Spoilers follow! Meaning to ask this for a while but during the scene where the radio operator plays "A Long Way to Tipperary" over the intercom the Captain says something like "This conflicts with your ideologies" to the young lieutenant who is a Nazi, why does he say that? I don't see anything within the song either other than the fact that it references a place within Britain, was it banned by the party? I know of cases within Heer units where soldiers out of fear would not speak out against the party for fear that a party supporter among them would "rat them out". Did similar feelings not exist in the Kreigsmarine? The scene where the British ships leave the crew of the transport ships to die, did such incidents actually occur? What was the reasoning behind it? (uncertainty of future attack, propaganda, etc) The chief who supervises the crew (the one who is often yelling at them and shows Werner around the boat) says something about a soccer match in one scene. At first I thought he may have been refering to the battle happening above them but some sources claim it was an actual match he was refering to. You never really hear much about national sports during the war, anyone have more info? When the boat is sinking in the franticness of the situation, Werner crawls into his bunk and goes to sleep, Johann attempts to abandon his post earlier on and he is almost killed/court martialed by the captain. Would Werner not have met a similar fate? The opening scene describing the war at that point is obviously incorrect (by 2 years at least as ), why didn't they change it during the re-releases? I don't think the year is mentioned anywhere else in the movie by a character. As an aside, Jürgen Prochnow is in the Uwe Boll film "House of the Dead" playing a homage to the U Boat captain! I think he is wearing the same clothes he had during the filming of Das Boot as well. Bad movie, the trailer should give you an idea, Prochnow is the only saving grace of the movie but even then... YouTube - House Of The Dead Trailer (2003) (Prochnow has a monologue at 0:49s where you can see his character)
Hi mehar ..the remark about the song is simply that its 'too' english to be considered political correct according to NAZI standards of the time ..singing an english song would be highly out of tune in Germany in those days and would have shurely got you a note in someones eagle-ears-notebook ...Captain makes the remark that on the high seas nobody is directly afraid of the political officer as he cant harm them untill back home and chances are big they might never come home again , so stop being a pain in the arse to us is what he really says ... its like Microsoft ..you think Microsoft , you breathe microsoft you live microsoft .. dont say you actually like wordperfect or youre in trouble .
Submariners did not rescue enemy sailors as I understand it. Too many men to guard, transport, feed and oxidate. Not to mention how dangerous it was for a submarine to loiter in the site of a strike.
Ahh I guess that that makes sense, felt a bit out of place in the movie until the full context was realized. Oh no, not the U-Boat crew but the British ships that were accompanying the transports. Originally the U-Boat crew blew up the remnants of the sinking ships believing the crew were rescued by the battleships only to find out none of them were after the wreckage was bombed.
There was a real life incident which resulted in orders given not to pick up survivors. Laconia Incident - history of U-Boat War
I believe that during WWII there were Standing Orders, certainly where convoys were concerned, that escorting Naval vessels would not stop to search for survivors. This sounds harsh but is pragmatic ; the RN learned a hard lesson when the cruisers Hogue, Crecy and Aboukir were sunk in WW1. A U-Boat torpedoed one of them, the others stopped to assist, and the same U-Boat proceeded to sink all three with great loss of life. The 'no stopping' practice caused much disquiet among RN crews, and certainly later in the war many vessels did stop to save lives ( such as Captain Roger Hill's HMS Ledbury during the Pedestal Malta convoy ).
Wasnt there a german u boat that picked up survivors at beginning of war and carried em on top not submerging...Or is this heresay or ww1 even...I was amazed to read of it somewhere...But I cant for the life of me remember. Obviously before we all got into total war....But convoys were not supposed to stop to pick up survivors...under standing orders I believe you to be correct Martin....But that didnt stop individual ships doing so. Many pics exist of em doing so....RN ships like HMS Hurricane or Grenade was tasked to pick up survivors from the infamous evacuee ship sunk in 1940 while crossing atlantic. I would have thought whilst under convoy attack no one will stop and act as a target but if survivors spotted any other time..Im sure they would be picked up...Bismarks number of dead rose specifically because RN stopped picking up survivors in case of U boat attack I believe..
all I heard him say was something like " a simple song (record) will not turn you into the king of england number one"
On larger convoys the Allies started the practice of 'rescue boats' small vessels which sailed behind the convoy, whose purpose was the rescue of crews. The idea being that these ships were safer because they were too small to waste a valuable torpedo on
