Hi Dave,

Here is what Topp himself had to say about those years:

From: Topp, Erich. The Odyssey of a U-boat Commander – Recollections of Erich Topp. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992. ISBN: 0-275-93898-0. Copyright: Verlag E. S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, 1992 – Pages 10-11.

“By the time I was fifteen and we had moved to Celle, I found these ideals embodied in the musicians' guild. We sang the Mass in B minor as well as the Passions of St. John and St. Matthew by Bach. We also enjoyed good times together in the guild's rural retreat. I spent more time with this circle of friends than at home with my parents. For here I discovered not merely a forum for music but a fascinating center for broader artistic interests and activities. I began to believe that art, and culture in a broader sense, was the best preparation for meeting the imponderables of the future. Only much later did I realize that imagination and reality are creative in wholly separate ways, leaving behind quite different traces. At first I noticed hardly more than a sense of dissatisfaction that my emotional escapism provided no answer for the pressing problems of the day.

What were the problems that confronted us? Nearly 7 million workers were unemployed. The political parties fought one another without mercy. Every day brought public demonstrations and paramilitary parades in the streets, often involving violence, gunshots, death. The political and economic chaos was complete, a consequence of the Versailles Schanddiktat, as we called the treaty in those days. The victors of the war appeared to have honored the dictum of the Roman senator Porcius Cato: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." The treaty hinged on the theory of Germany's exclusive war guilt, which in turn justified all other measures: the demilitarization of the Rhineland; the limitations imposed on Germany's armed forces; the reparations whose burden defied all economic sense; and the territorial amputations.

Books, newspapers, and our history lessons in school reflected anti-republican sentiments. Responsibility for Germany's decline, we learned, rested on the shoulders of Erfüllungspolitiker - those leaders of the Weimar Republic who seemed to do the enemy's work by honoring the terms of the Versailles treaty. As a result the entire republican system came under fire.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party presented itself as the best hope to solve Germany's problems. We defined "workers," as Ferdinand Lasalle had done earlier, as those who somehow dedicated themselves to the benefit and progress of human society, as serving the bonum commune. At the same time we understood "socialism" to mean a system of government that allowed for the development of the individual while fostering a climate of equal opportunity and reducing economic hardships. Naturally, we also harbored reservations toward the image of this party with its brown columns, the violence it created in the streets, and its Fuhrer cult. But for us such reservations did not outweigh the promise of the party's national and social program. I, as most people, became part of an irresistible, almost mechanical movement. We joined this movement voluntarily and tried to justify our decision as best we could.

For half a year I served in the Voluntary Labor Service. Then, after having taken up the study of medicine, I decided to pledge one of Germany's old student fraternities. I joined the Navy on April 8, 1934.”

Topp’s Party membership probably had to do with his joining the Voluntary Labor Service at age 18 and as Philipp0408 points out the SS membership if he actually even applied was associated with his attempt to study medicine. He was 18 years old when Mulligan says he joined the Party and 19 when he studied medicine and subsequently was accepted into the Navy. Once in the Navy any Party affiliation was forgotten. No one who knew him or studied his actions ever described him as a Nazi. He was a critic of the Nazis and though his family kept it from him at the time his aunt Anna Topp was an inmate in a concentration camp from May 1943 to July 1945.

Regards,

Ken Dunn