Table Of ContentU588 commanded by Kptlt Viktor Vogel entering St-Nazaire in 1942. (Bundesarchiv, 101II-MW-
6029-31A)
Copyright © Christoph Links Verlag GmbH 2012
English translation © Seaforth Publishing 2014
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Seaforth Publishing,
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS
First published in 2012 under the title Hitlers Tor zum Atlantik by Ch. Links Verlag
www.seaforthpublishing.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library ISBN 978 184832 199 1
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Contents
Introduction
1 The Dream of the Gateway to the Atlantic
2 Brest as the Main Base for the German Fleet
3 German U-Boats in the Atlantic
4 The Significance of French Collaboration
5 Life under the German Occupation
6 Holding Out to the Bitter End
7 The Last Bastions
8 The Bunkers Today
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Introduction
The image that springs to mind when thinking about the French Atlantic and
Biscay ports in the Second World War is one of German U-boats running into or
departing from the huge U-boat bunkers built for their protection.
At the outbreak of war the German U-boat arm had fifty-seven submarines, of
which only about half were suitable for operations in the Atlantic. As the war
went on, Admiral Karl Dönitz, the Commander-in-Chief of the U-boat arm,
transformed the U-boat into one of the most important weapons available to the
Kriegsmarine in the naval war against Great Britain.
The German maritime armaments industry was redirected to step up U-boat
production, and by the end of the war 1,110 boats had been turned out. Of these
757 were lost and with them 29,000 submariners, a casualty rate of almost 70 per
cent.1 Although most of these men ultimately died for no purpose, particularly
towards the end of the war, to this day the myth of a blood brotherhood
surrounding the U-boat fleet persists.
In Germany, the autobiographical novel Das Boot, written by former war
correspondent Lothar-Günther Buchheim, and Wolfgang Petersen’s film based
on the book, revived the myth, although the film gave rise to much controversy
amongst U-boat veterans.2 The fascination with U-boats remains undiminished,
as can be seen from the growing number of U-boat museums on the German
coast, from the World War II boat at Laboe to submarines of the former post-war
Bundesmarine, and the Soviet Cold War spy boat at Hamburg.
So what was it really like to serve aboard a U-boat? Looking at an exhibition
of Buchheim’s photographs, what are particularly striking are the facial portraits
of the crewmen. These faces reflect anxiety as depth charges explode, are etched
with the fear that an Allied bomber might yet attack the boat before it reaches
port, or are joyful at having completed a voyage safely once more.
The bases themselves remain in the background, rather as if they were merely
stage sets. The memoirs of individual U-boatmen are concerned mainly with
wartime voyages and life aboard; one learns little or nothing about the ports and
how the crew lived in the period between putting in and sailing again. Against
Buchheim’s well-known photographs of the bridge watch on the tower,
swamped by monstrous seas crossing the bow, bearded men in the torpedo
rooms, or indoor boxing in the U-boat bunker, the images of picturesque Breton
stone houses and precipitous rocky cliffs seem out of place. Nor is much known
about the French who had daily contact with U-boatmen for over four years.
Sources pose a problem for a sociohistorical investigation into everyday
activities and life in the naval bases. More than sixty years after the end of the
war, most of the participants, French and German, have passed on. Only a
handful of them set down their experiences for posterity in writing, and in most
cases these were former officers. The published experiences of simple sailors
and yard workers are modest in scale and usually sparing in their references to
the French. Thus the French rarely find mention in German memoirs, and in
French literature, the Germans are generally discussed in their role as occupiers.
The official archives are of little help, because the major part of the
Kriegsmarine documentation relating to the yards was destroyed when the
central office of naval construction in Berlin was bombed. All military
documentation, charts and photographs held in the bases along the Biscay coast
were destroyed before the final surrender in May 1945. Thus all that the German
Federal Archive BA/MA has to offer is the war diary for 1942 kept privately by
the senior yard director of the main U-boat base at Lorient. Hardly any files
survived from the no less important naval base of Brest. The Seekriegsleitung
War Diary made available in facsimile by the official German archive makes
only limited references to events at that port. Information specific to the region
can be extracted from the almost complete archived war diaries of the
commanding admirals and naval commanders in France, but on the other hand
almost nothing by way of documentation exists in the archives from the
subordinate service offices, such as the harbour commanders or naval
commanders, the real points of intersection between the French and Germans.
Thus the history of the French Atlantic bases during the German occupation
relies on the few published memoirs of those involved.3 This is presumably also
the reason why up until now only individual German historians have tried to get
close to this subject. At the present time, therefore, we find only the works of
Sönke Neitzel on the construction and use of the U-boat bunkers and an
investigation by this author into the history of the Kriegsmarine base at Brest.4
In France, on the other hand, particularly when it comes to the two naval
bases, Brest and Lorient, there is comprehensive material available in the French
navy archives, amongst them files from the technical directorates of the two
naval arsenals, as well as the relevant French Admiralty staffs in Vichy and
Paris. For the mercantile ports, St-Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux and the
private shipyards, however, there are neither files nor academic investigations
available: for example, into the role of the French shipbuilding industry under
German occupation. French historians have favoured a culture of reminiscence,
with, quite understandably, a leaning towards everyday life under the occupation
and what the French Resistance did, rather than the activities of the occupying
forces. The fact is that the naval bases with their purely industrial orientation
were places of intensive co-operation between occupiers and occupied: their use
by the occupying force was only possible with recourse to the French yards,
suppliers and labour force.
Of the thousands of workers who worked directly or indirectly for the
Germans during the occupation, nobody wanted to discuss this aspect of the war
after the Liberation, above all those involved. And so the history of the French
Atlantic ports enters the debate regarding the economic and political
collaboration of Vichy France with the German Reich. The subject of this book
is accordingly less about the details of U-boat bunker construction and the U-
boat war, and much more about the general development of the German naval
bases facing the Atlantic, from the first strategic considerations in 1925 to the
occupation of the French coast in the summer of 1940, and the capitulation of
the last Atlantic redoubt in May 1945. In addition, there is a sociohistorical
consideration of life around the bases, with a glance at modern attitudes towards
this history in the ports concerned.
The text which follows is a completely revised and expanded version of my
2006 dissertation on the German Kriegsmarine base at Brest, accepted by the
Christian-Albrecht University, Kiel and the Université de Bretagne Occidentale,
Brest, which was published in 2010 by Dr Dieter Winkler.5 I am grateful to the
Christoph Links publishing house for accepting this manuscript into their
schedule, and to all colleagues, especially reader Stephan Lehrem, for their
untiring patience and the expert advice and industry made during the production
of this book.
