The STRANGEST U-Boat Ace

U-Boat commanders were known for their bravery skill and daring exploits during the second world war but beyond their reputation as Fearless Warriors many of these commanders were also some of the strangest and most eccentric characters in military history from their peculiar habits to their unorthodox tactics U-Boat commanders were never short on surprises however there was one commander who stood out from the rest Wolfgang Luth in this video we'll delve into the life and career of Luth and explore why he was considered one of the most unusual but successful U-Boat commanders of all time [Music] Wolfgang Luth began his Naval career in April 1933 after studying law for three semesters in the summer of 1933 he spent the traditional three months on the sailing schoolship gorch fock and then went on a nine-month training Voyage around the world India Indonesia Australia North and South America on the light Cruiser karlsruhe after a year on the light Cruiser koenigsberg he transferred to the U-Boat force in February 1937. in July 1937 he became two w o second watch officer on u-27 and made one patrol in Spanish Waters during the Spanish Civil War in October 1937 he became Iwo First Watch officer on u-38 under Capitan Lloyd and Heinrich liba and was on patrol in September 1939 When The War Began after a short time on a school boat he took over the small-typed iqb U-Boat u9 during six patrols on this boat he achieved his first successes most notably the sinking of the French submarine Doris in May 1940 a month later oberloutant Luth commissioned the type knocker D U-Boat u138 during the night of 2021 September 1940 on his first Patrol in the new boat he sank four ships with a total of 34 633 tons a great coup for a small coastal type U-Boat in October 1940 after returning from his second patrol on which he sank one ship and damaged another he received the knights cross the only commander of a coastal type U-Boat to win that decoration he left u138 that month to take over the large type 9 U-Boat u-43 during five patrols on this boat he sank 12 ships with a total of 68 077 tons he left u-43 in April 1942 and in May 1942 commissioned the type 9 D2 u181 in September 1942 Capitan Lieutenant Luther left Keel for his first Patrol in this boat the operational area included the Indian Ocean as well as South African Waters he reached Cape Town South Africa at the end of October and during the next two weeks sank four ships with a total of 21 987 tons on the 16th of November he received a radio message announcing he had received the oak leaves to his Knight's cross before returning to base he sank eight more ships in the following two weeks totaling 36 394 tons arriving at Bordeaux in January 1943. in March 1943 Capitan loitent Luth left Bordeaux for another Patrol in African Waters in the Indian Ocean this Patrol under difficult conditions was also very successful with 10 ships sunk totaling 45 331 tons during this Patrol Luth became the first U-Boat officer to receive the knights cross with oak leaves swords and diamonds this Patrol was also outstand standing because it was the second longest patrol of the war lasting 205 days second only to kentrat's incredible 225 days on u196 to maintain morale during this Patrol Luth pioneered various ideas such as publishing a ship's newspaper holding contests of various types and other activities designed to keep the crew mentally and physically fit he spoke on this topic during a conference of Navy staff officers in Weimar on the 17th of December 1943 providing a fascinating description of the psychological problems which could arise due to the extreme length of such a patrol the entire text appears in Terence the U-Boat offensive 1939-1945. in January 1944 after more than five years of uninterrupted Duty on U-boats the highly decorated Corvette and Capitan Luth took command of the 22nd training flotilla which trained future U-Boat captains in July 1944 he took command of Tai long first section at the marina Shula flensburg murvik Naval Academy where future krieg's Marine officers were instructed and in September 1944 became the youngest ever commander of the marina Shula I just want to take a quick 30 seconds to thank you all for your support and helping to keep these stories alive if you'd like to learn more about the heroes of the greatest Generation we have a free daily World War II newsletter where we go into more detail about some of the lesser-known stories if you'd like to help honor and keep their memories alive you can click the link in the top right or in my pinned comment below thank you again for all your support we appreciate it more than words can express now let's get back to the story Triton King of the Seas belched loudly as another man was dragged to the foot of his throne like the prisoners before him he was dressed like a beggar and covered from head to foot in diesel oil the king yawned and began to pick his nose ostentatiously name Schmidt your majesty well what do you want Triton leaned forward to see better you are a wretched little thing aren't you the crowd around the rickety Throne laughed hysterically and Triton a huge smile on his face nodded and held up one filthy hand for silence guards give this man a whack for impertinence two men stepped forward Schmidt bent over and was smacked soundly on his bottom with a pine plank Triton's side his eyes closed his wig Askew his fingers still in his nose what was that you wanted again holy baptism your majesty Triton frowned and waved his hand limply take him away work on him for a while and then we'll see the crowd went wild poor Schmidt was dragged off for another round of public humiliation physical abuse and chemical poisoning he was smiling as he went for King Triton was only a shipmate named grobelny in a false beard his court was the weather deck of a gigantic U-Boat and Walter Schmidt was having fun Wolfgang Luth the commander of u181 laughed and clapped along with the rest of the crew but as Schmidt was led away and the next man brought before the king he separated from the crowd walked over to the railing lit a cigar and gazed out at a horizon as empty and as blue as his fuhrer's eyes it was the 16th of October 1942. U 181 was on the equator 500 nautical miles Southwest of Freetown and headed south at seven knots toward the Cape of Good Hope the sun was out the weather deck was too hot for Bare Feet the temperature in the engine room was approximately 140 degree Fahrenheit the ceremony going on behind him made it all the more difficult to believe that nine months earlier the ice on his last boat was so thick that hammers had to be used to knock it off Luth had been a U-Boat Commander for almost three years by October 1942. his performance during those years if not the stuff of Legend had been better than adequate and he had matured in the job his first boat was u9 a type 2 Ein bomb commissioned in 1935 and the namesake of Otto wetigan's old smu9 in four patrols he sank three ships the first two in a farcical manner his second patrol a mining operation was saved by the luck usually associated with fools during operation vesarubung he had been assigned to a position outside Bergen where he was thoroughly bored and shortly after the invasion he had fired four defective magnetic Torpedoes at the Polish Destroyer Grom all of which missed or misfired after u9 came command of u138 it was at this time June 1940 that Luth became irritated at having to leave the front for her commissioning But ultimately he won the Knights cross as her commander curiously after almost three months spent commissioning and shaking down his new boat Luth was allowed to make only two War patrols both of them in the western approaches during the wild month of October 1940 before he had to leave for command of a third boat the larger type 9B boat u-43 within three months one of his watch officers allowed her to sink in Orient Harbor another man might have been cashiered but Luth was eventually forgiven and over the next 12 months he chased the Bismarck in 17 43 cheered Operation Barbarossa saw the Untouchable Americans in his crosshairs and sank 22 ships in five Patrols five days before Victor urn left wilhelm's Haven for the North Atlantic in May 1940 Luth had Departed the same Harbor in u9 for the English Channel they would be the only two German U-Boat commanders at sea for most of the month and they made a striking contrast they were as different as day and night Ern was a handsome man not dashing but handsome in the saturnine way of a sleek and well-fed burger his appearance on the bridge of u-37 in May 1940 every hair in place calls to mind the image of a successful businessman looking only slightly out of place lashed to the wing of a small airplane Wolfgang Luth was a plain looking man although he looked less so after a shave and wearing a pressed uniform bald with a pointed head a large nose and a gap between his two front teeth wide enough to push a pencil through earn was Urbane a diplomat a thinker Luth had neither diplomacy nor tact he was remarkably rude and he was pushy prying and utterly prudish regarding other people's personal lives he was not a Sentimental Man more to the point there was a critical difference in the way the two men went about their work Ern was tentative Torn Between the desire to succeed and the need to temper his destruction with Charity he sank ships because he had to Luth was as cold-blooded about his work as any predatory animal on the 9th of May 1940 for example he sank the French submarine Doris off the Dutch Coast when the Doris blew up and bits and pieces of her crew rained down on u9's bridge he was unmoved poor fellows said my watch officer they were only U-boats Killers like us but War drives feelings like this into the background it is either you or me if we hadn't sunk them they would have sunk us or one of our comrades this attitude was not uncommon but Luth held it more firmly than most of his fellow commanders he had no idea of the suffering he caused said his friend Theodore Peterson sadly when he sank ships as his career progressed and his numbers mounted luth's Behavior became worse he developed a reputation as a political man he was one of the few officers in the U bootwafa who openly admired national socialism and he took every opportunity that arose to say something favorable about the government or the party his Mean Streak became more pronounced as Theodore Peterson said he had no idea of the misery he caused every time he let loose a torpedo in April 1941 he shot the French sailing ship Notre Dame de chatealay to match sticks and killed several men not because she was a threat to anyone but because he wanted some target practice and he was smarting from the tongue-lashing Carl Donuts had given him for scuttling his own boat in Laureate not something I would have done murmured Carl Friedrich Merton who had once led a similar ship sail luth's prudish sense of morality was very annoying he nagged his men to get married and have children if they were married he nagged them to be faithful and have even more children for the good of the Reich he restricted them to the boat so they could not visit bordellos he followed his officers around to make sure they did not cheat on their wives he banned Pinups and unhealthy reading material from his boats and he never drank it is not easy to imagine Luth relaxing in the shaharazada Peterson dragged him into the Lido once and he was shocked to learn that there were nude women inside clearly his behavior was odd and many people thought it approached eccentricity Wolfgang Luth said lothar Gunther buchheim was the craziest man I ever knew few commanders with such character flaws could have survived there is no doubt that some were fervent Nazis some were morally straight laced some were bullies some were even Psychopaths but none of the top commanders the aces carried all the baggage Luth carried and yet he survived and prospered in the U boot wafa by the time he left the front he was second only to Otto kretchmer in tonnage sunk and his career which lasted from the first day of the war to the last was arguably more impressive and more rewarding than that of any commander in the Service Such hardly seems fair or even fitting until one realizes that Wolfgang luth's faults were like so much chaff compared to his one great virtue this virtue which made him a superb military officer in a tolerable human being as well was his Sublime ability to lead men the responsibility of a commander to his crew formed the leadership style of Wolfgang Luth it drove him as a leader we know this because Luth took the most time and trouble to explain his idea of U-Boat leadership and he authored the single most important first-person document on the subject a lecture he delivered to a Convention of krieg's marine officers meeting in Weimar in December 1943. this lecture which Luther entitled problems of leadership in a submarine was an immediate and sustained success first as a teaching tool for the kriegs Marine then as a legitimate source of information for historians it is the best written description of the Mind Games that so often went on inside a U-Boat it is one of the most candid and unexpurgated statements of personal opinion from a commander in Wartime problems of leadership which is about ten thousand words long and would have taken over an hour to read is divided into five uneven sections in each section Luth discusses one of the factors he thought necessary for good leadership in a U-Boat discipline success shipboard routine the example of the officers and real spiritual leadership for the men together with a genuine concern for their personal welfare it is as good an outline as any for such a lecture even if Luth adheres to it only casually one of luth's favorite leadership tools was competition he made a contest out of anything no matter how dull or how odd it was after the boat's doctor lothar angle had presented his derogare lecture on hygiene and venereal disease Luth arranged a poetry contest on the same subjects the winning entries were predictably vulgar he had a tall tales contest in which contestants tried to outdo each other in telling lies he held a shipboard Olympic Games a drawing contest test chess and card tournaments and a singing contest that was broadcast with commentary over the address system he encouraged a sense of competition with the few other boats in the Indian Ocean by printing each boat's tonnage totals in the newspaper he had a talent for taking advantage of the unexpected one could only manufacture so many things to do within the hull of a U-Boat even a boat that was 88 meters long with three deck guns in her own refrigerator thus it became very important to adapt external events to fit the need sinkings were always best for interrupting the tedium and Luth like to turn them into special events during a Chase he would summon crewman onto the bridge to look at the ship through binoculars and identify it during an attack he would keep the crew informed of torpedo firing Target angle expected run time hit or miss after sinking the Panamanian steamer amaryllis in December 1942 he allowed his crew to haul an entire sheep aboard fresh meat was rare on a long cruise and the Sheep was chopped up and roasted with enthusiasm he was a strong believer in celebrating holidays and birthdays any holiday no matter how obscure was the occasion for a party the most important of these of course was Christmas on Christmas Eve the officer's mess was dissolved the entire crew ate together presents were distributed and songs were sung around a Christmas tree made out of green toilet paper but Easter was also cause for celebration and so were Mother's Day and Father's Day Luth made a lot of these last two because he had such strong views on the value of family and the responsibilities of Parenthood by the time he returned from his last Patrol he had three children birthdays were celebrated in u181 with songs parties cakes and cognac the day the boat crossed the Equator was when Luth held a wild crossing ceremony preceded by weeks of publicity and commemorated with hand-lettered certificates finally u181 was one of the few boats in the U bootwafa that observed the fuhrer's birthday in the closing paragraph of problems of leadership Luth stated clearly and simply a very simple truth a Commander's first obligation his first thought his first love must be his crew he blows the opportunity completely wasting it on one last gratuitous wheeze of Nazi ideology the result is a curious welding together of his greatest virtue The Virtue that led him to present the lecture in the first place and made him famous despite himself and his greatest Vice ironically one of the more positive reactions to problems of leadership came from a prominent American submarine Commander Edward L Beach my general impression of the lecture is that it was right on target he stated making allowances for the differences in submarines and our own Submariner experiences during the war his practices would have applied perfectly well to us he agreed that some of luth's methods were pedantic but so were mine in a similar situation others he considered genuinely Innovative and only wished that he had thought of them himself as a prize in one of his competitions for example Luth would stand a man's watch for him this had a double effect that no Submariner would miss but which others might the skipper could stand any watch in the ship I don't know if I would have had the self-confidence to do that would luth's style have worked in one of Beach's boats probably not because both the boat and the crew would have been different but he was smart enough that he would have thought up appropriate things for the same objective and they would have worked about as well problems of leadership should be recognized for what it is an imperfect but Illuminating glimpse into the practice of good leadership at the U-Boat command level it is the best Glimpse we have even though it is badly written politically skewed and easily mocked to get a better idea of the qualities that made Luth special one is well advised to skip it and listen instead to his men their bond with him has lasted over 50 years and transcends death Capitan Luth was a man to depend on wrote Franz Parish one of the crewmen on that last long Patrol and I can say with great pride that his entire crew Stood Beside him and as one would say in German would go through fire for him there are no men like him anymore sobbed Walter Schmidt some of his contemporaries found his ideas on crew management naive and even laughable commanders who endured frequent and deadly attacks from the aircraft and escort vessels that dogged them in Northern Waters found little to relate to in the problem of needing to keep Crews amused during monotonous patrols buchheim's dos boot ridicules luth's famous lecture on problems of leadership in a submarine although the lecture actually occurred two years after the events in the book were supposed to have taken place it is clear who buchheim means when he pokes fun at a long text from a speech by Lieutenant Commander l luth's paternalistic attitude toward his crew was also well known not only did he believe it was his duty as a leader to be concerned with the well-being of his men even after they had left his boat he also controlled their personal habits as much as possible all reading materials brought on board had to gain luth's personal approval and pinup posters were forbidden part of a campaign to Stamp Out sexual problems on board he actively promoted his theories about the proper way to maintain physical health on patrol going so far as to require certain items of clothing to be worn and forbidding or closely regulating the consumption of cigarettes in certain foods and drinks however luth's style of leadership seems to have evoked lifelong loyalty among the majority of his crewmen who Revere him to this day he also continued to assist his men in their personal affairs and careers after he left u181 taking time from his busy administrative schedule to respond to their requests for help he was clear really a charismatic leader of men similar in this respect to gross Admiral Donuts who stated after the war that Luth had been earmarked for the position of the befels harbor der unter sebuti or BDU which was the supreme commander of the German Navy's U-Boat arm uputwafa during the first and second world wars however because of his political leanings had Luth survived he would have undoubtedly served a long-term and Allied captivity and may even have been barred from serving in any position of authority after his release only a few days after the war ended he died in a tragic accident on the 13th of May 1945 Capitan zursi Wolfgang Luth was shot by a century at the marina Shula when he failed to identify himself or give the password The Unlucky shot fired by the Sentry at a Target he could not even see in the darkness struck Luther in the head killing him instantly there has been much speculation as to why he did not respond to the Century's challenge some have suggested it was deliberate suicide others that Luth responded but the Sentry failed to hear him the most likely explanation is that he was drunk exhausted or otherwise distracted as he made his way across the grounds of the marina Shula shortly after midnight on the fourth day after Germany's surrender Luth was one of the most controversial of all U-Boat commanders first and foremost because he publicly advertised his firm belief in the tenets of Nazism but other aspects of his personality and even his successes have also found their detractors although he sank a huge tonnage of vessels his successes occurred mostly in African Waters and in the Indian Ocean areas which offered relatively easy pickings with light defenses compared to the North Atlantic two days after his death Luth received the last state funeral of the Third Reich six U-Boat officers decorated with the Knights cross formed the honor guard and donuts spoke the last words Wolfgang Luth was credited with the sinking of 46 Merchant ships plus the French submarine Doris sunk during 15 War patrols for a total tonnage of 225 204 gross register tons this makes him the second most successful U-Boat Ace for tonnage song a memorial stone at marinashula mervick still honors the memory of this outstanding U-Boat officer today [Music] thanks for watching Remember to like And subscribe see you soon [Music]

Channel: Hidden History

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Keywords: hidden history, the strangest u-boat ace, uboat ace, uboat aces, wolfgang luth, otto kretschmer, heinrich liebe, u-181, uboat, u-boat, u-boat ace, kriegsmarine, navy, submarine, submarines, das boot, military history, dark docs, uboat captain, us navy, ww2, wwii, world war 2, uboats ww2, uboat footage, battle of the atlantic, ww2 aces, history, navy history, warship, warships, dark seas, world of warships, mark felton, ww2 uboats, german navy ww2, ww2 documentary, second world war

Id: iD0yQq_0TmE

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023