IntroductionREINHARD ‘Teddy’ Suhren entered the U-boat service in 1938, already carrying a reputation for outspokenness and honesty that did not always sit easily with superior officers. Possessed of a passion for life that manifested itself in a raucous sense of humour, Teddy soon felt at home within Dönitz’s élite corps where the maverick often reigned supreme: ‘They [the Flotilla] all liked him. He was widely known; he was an original. There was but one Teddy Suhren.’1
Suhren had already led a tumultuous career since enlisting in the German Navy at the age of eighteen, and it was a trend that continued through the years that followed. He was born Reinhard Johann Heinz Paul Anton Suhren on 16 April 1916 at his grandmother’s house in Langenschwalbach, west of Frankfurt. His parents, Geert and Ernestine Ludovika, had only recently returned to the Fatherland after their expulsion from Samoa, an Imperial German colony annexed by New Zealand troops at the outbreak of war.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the newborn country of Germany had cast around for territories – leftovers from the more mature European powers’ empire building. Germany soon established dominion over several African and Pacific states, among them Samoa. Anxious to expand the farming and trade potential of her new protectorate, she encouraged settlers to emigrate to the lush Samoan islands, and among them was Geert Suhren, a recent graduate of Halle’s agricultural courses. In 1913 he returned to Germany from Apia, where he had made his home and established a thriving plantation named Tafaigata. His stay in Europe was brief – long enough to marry Ernestine Ludovika – before returning to Samoa. A year later, on 16 May 1914, a son was born in Apia to the contented pair, named Gerd as family tradition demanded for any first-born male.
An uncharacteristically bearded Teddy Suhren returns from successful patrol to the coast of the United States, June 1942. Around his neck he wears the red scarf knitted by his mother – a talisman he rarely removed while at sea.
Their paradise was to be short-lived. In June 1914 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, and within weeks Europe was at war. New Zealand soldiers rapidly arrived to claim German Samoa as a New Zealand protectorate, and the South Seas idyll was over for the Suhren family. Geert, Ernestine and their infant son travelled from Pago-Pago to San Francisco and on to Europe under the assumed name of ‘Mr and Mrs Gasket’ aboard a Norwegian steamship. Geert had managed to mask his pronounced duelling scars – a sure mark of German University education – beneath a heavy beard, promptly shaved off after arrival in Germany and his enlistment into the Ulanen, the 18th Leipzig Lancers. Leaving his wife and son with Ernestine’s mother in Langenschwalbach, Oberleutnant Suhren was sent to the Russian Front, where he soon acquitted himself well, earning the Iron Cross for valour. By the end of 1916 he had also been awarded the Ritterkreuz der Militär-Sankt-Heinrichs-Orden (Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of St Heinrich), Saxony’s second highest decoration for conspicuous personal bravery on the battlefield during the fierce fighting against Russian troops of General Alexei Brusilov’s southern offensive.2 His regimental report read: ‘By means of his personal bravery and iron strength of will, he took charge of the Ulanen, who were exhausted by previous strenuous fighting and days of marching, and after a twelve-hour battle took control of Tuliczew in the face of strongly consolidated Russian positions.’
In November 1918 Germany requested, and was granted, an armistice, but this was followed by many years of internal strife and unrest. The country’s manpower and resources had been bled dry both by four years of unrelenting war and by the harsh surrender terms of the Versailles Treaty. The Suhrens were among those to suffer from runaway inflation, and they, among nameless other millions, were soon stricken by poverty. There was no question of a return to Samoa to reclaim their lost plantation, but, using his agricultural training to the utmost, Geert Suhren became Director of Agricultural Production for Saxony.
Even at that stage of their lives, the characters of the two young Suhren brothers were clearly defined. Gerd and Reinhard were almost two sides of the same coin: ‘I daresay in a way they were similar, but in other ways they were very different…. Gerd was far more introspective, quieter than Teddy was. … He was perhaps a more noble edition of the Suhren brotherhood, more refined.’3 A third sibling soon joined the inseparable brothers, a sister named Almut, whose disposition more closely resembled that of her eldest brother. While Gerd was studious and quiet, intensely interested in engineering with his keenly analytical mind, Reinhard was boisterous and high-spirited, his perpetual grin the bane of many teachers and figures of authority. It was a personality trait that would survive with him through the difficult years that followed.
Reinhard went through a succession of schools; hw was, in his own words, ‘not particularly industrious, but I survived.’ Along the way, he developed a love of horseriding and sailing. This latter skill was particularly encouraged by time at the Hermann Lietz School in Spiekeroog, a rural boarding school modelled along English lines. As soon as they were old enough, the two brothers learnt to drive and ride motorcycles, displaying the kind of calm under pressure that would later become a hallmark of their military service: ‘Their confidence on the road was most unusual, as was their unerring ability to make important decisions in moments of danger.’4
Later, in their mid-teens, Reinhard and Gerd attended the state secondary Deutsche Oberschule at Bautzen, riding by motorcycle from their home at Drehsa. During the final summer of his education, Reinhard applied to attend a sailing course in Neustadt, hoping to sharpen his skills. In the newly militarised Germany, an emphasis was placed on parade-ground manoeuvres in even so innocuous an activity as sailing tuition, and, having applied to join the Navy after graduation, Reinhard was determined to impress. Soon his five-foot four-inch tall figure was joining the other students in learning to march. It was here that he acquired his nickname. During the parade drill of the young students, the adolescent cadet in the following rank suddenly began to laugh: ‘My goodness, Reinhard, your marching makes you look like a teddy bear!’5 Unimpressed with the inferred derision at his less than military appearance, Suhren chose to ignore the remark and concentrated on keeping his left foot separated from his right.
Suhren (left) as a Fähnrich during his turbulent cadetship.
It was in Bautzen that Reinhard finally took his school leaving exams (Abitur) in 1935 and prepared to begin further training for his adult career. He had felt himself drawn initially towards medicine, a vocation that ran in his mother’s ancestry. His great-grandfather had been consultant gynæcologist to the Grand-Duchess of Hessen-Nassau, Queen Victoria’s daughter. From there he had also attended the Tsarina in Russia, Princess Alice von Hessen, who had inherited the haemophilia that blighted Victoria’s bloodline. But Reinhard was also attracted to the sea, and it was perhaps his brother Gerd entering the Reichsmarine as a cadet-engineering officer during 1933 that made his mind up for him. On 5 April 1935 he enlisted as a trainee line officer, attached to the 2nd Naval Division within what was now known as the Kriegsmarine: ‘My father, an old hand at these things, gave me a piece of advice for the road: You can’t do anything, you don’t know anything; to start with make yourself out to be a dimwit – and be grateful that you are in a position to learn so many new things that are important for your life. And that advice has never yet been proved wrong.’6
By 1935 Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party was enjoying its third year of power. New prosperity was revitalising Germany, and the armed forces were among those institutions that benefited. However, there were many who feared an ill future with their new government. In the Suhren household, Geert was one of those conservatives that doubted the intentions and abilities of the Nazi regime. This attitude rubbed off on Reinhard, who had always listened to his father’s wisdom. However, in April 1935, at the age of eighteen, the subject of politics was far from Reinhard’s mind as he travelled to Dänholm to begin his basic naval training as part of 2 Kompanie/II Schiffsstammabteilung der Ostsee. There the new draft of officer cadets started three months of infantry-style physical training, Reinhard’s squad under the command of the East Prussian Bootsmaat Jodeit. Although he remembered him fondly in his autobiography, Reinhard, with his unfaltering ability to see the humour in any situation, coupled with an insolent grin and innocent gaze, became the target for a great deal of Jodeit’s disapproval, much to the amusement of the rest of the squad:
‘Matrose Suhren, do you know what you are?’
‘No Herr Bootsmaat’
‘You are an ape. What are you?’
‘I am an ape, Herr Bootsmaat.’
‘Matrose Suhren … these boots of yours are a disgrace to the entire German Navy.’
‘Yes, Herr Bootsmaat.’
‘What do you mean “Yes”? Are you trying to give me shit…?’7
The hapless Matrose Reinhard Suhren marched and doublemarched around Dänholm in his ‘diceboxes’, too large for his small feet. His slight figure soon became a familiar sight hopping around the parade ground with rifle at arm’s length or lugging machine guns over sand dunes as punishment. He also bumped into his old friend from Neustadt, now a member of a sister training division. Sighting Suhren, he bellowed a greeting across the parade ground, using his nickname ‘Teddy’ to attract Suhren’s attention and prompting peals of laughter from his comrades. Much to his annoyance at the extremely ‘unmasculine’ nickname, it stuck with his fellow cadets and became his new name. Eventually, once his pride recovered from the dig at his stature, Teddy resigned himself to his fate and accepted the new sobriquet, soon using it himself in general preference to his ‘thoroughly Germanic’ real one.
Teddy was not particularly comfortable beneath the glare of publicity that found him after his successful career at sea. Suspicious of many of those that led his country during the Second World War, he covered his reticence with a raucous and rebellious sense of humour.
Three months of basic training were followed by a further three months sail training aboard the square-rigger Gorch Fock, which crisscrossed the Baltic and North Sea. Teddy was frequently stationed at the top of the mainmast, the smallest man on board and the natural choice for such a lofty position. A brief accident while under anchor near Fehmarn earned him a badly bruised leg after being caught between the ship’s cutter and hull in a rising sea; but it was not enough to delay Teddy’s training, and after three months of physiotherapy he was back atop the mast.
From there, Teddy and the rest of ‘Crew 35’ became Seekadetten and transferred en masse to the cruiser Emden for a nine-month foreign cruise to the Azores, the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal into the Pacific.8 As a prospective Fähnrich zur See, Teddy saw little of the foreign ports that he visited on board Emden. Run ragged by the ship’s regular crew, the intake of midshipmen was put through their paces in their first taste of foreign service.
Finally, after their nine-month voyage, Teddy and his fellow 400 draftees were moved ashore to the famous ‘Red Castle by the Sea’ – the Marineschule (Naval Academy) at Mürwik, east of Flensburg. There the recruits would be schooled in all aspects of being a naval officer – navigation, signals, engineering, tactics, leadership, maritime law, mathematics and English – as well as the more genteel arts of dancing, fencing, riding and sailing. Teddy flourished. Excelling particularly at artillery school, he amassed high marks for his overall service aptitude, totalling 7.5 out of a possible 9. However, even while doing well, he invoked the ire of the academy’s commander. Teddy’s superb eyesight enabled him to gauge with extreme accuracy the fall of shot of his own artillery fire and make rapid readjustments so that he was able to score direct hits within three attempts, shortcutting the long-winded official method of fire adjustment by using his own judgement. Singled out for praise by the school’s commandant, Fähnrich Suhren inadvertently allowed himself to speak too plainly and criticised the ‘accepted method’ of adjusting fire, earning for himself a dressing-down before the stifled laughter of his classmates. Nevertheless, even that could not prevent his excellent grading, and he continued to head his class – until Rosenmontag, 1936.
A Rhineland tradition, the Rose Monday Festival heralded a carnival in nearby Flensburg, and all midshipmen were granted leave until 6 a.m., apart from those within Teddy’s division. His divisional commander had curtailed their free time to end at 5 a.m. – a fact that Teddy promptly forgot as the beer, wine and dancing continued into the early morning. Realising at the last moment that he, unlike his fellow-revellers, had to be back by 5 a.m., Teddy was mortified to arrive several minutes late for his curfew after a last-minute dash by taxi to the Marineschule. Inevitably, the guard officer reported him, and once again Teddy stood on the carpet before his furious superiors, his mere presence seeming to inflame their rage all the more. Most hurtful to the anxious Teddy was that his divisional officer, Kapitänleutnant Walther Kölle, who had awarded him such high marks during the previous weeks, stood silently and failed to defend him while Suhren was verbally torn apart. The consequences could have been disastrous. In a few short weeks, the draft was scheduled to take its Seaman Officer’s exams, the service aptitude marks combining with examination results to give each cadet’s final grade. Teddy’s 7.5 was slashed to a 4 – equivalent to being reduced from a class leader to the bottom grade. He would never forgive what he took as a betrayal by Kölle, but one day, in the middle of the Atlantic, he would have some small measure of satisfaction.
Eventually he graduated, passing the exam with high marks and thereby enabling his aptitude score to be balanced, providing the required pass mark. But his record was permanently tarnished, and it followed him immediately to his first proper assignment as a Fähnrich aboard the destroyer Max Schultz, attached to Swinemünde’s First Destroyer Division. There, the heavens seemed to rain misfortune on the hapless Teddy as the ship’s Captain, Martin Baltzer, took an instant dislike to the young man: ‘Apparently my mere appearance was tantamount to a provocation, especially since I was the smallest and didn’t pussyfoot around and didn’t allow myself to be brow-beaten. I was myself, and determined to stay so.’9 As his close friend and fellow Fähnrich Jürgen Sander put it, in his thick Berlin accent,
I tell you, once you’ve got yourself well and truly in the shit nothing can help you; you’re always in the shit. However hard you try, even if you come out with top marks, no one notices any more, and at the end of the day the Old Man is determined to shit on you too for treading his corns too hard into the deck!10
At one point Teddy even considered leaving the Navy, confiding his intention to his brother Gerd – by then a commissioned Engineering Officer – whose horrified response and help in influencing the opinion of those above him persuaded Teddy to stay. Finally, upon graduation as Leutnant zur See on 1 April 1938 Teddy volunteered and was transferred to the U-Bootwaffe, and a whole new world that welcomed, indeed valued, unconventional officers and independent thought opened before him. Teddy had at last found his place.
He was posted to the Watch Officer’s Training Course, stationed aboard U 1, where he began to learn the tools of his new trade. The informal atmosphere and camaraderie peculiar to Dönitz’s small corps appealed enormously to Teddy, and he thrived accordingly. As he settled into his new life, during November 1938 he was assigned to the ‘Wegener’ Flotilla as an officer aboard U 48, then under construction in Kiel’s Germaniawerft shipyard. ‘Wegener’ was the seventh U-boat flotilla within Dönitz’s fledgeling service and at the time of Teddy’s arrival boasted four boats (U 45, U 46, U 47 and U 51), with a further four, including Teddy’s, nearing completion. Standards were extremely high in the pre-war submarine force, and suitable officers were in short supply. To remedy the lack of trained men and also to grant a wider experience base for those who had graduated into its ranks, Dönitz rotated any ‘spare’ men through the available U-boats. Thus Teddy found himself as IIWO on three of the four ‘Wegener’ boats – U 51, U 46 and U 47. The experience aboard each differed as widely as the individual commander’s temperaments. While the calm and assured Kaptlt Ernst-Günter Heinicke (U 51) and Kaptlt Herbert Sohler (U 46) were veteran naval officers of a decade’s experience, the mercurial Kaptlt Günther Prien (U 47) was one of the draft of merchant marine officers transferred into the Kriegsmarine after the loss of most of the officer’s Crew 33 during the tragic sinking of the training ship Niobe. Tough, able and passionate about his trade, Prien had a harsh personality, able to whip any man found lacking to ribbons with his blistering wit. Teddy was not among those to earn Prien’s disapproval, however, and he thrived. While aboard U 47, he absorbed the unorthodox nature of successful submarine command from one of Germany’s legendary fighting men, also forming a strong bond of friendship with the friendly, quiet – and equally short in stature – Engelbert ‘Bertl’ Endrass, Prien’s IWO.
Oberleutnant zur See Suhren and his crew stand to attention on the stern deck of U 564 during the boat’s commissioning in Hamburg, 3 April 1941. Occupying the front row of the assembled crew are (left to right) Schmutzler, Grünert and Schiedhelm, present throughout Teddy’s command of the boat.
During 1938, the entire circle of U-boat officers within Dönitz’s élite corps were known to each other. Flotilla loyalties elevated the bond so that those of the ‘Wegener’ flotilla remained the closest of friends into the difficult years that followed. Finally, on a spring morning in April 1939 Teddy and his crew stood before their commander as the Kriegsmarine ensign was raised for the first time and U 48 prepared to begin service. Here Teddy brushed once more with authority when none other than his new Führer der Unterseeboote, Karl Dönitz, reprimanded him for using profanity during a gunnery exercise aboard U 48. However, beneath Dönitz’s harsh words was an unspoken acknowledgement of Teddy’s superb marksmanship and willingness to shave away the rigidity that sometimes marked the surface fleet in order to achieve whatever results were desired.
Under three successive commanders – each winning the Knight’s Cross – and during twelve war patrols, U 48 went on to become the most successful U-boat of the Second World War. Of the 300,000 tons that U 48 destroyed at sea, Teddy had fired torpedoes accounting for over half of that total, a primary task of the First Watch Officer being torpedo shooting when the boat was engaged in a surface attack. On 3 November 1940, in recognition of this achievement, Teddy became the first Watch Officer to be awarded the Knight’s Cross.11
The second man to captain U 48, Hans Rudolf Rösing, arrived in May 1940 as temporary relief for Herbert Schultze, incapacitated through illness. He had the advantage of being well acquainted with U 48, having commanded the 7th U-Flotilla since January:
Schultze had an excellent crew – one of the best I ever saw. When he fell seriously ill and couldn’t go out, they needed another captain. So I was sent aboard U 48 three or four days before leaving for the mission. Since I knew them all, it was no problem and I told them, ‘Well, each sub has its customs. Leave it as it is, and if I don’t like something then I’ll tell you/But there was one thing we altered. My lucky number is seven and therefore I saw to it that any course we steered was divisible by seven, and I told my people that, although we had a command in the German Navy that meant ‘ten degrees to port or ten degrees to starboard/we would have a new command ‘seven degrees to port’. It didn’t mean anything, but these little things are important for the mood of the crew…. Suhren and [Otto] Ites, they followed my wishes, they understood. So we were a fine group, together with [Erich] Zürn, the engineer.
When we were waiting and sat in the mess on U 48, we played a child’s game – Fang den Hut [‘Catch the Hat’, somewhat similar to Ludo]—because in war, of course, there were long periods of boredom interrupted with short periods of great anxiety. We never played cards. We talked together … we were in our little mess room a good gang—a happy crew.
Suhren was a very humorous man and extremely independent. Therefore you had to support him. If you left him alone, while giving him the support he needed, he was excellent. He was also an outstanding torpedo shot.
After two patrols with me on board, when we came back [we] were one of the first boats to use Lorient. So I immediately telephoned Dönitz, and he said to me, ‘You must leave the boat.’ Well …1 let him know that I was not of the same opinion. But of course it was important for him that I leave, because many of the older commanders, the experienced men from peacetime, had been killed. We were few, and he needed us for other commitments, so I was sent to the Italians in Bordeaux. I would have preferred to stay with so fine a crew: we were more than friends.12
A more familiar pose—but a far from natural one: Reinhard Suhren pictured at the Brest Naval Academy, headquarters of the First U-Boat Flotilla, after his award of the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross and his promotion to Kapitänleutnant.
In Germany it was common for a town or city to ‘adopt’ a U-boat—the so-called ‘Patenschaft ‘scheme. U 564 was thus adopted by Zweibrucken in the coal-mining Saarland region, and the crew would occasionally visit the town and receive the hospitality of its inhabitants. Here Suhren and part of his crew are pictured with local dignitaries on a visit during August 1941.
The run of luck that had begun with Herbert Schultze continued under Rösing’s command, Teddy viewing his new commander with great respect for his style of leadership and handling of what could have been a difficult crew for any officer who failed to gain their trust. The men aboard U 48 were a tightly knit brotherhood that would not have tolerated fools in command. Heinrich Bleichrodt, an ex-merchant mariner, was U 48’s third commander, and it was under his leadership that Teddy received his Knight’s Cross, Bleichrodt refusing to accept one awarded to him if Teddy did not receive the decoration in turn. In total, by October 1940, when Teddy departed the boat for commander training, U 48 had discharged 119 torpedoes in action – sixty-five of them fired by Teddy, of which thirty had hit the target.
In February 1941 U 564 was launched from Hamburg’s huge Blohm & Voss shipyards, and Teddy was transferred aboard to take his first command, commissioned into the Kriegsmarine on 3 April 1941. As well as his soaring reputation, Teddy brought one further legacy from U 48 – the boat’s Wappen, an unofficial painting or symbol that graced the conning towers of almost all operational U-boats. For U 564, Teddy kept his old boat’s character, a large black cat, its back arched above the characters ‘3X’ and tail held high. In Germany, as in other countries, one black cat may be bad luck, but three will turn away misfortune. Soon the commander and crew sported their own smaller metal emblems on their caps and the newest dreimal schwarze Kater boat went to war.
A true maverick, Teddy is remembered even today as much for his continual clashes with authority and irrepressible sense of humour as for his gift for submarine warfare and leadership of men. The stories of his exploits ashore and almost constant reprimands equal those of his cool nerve in action, and have become almost legendary.
Fortunately for Teddy, in a nation where the frenetic activity of Reich security forces could condemn a man for the slightest slur cast upon the nation’s leadership, Dönitz held a protective hand over the vast majority of his men, and over those he favoured in particular. Teddy had already been investigated by the Abwehr Intelligence Service for association with a Jewish woman, and drinking raucously with a black African man in a Hamburg bar. When confronted with the Abwehr’s four-page typewritten dossier, Dönitz’s deputy, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, disposed of it with the scribbled annotation ‘complete rubbish’ in the margin. Indeed, the entire issue of Aryan racial superiority was anathema to the young Teddy. After 6 September 1941 when Reinhard Heydrich’s SS Security Office legislated that all German Jews were to wear the Star of David sewn on to the outside of their clothing, Teddy was perplexed after being confronted with the sight of several elderly Berliners in the Kurfürstendamm wearing the yellow cloth patch. He felt compelled to investigate:
Entirely naively, I asked one of the group what it meant. He looked at me in amazement.
‘My dear sir, this is the Star of David which we are obliged to wear’.
That was still running through my mind when I sat down in a street café. Two members of the Hitler Youth crossed over to me. They wanted my autograph or something signing. I was pretty short with them and refused. It wasn’t the young people who were to blame, and they were surprised and offended. So had I been, but for quite a different reason.13
U 564 leads Kaptlt Forster’s U 654 into Lorient harbour during the morning of 10 July after their overnight voyage from Brest.
After an overnight stay as guests of the 2nd U-Boat Flotilla, both boats prepare to leave Lorient. At left is U 654 and the boat in the foreground is Teddy’s U 564, her crew assembling for their formal evening departure.
At sea, five war patrols into the North Atlantic and along the American coast had accumulated a grim tally to Teddy’s already impressive combat record, adding the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross in December 1941 and accelerating his promotion to Kapitänleutnant:
I myself was fortunate enough to get to know [Raeder] personally. … I remember a day in lanuary 1942.1 had come out of headquarters and was next invited to breakfast by Großadmiral Raeder. Time 1400 hours! Lehmann-Willenbrock [commander of U 96] and I had arrived in Berlin the previous evening. I said: ‘Hey … that is a particularly considerate breakfast-time for us! It will give us a few more hours under the blankets!’ So off we marched and made the most of it. The whole of Berlin got clouded over. About 6 a.m. we shut the Jockey bar from inside and then carried on. We didn’t get a great deal of sleep.
Then, at 1400 hours, breakfast started. The Admiral’s staff smirked near us, and Raeder kept gasping for air so as not to be completely overcome by the intoxicating fumes as we were sitting not too far from him. Later, during a conversation over coffee and cognac, I could see that when Raeder was discussing non-functioning torpedoes with me he was trying to go into reverse in order to extricate himself from my alcoholic cloud. When, around 1600 hours, he excused himself and left his admirals to it, we all … sat down cosily round the table, and, among other things, negotiated my promotion to Kapitänleutnant…. The next day I was supposed to get my U-boat badge with diamonds, and then the promotion was supposed to be announced by Raeder. I did indeed receive the U-boat badge, but no promotion, and as I left the room of the Oberbefehlshaber der Marine, I met Admiral [Otto] Backenköhler, who congratulated me on my rise in rank. I said, ‘No promotion. It didn’t work out.’ I had just about got to the bottom of the grand staircase nearby when Kapitän Freiwald [Raeder’s adjutant] summoned me back, coat-tails flying. The Oberbefehlshaber der Marine said to me, ‘Now you must submit to something else; I promote you to Kapitänleutnant.’
Behind him grinned Admiral Schulte-Montig, beside me Freiwald. I stood there and could hardly restrain a smile, and my face must have been even more stupid looking than usual, so that the Oberbefehlshaber der Marine … asked me, ‘Well, don’t you believe me? It’s my prerogative; I can do it.’14
U 564’s petty officers—including Haring, in the centre of the photograph, at the rear, and smiling—stand in formation behind Lawaetz and Gabler (checking the watch in his pocket) as the boat prepares for departure. This photograph, and the others depicting the U-boats’ departure, was taken by Meisinger
In early 1942 Teddy was at the zenith of his operational career, despite almost becoming the victim of a tragic accident during April.15 Three days outbound from Brest on 7 April, in weather rated as ‘still endurable’ for Biscay (west-south-west Force 6 winds, with a swell of four metres), the boat’s IWO, LzS Hans-Ferdinand Geisler, had enquired from the bridge watch on duty what was causing a loud and regular banging noise from the U-boat’s upper deck. Believing it to be either a loose hatch or even a contraband stock of beer stashed beneath the wooden deck grating, Teddy ordered Bootsmann Heinz Webendörfer to proceed along the U-boat’s slippery casing to investigate what indeed later transpired to be a damaged hatch cover.
Webendörfer was harnessed to the conning tower jumper wires as he began the perilous task of fastening the hatch, the U-boat frequently inundating him with rolling green water. While the unfortunate man clung to the bucking deck, Teddy arrived on the bridge to oversee the operation, without lifejacket or safety harness, and made the rash decision to help the struggling man.
As he peered over the rim of the conning tower, preparing to descend to the deck, U 564 struck a towering wave. Webendörfer hung on for dear life as the steel hull was temporarily submerged. Teddy, however, was not quick enough, and, as the conning tower broke free of the swirling water, the cry ‘Kommandant über Bordl’ echoed into the Control Room. Both engines were immediately thrown into full reverse as Teddy, now several metres away, desperately kicked off his cumbersome leather jacket (with heavy Zeiss binoculars and a Mauser pistol in its pockets), trousers and sea boots in an effort to stay afloat. Fortunately, the young commander was successfully retrieved from the water, clinging to a life-ring thrown from the U-boat’s bridge. The only casualty of the event was Teddy’s pride.
In a bizarre example of paper-driven military bureaucracy, there was an official enquiry into the event, and the loss of equipment from U 564. Suhren’s list of items included ‘1 rain jacket (sou’wester), 1 three-quarter length leather jacket, 1 pair leather trousers, 1 pair U-boat boots (with cork soles), 1 Mauser pistol (7.65mm calibre), 1 artillery stopwatch, 1 pair of sunglasses in case, 1 artillery torch.’
Teddy’s official statement – made in his inimitably tongue-in-cheek style – accompanied similar statements from Webendörfer and Stabsobersteuermann Limburg (IIIWO) for the enquiry, and concluded:
One cannot blame Bootsmann Webendörfer that the commander climbed down on to the upper deck to help repair the damaged hatch cover. Furthermore, I do not consider Bootsmann Webendörfer to be responsible for what the commander carries in his pockets. All efforts to retrieve the lost items remained unsuccessful, and I should like to request that the lost items be replaced. [Signed] Suhren.
Everything but the pistol and stopwatch were replaced by Brest’s quartermaster department, and the entire report was circulated amongst the U-boat service by Karl Dönitz as part of a ‘Humour in Wartime’ series.
Dressed in his newly issued U-boat leathers, PK Maat Haring (left of photograph) talks to Rudolf (‘Handsome Rudi’) Meisinger in Lorient before U 564’s departure. Meisinger was another naval war correspondent, already a veteran of U-boat and minesweeper patrols.
By mid-1942, Germany’s U-boats seemingly teetered on the edge of Atlantic dominance, savaging the vulnerable trade routes that kept the United Kingdom’s war effort from grinding to an irreversible standstill. Losses of Allied merchant shipping traffic had climbed inexorably since a brief respite during the previous December. This fearful predation culminated in June 1942’s destruction by German U-boat of 130 ships – 613,682 tons of merchant shipping sent to the bottom worldwide, a figure that would be bettered only once more during the war. For the Germans, the tantalising scent of victory lay barely over the horizon; for the Allies, disaster loomed nearby as it finally began to appear possible that Admiral Karl Dönitz’s vaunted ‘Sea Wolves’ might achieve their difficult goal.
The Allied advantage of having broken the U-boat’s ‘Enigma’ code during most of 1941 had disappeared in February with the combined introduction of an improved cipher named ‘Triton’ and the four-rotor ‘Enigma’ machine. Bletchley Park would struggle with this new code until the year’s end. On the other side of the hill’ Germany’s B-Dienst intelligence service had matched Allied code-breaking success concurrently, penetrating Naval Cipher No 3 that was used by the Royal, Royal Canadian and United States Navies within the Atlantic. At one point, Dönitz estimated that 50 per cent of his effective operational intelligence originated from B-Dienst, although it took years of combat before U-boat strength was able to fully capitalise on the intelligence bonanza.
However, intelligence alone could not fight the war. While convoy after convoy of crucial supplies and military material headed east across the Atlantic, more and more U-boats sailed to intercept and destroy. Exhorted by Dönitz (known to and beloved by German submariners as ‘The Lion’), the ‘Grey Wolves’ attacked without pause. It was into this arena of combat that Teddy prepared to take his Type VIIC U 564 in July 1942.
On 9 July, in the French port of Brest, where U 564 was stationed as part of the 1st U-Boat Flotilla, the veteran crew geared up to put to sea once more, their destination on this occasion the balmy waters of the Caribbean. Theirs was to be one of ten boats despatched from Europe to the Western Atlantic waters edging the United States and Caribbean Sea, and it was U 564’s second journey to the region. It was also to be Teddy Suhren’s last combat patrol before he rotated out of the front line to help train and shape the commanders of the future. Dönitz made his feelings plain when Teddy reported to BdU to be briefed on his forthcoming patrol:
Suhren, make sure you bring your boat safely back home and then come ashore. Then we can use you back at home for training. Prien, Kretschmer and Schepke would in theory have been ideal for the job, but they are all gone. Prien and Schepke are dead, Kretschmer a prisoner. [Erich] Topp has already come ashore – and you’re next.16
On Friday 3 July 1942, U 564 underwent dockyard tests to check her trim under water and verify the free movement of hydroplanes and rudders as well as ensuring the functionality of the echo-sounding installation. Rust treatment eliminated all traces of the corrosive effect of salt water along the steel hull and her external armaments, after which final preparatory work was undertaken on 5 July as the boat lay docked for refuelling, gallons of diesel flooding into her cavernous fuel bunkers. The following day it was time to arm the boat, and torpedoes and ammunition were embarked as U 564 lay moored within the thick concrete shelter built on the Brest shoreline. Provisions took a further two days to store, wedged into every nook and cranny that could accommodate either fresh or preserved foodstuffs. By Wednesday, the entire crew had been given medical examinations by Doctor Richter, Surgeon for the 1st U-Boat Flotilla, and the following evening, 9 July, after all fresh rations had been carefully stowed, U 564 left Brest at 2130 hours alongside Oberleutnant zur See Ludwig Forster’s U 654. Both boats followed the ‘Herz’ route through the lethal defensive minefields, bound for Lorient and escorted from harbour by two Vorpostenboote and a single Sperrbrecher as the combined threats of enemy aircraft and mines were very real. In Lorient, Teddy was ordered to take aboard a passenger.
U 564 casts off and slips from Lorient.
Propaganda Kompanie Maat Haring was temporarily attached as a war correspondent to capture the cruise on camera of one of Germany’s new generation of U-boat heroes. The naval branch of the Propaganda Kompanie was based in France, operating under the auspices of KK Karl Hinsch’s Marinekriegsberichterabteilung West and frequently assigned to the U-boats, still wreathed in the glamour of an élite service. The officer directly commanding the correspondents aboard submarines was the noted journalist Wolfgang Frank, now famous for his books on the U-boat war and on Günther Prien in particular, written both during and after the conflict.
The U-boats were no strangers to the attentions of propaganda, frequently appearing within the pages of all manner of periodicals issued in Germany and the occupied countries. However, Teddy appeared almost to resent the intrusion aboard ‘his’ boat by Haring. Despite his outgoing exuberance, Teddy was uncomfortable beneath the glare of publicity, a fact remembered by Harald Busch, a correspondent who had been tasked with interviewing him during January 1942:
Indeed, he seemed inhibited, as if he knew he was being watched. I had the impression that he was too clever to be able to relax and enjoy himself in his newfound position of fame. He did not like to allow himself to be praised by a public with whom as a U-boat man he was not likely to have much in common. Of course, he was proud to have achieved successes, but he was unable to put on an act before people who belonged to a quite different society, who would have no comprehension of his own. Reinhard Suhren seemed to me to be an unusually reflective man, who liked to conceal the fact, very much beneath the comic antics of a clown: ‘Come on children, don’t look so worried! Don’t take yourselves so seriously!’ That was how he seemed to me, and he was having to leave the circus specially for me, because I had come to annoy him with my order to find out all about him.17
Thus, in early July 1942, Haring joined the crew of U 564, given no special duties aboard the boat other than to make himself generally useful and not get in the way. His primary ‘weapons’ were a small cine-camera and a Leica for taking still photographs with which he would record the daily life of one of Germany’s veteran submarines.
It would be Saturday 11 July before both boats finally left France, sailing under similar escort as before from Lorient into the Bay of Biscay, following the swept ‘Kernleder’ route. At the channel’s end, ‘Point Kern’, two hours’ cruising west from Lorient, a final flashed ‘Good hunting’ from the small patrol ships and their larger Sperrbrecher cousin heralded the end of their anti-aircraft and mine-sweeping escort, the surface vessels turning back leaving the two U-boats to thunder alone towards the Atlantic. U 564’s bridge lookouts soon lost sight of Forster’s boat in the deepening twilight. Presently they would begin the deadly routine of alternate stalking and hiding as the ‘Three Black Cats’ proceeded west into the Atlantic killing grounds.