All language subtitles for h.u.s04e04.1080p.web.h264-cbfm_track3_[eng]

History is not an exact science.
It is never set in stone.

As time passes,

knowledge of the past is
refined and evolves.

But by definition,

received ideas have thick
skins and are hard to shift.

To understand the realities of
the world, you sometimes have

to shake them up and decipher

the facts by looking
at them another way.

Posterity has it that German
U-boats were fearsome fighting

machines which ruled the

Atlantic Ocean throughout
World War II. But were they?

In February 1939, Hitler
personally presented to the world the

new flagship of the German fleet,

the battleship Bismarck.

A fine show of strength to
intimidate potential enemies

because, since the dismantling
of its fleet after World War I,

Germany had lost its
standing as a naval power.

The Fuhrer had clearly broken
the Treaty of Versailles,

but rebuilding a
Kriegsmarine takes years.

The Bismarck looked
impressive, but

could it rule the waves?

Among the Nazi chiefs of staff, a
handful of admirals doubted it.

Admiral Erich Raeder,
commander-in -chief of the

Kriegsmarine, congratulated himself on

having two giants like the
Bismarck and its twin, the Tirpitz,

launched two months later.

Hitler was eager to attack,
but the Admiral had to admit

to his subordinates.

"At this moment in time,
the Kriegsmarine is clearly

insufficiently armed for the great

combat against Britain."

An opinion shared by his second-in
-command, Rear Admiral Karl Donitz.

But Donitz suggested an
alternative to a surface conflict.

A plan B, using inexpensive
craft which were discreet,

easy to mass-produce, and able to

patrol furtively through the Seven
Seas, the Unterseeboots, or U-boats.

This phantom menace
strategy wasn't unanimously agreed

upon in the Nazi camp.

Raeder opposed it, and a rivalry was
instilled between the two admirals.

On September 1st 1939, Hitler's
troops invaded Poland without warning.

The attack was mainly by land,
with some backup from a battleship

which decimated the garrisons

in the port of Danzig.

The Kriegsmarine had
to prove its strength.

Following the attack on
their ally, Poland, Britain and

France declared war on Germany.

That very day, the U
-boats made their entrance.

Their orders were to destroy all
enemy ships without distinction.

- The biggest war news of
these early days has been the

criminal sinking of the Athenia.

The liner, with about 1,400
people on board, was outward bound

across the Atlantic when

without any warning
whatsoever, she was torpedoed by a

Nazi submarine 200 miles
west of the Hebrides.

These survivors, landing at
Greenock en route for Glasgow,

are victims of Hitler's first

crime by submarine.

- Submarines that
methodically hunted for victims.

One woman survived to tell the tale.

- About 2 o'clock the next
morning, we were drifting around

and spotted the submarine,

it was one of the
destroyers come to our rescue.

And we turned around and tried to
drift away from it, which we did.

And we drifted for
about four more hours

when we were finally
picked up by the destroyer.

- The death toll, 112.

The affair caused uproar.

It revealed the true
face of Nazi Germany,

which disregarded the rules of war

and sent 112 innocent
civilians to their death.

The U-boats were already
under battle orders, while their

opponents were still unfit for combat.

And on dry land in Europe,
there had yet to be any clashes.

The British and French were
taking their time to mobilise their

armies when the unthinkable happened.

In mid-October, the British
battleship HMS Royal Oak was

torpedoed and sunk in Scapa Flow,

the chief naval base in
the Orkneys north of Scotland.

A symbolic place, because it
was here that the German fleet

had been scuttled
twenty years earlier.

The time for revenge had come.

At the helm of U-47, bearing
its emblem of a snorting bull,

the instigator of the sinking

entered into legend.

Described as arrogant and a fanatic
Nazi, Captain Gunther Prien was given

a hero's welcome on
his return to Germany.

He was decorated with the
Iron Cross by Hitler himself.

Submariners became and the
new heroes of the Third Reich,

proud to have struck
behind enemy lines.

For a long time looked
down upon, German submariners

had earned a new status.

Otto Kretschmer, another
renowned captain, stated,

"After four years of
training, we suddenly felt like

the elite of the Navy."

In a handful of operations,
submarines proved they were far

more effective than surface vessels.

Moreover, one of the Kriegsmarine's
flagships, the battleship

Graf Spee, was sunk by the Royal Navy.

A slap in the face
for Admiral Raeder.

Hitler ordered the construction
of an armada of U-boats.

The cost of one Bismarck
or Tirpitz could pay for 50

submarines to compose a fleet much

more capable of hassling Allied ships.

Donitz had won the battle
against his superior,

but would nonetheless
concede,

"In 1939, we weren't ready.

We had only 23 U-boats capable of
reaching the Atlantic from Germany."

The French and British had twice
as many submarines as the Germans.

But this clear advantage
didn't impress the Nazis.

Karl Donitz, a veteran
submariner from World War I,

promised his Fuhrer victory.

His plan was to
choke the British Isles.

Britain was importing almost
50% of its meat, 70% of its

sugar and 90% of its grain and fats

-22 million tonnes a

year just in foodstuffs.

So it depended heavily on
the 8,000 merchant ships that

delivered this produce.

They were prime targets for
the U -boats which day by day

chipped away at this
vital supply line.

As a result, in March 1940, a
famished Britain was forced to

introduce meat rationing
as shortages worsened.

Public parks were turned
into vegetable patches.

But Germany's tonnage war
strategy was beginning to pay off.

British citizens saw
their daily lives suffer.

Part of public opinion began to put
pressure on the government to

bring an end to the blockade.

Some politicians even
suggested negotiating with the enemy.

Only First Lord of the
Admiralty Winston Churchill

categorically refused
to make a pact with the Devil.

And events were soon
to prove him right.

Eight months after
the declaration of war,

ground combat began.

Within just six weeks, the French
army was swept aside by the Wehrmacht.

With this blitzkrieg victory,
Germany took over the naval bases

along the French coastline.

From Norway to France, the coasts
of Europe were under Nazi control.

The gateways to the Atlantic
were now wide open to the U-boats.

Great Britain stood alone in
the face of the Third Reich.

In the summer of 1940, the
pilots of the Royal Air Force put up

fierce resistance to repeated

attacks from the Luftwaffe
in the Battle of Britain.

After three months of aerial
combat, Britain inflicted a

first defeat on Germany.

Victory in the skies,
but heavy losses at sea.

245 Allied ships were sent
to the bottom of the ocean,

that's two wrecks a day.

The Kriegsmarine lost only
seven of its submarines.

An unbeatable ratio which led
the British war leader to say,

"The only thing that really

frightened me during the
war was the U-boat peril."

Donitz's gamble had paid off.

He had the enemy quaking.

In the autumn of 1940, he
established his base in the

strategic city of Lorient,

where the U-30 was the first
submarine to report.

Docked in Brest, Lorient, and
Saint-Nazaire, the U-boats

gained a weaker sea compared to

their former bases in Germany,
and also avoided the North Sea

and the Channel, which were

under Royal Navy control.

After one year of war, almost
600 Allied ships had been sunk

against only 38 German submarines.

But an insufficient number to
wipe out the British merchant fleet.

With only a dozen
operational craft, Donitz needed

to increase pressure.

So he experimented with a tactic
which had been maturing for years,

the Wolf Pack.

From then on, U-boats
would attack in numbers.

At radio stations dotted along
the coasts from Norway to Spain,

the Kriegsmarine decipherers

were able to localise enemy ships.

From his HQ in Lorient,
Donitz would send his U-boat packs

to the pinpointed zones.

The moment a convoy was spotted
on the horizon, the pack dived.

A lieutenant on the U-224 explained,
"We were lurking around like wolves.

Then we attacked, fired our
torpedoes, and got out again.

The best fun is to hunt."

Another submariner confessed.

"It was grand fun when we made
the attack on the whole convoy.

Everybody picked out
their own victim."

It was easy hunting, because when
they resurfaced, the wolves were

faster than their targets.

But contrary to the legend which
persisted even after the war,

U-boats didn't really

have the true capacity to
carry out undersea attacks.

As derivatives of surface ships,
they could only perform short dives.

Below the surface, an electric
engine took over from its diesel

counterpart, which couldn't

function underwater.

Then, autonomy and speed
were considerably reduced,

meaning they could only pursue the

slowest cargo ships.

So it was impossible to launch
decisive underwater attacks.

And moreover, their torpedoes
had an infuriating tendency

to detonate too early.

Renowned U-boat captain
Otto Kretschmer admitted,

"We had the worst
torpedoes in the world.

Nearly half of them were deficient."

So the U-boats merely
carried out stealth approaches

and once in range of
the enemy, resurfaced.

All the pack had to do then

was to pound the
defenseless cargo ships.

Submariner Heinz
Schaeffer gave this account.

"A tanker breaks in the middle.

Each crew member has permission
to look through the periscope.

The powerful ship
sinks into the waves.

A poignant vision.

The demon of destruction is at work."

Simultaneous attack by the
Wolf Pack meant that several

Allied ships could be sunk in one go.

Ambushes were all the
more effective when

carried out after nightfall.

Then the attackers would slip
silently away through the dark

waters of the Atlantic.

From Newfoundland to the tip
of Ireland, the merchant ships

had to navigate between the wolves.

In convoys of ten to twenty
ships, a huge floating target ten

kilometres long by three

kilometers wide, took to sea.

Their orders were, keep your distance,
500 meters between each ship,

never stop, even if
another ship is sinking.

On board, life went on, thanks
to His Majesty's rum ration,

which kept the sailors' spirits up.

##

But fear haunted daily life.

Merchant Navy officer John Harvey,

who made 12 Atlantic
crossings, recalled:

"We were hopeful rather than scared.

With a cargo of minerals, we
slept fully dressed, in the hope

of escaping, because it would

only take three minutes
for the ship to sink.

If it was a cargo of explosives,
then we slept in pyjamas,

and we were happy if we
woke up in the morning."

The Royal Navy dealt with the
threat phlegmatically, banking on

ASDIC, the ancestor of sonar, which

could detect a
submarine 900 metres away.

The Admiralty believed that
corvettes, light, fast destroyers

equipped with depth charges,

were enough to
protect the vast convoys.

Churchill called them
'the cheap and nasties'.

Officer John Harvey continued,
"My worst memory was sailing by

the survivors of a sinking

corvette and being unable to help,
because in a convoy you cannot stop."

The Royal Navy thought that
the bigger the convoy, the less

chance of a U-boat attack,

since the ships
guaranteed mutual defence.

But the sailors of the
Merchant Navy disagreed.

They constantly felt under threat
because they were too easy to spot.

Sailing at the speed of the
slowest vessel, each cargo

ship became vulnerable.

At 13 km/h it was like
crossing the Atlantic on a bicycle.

And the risk increased halfway
across, when the naval escort about

turned to provide
protection for the next convoy.

A weakness that the
Germans had spotted.

On October 5, 1940, Convoy
SC-7 left Nova Scotia with 35

ships heading to Liverpool.

A wolf pack of eight U-boats
commanded by the ruthless Otto

Kretschmer patiently waited

for the naval escort to leave the
convoy before pouncing on their prey.

Only 15 ships made it to
England, 20 had been sunk,

including an oil tanker.

A record.

This came on top of another
convoy on the same route, also

losing 12 of its ships.

The sinking of 32 ships in 48
hours gave the Wolves their

most impressive victory yet.

Donitz, who commanded the operation
in person, was triumphant,

especially as his eight U
-boats all made it home intact.

Here, the submariners gloat
with a collection of lifebelts

filched from their
victims as war trophies.

On the mast of the
periscopes, pennants display the

amounts of tonnage sunk.

Rankings were even established
between the different crews to

motivate the men based

on who sank the biggest ship.

At this point in the war, Allied
convoys had lost 20% of their fleet.

In 1940, 563 ships were
sunk against only 23 U-boats.

This striking result, however,
didn't have the hoped-for impact.

Despite the tonnage sunk, 80%
of cargo ships made it to port,

and the British had been

able to adapt their
farming techniques.

Shortages were a thing of the past.

The first lieutenant of the
U-32 stated, "The English can hold

out under existing conditions

for years.

You only need to look at the shops."

The U-boat's arms will not break them.

The blockade didn't seem
to dampen British spirits.

It was impossible for Admiral
Donitz to step up a gear.

He could only send out 35 units at
any one time, which wasn't enough.

The U-boats leaving the shipyards
only replaced the losses,

and military command refused to

provide extra means.

The Kriegsmarine's requests
generally played second fiddle to

those of the Wehrmacht, which

was better represented
in the Nazi hierarchy.

And now the commander of the
Luftwaffe, Hermann Goring,

was asking for even more.

In early 1941, however, Goring
agreed to supply a handful of

reconnaissance planes,

which became the U-Boat's eyes.

With their first collaborations,
the U-Boats notched up new successes.

It was the era of the aces.

Victory after victory, new
heroes added to the ranks

of legendary captains.

After Gunther Prien, the Bull
of Scapa Flow, it was the turn

of Joachim Schepke to shine.

He was even invited to
Berlin to tell of his exploits at

the helm of the U-100.

But the king of tonnage was
Otto Kretschmer, or 'Silent Otto'.

Responsible for 46
sinkings, the captain of the U-99

was never dethroned.

The Nazi propaganda machine was
quick to flaunt its hero's feats.

Omnipresent in the field,
the Third Reich's film cameras

magnified each action and gesture.

Unrelentingly, the wolves
were portrayed as demigods.

Footage that fuelled a legend
which would last for years to come.

In truth, there was little
heroism in the U-boat attacks.

The victims were essentially
defenceless merchant ships.

One submariner on the U-55
admitted as much, "We sink everything

without previous warning.

But the British must not know that.

We always allow the crew to drown.

What else can you do?"

An order that broke the rules of war.

Most of the victims were
civilians left to their sad fate.

The Nazi submariners were pitiless.

At best, they threw some bread
and a compass to the wrecked

survivors and wished them good

Nobody was spared. One
submariner revealed,

"The BDU sent through -there's
a convoy, a children's transport.

The children's transport is so big.

We sank a children's transport.

All are dead."

After 18 months of war,
British technology had progressed.

ASDIC could now detect a
U-boat two kilometres away, making

counterattacks more effective.

The days of impunity were over.

In March 1941, the U-boat
aces were caught unawares.

On March 7th, Gunther Prien,
with his record of 30 ships sunk,

disappeared with his U-47.

On the 17th, it was the turn of
Joachim Schebke, author of 37

sinkings, to go down with his

U-100.

On the 22nd, Otto
Kretschmer was captured southeast of

Iceland having scuttled his U-99.

The Ace of Aces was a prize capture.

In two weeks, the
Wolf Pack was decimated.

And for Donitz, the trouble
was only just beginning.

In May 1941, one of the Nazi's
cipher machines, the famous Enigma,

was delivered to MI6 headquarters

at Bletchley Park.

The machine, along with its
instruction manual, came from a

U-boat captured by
a British destroyer.

By a twist of fate, it was the man
who sank the passenger ship Athenia,

Captain Fritz Julius Lemp, who,

failing to scuttle
his U-110,

allowed the British to take
the equipment left on board.

Lemp was killed, his crew
captured, and his U-boat finally sunk.

The Nazis, unaware of what had
happened, didn't change their code.

This event marked a turning
point in the intelligence war.

The Nazis' most
complex code was broken.

The machine, designed by the British
computer scientist Alan Turing,

could decipher the

enemy's messages within 36 hours.

The most important transatlantic
convoys were diverted to

protect them from attack.

But sparing all transport
would arouse German suspicion.

So the Admiralty sacrificed a
number of its ships to maintain

its precious advantage.

But Nazi tactics went unchanged.

The fall of the aces didn't
stop the methodical killings.

U-boats sank five times as many
cargo ships as German battleships did.

The Commander-in-Chief of
the Kriegsmarine,

Admiral Raeder, remained
convinced that his

giants still had a role to play.

In May 1941, he deployed his
fleet's flagship,

the fearsome Bismarck,
for its first Atlantic sortie.

Reputed to be unsinkable,
even Churchill called it "the

world's most powerful battleship."

Just one week after setting sail,
chased down by the Royal Navy,

it was pounded with almost

3,000 shells and sank, taking down
more than 2,000 crewmen with it.

The Bismarck had not
survived its first mission.

Hitler ordered all surface
vessels back to Germany.

The Third Reich could not rule
the waves in regular fashion.

Only the underhand tactics of the U
-boats could keep the illusion going.

On June 22, 1941, Germany
invaded the Soviet Union,

once again with no prior warning.

German divisions ploughed through
Soviet defences at lightning speed.

The Red Army was staring at defeat.

Donitz received orders to deprive
the Soviets of all kinds of support.

He dispatched his squadrons
towards the Arctic Circle,

where Allied convoys were supplying

the port of Murmansk.

The wolf packs now prowled the
Arctic Ocean, one of the most

dangerous and inhospitable

zones on the planet.

On board, the
conditions were deplorable.

The extreme cold put
sailors' bodies to a severe test.

At this point in the war,
U-boats held sway in the seas from

the North Atlantic
to the Mediterranean.

They sank more ships than
the Allies could produce.

But American industry
was ready to step in.

- Of all over America's contributions
to Allied victory

a vast shipbuilding program is
perhaps the most vital at the moment.

Shall we beat the Axis effort to
torpedoe our plans for attack?

The answer is, yes!

In late 1941, the United
States became the

arsenal for democracy.

Tanks, planes and munitions
were produced at a dizzying

pace to rescue Europe.

The shipyards of Baltimore
launched the first Liberty ships,

which inaugurated the longest

production line of
ships ever established.

Almost 3,000 ships were
mass-produced in record time,

thanks to the ingenuity of American

industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, who
introduced Fordism into his shipyards.

This new type of cargo ship
symbolized the strength of the

American war industry.

Extremely fast to construct, it
could carry up to 10,000 tons of

equipment, jeeps, locomotives,

tanks, and planes, and
be transformed into an

oil tanker or troop ship.

It sailed at 20 kilometres
an hour, sufficiently fast to

escape from the U-boats.

On board, 35 gunners
kept a constant lookout.

Nazi military command
didn't expect to see such

an armada spring up.

And another event would soon
change the balance of power.

On December the 7th, 1941,
the Japanese attack on Pearl

Harbor brought the United
States into the war.

Hitler could finally
have a stab at Uncle Sam.

Donitz dispatched his
U-boats to attack the

United States in Operation Drumbeat.

The objective?

To cut off the supply
of Texan oil to Europe.

The wolf packs were put
under increased strain.

The American coast lay
5,500km from Lorient,

a distressing voyage
for the submariners.

In the spring of 1942, American
waters were infested with Nazi

U-boats, so close to shore

that at night time, the crewmen
could admire the nearby city lights.

Donitz noted, "Our boats soon
discovered the best way to proceed.

During the day, they rested
between 50 and 150 meters deep on

the bottom, a few nautical

miles from the cargo route.

At dusk, they approached the coast
and surfaced once night had fallen."

The American coasts became akin
to a fairground turkey shoot, made

all the easier by the incompetence

of US naval command.

The Commander-in-Chief of the
Navy, Admiral Ernest J. King,

obsessed with the war against

Japan didn't take the U
-boat threat seriously.

Despite warnings from the
British, King stubbornly refused to

form convoys, which he
considered pointless

A stance which infuriated
his highest-placed peers.

In his journal, an exasperated
General Eisenhower wrote

"One thing that might help win this

war is to get someone to shoot King."

The outcome?

The 30 or so U-boats lying
off the U.S. coasts sank more

than 500 ships in six months.

One ship's captain recounted,
"I fished out wreck survivors

choking on fuel spillage.

Once I fished out a woman
whose torso was cut in two."

And Canada wasn't spared.

U-boats sneaked into the mouth
of the St Lawrence River, the

departure point for many convoys.

Cargo ships were sunk under the
very noses of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Citizens were ordered to caulk
their windows and cover their

car headlamps with opaque plaster.

Contrary to what we
think, Americans were also

victims on home soil.

1942 would be the year of the
greatest U-boat successes,

1,322 sinkings for the loss of

just 84 U-boats.

For each submarine lost, the
Kriegsmarine sent 16 Allied

ships to the bottom of the ocean.

And every month, 20 new
vessels joined the Wolf Pack.

Donitz finally had more than a
hundred U-boats on active duty.

In January 1943, Hitler
appointed Donitz

Admiral-in -Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

Raeder was forced to
give up his position to the

indefatigable promoter of U-boats.

This savoured his triumph, but he
took command at the very worst moment.

Early in 1943 came the
turning point of the war.

The Nazis were
retreating on every front.

In the Atlantic, the Allies now had
800 warships escorting the convoys,

the means to foil the

Phantom Menace, a strike
force equipped with the latest

scientific advances, providing

decisive assets in
anti-submarine warfare.

Since 1942, the US Navy
had been perfecting a system

invented by the British.

Radar, a crucial
technological advance.

The new compact models, fitted
into the noses of reconnaissance

aircraft, covered a radius

of 300 kilometres
compared to the previous 35.

German submariner Heinz
Schaeffer regretfully admitted,

"They now have the ability
to detect us in any kind of

weather, in the rain, the fog

or at night, when
we're at the surface.

Our means of attack have
diminished, our losses are increasing.

Maybe our command
underestimated the

capabilities of radar."

Detection which made
surfacing an act of suicide.

U-boats could no
longer hide or communicate.

The conversations were picked up
by a new system called huff-duff,

which could locate

the origin of a radio wave.

With huff-duff, any ship within
a range of 30 kilometres was

immediately spotted.

Without communication, the
wolves could no longer coordinate,

bringing an end to hunting

as a pack.

An officer at Donitz's
headquarters admitted,

"The enemy has every asset in hand.

He knows all our secrets,
while we know none of his."

As well as detection tools,
weapons had also evolved.

Fully fitted with radar,
reconnaissance planes were also

equipped with Mark 24 mines, highly

accurate acoustic anti-ship torpedoes.

And thanks to new powerful
spotlights, U-boats were visible at

night as if it was day.

Hunting now took place 24 hours a day.

Submariner Heinz Schaeffer conceded.

"The submarine doesn't have time to
activate its anti-aircraft defences.

The gunners are caught in
the thick of the action.

The U-boat is lost.

It's rare for a single
man to escape death."

Another lethal
weapon was the hedgehog.

This device fired 24 spigot
mortars ahead of the ship.

This increased the chances of
making a hit with newly developed

shells that only exploded

on contact.

Here, pools of spilled fuel
form on the surface, as if

they were funeral wreaths.

In 1942 the life expectancy of a
U-boat was more than 12 months.

One year later it was
no more than 12 weeks.

The Allies had found the
riposte and took full advantage.

It was Donitz's turn to
taste the bitterness of defeat.

His dream of sinking more ships than
the Allies could produce evaporated.

Altogether, the 16 American
shipyards were launching one

Liberty ship every day.

The Admiral accepted
the obvious conclusion.

On May 24, 1943, he ordered his units
to withdraw from the North Atlantic.

But Donitz wasn't one
to throw in the towel.

He informed his Wolves
of his new strategy.

"We know that the presence alone
of our U-boats will occupy two

million of our enemies.

So we must, in spite of
everything, dispatch our boats to

distract the enemy, even if they

never sink another ship."

15 U-boats entered the
North Atlantic to simulate the

presence of several wolf packs.

Donitz staked everything on
his most experienced captains.

It was a wasted effort.

The last wolves were sunk one by one.

The crewmen weren't unaware
of the fate awaiting them.

They lamented, "All of these U
-boat sorties are now suicidal."

In 1943, 238 U-boats were lost.

First Lieutenant Heinz
Schaeffer bemoaned,

"We feel bitter, a curse on
this war,

on mankind, on the inventors
of submarines, on ourselves."

After four years of war, half
of the U -boats had been sent to

the bottom of the ocean.

The surviving units were
transformed into life rafts.

The wolves' fangs were
well and truly blunted.

Since the Normandy landings,
Germany was in its death throes.

Early in 1945, Berlin
fell to the Red Army.

On April 30, Hitler committed suicide.

In his last will and
testament, he named Donitz as his

successor as head of state.

Donitz announced the news in a
nationwide radio address.

The admiral stubbornly refused peace.

To save the Kriegsmarine's honour, he
ordered the scuttling of all ships.

232 U-boats were sunk,
never to surface again.

A handful of rebel wolves
disobeyed and helped themselves to

the last cargo ships of the war.

On May the 4th, Donitz accepted
the facts and announced the

capitulation of Germany.

The Wolves surrendered to the
victors, but not all of them.

One new type of U-boat
was on a secret mission.

Capable of crossing the
entire Atlantic underwater, it

patrolled freely,
undetectable by radar.

It could easily sink any
ships it came across, then

flee in stealth mode.

But the war was over.

This sole prototype was unable
to change the course of history.

But it did pave the way for
the design of modern submarines.

Of the 40,000 German
submariners called to duty, 30,000 of

them remained in the ocean

depths alongside their victims.

A pointless sacrifice, because
the destruction of the Allied

merchant fleet was but a pipe dream.

They hadn't banked on the US
being able to produce more

ships than the U-boats could destroy.

Faced with the industrial power of
Uncle Sam, Donitz was always a loser.

The 153 surviving U-boats were
moored in Allied ports or on the

banks of the River Thames.

Churchill had one brought to
London, so that the British

people could at last approach

one of the terrifying wolves which
had sunk more than 3,500 Allied ships.

In November 1945, the
hour of judgment came for

the Nazi war criminals.

At the Nuremberg Trials, Admiral
Karl Donitz was at the head of

the list, just behind Hermann Goering.

He was indicted on counts of
crimes against peace and war crimes.

With a solid defense, he was
sentenced to ten years in prison.

As the instigator of
criminal warfare that accounted for

72,000 Allied deaths, half of

which were civilians, Donitz
was able to save his image and

convince the tribunal that

he wasn't a Nazi.

A little white lie?

After all, Hitler did
name him as his successor.

Whatever the case, he
preserved his reputation as an honest

soldier until his death
in December, 1980.