpedo.
Thing is, in the historical months before, several U-boats were indeed attempting to rescue shipwrecked sailors, surfaced, launched rafts and gathered the stranded on the wet deck. They raised the red-cross flag, just to fell victim to sorties by RAF fighter-bombers who apparently didn't give two cents of a thought that they were attacking their own side with board cannons. After a few fatal incidences like this, High Command of the submarine forces issued the order which is discussed in the film.
When I was a boy in West Germany, I knew a German named Werner. He had a missing leg he lost serving on a U-boat. He told me stories including seeing Quebec City and Coney Island through a periscope. When his boat was sank he was recovered by the RN and spent the remainder of the war a POW in Saskatchewan. On the other side I had an Uncle who served the RCN until he was badly burned when his ship was sunk by a U-boat. He never recovered. He died in hospital a couple years later.
@@LiveFromLondon2 Never happened? Official photos of Napier, New Zealand taken by a German U-Boat just offshore. And before you sa it there were U-Boats that far down in the Pacific.
@@StuartKoehl There are photos taken by U-boats inside New York harbour so being able to see Coney Island is likely. It wasnt exactly inconspicuose, fully lit the Ferris wheel and rollercoasters could be seen for miles out to sea. The U-boats used to use the coast lights to pick pick out targets and were sometimes close enough to be seen from the beach when they took their shots.
If i am correct The Book Never ending Story was written by Michael Ende I had the First print not so long ago and the intresting part is that the book story line is much bigger then the movie. and a lot better of a story becouse they let so much out it is a crime !!
In 1981 when the movie was released in Germany me and my group of teenage friends careened off to the cinema the daythe movie was released. We all thought we were to see a standard war movie After watching it we all left the cinema in a pretty sombre mood. Some of the girls were crying..
To answer your question at 37:22, it famously happened once. One of the captains of U-505 (one of the last surviving WWII U-boats, now a museum, which you can visit today in Chicago) suffered a total nervous breakdown in the middle of a heavy depth charge attack, and ended himself with his service pistol in front of his officers. In the middle of this, with bombs still bursting around the sub, one of the other officers took command of the boat and guided it to safety. If you're ever in Chicago, definitely go see U-505; it's a fascinating exhibit with an absolutely crazy backstory.
Awesome reaction!!! There was an incident in 1942 or 1943 (cannot remember) in the South Atlantic along the African coast where a German U-boat torpedoed a British passenger liner RMS LACONIA with over 2500+ passengers/crew. The ship did not sink right away. The U-boat commander decided to surface and provide assistance to the ship by deploying life rafts, having the freighter crew placed on the deck of the U-boat, having the ships life boats tied up alongside the U-boat and having some in tow, MARKED the U-boat with red cross flags, and even signaled the nearest the Allied naval base what was going on and to assist in the rescue of the ships survivors (he even radioed his own headquarters as well). Additional German, Italian, and even Vichy French submarines that were in the immediate area arrived to render assistance. Well, the Americans being sort of new to the war, sent out a B-24 Liberator bomber to check out the situation. The bomber arrived on-site and saw a German U-boat SURFACED with all these survivors of the ship on board (the liner eventually sank by that time) and clearly MARKED with non-combatant flags. Well, the American pilot/crew saw an EASY target and decided to strafe/bomb the U-boat and other submarines instead of dropping supplies. The U-boat commander signaled the American aircraft numerous times that he was conducting a humanitary mission, but the American plane kept attacking. The U-boat commander quickly conducted a crash dive (even with the survivors still on the submarines deck) and got out of the area as quickly as that U-boat could go while submerged (some sources even say that a few rafts that were tied to the U-boat and had survivors in them were pulled underwater as well). Some survivors were killed/injured during the air attack. The allied naval base sent ships out to the location of the sinking and conducted rescue missions of what was left of the survivors in the water and also conducted a rather vigorous search for the U-boat and other submarines. The U-boat eventually got away and reported the incident to their headquarters. After that incident reached higher-ups, U-boat commanders were FORBIDDEN to ever again render any type of aid/assistance to any Allied ship (thus the reason for the scene in the movie where the U-boat commander just fired a torpedo to finish off that ship and just watch the ship's crew die or jump into the water - think this movie & book takes place in late 1942 or early 1943). Also, when I was growing up in the 1970s a neighbor of a friend of mine served on a merchant ship. His ship was torpedoed/sunk in the North Atlantic. He and about 10 other crewmembers were able to get into a lifeboat and float around the North Atlantic for something like 45-days or so. Once eventually rescued, this guy was the ONLY survivor in the lifeboat. Have heard stories of this guy waking up terribly screaming and covered in sweat from his ordeals.
It is called "the laconia incident. U-156 Hartenstein sunk the british troop ship HMS Lanconia. In it were had been 1800 italian prisoners, most of them died because their guards did not allow them to leave their cells. In the aftermatch around 1400 People survived en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident It gives a clear picture WHO was the evil in this war at the sea.
The Bomber crew actually reported this back to their Superior Officer who decided that destroying the U-Boat was , despite the civilians, a better choice so there was one less U-Boat to sink ships. Collateral damage.
The movie is set in 1941, well before the Laconia incident. The Laconia incident was exceedingly uncommon (and obviously, never repeated), and there were many factors behind why the german submarine tried to give assistance (that there were a good number of lifeboats to put survivors on being a quite important one, other than a lot of the survivors being italian POWs at a time when Italy was a german ally), that there weren't present in the movie.
@@ramjb A lot of crap. The german submarine soldier did the right thing. They tried to rescue as much people as possible. They fought a war, but had no interest in killing the innocent. Compared to the USN and Royal Navy with their "incidents", slaughtering thousends or hundreds of axis soldiers in a worse situation. Not only had they basically no rescue boats, still the a§§holes machinegunned, fired their cannon on this (US-case) and only the bravery of an italian torpedo boat saved a thousend german soldiers near crete.
@@steffenjonda8283 or the time the british navy sank half of the french navy infront of the suez just because they didnt want Vichy France (legitimate france at that time) to have a fleet despite its starting neutrality
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade died last year (2023) in October at the age of 107. He was actually the chief engineer on the real U-96. (fixed a typos, 2023, not 2022)
and you can see that German soldiers were not all evil Nazis, they were just normal people who were just as afraid and duty-bound as any American soldier
The five hour cut of this film is nothing short of incredible. More character development, a greater sense of isolation and boredom, and MANY plot holes filled. If you can find it, I highly recommend it. But prepare yourself. That 5 hours goes surprisingly fast. EDIT: Other recommended German films: Metropolis, M, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (these first 3 titles are all Fritz Lang pre-war classics), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Downfall, Run Lola Run, and All Quiet on the Western Front (the most recent version is the best version)
@weepingscorpion8739 You were correct. It was shown in 5 one-hour episodes in certain countries in Europe and Australia. The version we got in North America was severely cut into a 2 hour feature film in 1981. We didn't get an extended version until the first DVD release. A few years later, we finally got the full version here in the states
@@Diskoboy1974 Cool. I actually found the 5 hour version on BluRay a while back and immediately ordered it. Unfortunately, some issue with the delivery came up so they cancelled my order and thankfully gave me a full refund. But I was kinda bummed about that. I guess I will try again and see if I can get that release some other way.
Two (fun) facts ...Idk if anyone said it yet, 1. In the beginning, you have drunk Captain Thomsen....actor Otto Sander was actually drunk, while filming that scene. 2. The Bar in the beginning is a real Bar in france. One day, after filming Martin Semmelrogge (actor of the 2nd officer) and Ralf Richter (actor of Frenzen) got high on LSD, put on their Na*i-Uniforms and went into that bar. Before the frensh could beat them up, actor Jan Fedder saved the situation by ripping Semmelrogges uniform
Yes, to deny the guilt of them for the Second World War and to blame other nations for this war suits very well to the whitewash. But this whitewashing doesn't work because only this nation was responsible for the Second World War.
They wanted to conquer these Slavic territories in order to carry out the insane genocidal plan which they called "Master Plan for the East! ("Generalplan Ost"). According to this insane genocidal plan they wanted to exterminate a large part of the Slavic population in the occupied Slavic territories and enslave a small part. In addition, all Jews and Gypsies in these areas were to be murdered.
Here is the interesting fact that I learned from "The Das Boot" film makers after watching the 25th anniversary documentary a couple of years ago. The filming of "Das Boot" was delayed for a few days because the film's main prop, the U-boat, was missing! The German film crew yelled, "where is our U-Boat?!!!" Somebody forgot to tell them that the U-boat was given priority for usage to "some Hollywood production lead by Steven Spielberg". As a reminder, "Das Boot" was released in 1981. 1981 was the same release year as (drum roll🥁) ........"Raiders of the Lost Ark". The U-boat that appeared in the first Indiana Jones movie where it stops the merchant ship carrying Indy and the Ark was the same submarine used in "Das Boot". Crazy! Lol😆
The film is up on the book "Das Boot" written by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, who describes his memories as a war correspondent. That's why Lieutenant Werner survives at the end, because it's him.
There were alot of Submariners and some pilots on the german side of WW2 that had a stong sense of honour. One pilot, Franz Stigler, spared, and even escorted a B17 bomber that had been crippled and was alone over hostile territory. He did this in spite of knowing he would be executed for treason if the german command found out about it. The american pilot was named Charlie Brown, like the cartoon character. Up until 1942, with the Laconia-incident, it was common for the german submariners to assist the survivors of ships they had torpedoed. U-156 was towing three lifeboats with survivors of a ship they had sunk, and they were flying the Red Cross flag to show they WERE helping survivors. In spite of this, an american bomber attacked and sunk her. After that incident, the germans enacted "Unresticted Submarine Warfare" and they were banned from helping the survivors by the german high command. The bombing of U-156 was itself a warcrime, and was alledgedly one of the reasons Admiral Dönitz didn't recieve the death sentence at his trial in Nuremberg for giving the order of unrestricted warfare.
Actually the movie is based on a book written by the reporter. The original captain survived and was an captain of german merchant vessels after the war. He actually captained the first and only merchant ship with nuclear power plant. The sailors actually look that sickly when they return to port because the actors were not allowed outside during filming. Since submariners at that time suffered from lack of sunlight and malnourishment. To emulate this the director forbid the actors to go outside and kept them only inside for the duration of the making of that movie. On a sad note, of the 40.000 U-Boot Sailors, 30.000 stayed at sea. This makes the german U-Boats the second most dangerous job during all of world war two. The only type of troops that had higher death rates were the japanese Kamikaze.
That are German War- Movies. Without any Mercy to the Realism. As a German i might remember you: We lost. There is not much Brightness to show. It was a horrible War, and it had no Happy- End for us. At least not in that War, but in the long Run. If you thing Das Boot was Haunting and Dark, you should fear "Stalingrad (1993)".
When I was very young (1960s), the parents of the family who lived in the home next door had emigrated from Germany as civilians after the war. I remember the wife telling me about having to go out into the fields under the cover of darkness to dig for potatoes since it wasn't safe for to go out during the day as a result of Allied bombing raids. I still remember her story - now nearly 60 years later. Yes. In the long run, it was for the best. Even only 20 years after the war, they were a welcome part of our neighborhood with no malice - even from those who'd been in the U.S. military during the time. The same for our, now, friends who are Japanese- although there was still lingering animus because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Another vote for Stalingrad. The two really show a side of war (pathos/futility/duty) that is largely absent from American centric WWII cinema. Admittedly our Vietnam movies have this in droves.
Once the Allies broke the U-boat codes, tracking and killing them became child's play and they were sunk by the score. German sailors assigned to serve on them called their instructions "orders to report directly to Heaven."
Every single person involved in this film fired on ALL cylinders here. An exciting, poignant, devastating work of cinematic art. I don't know which version you're watching, but every one of them is a masterpiece.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Günter Lamprecht was also in a remarkable German miniseries directed by Ranier Werner Fassbinder from 1980 called Berlin Alexanderplatz. He was a fantastic actor, for sure.
I'm sorry to have to disagree with you, but the version that was shown in cinemas in the 80s is by no means a masterpiece. Far too much was cut back then and the atmosphere that the film created in this theater version was nowhere near what later releases accomplished.
He was in The Mouth of Madness, and Fire Walk With Me as a woodsman with the other black lodge beings above the convenience store. Among other stuff, the Keep, Beverly Hills Cop II, and the Stalone Judge Dredd film. The Lynch Dune was great, even if Dino Di Laurentis' daughter kinda of had it edited it to death.
I’ve also seen him in Beverly Hills Cop II, Judge Dredd and Beerfest, where he did a parody scene of Das Boot where his character is on a submarine and he talks about “having a bad experience in one of these”.
@@ForceMaximus84 He was also in "Wing Commander" , a sci-fi film based on a videogame. There is one scene where Jurgen is in command of a spaceship hiding on an asteroid from enemy starships. It was clearly inspired by Das-Boot, down to the pinging that thge enemy ships make trying to find Jurgens U-Spaceship.
@@stvdagger8074 I saw that in the theater and forgot he was in it. I just remember Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, David Warner and the girl (I forgot her name).
Funfact: Hebert Grönemeyer who plays Lt. Werner is one of the greatest German pop stars of the last 100 years. That guy literally fills stadiums with 100k people. I strongly urge everyone to look up "Bochum live" and take a look on youtube. Also to understand the mentality of the entry scene..U Boot ppl knew they were basically dead..so when they had the chance they went totally bananas
46:18 there was a true story when a u-boat did get stuck in the sand. All the crew had to run from one end of the u-boat to the other constantly to eventually work themselves free.
I would argue... Metropolis 1929, Ghosbusters 1984, Das Boot 1981, 2001, theese are "perfect films" A perfect film doesnt mean free of mistakes, but a lightning strike moment, everything fits. Cast, crew, story, timing. Get all of this right and you get the perfect result.
One of the best war films ever made. Back in the 1990s I was touring a US WW2 sub on a visit to San Francisco. The group behind mine was speaking German. I understand German fairly well and from what I could hear, a man in the group was a German U boat crewman and he was discussing the differences between his boat and the American sub. Churchill said that the thing that he was most worried about during the war was the Uboat threat. It is worth noting that over half of the Japanese warship and merchant fleet that was lost during the war were sunk by the US submarine force in WW2.
*Some technical / historical information for a better viewer experience:* Mission of the German U-Boats was to sink cargo ships heading to England in order to cut them off of necessary supplies. The journey of U-96 starts in France, from the German U-Boat haven La Pallice. The big ass bunker still stands today despite numerous bombings. The U-Boats of all nations during that time were not "real" submarines like the ones we know today. The first real submarine Type XXI which was really fast under water, was invented by Germany and came into service in 1944. Due to technical limitations, the U-Boats were basically normal ships with an additional diving function. They were optimized to be fast on the surface, with a powerful diesel engine. Under water, of course, you can't use the diesel, because it would consume all the air and pollute the air in the boat with its exhaustions. They then operated with an electric engine, powered by batteries. They didn't last only a couple of hours at very low speed. Then the boat has to surface and reload the batteries with electrical power from the diesel. Hydrophones: Under water, sound travels longer distances than in the air. You can hear a ship long before you can see it. Of course the hunters on the destroyers also use them. And yes: You can hear peope talk, or things falling down. That's why the crew need to be absolute silent and only whispering. With a hydrophone of that time you can pretty accurate measure where a sound comes from, but not how far the ship is away, or how deep it is in case of the U-Boat hunter. That's estimated by the guy on the hydrophone by the level of loudness. Water bombs exploded not on contact. The destroyer crew had to dial in which depth, the bomb should go off. That's why the Captain was constantly changing depths. Another reason later in the movie was the sonar of the destroyer (the ping sound) It is like a radar, but under water. That was a total game changer. U-Boats were easier and more accurate to find and for the U-Boat, it was harder to escape of course. This was basically the end of the dominance of the German U-Boats in th north atlantic. Again, changing depths and going deep was a way to evade, in hope to get layers of different water temperatures between you and the sonar. "Why they didn't just dive and rushed away?" you asked. Due to the mentioned technical limitations. U-Boats were very slow under water, because the electric engine was not that strong. And of course, the faster you go, the loader the sound of the propeller blades which makes you easier to find. Why is the crew so scared of Gibraltar? Because of the british naval base. The strait of Gibraltar is very narrow and not very deep, which makes U-Boats easy to detect. Therefore the joke with the vaseline to push the boat through. The Captains's plan was to use the tides to travel through the strait. So the british ships cannot hear the boat.
Some things you may have missed in the movie. The sub looks smaller than the one in Red October, because it is. It's significantly smaller. And when they pulled into Spain, they couldn't actually pull into port, because Spain was a neutral country. To stay a neutral country, Spain was required to not help. But, Spain did side with the Germans, so they allowed things like what you saw. A German ship giving supplies to a German sub.
Pretty sure the maritime laws are that anyone must be allowed to refuel even in wartime. Denamrk had a big to do about all this as russian ships was allowed to refuel in 2022 and 2023. And the workers at the dock refused in the end but that's against the rules and so on. So rhey had all this back and forth stuff going on with talks about what should be done and should people be fired. The papers was full of it for a long time. Now its been changed. No more help to Russian ships in a lot of places it seems.. so they changed an old rule for the first time in decades.
@@ebbhead20 This movie took place during WWII. A neutral country is required to arrest and hold any military members entering their country. They are definitely not allowed to give aid and support, like refueling. That's why they had to find a German ship to tie up next too. Legally, they had not entered Spain. The thing is, the Spanish government knew what was going on with this sort of thing.
@@johnmiller7682 that's interesting as i know that's not the case anymore.. Harbours are neutral today and are not allowrd to take sides. That's why we had this big thing over here. They had a debate in Folketinget here.. The danish equivalent of house of commons.
Little bit of trivia: The guy at 4:20 is German actor Hubertus Bengsch. He was the only one of the young main cast, who couldn't use the momentum of the movie's big success for a breaktrough as a movie- or TV-star. Maybe it was because he had played the only real unsympathetic character in the story, the 1.Wachoffizier, who was a member of the party and also on board for the purpose of spying on the crew in order to report those, who might say something critical about the regime and the war efforts. At the end of the movie he had also lost most of his ideological illusions. But even if Hubertus Bengsch couldn't make it to stardom as a VISIBLE actor in Germany, he would make quite a career as a dubbing actor for foreign movies. In Germany his voice his very well known by movie goers as the German standard voice for Richard Gere for instance. He also became one of the most popular off-speakers in Germany for many TV-documentaries.
It was a german u-boat, not a sowijet submarine, they didnt had political officers and the Stasi didnt exist yet, so no he wasnt spying the crew to report them.
Fun fact: the submarine pen in La Rochelle was an actual submarine pen built by the Germans, and it was built so well and so sturdily that it still survives to this day. Another fun fact: the same submarine pen in La Rochelle was used by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas shortly after this film wrapped production, for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981).
