Authors: Japanese Reaping the Whirlwind: Personal Accounts of the German,Italian Experiences of WW II
Generally, hygiene went by the board, as fresh water was conserved for drinking and cooking. U-boat veteran Otto Giesse recalled:
During operations in the Atlantic or Arctic one simply could not escape becoming encrusted with dirt. At first, I thought a man could get scabies or some other skin disease if he didn’t wash down at least once a day. To my surprise, I soon learned that we could make do by just rinsing off our hands a couple of times a week with salt water. Afterwards, we splashed ‘Cologne 4711’ onto our faces and distributed any remaining dirt with ointment, vigorously rubbing it into the skin. Our hair and beards were soon filthy and clotted from the salt water breaking over the ship, and even the best comb broke when we tried to disentangle the hairy mess. So it was left as it was and sprinkled with birch water to neutralize the odour, which seemed to differ with each man.
Then there was the battle with the elements, recalled by Robert Klaus:
When on lookout duty, one got terribly wet. The heavy sea crashed over one’s head. We had to get fastened to the conning tower not to be washed overboard.
After his watch, he would dry his clothes near the engine, but once he found that his dry clothes had been stolen and other wet ones put in their place.
In the North Atlantic there was also the cold to contend with. Heading into Canadian waters, Erich Topp, commander of U-552, wrote:
We entered these icy waters and a number of the crew ended up with frozen feet, limbs; we weren’t dressed warmly enough. People were standing on the bridge with icicles hanging off their caps; everything was under ice. The water that came on deck froze immediately; the temperature was minus ten degrees and we had to dive to melt away the ice. That was a bad time.
In the tropics, though, the temperature inside a U-boat could reach 60°C (140°F), with a relative humidity of over 90 per cent.
Food was also a problem, particularly when missions went on longer than originally planned. The diet on U-340 became monotonous when its supply boat, U-459, was sunk. One crewman complained:
We had nothing but macaroni all the way from Freetown back to St. Nazaire. Macaroni with noodles and noodles with macaroni. Macaroni with dried fruit and dried fruit with macaroni. And then macaroni with ham and ham with macaroni.
However, birthdays and other special occasions were celebrated with tinned strawberries or a cake. In 1942, U-boatman Gerhard Schwartz remembers celebrating Christmas 30m under the Caribbean with a Christmas cake, carols and a paper Christmas tree made for the occasion.
Then there was the excitement of an attack.
Oberfunkmaat
(Radio Chief Petty Officer) Wolfgang Hirschfeld recorded in his diary on board U-109:
Then it is time. The men stand or crouch in tension at their posts. ‘
Rohr zwei fertig
!’ [‘Tube two ready!’] It is absolutely silent on board. Then I hear the muffled but decisive words, ‘
Rohr eins los! Rohr zwei los!
’ [‘Tube one fire! Tube two fire!’] The Aale [‘eels’ was the submariners’ slang for torpedoes] leave with a hissing noise … The stop-watch ticks. After three minutes there is the first explosion, immediately followed by the second … Suddenly fierce shock waves hit us like a hammer …
The captain looked through the periscope to see that the ship had been ripped apart by the explosions. Then came what Werner Kronenberg, the engineering officer on another U-boat, called ‘the death-struggle of a ship’.
Those squeaks, the bursting of the bulkhead, this noise when she goes down – a noise that gets into your bones. That is not a pleasant sound.
As sailors, the U-boatmen thought about ships rather than the loss of their fellow seamen. After sinking the Danish-registered tanker
Danmark
in Inganess Bay off Kirkwall in the Orkneys on 11 January 1940, U-23’s first watch officer, Hans-Jochen von Knebel Doeberitz, said:
We were very proud and happy. The English didn’t believe we could be so close by in the anchorage, and when the torpedo exploded they searched the air with lights because they thought we were the
Luftwaffe
. They were even firing into the air. Of course, for me on this first voyage, it was quite an experience. Then we turned back and again we sailed very close to the lookouts, but got out of there in one piece.
Others grew more aware of what they were doing. Herbert Arnecke recalled:
The war was ugly … I personally only realized that when I heard people crying in the water, because they were drowning. Until then I really focused upon the tonnage rather than the people.
Of course, once men were in the water the attitude to the enemy changed.
Korvettenkapitän
(Lieutenant Commander) Peter ‘Ali’ Cremer said:
For us U-boat commanders, the humane treatment of shipwrecked seamen of the enemy powers was a matter of course. They were not enemies any more, but simply shipwrecked and had to be helped as far as possible.
After an attack, there was always the danger of retaliation and the horror of being depth-charged. Hans Börner recorded:
After each depth-charge we were so relieved, when it was over, that nothing had happened for now. And you knew that the next would come. Often you heard the splash of it falling into the sea above us. We could hear that. But where was it? In front, aft, to port?
Depth-charging took a terrible toll. A submariner from U-37 wrote home from captivity in the Tower of London:
This is what happened. After an attack, we were simultaneously pummelled for three hours with terrible little depth charges by seven destroyers. The charge goes off with a most uncomfortable bang. Near the boat, they change the nature of material which breaks up into the form of atoms. We came to the surface, damaged and we were all saved by the British destroyers … Our treatment is good, and there is no need to worry. This is in itself astonishing, given the anti-German agitations stirred up in the English people by their newspapers.
Men endured depth-charging for two or three days.
Kapitänleutnant
(Lieutenant Commander) Hartwig Looks, commander of U-264, which was sunk on 19 February 1944, described the loss of his vessel:
We got around two hundred depth charges and they exploded beneath the U-boat. We were accustomed to depth charges exploding above us, but the full wave of the explosion came from below. I tried to shake them off by taking evasive action, but that didn’t work. Equipment broke away from the pressure hull, and there were various leaks. The water reached above our ankles and a fire was reported in the electric motor room, and when you are submerged and there’s a fire on board that’s the end. I thought, ‘There’s nothing for it – we have to surface.’ We shot out of the water like a champagne cork and found ourselves inside a circle made by Captain Walker’s submarine chasers. The crew jumped in the sea. I was on the tower holding on to the antenna to stop my legs being pulled into the tower hatch, where a whirlpool was forming. Then the U-boat sank below me.
Looks was rescued by a British rating:
I was hanging on the scramble net limp as a lettuce leaf. Then a British sailor jumped over the rail, climbed down the net, got hold of my collar and said, ‘Come on, sailor!’ and hauled me up on deck.
The entire crew of U-264 was saved, but of nearly 800 U-boats sunk during the Atlantic campaign, most went down with all hands.
During 1942, the Germans suffered further reverses in North Africa. In the summer, Hitler ordered an advance on Cairo. But Rommel found his supply lines overstretched and complained that ‘support only arrives when things are almost hopeless’. On the night of 1 November 1942, the British, under General Bernard Montgomery, stopped the German advance with a counterattack at El Alamein. Two days later, Rommel wrote to his wife:
Dearest Lu,
The battle is going very heavily against us. We’re simply being crushed by the enemy weight. I’ve made an attempt to salvage part of the army. I wonder if it will succeed. At night I lie open-eyed racking my brains for a way out of this plight for my poor troops. We are facing very difficult days, perhaps the most difficult a man can undergo. The dead are lucky, it’s all over for them. I think of you constantly with heartfelt love and gratitude. Perhaps all will yet be well and we shall see each other again.
Unhelpfully, Hitler sent a signal saying:
The situation demands that the positions at El Alamein be held to the last man. A retreat is out of the question. Victory or death! Heil Hitler!
It made no difference; the German army was soon fleeing back towards Tripoli, then on to Tunis. During the battle at El Alamein, Leutnant Heinz Schmidt’s Special Group 288 was left out of the fighting:
We listened to the heavy battle going on a dozen miles to the east of us, while our weapons lay idle and there was nothing for us to do except swim or lounge in the sun.
But they became Rommel’s rearguard. Schmidt described the conditions they then faced:
We went without sleep, without food, without washing, and without conversation beyond the clipped talk of wireless procedures and orders. In permanent need of everything civilized, we snatched greedily at anything we could find, getting neither enjoyment or nourishment … The daily routine was nearly always the same – up at any time between midnight and 0400; move out of the
lager
[camp] before first light; a biscuit and a spoonful of jam or a slice of wurst, if you were lucky; a long day of movement and vigil and encounter, death and fear of death until darkness put a limit to vision and purpose on both sides; the pulling in of sub-units which had been sent out on far-flung missions; the final endurance of the black, close-linked march to the
lager
area; maintenance and replenishment and more orders – which took until midnight; and then the beginning of another 24 hours.
On 8 November 1942 the Americans, who had now joined the war, landed in Morocco and Algeria and began closing in on Rommel from the west. Then, in early December, the British First Army under Lieutenant General Anderson led an attack on Tunis, the last Axis stronghold in North Africa. It was repulsed, but as the British, Americans and French were preparing to have another go, Colonel Rudolf Lang was moving 10 Panzer Division from Marseilles to Naples, ready to be shipped across the Mediterranean.
As soon as the last transport train had been expedited on 4 December from Marseilles, which – contrary to the rural population – was not altogether friendly towards us, last but not least because of the occupation of Toulon, I proceeded through Nice, Genova, Florence and Rome to Naples, driving by automobile to save time. It rained almost all the time so that we could not enjoy the beauty of the countryside. Many anti-tank obstacles had already been erected along the roads which we travelled; everywhere lighted signs, posters and large inscriptions on houses and walls expressed the determination to attain a joint victory. Many places in the part of Italy we crossed were literally swarming with Italian soldiers, who appeared to be friendly, happy and ready to burst into song.
But Colonel Lang did not want to wait around in Naples while the tanks were loaded on to ships.
I wanted to take charge of my Panzergrenadier Regiment 69, known to have reached a high degree of perfection and training during the last months as part of an excellently equipped division … I started across on 14 December on a Ju 52, flying in an enormous fleet of aircraft of all kinds, including one giant aeroplane. We had a wonderful trip, flew at low altitude, encountered no enemy interference and reached the airfield of Tunis safe and sound …
I was terribly eager to see the place where the division had recently earned its laurels. Everywhere there were the marks left from the fighting, giving evidence of a hard German blow. Major General Fischer, who had led the combat near Tebourba and had thereupon been awarded an oak-leaf cluster to the Knight’s Cross and had been promoted Lieutenant General, met me on the combat field. The General showed pleasure in greeting me, briefed me on the situation and told me that I might expect to go into action soon.
While the hurried trip of the last few days had taken in localities and places of world-wide fame, such as Nice, Monte Carlo, San Remo, Florence, Rome, Pompeii and the top of Mount Vesuvius, while during my flight across the Mediterranean, Sicily had floated by below me, during the few days before my employment I had the opportunity and time calmly to enjoy Carthage’s rich collections from ancient times, and to become somewhat acquainted with the country and the people.
On 17 December, Lang was given a command to the southeast of Tunis.
A command post of the
Kampfgruppe
[combat group] was a well-taken-care-of farm, owned by a courteous Frenchman, who as an officer during World War I had been seriously wounded, and who, afterwards, like many others used the financial support granted by the French government to settle in Tunisia. In his home he had a small but choice collection of antique objects found or excavated, paintings including some very good ones and a well assorted library, indicating his artistic understanding and wealth. Even though it was cold because the windows were broken, one could be very comfortable there and do good work. Since the owner, staying with relatives nearby, was exposed to hostile actions by the Arabs, which at times took rather serious proportions, I granted his request to let him keep his hunting gun, together with some ammunition to defend himself in case of emergency; I also promised him protection.
Lang sized up the situation:
The enemy could not fail to notice that because of the considerable enlargement of the bridgehead as a consequence of the Tebourba battle, the German lines had been seriously thinned out there, as a matter of fact, had to be left entirely unoccupied for stretches kilometres in length … Later on barely enough forces were available. In the Lanserine mountain range in the west, there was not one single German soldier in an area of about 20km in length … Furthermore, the enemy had to be aware of the fact that the number of German units to be moved up from Italy was limited, and that transports carrying troops and all kinds of material were sunk by torpedoes, bombs and shells … Reconnaissance groups were sent, by day and by night, deep into no-man’s land and even into the enemy lines … Although Arabs, throughout favourably disposed towards us, had been promised tobacco, blankets and clothing, they, at first, brought in only little unusable results from their spying expeditions. However, they confirmed observations made by our own forces. Statements by prisoners who were brought in – French and British – were contradictory and of little use.
However, it became clear that an attack was coming soon – particularly when Allied air reconnaissance was stepped up on 21 December.
Following a brief expenditure of ammunition reminding us of the First World War, the attack started on 22 December. In that coverless, hilly terrain, which produces only some miserable and thorny bushes and afforded no chance whatsoever for digging in, the brave German soldier was mercilessly exposed to the hail of shells and rock fragments. The fireworks claimed their victims … After hours of enemy fire, the enemy infantry rose to an assault on the decimated defenders, but was unable to reach its immediate objectives. All day long and during the night, the battle fluctuated back and forth … General von Arnim, as commander of the Axis forces in Tunisia, took the opportunity to express Field Marshal Kesselring’s approval and, disregarding the proximity of the enemy, he decorated some of our valiant fighters in the most advanced line …
Again the fighting flared up. Fighting went on all night long. The enemy finally succeeded in gaining possession of the summit of the mountain and some hills towards the west. The situation had grown to be very serious … To get us out of this difficult situation I assembled a counterattack for Holy Night. The commander who knows his men is entitled to make a demand of this kind on them, even though they had suffered severe casualties, were tired from extensive fighting during wet and cold days and nights, and were, furthermore, in an extremely unfavourable situation … The enemy forces, fighting stubbornly and obstinately, were caught in the frontal fire as well as in that from the Panzers to their west flank and were forced to give up. The group making the main effort reached the enemy’s east flank unnoticed. The enemy was completely wiped out or taken prisoner in close combat. The Panzers continued their thrust, cut off all of the important enemy elements from the chance of escaping, and proceeded up to a point where a mine field made a stop imperative … This troop had not only inflicted considerable losses to a British regiment and to an elite regiment from London, but it had also proved its ability to make a stand in defensive action.
The troops received congratulations by radio from the high command at 0955 hours on Christmas day. Even the enemy grudgingly acknowledged defeat.
The British newspapers did by no means conceal the failure of this action at Christmas time to the public, but they attributed its cause to the stormy, cold and rainy weather conditions, and to the commanding position of the Germans. It was during the close combat fighting there that the British earned the respect of the German soldier.
Although the Axis forces in North Africa were on the back foot, there were other small victories to be recorded. The March issue of the Army newspaper
Die
Wehrmacht
crowed:
Through the streets of Tunis rolls an American Sherman tank – bouncing along on its mobile tracks, its engine rumbling, with captured ammunition in its gun barrels, and on board, its crew – the German scout patrol that captured it in the hills of Sbeitla on the foggy morning of 22 February. Down it travels from the hills through the sea of olive groves, headed towards the seaport of Sfax. It’s a journey of some 210 miles, lasting four-and-a-half days, which testifies well to the overall march capacity of this steel colossus. The thing weighs about 31 metric tons. It was loaded onto a ship in the harbour while German fighter planes wheeled overhead in the clear sky of Africa, and not one enemy bomber dared intrude on this deadly zone. Now, after many intermediate stops, this star of American armament has arrived at its destination, a proving ground near Berlin, in the hands of German arms experts who are testing its combat efficiency and durability. Preliminary investigation in Tunisia had already revealed that this rolling steel mine is not a bad product. It was captured by a German Panzer regiment.
But defeat was inevitable. On 7 March 1943, Rommel was recalled to Europe to prepare the Atlantic defences against the Allied landings the Germans knew would come, and on 6 May the remaining Axis forces in North Africa were overrun.
Things were little better on the Russian front. In June 1942 Herbert Winckelmann had been with General Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army as it prepared to advance, fatefully, on Stalingrad, but he had fallen ill with trench fever and had been sent back to hospital in Germany. On 30 January 1943, Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad, so Winckelmann was not sent to rejoin his unit. What remained of the 6th Army mustered at Savenay in the Loire Valley and celebrated their survival with ‘good red wine’. While his regiment was being reconstituted, Winckelmann was offered a command and a commission, but refused.
To become a commissioned officer one had to swear allegiance to Hitler, which I was not inclined to do. I have never regretted this.
Rebuilding the regiment took five months.
We filled our leisure time with sight-seeing. One of the more relaxing trips was one taken to LeBaule … Now all this was boarded up and the seawall was spotted with bunkers and other obstacles to hinder the possible landing of the Allies. At any rate, the miles of beaches, although now deserted, were beautiful and it was peaceful to lie in the sand and forget the ugliness of war … I had longed to visit Paris before the war but had to postpone it several times because it was too expensive. However, now with the devalued franc I could patronize the most luxurious hotels and restaurants with their exquisite cuisines.
The first thing Winckelmann did in Paris was catch up with his old school friend Goetz Bannay, whom he had not seen for four years. Bannay was now a staff officer in Field Marshal Kesselring’s headquarters there. He had lost a brother on the Russian front, who had written in his last postcard, ‘Just today I saw through my binoculars the towers of the Kremlin.’
The following days were filled with sight-seeing. Although we were on our feet from morning till night, we were only able to see the highlights of Paris. We strolled along the wide avenue of the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. Here and there we stopped for some window-shopping. It was too bad that we did not have more money on us as these stores offered goods that were already scarce in Germany. When our feet were tired we rested them in one of the many sidewalk cafés and watched passers-by while enjoying a
café au lait
with some delicious
petits fours
. Paris was still bustling as though the war did not exist. It was regrettable that the Louvre was closed … There was a special order in effect that groups could not split up at night. Being an opera fan, I would have loved to have seen a performance there, but I was overruled by my comrades and instead we visited the nightclub Folies Bergère. Although they were practically naked, the performance was artistic and not vulgar. A woman’s body does not exist for man’s lust alone … On the last morning in Paris we went to Montmartre where the artists lived, viewed some of their exhibits, had lunch at one of the bohemian restaurants … It was like a vacation except that our spouses could not be with us.