Sub Standard? (Das Boot - Lothar-Günther Buchheim)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Das Boot - Lothar-Günther Buchheim
Date:	23/10/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping and compelling, incredibly realistic

Disadvantages: Starts very slowly, lack of action will put off many

What is it about losing a war that makes for such good literature? This is not meant as a flippant remark, but offered as a genuine observation. All Quiet on the Western Front - probably the greatest (anti) war novel of all time - was written by an ex-German soldier, and Das Boot was also penned by a German author with experience of active service in World War II. Perhaps directly experiencing the bitterness of defeat helps an author to capture fully the misery and suffering of war, rather then looking at the "glamour" of victory.

Whatever the reason, if you are a fan of "real" war literature (and not "boys' own adventures" featuring "plucky Tommies"), you should read Das Boot. An account of the missions of a German U-boat in World War II, it is an exceptional, if sometimes difficult, read.

When I started reading it, I was did have my concerns whether I would enjoy it. Wolfgang Petersen's TV mini-series adaptation was excellent and I was afraid that the original book would prove disappointing. Thankfully, it proves just as intense and compelling. It may lack the visual element of the TV series, but the language and descriptions provided by the author are incredibly vivid, helping you to visualise the horrific conditions under which U-Boat crews operated in your mind's eye.

Realism is the watchword of Das Boot. This is no glamourisation of war, or tribute to "defeated heroes". It is a highly realistic account of the appalling conditions on board a U-Boat and the low life-expectancy of their crews. The back of this book gives a startling statistic: of 40,000 U-Boat sailors in World War II, 30,000 never returned. Having read Das Boot, it's easy to understand why.

Buchheim - himself a U-Boat survivor - describes life on board a U-Boat in incredible detail, from the technical details about the ship, to the intense cat-and-mouse battles with Allied Destroyers and the helpless knowledge that arises from knowing that any slight damage to the hull of the ship spells disaster. Buchheim displays a strong knowledge of all aspects of U-Boat life. He has that rare ability to put all this varied information - technical, personal, tactical - across to the reader in a way which both makes sense and is fascinating. I'm not the most technical of people, but even I came away with a reasonably good idea of how U-Boats actually operated, thanks to Buchheim's detailed, but clear descriptions.

As well as communicating a sense of the dangers of U-Boat life, Buchheim also does an excellent job of showing the tedium. For long periods, virtually nothing happens. The U-Boat is searches the Atlantic looking for enemy shipping - the nautical equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack trapped in little more than an underwater tin can with hardly any space. For every period of intense danger and excitement, there are long periods of boredom (for the crew, not the reader!), where life is reduced to little more than sitting around, eating and sleeping. There is a very real sense of claustrophobia and of how dispiriting U-Boat life could be.

Characters within the book are sparsely sketched, but highly effective. Buchheim deliberately shies away from providing much in the way of personal detail or background. For the most part, they are all carefully referred to by their roles on board the submarine, rather than their real names. This enhances the idea that this group has been thrown together in a professional capacity and the survival of each rests upon the ability of their comrade to do their job. This could have dehumanised and made it difficult to care for them, yet Buchheim invests each with a strong sense of character and nobility. These are ordinary people forced to do an extraordinary job by leaders who know nothing of the reality of war. Their humanity is shown in their despair at being forbidden to pick up enemy survivors, or their admiration of the sailing skills of their opponents. These are not war heroes; they are men.

Despite the strong sense of atmosphere, Das Boot is not always an easy read. I suspect many people will start, but never complete it. Anyone expecting a gung-ho account of submarine war, full of sinkings, explosions and daring raids will be bitterly disappointed. The book proceeds at a very pedestrian pace, brief moments of intense danger broken up by long periods of inactivity. For almost the first 200 pages, for example, the sub is simply sailing at sea and absolutely nothing happens. This might sound dull, but it is precisely this pedestrian pace that allows Buchheim to build such a strong atmosphere, to help us identify with the lives of these men and almost feel ourselves to be one of the crew. Yet, it is also something which will bore a lot of people.

Das Boot is also very slow to get going. The first 100 pages deal with the last night of shore leave before the boat sets off on its latest mission. It's meant to introduce you to some of the key characters in a less intense atmosphere, but I found it rather hard-going. Again, I suspect many potential readers never get past this section, which is a shame because wants the boat puts to sea, it's an incredible read.

Buchheim does have a slightly tricky writing style at times. He writes in very, very long chapters - often 80 pages or more. The sheer amount of detail (technical, personal, historical) makes it very difficult to read in long spells, yet the lack of regular breaks in the text don't encourage reading in short bursts. Even when there are breaks within chapters, each section is usually at least 20-30 pages of densely packed text and you do need to concentrate, making it a difficult book to read if you are tired.

Inevitably, there are a few problems with the translation and there are times when it is a little clunky. This is particularly true of some of the dialogue and the banter between the crew. Inevitably, this is full of idiomatic German which doesn't translate easily into English and some of the translations given sound completely ridiculous. That, though, is always a problem when books are taken out of their original language and shouldn't be held against Das Boot because for the most part, the translator has done an excellent job of capturing the tone and atmosphere.

It's well worth tracking down a copy of Das Boot and it can often be found cheap in charity shops. It perfectly captures the misery and suffering of war in a way ignored by most writers. Much war literature concentrates on the ground troops or the air raids, so it's refreshing to see things from a very different perspective. The palpable sense of danger and the descriptions of the sheer tedium of life on board a U-Boat are incredibly realistic and mark this book down (as the cover proclaims) as "one of the best novels ever written about war."

All Quiet on the Western Front is still the best, though 

Basic Information
------------------------
Das Boot
Lothar-Gunther Buchheim
Cassell, 1973
ISBN: 0-304-35231-4

© Copyright SWSt 2009

Summary: Yet another great German anti-war novel