Das Boot

The epic Second World War novel, now an acclaimed Sky One series

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Das Boot

By: Lothar Gunther Buchheim

Narrated by: Tim Bruce

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About this listen

'Breathless, terrifying U-boat drama... a masterclass in economical, tight-space storytelling, piling the pressure on both characters and audience'
Time Out

It is autumn 1941 and a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Over the coming weeks they must brave the stormy waters of the Atlantic in their mission to seek out and destroy British supply ships. But the tide is beginning to turn against the Germans in the war for the North Atlantic. Their targets now travel in convoys, fiercely guarded by Royal Navy destroyers, and when contact is finally made, the hunters rapidly become the hunted.

As the U-boat is forced to hide beneath the surface of the sea, a game of cat-and-mouse begins, where the increasing claustrophobia of the submarine becomes an enemy as frightening as the depth charges that explode around it. Of the 40,000 men who served on German submarines, 30,000 never returned.

Written by a survivor of the U-boat fleet, Das Boot is a psychological, military drama merciless in its intensity, and an epic rendering of the Second World War.

20th Century

Action & Adventure

Engineering

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Historical Fiction

Military

War & Military

Submarine

U-Boat

War

Thought-Provoking

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Critic reviews

Breathless, terrifying U-boat drama ... a masterclass in economical, tight-space storytelling, piling the pressure on both characters and audience

Most relevant

This isn't what I expected. That was my initial feeling regarding this long awaited audio book. I'd seen Das Boot for the first time way back around the mid 80's when it was a mini series on the BBC. I've since watched this several times, now on DVD and am very familiar with the tone and content of the television adaptation of the book. I knew Das boot originated in book form way back and this is, of course, what the television movie was based on. More often than not, the book is the definitive incarnation and the movie version is the poor relative.

Das Boot is perhaps a rather strange mix of the two. The books prose style is one I've never come across before. The writer literally describes every thought as he experiences the world around him. This can both be a terribly verbose and largely unnecessary drag on the narrative and at other times, such as during depth charging and other dire situations, is an asset as we are brought right inside the mind of the terrified author.

The author's writing style is akin to poetry at times as he describes many things using poetic metaphor. One might read a passage describing the mountainous waves during a storm and imagine it coming from a verse of poetry. As alluded to above, this style can both be good and bad. the bad being that the narrative can be slowed to a crawl and prove rather difficult to read, especially when it's new to you at the start of the book, and yet be so engaging at others.

The story closely follows that depicted in the television movies apart from a couple of incidents toward the end of the book completely skipped for television. Probably this was due to the length of the movie version, I'm not entirely sure. The first incident involving the stopping of an ocean liner could possibly be something to cut from the movie, but the final attack on and sinking of a fellow U-boat in close proximity to U-96 would've been a powerful reminder of the price of war.

In many respects, the television movie is perhaps the better version as it removes the unnecessary elements and leaves us with the key plot points as well as faithfully reproducing many of the characters and situations. however, if you want to know how terrifying experiencing a depth charge attack is, then the written word is king when described in such verbose prose in this book.

On the whole the narration is fine. However, the narrator didn't really attempt to come up with distinct character voices, so in the early stages it's hard to know whose talking at times. In addition, the narrator tends to make many speakers sound slightly Cockney, something that sounds a little odd given the characters are German. This is rather odd as the narrator appears to be able to produce excellent accents when needed. Also, he sings the lyrics of some of the songs heard and this isn't pretty listening. However, he does manage to do an amazing impression of an ASDIC ping in one instance.

This book is a translation from what, I presume, was the original German. I wonder if the original translation to the English book format done, likely many years ago, was the reason why all the measurements given were in Imperial and not in the original Metric system as would be used by the German U-boat arm during the second World war. After seeing the television version, the reference to depth etc in feet feels somewhat out of place. other likely points where translation has come up with oddities is the reference to "cells". I would imagine that cells really ought to be tanks, even though ballast tanks are mentioned. I'd never heard the term "diving cells" or "buoyancy cells" being used as terms on submarines, so I suspect the translation may be the culprit. Similarly, the word "plugs" is used when I believe vents or valves may be more appropriate. The author's description of the u-boat interior spaces is accurately portrayed in the television movie. In fact, the television movie had a completely faithful reproduction tube built with the type 7C submarine interior recreated with painstaking accuracy.

If you've seen the television version of this seminal depiction of war, then the book might be hard going to begin with. Once the author is underway in U-96 (interestingly, the U-boat number and others referenced was never mentioned and instead some lettering system was used, such as UA and UW etc) then you'll start to enjoy this highly detailed telling of the story.