Friday Reflection: Twenty-Five Percent
The Men, Machines, and Myths of Germany’s Undersea War
Synopsis of the Conversation
In this conversation, historian Roger Moorhouse revisits one of the most studied fronts of the Second World War—the Battle of the Atlantic—and looks at it from below the surface. His book Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War tells the story of Germany’s submarine campaign through the men who fought it: the officers, engineers, and enlisted sailors who endured claustrophobic conditions, slim odds of survival, and the psychological strain of fighting a “war within a war.”
Moorhouse and Al begin by tracing the interwar development of the U-boat arm. Despite the Treaty of Versailles, Germany quietly continued submarine research through shell companies in the Netherlands, preserving expertise and technology. By 1939, Admiral Karl Dönitz’s “wolfpack” concept—coordinated attacks by radio-linked submarines—was ready for deployment. Yet as Moorhouse notes, when war broke out, Germany possessed only twenty-seven ocean-going submarines, far short of the 300 Dönitz believed necessary to strangle Britain’s supply lines.
The conversation turns to the peculiar character of the U-boat service. Dönitz recruited mavericks—technically skilled men who thrived on independence but could work within the rigid teamwork a submarine demanded. Many were electricians, plumbers, and machinists rather than peasants or laborers; they needed practical skill and nerves of steel. Training weeded out the claustrophobic and faint-hearted through punishing endurance exercises, including being locked underwater in escape tanks until panic subsided.
Life aboard a Type VII U-boat, Moorhouse explains, was miserable. Crews of fifty lived in a space barely larger than two subway cars, packed with engines, torpedoes, and supplies for weeks at sea. Men hot-bunked, had two pairs of underwear, wore the same clothes for months, and subsisted on minimal fresh water. The stench of diesel, sweat, and sewage was constant. Death was always near.
The discussion then broadens to ideology and morality. Though Dönitz was personally a Nazi and fiercely loyal to Hitler, Moorhouse argues that the U-boat arm was less ideologically driven than the Luftwaffe. Indoctrination was limited—there was simply no room aboard a submarine for political officers—and many commanders maintained the older naval codes of honor. Contrary to popular myth, most U-boats did not machine-gun survivors; more often, they provided food, water, or bearings before departing. The infamous “Laconia order” of 1942, forbidding rescue efforts, marked the end of that practice.
Finally, Moorhouse reflects on the terrible human cost. Of roughly 40,000 men who served in the U-boat fleet, 30,000 died—a 75% fatality rate, the highest of any service in modern warfare. A third of all submarines were lost on their first patrol. Survivors returned home psychologically shattered, haunted by claustrophobia, guilt, and trauma. For Moorhouse, their story is both tragic and cautionary: a reminder of how a regime that treated people as expendable could waste extraordinary human courage in pursuit of impossible ends.
Reflection Questions
What factors explain why Germany invested so heavily but lately in U-boats?
How did interwar technological continuity give the Kriegsmarine an early advantage?
What sort of men were drawn to U-boat service, and how were they selected?
How did the physical environment aboard a submarine shape morale and behavior?
In what ways was the U-boat arm “less Nazi” than other branches of the German military?
Why did Moorhouse emphasize the persistence of traditional naval ethics even in total war?
How did technology—radio, radar, Enigma—determine the rise and fall of the U-boat threat? How did it not?
What does the collapse of training and survival rates after 1943 reveal about totalitarian warfare?
Why is the story of the U-boatmen important for understanding the broader moral landscape of the Second World War?
What parallels can be drawn between Moorhouse’s “war within a war” and modern forms of unseen or asymmetric warfare?
For Further Investigation
Roger Moorhouse, Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War (Basic Books, 2024)
—, The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation (Bodley Head, 2023)
Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War, vol. I: The Hunters, 1939-1942 & vol. II: The Hunted, 1942-1945 (Random House, 1996–1998)
Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, vol. I (HMSO, 1954–1961)
Jürgen Rohwer, Chronology of the War at Sea, 1939–1945 (Naval Institute Press, 2005)
Tags: Roger Moorhouse; Wolfpack; U-Boats; Battle of the Atlantic; Submarine Warfare; World War II; German Navy; Historically Thinking