it's been a while but if i remember correctly, as the war progressed (and so did the ability to locate enemy subs) most U-boat crews never made it back to port. Sobering thought even though they were the enemy.

You gotta wonder how they know exactly where it sunk when no one was alive to report. The Sunderland will know they sank a boat, but how do they know which one?

You gotta wonder how they know exactly where it sunk when no one was alive to report. The Sunderland will know they sank a boat, but how do they know which one?

it's been a while but if i remember correctly, as the war progressed (and so did the ability to locate enemy subs) most U-boat crews never made it back to port. Sobering thought even though they were the enemy.

30,000 out of 40,000 U-boat crew members didn't survive the war.

In the Nuremberg trials D�nitz was accused of war crimes. Most sensible people agree that the German U-boats fought hard but fair considering the situation. [No one tries to deny the war crimes committed by the Germans before and during the war though]. Thus many say that D�nitz was simply punished for being too efficient at his job and his U-boats having been to much of a threat to allied shipping and the outcome of the war. D�nitz served 11 years and 6 months in prison, the last ten years at Berlin-Spandau.

It was in this situation that on 30th April 1945 he received a radio message from the private secretary of the F�hrer, Bormann, which appointed him, D�nitz, as Hitler's successor, head of state and supreme commander of all German armed forces. D�nitz was well aware of the fact that if he accepted this political office not only would that leave a shadow on his stainless military career, but that he could not escape the prospective humiliation by committing suicide. He would have to stand and fight on until - with as many people as possible saved from the Soviets - he could finally surrender and put an end to the worst war in the history of mankind. He also knew that he was the only high ranking official German person available that the Allies would accept in talks about an armistice or a surrender as he was by no means involved in the political entanglements of the Third Reich. Although the appointment of him as 'Reichspr�sident' was at least questionable from a constitutional point of view - the Weimar Constitution of the Reich was still effective - he had to accept it, as the required legitimization of the head of state by a general election was impossible to carry out. Some people might have been puzzled, why Gro�admiral D�nitz was appointed by Hitler and not some other Nazi. Well, the answer might well be that Hitler saw in one last moment of clear thought, that Germany did not need a Nazi criminal but somebody decent who could - with firmness of character and an unstained personality - help the devastated country. Someone had to take over the responsibility and care for the German state and people. This the Gro�admiral did in the finest traditions of the German officer corps, holding the needs of the many higher than considerations of personal honor or welfare.

So a provisional government was formed which was to be responsible for all German affairs until a democratic general election could be held. D�nitz carefully avoided the involvement of Nazi scoundrels in his government, so he personally had to deny the still powerful Reichsf�hrer SS Himmler a post in the new 'Reichsregierung'. During that talk, D�nitz always had a loaded gun for self defence ready at hand, hidden under piles of paper on his office desk.

it is certainly so in the case of the trial against Gro�admiral D�nitz. He was accused of conspiracy against peace, crimes against peace and crimes against martial law. He was not accused of crimes against humanity, as were the Nazi villains responsible for the incredible cruelty at the concentration camps. Although the Gro�admiral did not care what happened to him as a person, he sensed what was the real cause for him being the defendant: to condemn the German U-boat warfare as an act of piracy and to justify his unlawful removal as head of state. Therefore, he asked the former Flottenrichter (Navy Judge in the rank of a Kapit�n zur See) Otto Kranzb�hler to be his lawyer. Kranzb�hler shared the Gro�admiral's concerns and did everything he could so that the German Navy and its U-boat arm would get out of the court unscathed.

Only by exceptional tactics could he achieve that the testimony of the Commander-in-Chief of the American Pacific Forces, Admiral of the Fleet Chester Nimitz, was admitted in court. Nimitz stated that from the very first moment of war, American submarines conducted an unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. With that statement by one of their own military commanders, the Allied judges could not condemn D�nitz for unlawful warfare.

But a twist had to be found, to make it possible to pass a sentence not in favor of the Gro�admiral. He was then condemned because he conducted (not planned, prepared or unleashed) an offensive war and his U-boats were well prepared and trained for war. This strikingly ridiculous reasoning has never since been applied. If it had been, every officer in the whole world training and preparing his men for battle (after all that is what the job of an officer is all about) should have been convicted. He was not found guilty of conspiracy, but guilty of crimes against martial law. The crime against martial law mainly consisting of not cancelling Hitler's order concerning the unlawful shooting of captured commando soldiers after D�nitz had become Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. That no commando soldier whatsoever had been caught and shot by Navy personnel according to this order did not bother the judges.

The verdict was regarded by many as an outrageous example of injustice and officers all over the world, amongst them some 120 Admirals of the U.S. Navy, considered the sentence as an unjustified attack on one of their brother officers. D�nitz received nearly 400 letters from Admirals, Generals, politicians, historians and journalists from all over the world, expressing their sympathy and regretting his fate.