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Re: Das Boot
Posted by: Meg Rosenfeld ()
Date: January 21, 2004 05:39AM

<HTML>Hi Feargal,

It sounds like you're well on the way to becoming a U-boat expert! I confess to having very little knowledge of the way the boats work, other than what's in Buchheim's books. Die Festung, the sequel to Das Boot, goes into a lot of detail about life in the 9th Flotilla, in Brest, where his friend Kptlt. Lehmann-Willenbrock was Flotillenchef after leaving U96 (by all accounts he would rather have stayed with the boat, but of course he had no choice, and for whatever reason, he did manage ro survive the war.) Die Festung takes place during the spring and summer of 1944, and there is an eery quality to Buchheim's descriptions of the lovely summer days on the coast of Brittany,where everyone was studiously ignoring the fact that a massive invasion had just taken place in Normandy. To have acknowledged the fact that they were in deep you-know-what at this point, would have been considered an act of treason, and so everyone went on pretending that they believed in the Endsieg, as boat after boat was sent out full of younger and younger men, who mostly didn't come back.

One of the most truly tragic aspects of the U-Boat War is that as the war went on, and the Allies developed better and technology, the Germans didn't; instead of radar, they had guys with binoculars, trying desperately to see above the swells, with their lenses constantly wet and salty. They were sitting ducks for the Allied planes and destroyers. I thought of them when I saw The Return of the King, and the troops were mustered on the field of battle. The Riders of Rohan are based on the Old English, who of course were Germanic, with all that old idealism about going gallantly into a losing battle. The King of Rohan basically exhorts his men to go into a hopeless battle and die nobly, jut as the "U-Boot Fahrer" were called upon to do.

My stepfather, who is English, thinks I'm completely mad to be studying German and to have such an interest in the works of a German writer who was actually involved in the war. There's no use in arguing with him, of course, and if he were in his grave, he'd be spinning too!

Have you read all the postings on this forum about people's favorite, and least favorite, parts of the movie of Das Boot?
Regards,
Meg</HTML>

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Subject Written By Posted
Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/19/2004 08:15PM
Re: Das Boot Wiljan Bakers 01/20/2004 05:06PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/20/2004 06:40PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/20/2004 07:19PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/20/2004 07:48PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/20/2004 08:13PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/20/2004 11:59PM
Re: Das Boot Ken Dunn 01/21/2004 03:03AM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/21/2004 03:59PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/21/2004 05:39AM
Re: Das Boot ROBERT M. 01/21/2004 07:20AM
Re: Das Boot Steve Roberts 01/21/2004 11:43AM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/21/2004 04:06PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/21/2004 04:13PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/21/2004 08:09PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/21/2004 08:21PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/22/2004 04:07PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/23/2004 04:19AM
Re: Das Boot Io Chrysafidou 01/25/2004 06:51PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/27/2004 01:56AM
Re: Das Boot Volker Erich Kummrow 01/27/2004 01:26PM
Re: Das Boot Volker Erich Kummrow 01/27/2004 04:19PM
Re: Das Boot ROBERT M. 01/27/2004 11:03PM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/28/2004 12:41AM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/21/2004 04:09PM
Re: Das Boot Steve Roberts 01/22/2004 11:23AM
Re: Das Boot Meg Rosenfeld 01/22/2004 01:40PM
Re: Das Boot ROBERT M. 01/22/2004 02:16AM
Re: Das Boot PaulHughes 02/03/2004 08:58PM
Re: Das Boot PaulHughes 02/03/2004 09:24PM
Re: Das Boot J.T. McDaniel 02/04/2004 12:26AM
Re: Das Boot PaulHughes 02/04/2004 05:46PM
Re: Das Boot Wiljan Bakers 01/21/2004 04:48PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/21/2004 07:52PM
Re: Das Boot Wiljan Bakers 01/22/2004 06:03PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/22/2004 08:30PM
Re: Das Boot Wiljan Bakers 01/23/2004 01:00PM
Re: Das Boot Feargal Craven 01/23/2004 08:11PM
Re: Das Boot LuisMM 02/03/2004 09:15PM
DO U KNOW WHERE WAS U-96 ELSE USED EXCEPT DAS BOOT ELIAS EKONOMOU 02/15/2004 01:34PM
Re: DO U KNOW WHERE WAS U-96 ELSE USED EXCEPT DAS ROBERT M. 02/15/2004 03:59PM
Re: DO U KNOW WHERE WAS U-96 ELSE USED EXCEPT DAS Ian Stapley 02/16/2004 01:12PM


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