Sutter, N. Der U-Boot Mythos in Deutschland

Lothar Günther Buchheim sold millions of copies of his semi-biographical account of his own experience of a U-boat voyage in the Second World War. The film adaptation by Wolfgang Petersen brought the cinemas the highest occupancy rates. But how can this success be explained? What factors are so powerful in such a gruesome affair as submarine warfare that they can cause such fascination?
The author attempts to tease out the mechanisms from the heterogeneous mass of warlike conflicts in order to illuminate them historically, socially and militarily, and not least metaphorically and psychologically. In this way, this study provides meticulously compiled explanations of the "fascination of the submarine - the poor man's cudgel. "

Few topics in Germany have such a lasting and intergenerational fascination as that of submarine warfare. In numerous documentaries, television offers regular insights into the perilous world of underwater warfare, describes picture-rich diving expeditions to sunken German submarines on almost all coasts of the world and attempts to clarify their fate and that of their crews.