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The Odyssey of a U-Boat Commander: Recollections of Erich Topp

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This is one of the finest memoirs available from any war. As far as Kriegsmarine memoirs go, it is more reflective than the also excellent Under Ten Flags (The German Raider Atlantis), by Bernhard Rogge, which tells the tail of a surface raider (auxiliary cruiser). This book is comparable to the masterpiece, Panzer Commander, by Col. Hans von Luck, who also appears in Stephen Ambrose's books, in its survey of politics and philosophy.

Topp's book is excellent for several reasons. First, after the war, he was the German Navy representative with NATO. This gives him a perspective on the twentieth century shared by few others. Second, he writes not only about action at sea, but about the political and philosophical troubles in Germany. Third, the accounts of naval action are first-rate. Fourth, this book refutes the silliness propounded by such as Daniel Goldhagen that everyday Germans were in on the Holocaust. Topp's aunt, Anna, was part Jewish, and sent to a "model" work camp which was open for Red Cross inspection. The ill treatment still led to her death soon after liberation. Topp learned of this after the war, and was sickened to know that she had only received such "good" treatment because of her relation to the famous U-Boat commander (Topp was featured on wartime postage stamps). It is worth noting that the father of von Luck's fiancee was also killed in a concentration camp, and that although von Luck attempted to have him released, it was not until the man was killed that von Luck, a high-ranking officer who was close to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, began to realize that there was something going on.

Erich Topp is a reflective and insightful author. If you appreciate military history in the tradition of Caesar, this is not to be missed. This book is also reviewed on uboat.net.

As everyone probably knows, Erich Topp was one of the most successful U-boat Aces in WWII. This book is a collection of his diary entries from 1934 when he was a naval cadet, and continues to when Topp was a NATO officer.

This is a very personal work, and Topp tries to hide nothing, including his theories on the rise and fall of national socialism.

If you are looking for stories of convoy battles and the like, you would be better served reading Peter Cremer's book. This book is actually more similar to Prien's memoir.

Topp is also not sparing of Doenitz. Topp believes that the Unterseebootswaffe could have used hit and run tactics to tie down just as many aircraft and escorts, as using wolfpack attacks after Black May.

My first novel, An Honorable German by Charles McCain, is a World War Two epic told from the point of view of a German U-Boat Commander. As part of my research, which involved decades or reading books about the German Navy including every U-Boat memoir in English, I would say I have certain qualification to review a book like this.

This is not an account of U-Boat warfare in World War Two although it contains some of that. It is what it says in the sub-title: Recollections. If you want more of an action memoir I recommend Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner who is still alive and living in Florida.

Topp's Recollections are thoughtful, deep and unforgiving of himself and other Germans who followed Hitler. He explores why he fell for Hitler and why he followed him. And it is clearly very painful for him to examine this. He wasn't a member of the Nazi Party, German naval officers of that era were not allowed to join political parties or even vote but he supported Hitler in the first years of the war and it was only when the suffering of the German people and the German soldiers and sailors became unbearable that he reconsidered.

Topp had a clean record and later served with distinction in the reconstituted German Navy including a long stretch as German naval attache in Washington. One day while inspecting a new US nuclear submarine with a group of other attaches and US Navy officers, the wife of a US Navy officer asked, "Captain Topp, have you ever been aboard a submarine?" Since almost everyone knew who he was they must have been forced to bite their tongues to keep from laughing. Topp politely said that he had been aboard a submarine before and did not mention he was one of Germany's ace U-Boat commanders.

Topp's unsparing look at himself and his fellow officers after the war is even more revealing. He didn't really like many of them and kept his distance and they repaid him by saying insulting things about him. Part of his feud with the surviving UBoat officers was over the film Das Boot which many officers felt did not show the German U-Boat force in the best light. This argument became and continues to be vociferous. Topp not only defended the movie, but was one of the officers from WW Two who served as a technical consultant to the movie. The other was Heinrich-Lehmann-Willenbrock who is actually the person on whom the character of the Captain in the novel is based.

Topp was bitterly assailed for this and he basically told everyone to go jump in the lake. Perhaps the most poignant writing in his recollections has to do with the terrible memories of men being killed, of battle, of the horror of war. He writes that many have said time heals those wounds but for him they occupy his nightmares every single night and have never diminished.

In years to come, this will be the memoir students will read in college.

I recommend it highly.

Charles McCain author of An Honorable German click this link to buy my novel: An Honorable German

For those considering this translation: you can get this same work in the original language vastly cheaper at Amazon.de.

Those desiring a chronological, blow-by-blow account of Topp's wartime U-Boat exploits will be disappointed. Topp spends a fair amount of time examining and condemning the philosophical problems that led to the rise of the Nazis, but at the end of the day cannot propose a philosophical system to keep such a travesty from recurring, other than via vague references to "tradition."