German soldiers were most likely to talk about killing when the enemies were defined as partisans or “terrorists” (this trope will be treated in detail in the next section). But both army and navy men were generally reluctant to discuss the topic.
What navy men did enjoy talking about in great detail was the tonnage of the ships they sank. It was irrelevant in terms of medals whether those ships were passenger, merchant, or fishing boats. All sorts of vessels were “knocked over,” “shot down,” “cracked,” or simply “sunk.” Navy POWs rarely mention any victims. One exception was this narrative told by an E-boat sailor about an experience in the Baltic Sea:
We once sank a Russian E-boat, a kind of small anti-aircraft boat with a crew of ten. They are quite small things and run on petrol. We shot one of them into flames. The crew went overboard. Our captain said: “Watch out, we can take those few men on board.” We went up to them, there were Russian women among them. The nearest ones started to shoot from the water with pistols. They simply didn’t want to be picked up, they were so stupid. Our captain said “We meant to treat them decently. They don’t want it so we’ll just do the fellows in.” We… let them have it, they were… gone.124
If the rescue attempt had gone off without incident, the navy man probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. What made the story worth telling was the unusual detail that the Russian women didn’t want to be saved, and that they, too, had been killed.
The battles surrounding convoys HX 229 and SC 143 seem to have made a particular impression. Forty-three German submarines attacked the ships, which were on their way from Canada to Great Britain, in March 1943. Over the course of a few days twenty-one Allied merchantmen were drowned.
People who mutually participated in this witch’s cauldron said that not one of the English who had lived through this bombardment would ever sail again. It was such a hell of fire, flames, noise and explosions, dead bodies and screams, that none of all the ships’ crews will ever go to sea again. That is definitely one up to us, a clear moral victory, if the enemy’s morale should deteriorate to such an extent that he should have no further desire to go to sea. But if they really get short, they will force the crews to sail, exactly as we do.125
Evidence that sailors felt pity for the crews of ships they sank were very rare, as were reports about successful rescues. Apparently, the POWs talked very little about whether submarines occasionally rescued and cared for enemies fleeing destroyed vessels. One exception was First Mate Hermann Fox from the submarine U-110:
FOX: We torpedoed a ship which was bound from SOUTH AMERICA, at night, 200 sea-miles off the English coast. We were unable to save the people on board. We found three of them in a boat and gave them food and cigarettes, the poor devils!126
By contrast, most narratives are simply concerned with how many gross registered tons had been sent to the bottom of the ocean. Victims mainly appear in the anonymous form of masses of killed or dying enemies.
Lieutenant Captain Heinz Scheringer, for instance, told two of his comrades of the final mission of the U-26:
