Sous-marin, en avant!

The movie is one of the numerous German propagandist movies of that era. Featuring lots of high-class stars, but the plot is rather dull. Shipmen having a short holiday, falling in love with some dames, then called back to their ship for fighting in the Atlantic.

But: It is very obvious that this movie was the template for Wolfgang Petersen, making his world-famous "Das Boot" in 1981. The protagonists, even their physical appearance, several plot-lines, but especially the photographing of the movie seem to be at many points a black&white version of "Das Boot"! So this movie can be considered as a kind of "missing link" concerning "Das Boot", which makes it interesting for me.

Yes, this is actually a WW-II propaganda-movie. I think, this is the main reason why it was "banned" here in Germany and never send on TV neither available on VHS or DVD. But "Action in the North Atlantic" (1943) is a propaganda movie too, and was aired every year several times. The difference is, that in "Action in the North Atlantic" you see cool Humphrey Bogart, and in "U-Boote Westwärts" only ugly krauts :-) But it this the truth? "U-Boote Westwärts" was filmed in 1941 during the war, and it's common for every nation in war making propaganda-films, and "U-Boote Westwärts" was surprisingly good. It contains not much Nazi-propaganda as i suspected. It is more a movie about the daily struggles of the "grey wolves" in her iron coffins. In many aspects far better and closer to reality than "Das Boot"!

This movie was shoot on real u-boats (most of them are Type II and IX/B) and a lot of real u-boat crewmen as actors. The movie depict a lot of personal problems, hopes and fears of the crew. i.e. one of the man was young father and proud about his newborn twins, he shows the crew proud the new savings book (Sparkassenbuch) with a starting amount of money, that he had opened for his children's future.

And the crew had several problems during the war with this what they must do: To sink ships and perhaps kill people. Everyone knows about the fates of the crewmen of the torpedoed ships and know that their self will probably killed in action. The enemy, in this movie the Englishman, was surprisingly fair represented. A scene shows a English destroyer rescuing the some crewmembers of the u-boat.

I got a copy of this movie (unfortunately in a very bad condition; a copy of a copy of a copy or so) from a friend in Italy. I am not sure if this film ever dubbed into English. But if it probably available in English, don't miss to buy and see it. It is really worth of it! I give it a good 7 out of 10.

P.S. The maximum diving depth of 80 meters in the movie was wrong. A type IX/B-boat was able to go down 230 meters and sometimes 260 meters or even more! It was limited to 80 meters in the movie because the real diving depth of the German submarines was a secret during the war.

German propaganda films made during WW2 and ordered by Dr Goebbels are not no easy to purchase, and find one of them is already a victory. No matter the message. After all, we have seen British, American - not French because France was occupied by Nazis then - so why not seeing a German propaganda film after all? We may watch this one as a documentary, despite the anti British accents and unrealistic behavior of the men aboard the sub; nothing to do with DAS BOOT atmosphere. Here they seem to have much fun and also enjoy enough comfort, compared to Wolfgang Petersen's masterpiece. It remains a must see for me. Forget the Nazi message, you are grown enough to appreciate at its fair level.

My dad was in that movie! He was an extra. He was one of the sailors jumping overboard. About a 3 second clip.