Hirschfeld

The Secret Diary of a U-Boat

Geoffrey Brooks, Wolfgang Hirschfeld

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781848326224
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473814950
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Whilst there have been many memoirs written by U-boat commanders of the Second World War, a book such as this, based upon the diaries of a senior Petty Officer telegraphist, written in 'real time' is something very special. Wolfgang Hirschfeld, whose diaries Geoffrey Brooks has translated is a born story teller. The principal chapters describe his experiences during six war patrols in U-109, in which he served as the senior telegraphist. His is a tale which covers the whole kaleidescope of emotions shared by men at war—a story of immense courage and fortitude, of remarkable comradeship born of the dangers, frustrations and privations shared and of transitory moments of triumph. Throughout runs a vein of humour, without which resistance to stress would have been virtually impossible. We get to know one of Germany's great U-boat aces, 'Ajax' Bleichrodt, holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and, in a special biographical appendix, learn how he finally cracked under the strain. The role of Admiral Karl Donitz, the dynamic commander of the U-boat service, so fascinatingly described by Hirschfeld, is of special interest—not least because even this dedicated Nazi had clearly realized by September, 1942, that the war was fast being lost. In 1944 Hirschfeld was promoted Warrant Officer and found himself on a large, schnorkel-equipped boat (U-234) heading for Japan with a load of high technology equipment and, in addition, a quantity of uranium ore. The possible significance of that uranium has been deeply researched by Geoffrey Brooks and is discussed in a second appendix.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Foreword by Jak P. Mallmann-Showell
Author’s Foreword to the Second Edition
Introduction
1.	Early Days at Sea
2.	U-109: Working Up
3.	First Patrol: An Eventful Failure
4.	Bleichrodt Assumes Command
5.	‘A Well Conducted Special Mission’
6.	‘The Outcome of the War Depends on Your Success’
7.	‘Today is the Führer’s Birthday’
8.	Oakleaves for the Commander
9.	Warrant Officer: I Join U-234
10.	On Course for Japan: Surrender
Appendix
Chapter Notes
Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the library of the Institute of Marine Engineers, Mark Lane, EC3: the German Historical Institute, Bloomsbury Square, WC2, and the Science Museum Library, South Kensington, and extends his thanks to Professor Dr Jürgen Rohwer, the naval historian, who supplied much useful information with regard to the question of the uranium oxide aboard U–234: to Jak Mallmann-Showell, the U-boat historian and author, who checked the manuscript for error and pointed out a number of avenues the author had carelessly left unexplored. Finally to Brigadier Bryan Watkins and to my ex-MN friend Philip Oastler a special note of gratitude for invaluable comments, suggestions and encouragement.

Geoffrey Brooks
London 1996

FOREWORD

By Jak P. Mallmann-Showell

This book, based on a secret diary of a U-boat radio operator, ranks as one of the most outstanding documents of the Second World War. It is unique inasmuch as it is probably the only U-boat diary kept by an NCO as the events unfolded. The keeping of private records was so strictly forbidden that discovery would have resulted in court-martial.

Wolfgang Hirschfeld witnessed almost the whole period of the Battle of the Atlantic and his position enabled him to be better informed than many officers. What is more, he served under three unusual commanders. The first, Fischer, was dismissed unjustly for the incompetence of his chief engineer. The second, Bleichrodt, one of the famous ‘aces’, was probably the only German naval officer to have resigned in mid-operations on the high seas and to have broadcast his intention for all to hear. The third, Fehler, joined the U-boat Arm after having served as Demolition and Explosives Officer aboard the legendary raider Atlantis.

Hirschfeld’s final voyage is of special interest because many aspects of it are still shrouded in mystery. The submarine, U-234, surrendered on its way to Japan. When the Americans unloaded it, they found amongst its cargo of war material an Me 262 jet and radioactive substances.

Wolfgang Hirschfeld was a natural writer of great ability. Not only does he bring the past alive by illustrating hard facts with fascinating anecdotes of shipboard life, but he slots the events he is describing into the overall picture of the war. The English version is just as compelling as the original German.

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD TO THE
SECOND EDITION

Wolfgang Hirschfeld died on 24 April 2005, a few weeks short of his 89th birthday. His death releases me from a pledge I made to him during our collaboration on the first edition of this book to remain silent on certain matters until after his passing.

It was in 1985 that I first contacted him with an offer to work jointly to produce the English-language version of his published diaries Feindfahrten (Paul Neff Verlag, Vienna, 1982). Following his agreement I was supplied with additional unpublished material, about one hundred typed pages in all, which he encouraged me to include in the manuscript as I saw fit. During the compilation of the translation and arrangement of material it was necessary for me to consult Hirschfeld quite frequently to clarify matters arising. Whatever I asked about U-109 was always answered by return, but almost anything sensitive I needed to know about U-234 had to be referred by Hirschfeld to an ‘authority’ before I would receive an answer, not always satisfactory. I became aware by this means that there still exists in modern Germany a rigid military discipline enforced against all former members of the German armed forces from the Hitler period, its main aim being to guard certain secrets. Accordingly I understood Hirschfeld’s real fears when he confided that he had to be cautious regarding what he said about the submarine U-234.

The mystery of U-234 can be summarized as follows. After being loaded with cargo at Kiel, U-234 left for Tokyo via Norway on 26 March 1945, and surrendered at sea to US naval forces on 17 May 1945. The boat, a huge Type XB minelayer as long as a football pitch and converted for cargo purposes, was unloaded at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Exactly how much cargo was aboard is not known because only a partial unloading manifest has ever been declassified. This is clear from the insistence of the commander, Heinrich Fehler, and Wolfgang Hirschfeld, that there was an Me 262 jet aircraft in its component parts aboard U-234, yet this item does not feature on the US unloading manifest. Neither do the 39 barrels of heavy water and 90 cases of U-powder referred to in two cables dated May 1945 appear in the manifest.

The U-234 cargo appears to have consisted mainly of strategic war materials estimated in weight at around 250 tons. The item of cargo attracting most attention was ‘10 cases uranium oxide – 560 kgs’. All efforts to determine officially from the US authorities the nature of this ‘uranium oxide’ have been unsuccessful to date. Despite numerous requests to them under the Freedom of Information Act, the reply has always been that matters relating to nuclear affairs are still subject to official secrecy. Since US law does not supply a blanket to suppress all information about nuclear affairs, it is likely that the material is ‘secret in the interests of national defense or foreign policy’.¹ The fact that it remains exempt from declassification after 65 years indicates its extraordinary nature.

I asked Hirschfeld about these ten cases on several occasions before the first edition was published in 1996. He said each time that honestly he had no idea what they contained and it had never been something which really interested him.

The ten cases of ‘uranium oxide’ had been stowed in one of six steel loading containers each resembling an enormous cigar tube. Each tube was designed to fit into each of the six vertical mineshafts grouped down the centreline of the U-234 foredeck. In a letter in 1995, Hirschfeld revealed to me that the US scientists unloading U-234 discovered by means of Geiger counters that all the steel tubes were contaminated with radiation. So extensive was this contamination with radiation that it was not possible to determine in which of the six tubes the ‘uranium oxide’ had been stowed.

Two years after publication, the American historian Joseph Mark Scalia decided to investigate ‘the controversial cargo of U-234’ for a book of his own. He set up a postal forum for which he enlisted a number of scientists and writers, including myself, to harvest opinions on what the ten cases of ‘uranium oxide’ might have contained. Eventually he produced a book.²

It was during the lifetime of this forum that I saw an apparent paradox regarding the radiation aboard U-234. I realized that if I could find a nuclear scientist to answer my question, without any doubt that answer would solve the riddle of what the ten cases of ‘uranium oxide’ contained. A nuclear scientist contributing to the Scalia forum was Lt-Colonel Richard Thurston, US Army (retired), who had worked with the Manhattan Project. He gave me his answer privately, which was unusual for that forum, since the idea was to pool information, and now I knew for certain what the ten cases contained, and it was not uranium oxide. In my opinion, the US authorities will never release details of the contents. I have been cautioned never to reveal my question and its answer. However I can say that the material was not part of a German nuclear bomb project, but of German unconventional defence research.

Geoffrey Brooks
Buenos Aires, 2010

NOTES:

1. Title 552(a) sub section (6)(c)(b)(1)(A) USCA Title 5, 1 to 552, page 109.

2. Joseph Mark Scalia, Germany’s Last Mission to Japan (Greenhill Books, 2003).

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of an enlisted naval rating who served as a telegraphist in the German Navy for ten years from 1935. Wolfgang Hirschfeld was born in Berlin on 20 May 1916, the only child of Margarethe (1893–1987) and Eugen Hirschfeld (1882–1972). His father, a qualified pharmacist, was conscripted and fought on the Somme, where he received a serious chest wound, and at Verdun.

After the war, the father’s study accommodated a large selection of war books, among them the personal records of the U-boat aces Hashagen, Valentiner, Hersing and De La Periére, which Wolfgang read with special interest, since he felt the inclination to join the Navy. However, he had no desire to become a submariner, for this seemed to be an unpleasant and eerie life to have to endure.

At the age of ten he attended the Hindenburg-Oberreal School at Berlin Lichterfelde, and his political indoctrination began at this age when he joined a youth organisation known as the Deutsche Freischar, modelled on the Freikorps of the immediate post-war period. During school holidays the Freischar made long excursions to West Prussia, Upper Silesia, Memel and Posen. Germany had been deprived of these eastern provinces by the Treaty of Versailles. They had retained East Prussia, but only with land access granted as a favour (the ‘Polish Corridor’), a state of affairs which had last existed in the 17th century. The Deutsche Freischar was a political nursery, strongly anti-monarchical and which blossomed in the War Guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles.

In 1932 at the age of sixteen, Hirschfeld had been offered the opportunity of an apprenticeship at the Prussian Institute for Fisheries in Berlin Friedrichshagen. Even in those years of savage unemployment no school-leaving certificate (Abitur) was required to enrol, and he was accepted for one of the five annual vacancies. The post of Master Professional Fisherman, which he had hopes of achieving in five years, was a civil service position offering financial security which had not known it since the war.

He spent a year learning the fish-catching methods of the Havel and other Berlin lakes from a former royal hunting lodge at the State Fishery School, Sacrow near Potsdam. This was followed by two years at Timmendorf/Holstein where he trained as a cadet in the Kiel trawling cutters of the western Baltic. Hirschfeld supported the ideals of the NSDAP though never a member. At age eighteen in 1934 he joined the SA.

In the Nazi Government, Hermann Göring was...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents