Vause - U-Boat Ace: the Story Of Wolfgang Luth

Wolfgang Lth

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

1990 by Jordan Vause

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Bluejacket Books printing, 2001

ISBN 978-1-61251-380-5 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Vause, Jordan

U-boat ace : the story of Wolfgang Lth / Jordan Vause.

p. cm.

Originally published: Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, cl990.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Lth, Wolfgang . 2. World War, 19391945Naval operations, Submarine. 3. World War, 19391945Naval operations, German. 4. World War, 19391945CampaignsNorth Atlantic Ocean. 5. Germany. KriegsmarineBiography. 6. SailorsGermanyBiography. I. Title.

D784.G3 V38 2001

940.54'51dc21

2001044541

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

9 8 7 6 5 4

CONTENTS

To Carmel

No equivalent rank exists in the U.S. Navy.

We of Lths generation were given two lives. In our first life we were hard-charging and reckless; in our second life, after a fall like that of Icarus, we became introverted, restrained, confused. We survived the fall, but we must bear responsibility for it. We are still trying to understand why it happened.

Wolfgang Lth plunged into the darkness with us. I can see him during a last conversation shortly before his death, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes like one of the figures in Rodins Burgesses of Calais, exhausted after years of siege, a rope already at his neck, delivered unconditionally into the hands of a merciless victor.

Lth, like the knight Parsifal, died a young man, but his conduct and his achievements had won for him the respect of his men and the recognition of the world. Like Parsifal, he lived in harmony with the values, the norms, the rules of behavior dictated by his social and political environment. Loyalty, courage, honor, and country were the pillars of his life. Myths have grown up around these words, from the Iliad through the Nibelungenlied to Rilkes Cornet; the words are personified in the hero who stands up for them at the risk of his life, who errs, who suffers, yet who passes on his beliefs. Parsifal, the knight, the hero.

Lth was not the knight of Drer, accompanied by Death and Satan. He did not see the evil of the political state for which he lived and staked his lifethe extent of its hubris, its perversion of values and virtues. He did not see that many of his traditional values were already gone, destroyed. He did not perceive the ambiguity of the states skewed perspective, nor that of his own.

In the same way, many of the ideas that he presented and published, particularly those on leadership and personnel management, were shaped by circumstances and the spirit of the times.

Lths style of leadership was formed primarily by events far out of the ordinary in the U-boat war: long voyages to distant waters that lasted anywhere from two to seven months; a monotonous onboard routine; great but relatively easy success. His experience contrasted with that of others engaged in the terrible operations in the North Atlantic, where a mans life expectancy was about four months.

This style, which Lth set forth in the lecture Problems of Leadership, harmonized with his political surroundings. Thus the lecture attained the status of an ideological manual, the weight, almost, of an honor code at the German Naval Academy, whose commandant he became.

Once we know their limitations, we have to ask ourselves if his words can be accepted now as they were spoken then. It is as though one were looking into a kaleidoscope, glimpsing many-colored stones in a shifting mosaic. The stones represent the cardinal virtues, Lths virtues, of intelligence, moderation, courage, and justice. But when the kaleidoscope turns, another picture takes shape. The stones are the same, their effect different; they have been changed by their surroundings in some way.

Mankind has always had to live with the prospect of the apocalypse, the Gtterdmmerung. The many-headed beasts from land and sea were always there, and the harnessing of nuclear power brings them that much closer. In place of a Parsifal, the ideal knight, therefore, we have the logician, the clear thinker who can lead his men with steady nerves, discrimination, and intelligent self-control.

From my acquaintance with Wolfgang Lth, by tradition a Balt and a Prussian, and therefore combative but disciplined, I am sure he would have pursued this path had fate allowed him to survive.

Most writers claim to have too many people to thank and too little space to do so. I am no exception to this unfortunate rule.