Volunteers and Lucky Beggars

The losses suffered by the U-boat force were seized upon by the Allies in attempts to damage morale among the Kriegsmarine’s submariners, as Lee Richards explains.

During the Second World War, the losses sustained by Germany’s U-boat fleet were horrendous. In total, the Kriegsmarine would go on to lose 793 U-boats and 28,000 submariners. This translated to a casualty rate of 75% of the entire force, the highest percentage of losses for any arm of the German military in the 1939 – 45 conflict.

Equally, Allied vessels were taking astonishingly heavy casualties. This was especially the case during the Battle of the Atlantic. Set against the overall German U-boat losses, some 36,000 Allied merchant seamen perished, along with 36,200 Royal Navy sailors. This translated into 3,500 merchant vessels sunk and 175 warships lost. In addition, 175 aircraft of RAF Coastal Command were lost on anti-submarine operations, many of them with their crews. Overwhelmingly, these losses were sustained as the result of U-boat activity and it was a rate of attrition which needed countering by every means at the Allies’ disposal. And this included propaganda and ‘political warfare’ operations.

While the efficacy of such activity is hard to measure, the British embarked on a number of schemes through its Political Warfare Executive which attempted to undermine and chip away at German morale. And one of those schemes was the use of leaflets such as the relatively elaborate example shown here, and which became an element of the long running propaganda campaign against U-boat crews and as part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic.

The Political Warfare Executive worked very closely with the Naval Intelligence Department in developing propaganda to undermine morale and cause disaffection in the ranks of the U-boat service. The propaganda measures, or “political warfare”, were conducted through open channels, such as the dropping of leaflets (like this example) by the RAF over Germany, and over the U-boat bases in France. Broadcasts were also made through the BBC German language service.

Additionally, covert propaganda was spread through ‘underground’ routes: either printed matter, clandestine radio broadcasts or word of mouth rumours. A special clandestine station, or “black” radio broadcast output, called Deutscher Kurzwellensender Atlantik, targeted U-boat crews and was developed by Sefton Delmer’s

team at the PWE, working in close collaboration with the NID.

The latter organisation, at that time, included Ian Fleming (later the creator of James Bond) and Donald Maclachlan, who was the head of the Naval Propaganda sub-section NID (17Z), which was tasked with focusing on propaganda efforts against the Kriegsmarine.

The “black” radio broadcasts were eventually transformed into the Soldatensender Calais radio station, transmitting on the medium wave, and considered to be the most listened to enemy radio station.

We are indebted to Lee Richards for his help with this feature and for the supply of images. Further information can be found by visiting his site at: www.psywar.org

■ This dramatic representation of a U-boat at sea was painted in 1943 by the German artist Adolf Bock. It is a stirringly heroic image, doubtless calculated to reinforce to the German people the heroic exploits of their U-boat men. However, losses to the U-boat fleet were huge and British Naval Intelligence set about trying to capitalise on those losses and undermine the morale of the Kriegsmarine’s submariners through every means at their disposal. This included psychological warfare conducted through open channels such as aerial leaflet distribution.