Even though each and every one of World at War's episodes is amazing in its own right, this one is probably the one I have the most preference for. It sets itself apart from the other ones because unlike those, this one focuses on the war at sea, specifically how Hitler's fleet of submarines tried to choke off british supplies in the atlantic and bring the country to the bargaining table. After the battleship Bismarck, pride of the Kriegsmarine, was sunk by Royal Navy aircraft in 1941, it looked like the germans had lost the battle for the waves, above the water anyway. Things were much different under it. The episode features interviews with people who were on ships, both british and german, which is typical for the series, but more important it also includes scenes featuring Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, leader of the german navy and the man who tried to convince Hitler he could win the war by simply having enough U-boats. Laurence Olivier says Doenitz knew the importance submarines could have in wartime because he was stationed on one himself 20 years before in 1918. Early in world war 2, we see how the germans put their submarines to good use and sink millions of tons worth of british ships, which were responsible for supplying the country with everything from food to fuel. If ships were being sunk faster than they could be built, britain would be completely up against it. After the japanese attack Pearl harbor at the end of 1941 and America gets involved, Churchill knows his island is saved. The huge industrial might of the US would grind down the german war machine, but Roosevelt had to physically send his aid to europe first. This is where america suffered the same way britain did in the early stages of the war, as Hitler sent his submarines to attack ships along the american seaboards. Some of them got as close as Hudson Harbor and could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan glowing in the distance. Eventually, the americans introduce a convoy system which provided more protection to ships traveling in one big group, since if one was attacked by a submarine, another ship could shoot at it. Later on, we learn why the episode is called wolf pack. It's what the formations of german submarines were called, because they would all hunt ships together in a group. The war then begins to turn against the germans as fuel, food, oil, and other valuable consumables all start to run dry. To hasten their defeat, the british introduce new counters to german submarines, including isometric radars, a permanent convoy patrol system, seaplanes flying close to ships ready to bomb enemy submarines, and the hedgehog: a large, anti-submarine mortar weapon that launches 24 bombs in less than 3 seconds. Towards the end of the war, the german submarines were a shadow of their former selves. In an attempt to keep U-boats relevant, germany introduced a new type of submarine called the Type XXI, which was electric powered, enabling it to spend more time underwater. It was too late. Only 2 ever entered service, and they never came into contact with the enemy. Aside from being my favorite World at War episode, what Wolf Pack does extremely well is make the viewer feel afraid. It makes you realize the immense courage that was required in order to get into a submarine in world war 2, because most of the german crews would die in action. Hearing depth charges explode around the submarine must have been a horrible experience, because the bombs don't need to be direct hits. An explosion could cause a crack in the submarine's hull, allowing huge amounts of water to flood in. Ultimately, germany's formidable underwater fleet was subdued and overwhelmed by the huge amount of ships and anti-submarine weapons pouring off american and british production lines. As for Doenitz, he would go on to be one of the defendants in the Nuremberg Trials after the war and received 10 years imprisonment. He probably would have been hanged if it wasn't for the fact that he was not found guilty of war crimes. Similarly to Albert Speer, he supported Hitler during the war but pretended to hate him once it was over in order to paint himself as the "good nazi." Even though I love this episode, it is not perfect. It doesn't go into depth (no pun intended) about the submarine battles america fought against the japanese in the pacific, or the ones fought by the british against italy in the mediterranean. It's almost 100% atlantic only. Still, Wolf Pack is my favorite World at War entry because it doesn't focus on land fighting like most of the other ones do.
The World at War (TV Series)
Wolf Pack: U-Boats in the Atlantic - 1939-1944 (1974)
User Reviews
Review this title2 Reviews
Gripping, Revealing Accounts of an Unsung Yet Vital Battle
darryl-tahirali11 September 2023
Even knowledgeable students of World War Two might not know that the war's longest battle was the Battle of the Atlantic, the continuous and manifold maritime confrontations between the Allies and the Axis that spanned virtually the length of the European war from September 1939 to Nazi Germany's surrender in May 1945.
The reason why it was so long is that Britain is an island nation dependent upon seaborne imports of vital goods to sustain its population--and its ability to fight Germany. That meant convoys supplying Britain primarily from North America and the Mediterranean, with merchant ships falling prey to German submarines ("U-boats") while naval vessels and airplanes escorting the convoys tried to repel them.
"Wolf Pack: U-Boats in the Atlantic (1939-1944)," the tenth installment of "The World at War," brings this unsung, underappreciated, and overlooked battle to the bracing fore in poignant, intimate, compelling, and tragic detail. Integral to that is the impressive range of interviewees, British and German, all participants in the battle, who, for the first time in this superlative British documentary series, assume center stage in the narrative penned by J. P. W. Mallalieu rather than narrator Laurence Olivier.
At the war's outset, the expectation was that convoys would be attacked by surface raiders such as the German battleship Bismarck, which the British did sink in the North Atlantic in May 1941, providing Britain with a morale boost, although "Wolf Pack," remaining exclusive to U-boats, does not cover that or other actions.
German Admiral Karl Dönitz explains how he lobbied to build more submarines instead of surface ships, which reached fruition after he became Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (Navy) in January 1943; ironically, U-boats were more effective when they attacked like surface raiders and not submerged as their low silhouette made them harder to spot and attack.
More importantly, Dönitz championed the "wolf pack," groups of U-boats working together to decimate a convoy. Furthermore, the fall of France in May 1940 afforded Germany ports on the Bay of Biscay, which made it much easier to feast on merchant fleets during this "happy time" that saw Dönitz's wolf packs sink millions of tons of shipping, culminating in 1942 with 1675 ships lost, a total of nearly eight millions tons sunk.
The British were slow to respond to the German tactics. Royal Navy anti-submarine tactician Gilbert Roberts notes that the Germans had broken the British radio code, which the British didn't realize until after the war, enabling U-boats to quickly know convoys' locations. But convoy escort commander Peter Gretton explains how anti-submarine lessons learned during the previous world war were ignored while Royal Air Force Coastal Command officer Wilfred Oulton cites unsuitable aircraft and a lack of equipment and training that left the RAF ill-prepared to provide the air cover and support crucial to protecting convoys.
While foul weather could make the North Atlantic perilous to cross beyond the U-boat threat--Chief Petty Officer Edward Butler describes the often-miserable conditions aboard convoy ships, enduring the cold and wet and cramped, unhygienic quarters--U-boat attacks made the conditions tragic.
Thomas Finch, captain of the oil tanker SS San Emiliano, relates a harrowing account of a torpedoing that set oil ablaze on the ocean's surface, with sailors forced to dive into that flaming water. Merchant Navy Captain William Eyton-Jones relates being stranded in an overcrowded lifeboat between Africa and South America, with the U-boat that sunk them simply ignoring them. Several British interviewees note that their own convoys couldn't even stop to pick up survivors. One of every three merchant seamen died during the Battle of the Atlantic.
By contrast, German interviewee Otto Kretschmer, captain of U-99, recounts his part in the October 1940 attack on convoy SC 7--during the "happy time"--that sunk half of its 34 merchant ships, airily describing it as a "Night of the Long Knives," a disconcerting reference to the bloody 1934 Nazi purge of "Brownshirt" storm troopers. (Indeed, Dönitz himself was an unrepentant Nazi war criminal and admirer of Adolf Hitler, even briefly succeeding Hitler as President of Germany as the Third Reich collapsed.)
As Allied anti-submarine tactics improved, including escort aircraft carriers to provide air cover and support anywhere along the convoy route and electronic countermeasures such as advanced direction finders, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt, meeting in January 1943, made defeating the U-boat menace their top priority.
Sailing in May 1943, convoy ONS 5 provided the turning point of the battle. While 13 merchant ships were sunk, seven U-boats were also sunk and seven others damaged. Captain Raymond Hart, commanding the destroyer HMS Vidette, describes the elation his crew felt at sinking a U-boat, adding soberly that there were "no feelings at destroying 70 lives." It was the start of what the Germans termed "Black May," with 41 submarines sunk and even Dönitz's son killed as, overall, four of every five submariners perished in their "iron coffins."
Because of the lack of archival footage available, producer-director Ted Childs and editor Beryl Wilkins make judicious use of it, occasionally using a montage of still photographs, as when describing the exploits of legendary British anti-submarine hunter "Johnnie" Walker, while some film footage, particularly inside the U-boats, appears to have been staged or lifted from stock sources. However, the extended, intimate interviews, a remarkable departure from previous episodes, distinguish "Wolf Pack" as one of the most gripping and revealing episodes to date.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
The reason why it was so long is that Britain is an island nation dependent upon seaborne imports of vital goods to sustain its population--and its ability to fight Germany. That meant convoys supplying Britain primarily from North America and the Mediterranean, with merchant ships falling prey to German submarines ("U-boats") while naval vessels and airplanes escorting the convoys tried to repel them.
"Wolf Pack: U-Boats in the Atlantic (1939-1944)," the tenth installment of "The World at War," brings this unsung, underappreciated, and overlooked battle to the bracing fore in poignant, intimate, compelling, and tragic detail. Integral to that is the impressive range of interviewees, British and German, all participants in the battle, who, for the first time in this superlative British documentary series, assume center stage in the narrative penned by J. P. W. Mallalieu rather than narrator Laurence Olivier.
At the war's outset, the expectation was that convoys would be attacked by surface raiders such as the German battleship Bismarck, which the British did sink in the North Atlantic in May 1941, providing Britain with a morale boost, although "Wolf Pack," remaining exclusive to U-boats, does not cover that or other actions.
German Admiral Karl Dönitz explains how he lobbied to build more submarines instead of surface ships, which reached fruition after he became Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine (Navy) in January 1943; ironically, U-boats were more effective when they attacked like surface raiders and not submerged as their low silhouette made them harder to spot and attack.
More importantly, Dönitz championed the "wolf pack," groups of U-boats working together to decimate a convoy. Furthermore, the fall of France in May 1940 afforded Germany ports on the Bay of Biscay, which made it much easier to feast on merchant fleets during this "happy time" that saw Dönitz's wolf packs sink millions of tons of shipping, culminating in 1942 with 1675 ships lost, a total of nearly eight millions tons sunk.
The British were slow to respond to the German tactics. Royal Navy anti-submarine tactician Gilbert Roberts notes that the Germans had broken the British radio code, which the British didn't realize until after the war, enabling U-boats to quickly know convoys' locations. But convoy escort commander Peter Gretton explains how anti-submarine lessons learned during the previous world war were ignored while Royal Air Force Coastal Command officer Wilfred Oulton cites unsuitable aircraft and a lack of equipment and training that left the RAF ill-prepared to provide the air cover and support crucial to protecting convoys.
While foul weather could make the North Atlantic perilous to cross beyond the U-boat threat--Chief Petty Officer Edward Butler describes the often-miserable conditions aboard convoy ships, enduring the cold and wet and cramped, unhygienic quarters--U-boat attacks made the conditions tragic.
Thomas Finch, captain of the oil tanker SS San Emiliano, relates a harrowing account of a torpedoing that set oil ablaze on the ocean's surface, with sailors forced to dive into that flaming water. Merchant Navy Captain William Eyton-Jones relates being stranded in an overcrowded lifeboat between Africa and South America, with the U-boat that sunk them simply ignoring them. Several British interviewees note that their own convoys couldn't even stop to pick up survivors. One of every three merchant seamen died during the Battle of the Atlantic.
By contrast, German interviewee Otto Kretschmer, captain of U-99, recounts his part in the October 1940 attack on convoy SC 7--during the "happy time"--that sunk half of its 34 merchant ships, airily describing it as a "Night of the Long Knives," a disconcerting reference to the bloody 1934 Nazi purge of "Brownshirt" storm troopers. (Indeed, Dönitz himself was an unrepentant Nazi war criminal and admirer of Adolf Hitler, even briefly succeeding Hitler as President of Germany as the Third Reich collapsed.)
As Allied anti-submarine tactics improved, including escort aircraft carriers to provide air cover and support anywhere along the convoy route and electronic countermeasures such as advanced direction finders, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt, meeting in January 1943, made defeating the U-boat menace their top priority.
Sailing in May 1943, convoy ONS 5 provided the turning point of the battle. While 13 merchant ships were sunk, seven U-boats were also sunk and seven others damaged. Captain Raymond Hart, commanding the destroyer HMS Vidette, describes the elation his crew felt at sinking a U-boat, adding soberly that there were "no feelings at destroying 70 lives." It was the start of what the Germans termed "Black May," with 41 submarines sunk and even Dönitz's son killed as, overall, four of every five submariners perished in their "iron coffins."
Because of the lack of archival footage available, producer-director Ted Childs and editor Beryl Wilkins make judicious use of it, occasionally using a montage of still photographs, as when describing the exploits of legendary British anti-submarine hunter "Johnnie" Walker, while some film footage, particularly inside the U-boats, appears to have been staged or lifted from stock sources. However, the extended, intimate interviews, a remarkable departure from previous episodes, distinguish "Wolf Pack" as one of the most gripping and revealing episodes to date.
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
