Bodo Duke

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Bodo Herzog (born 1925 ) is a German archivist, naval historian and former naval officer .

life and work

During the Second World War , Herzog served in the Navy and after the surrender was part of the German mine clearance service . In 1959 he published his first book under the title German U-Boats 1906-1945 . In his journalistic activity as a marine historian, the autodidact Herzog relied on an extensive private archive. In addition, he had extensive photo material from press work during the war.

Books

Although his first work, German U-Boats 1906–1945, was a product of the transition period of the post-war years and, according to the foreword ("... convey, awaken memories, admonish, but also reconcile ...") also addressed the former opponents, succeeded Initially, Herzog did not find it easy to break away from the imagery and ideas of the war years. He preceded the work with a stanza by the poet Hans Carossa , who was awarded at Joseph Goebbels ' instigation in 1938 , who in his poem "Secrets" with "There is no end / Only glowing service / Disintegrating send / We beam up " has become an end in itself Sacrifice idealized for a higher good, and thus illustrated the thrust of the book. These and other traces of the period between 1933 and 1945 had largely disappeared in the revised new edition that Herzog presented almost ten years later.

When Bodo Herzog, at the age of 60, re- published his first book on the subject of submarine warfare in World War II , which had been published ten years earlier, in an edition expanded and revised by almost a hundred pages, he was working full-time as a commercial clerk in Oberhausen. Among the publications on the subject, which had become more abundant in the meantime, the book stood out not only because of Herzog's peculiar spelling of the subject of his considerations - submarines , without hyphen, instead of the usual spelling of submarines - but also because of the decided and hitherto unusual criticism of naval officers, such as Erich Raeder and the “naval history mostly leased by admirals”, as a reviewer of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit put it in his benevolent review. The reactions in the affected naval circles were correspondingly. Adalbert Schnee , then chairman of the Association of German U-Boat Drivers, criticized a “distortion of events” and complained of Duke's criticism of his “fellow naval writers”. In a review in the military history reports , predecessor of the MGZ , Herzog's handling of naval officers was also criticized. In addition, he was attested to having “polemics against historians” and an inadequate scientific examination of the subject.

German U-Boats from 1906–1966 later appeared again, first by Bernard & Graefe Verlag, then as a licensed edition in 1990 by Pawlak and in 1993 by Karl Müller Verlag. In 1970, Herzog published the bilingual book U-Boats in Action - U-Boats in Action, a pictorial documentation in Podzun-Verlag, which specializes in Wehrmacht issues. Herzog's most recent publication appeared under the title We must remember. One hundred years of German submarines in 2006 at Veit Scherzer- Verlag.

Contribution to the processing

In his other publications, too, both in articles in more or less renowned specialist journals and in the daily press, Herzog criticized the submarine weapon of the Navy and its protagonists and addressed issues that were little known or reluctant to hear.

In 1967, Herzog criticized Jochen Brennecke , who, in his opinion , had portrayed an episode about the commander of U 68 , Karl-Friedrich Merten, in a "completely worthless" way in the 1956 book Jäger - Gejelte . This assessment led Brennecke to consider suing Herzog. Brennecke finally dropped this plan because he feared that some of the officers questioned as witnesses at the time might say more in the process “than he is actually allowed to say in the interests of the Navy”.

Herzog's article on the practice of awarding the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to members of the submarine weapon, which he published in 1987 in the journal Deutsches Marinearchiv , initiated a reassessment of this level of the order in connection with the Navy.

His contribution Pirates in front of Malaga , which appeared in 1991 in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , also received a lot of attention . Herzog reported on " Enterprise Ursula ", an illegal deployment of a German submarine flotilla in the Spanish Civil War . The navy members involved at the time had been given a "lifelong duty of confidentiality" about the use and objectives of the submarines involved, including the U 33 under the cover name Triton and U 34 under the cover name Poseidon . As Herzog discovered on the occasion of his first research on the “Ursula Company” in the 1960s, this continued to have an effect far beyond the end of the Navy. Since both the naval historian Jürgen Rohwer and the former Admiral Wilhelm Marschall advised against publication, Herzog initially dropped the plan for publication. After processing the now accessible archives of the GDR , Herzog was finally able to complete the article 30 years later. By pirates off Malaga the German public, the use of German submarines in the Spanish Civil War was first known, who is also from Karl Doenitz had been mentioned in any of his books, or contested on demand. With his contribution to the weekly newspaper, which is widely read compared to the usual specialist journals, Herzog attacked the narrative of the apolitical German naval forces of the 1930s and 1940s. He also made it clear that a National Socialist spirit was developed here early on and that the naval leadership had been unscrupulous in silence before the war. In this context, he certified that the respective protagonists, in particular Karl Dönitz and Erich Raeder , had abandoned moral and ethical concerns long before the outbreak of war.

In an article published in 1997 in the Patzwall magazine Militaria , under the title War Crimes and Humanity in Submarine War 1939/45, using the example of two German commanders , Herzog described the sinking of the sailor Notre Dame du Chalet in May 1941 as a war crime he blamed Wolfgang Lüth .

Publications (books)

  • German submarines: 1906–1945. JF Lehmann, Munich 1959.
  • Knights of the Deep - Gray Wolves. (with Günter Schoemakers), Welsermühl, Munich 1965.
  • German submarines from 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968, new edition of Deutsche U-Boats expanded by 90 pages and 144 illustrations : 1906–1945.
  • The German Navy in combat 1939–1945. Podzun-Verlag, Dorheim 1969.
  • Submarines in action. A picture documentation. Podzun Verlag, Dorheim 1970.

Publications (Articles)

For several years since 1994, Herzog has regularly published articles in Militaria , a magazine published by Klaus D. Patzwall , which describes itself as a “specialist body for awards, uniforms, military and contemporary history”. Here, Herzog u. v. a. The tonnage efficiency of the most successful submarine commander of World War II: Flotilla admiral a. D. Otto Kretschmer (1994) and The Great Atlantic Exercise of German Submarines from April 18 to May 1939 (1999).

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c Alexander Rost: The German weapon at sea. , Article in: Die Zeit, November 29, 1968.
  2. ↑ a b Michael L. Hadley: Der Mythos der Deutschen U-Bootwaffe, ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0771-4 , page 110 - page 112
  3. ^ Jürgen Schlemm: The submarine war 1939-1945 in literature. An annotated bibliography. Elbe-Spree-Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-931129-24-1 , p. 52.
  4. ↑ Mertens had abandoned a prisoner of war in a barely floatable box floating in the shark-populated water and left it behind.
  5. ↑ Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz Legend and Reality. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 , p. 357.
  6. ↑ a b Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz Legend and Reality. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 , p. 73.
  7. ^ Pirates in front of Malaga , report in the ZEIT of November 29, 1991, p. 2.
  8. ↑ Michael L. Hadley: The myth of the German U-Bootwaffe, ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0771-4 , page 162 - page 163
  9. ^ Jürgen Schlemm: The submarine war 1939-1945 in literature. An annotated bibliography. Elbe-Spree-Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-931129-24-1 , p. 129.
personal data
SURNAME Duke, Bodo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archivist, naval historian and former naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH 1925