Jürgen Wattenberg

Jürgen Wattenberg ( December 28, 1900 in Lübeck - September 27, 1995 there ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander of U 162 in World War II . He sank 14 ships totaling 82,027 GRT in just one year , with 85 people dying before the boat was sunk on September 3, 1942 and he and 48 of his men were taken prisoner by the United States , while two of his men died. He became known in connection with a large-scale escape from the Camp Papago Park camp in Arizona (USA) in December 1944. As a staunch National Socialist, he exerted considerable influence on the prisoners in this camp.

Live and act

Wattenberg joined the navy and was appointed ensign in the sea in 1923 , in 1925 he was appointed lieutenant in the sea and in 1927 as first lieutenant in the sea . In 1938 he was promoted to lieutenant captain and took up his position on the Admiral Graf Spee when the war broke out . The damaged Graf Spee was sunk off Montevideo ( Uruguay ) in December 1939 by her commander, Hans Langsdorff . Wattenberg was interned with the crew in Argentina . He escaped in Buenos Aires in April 1940 and reached Germany in May 1940.

In October 1940 he switched to the submarine fleet and was given command of U 162 in September 1941 , with which he set out for the first voyage in February 1942. Wattenberg was 41 years old at the time, which made him one of the oldest submarine commanders on patrols. While the first patrol was in the Atlantic, Wattenberg was active on the second and third in the Caribbean and sank a number of ships.

On September 3, 1942 at around 6 p.m., when U 162 was operating in the Atlantic northeast of Trinidad, the crew noticed an enemy destroyer nearby and approached under water within firing range. Although it now turned out that there were three destroyers, Wattenberg gave the order to first torpedo the middle one, which was HMS Pathfinder . The torpedo was disturbed by the heavy swell, surfaced and narrowly missed HMS Quentin (G78), which was moving further to the left . Now the three British destroyers HMS Pathfinder , HMS Vimy and HMS Quentin were warned and attacked, whereupon U 162 went diving. The submerged submarine was severely damaged by depth charges within the next few hours . The boat had to turn up, and Wattenberg gave the order "all hands on board" and let the scuttling prepare. Wattenberg and another 48 men had meanwhile left the boat, but the chief engineer Stierwaldt, who was involved in the self- sinking, did not make it to the tower hatch in time, through which the water now broke. The seaman Dettmer, who was wounded in the leg, was also unable to escape from the boat. The 49 submarine drivers floating in the water were taken on board by the three British destroyers as prisoners of war and brought to the port of Port of Spain on the British colony of Trinidad , where they were subjected to intensive interrogation first by the British and then by the US Americans have been subjected.

The relationship between Wattenberg and his subordinates and the discipline on board the U 162 were described as very good. Wattenberg emerged as a staunch, wholehearted supporter of Nazism and Adolf Hitler's government , and his beliefs were shared by the other officers of the submarine. Through his boldness, determination and aggressiveness, he had achieved great success in scuttling with 14 sunk ships and caused the deaths of 85 people. He achieved a high level of security awareness among his crew, so that the British and later the Americans did not succeed in extracting information relevant to the war effort from the prisoners in U 162 . The bold torpedo attack against a superior force of three destroyers, which led to the loss of the submarine, was later blamed on Wattenberg as a serious mistake.

Captivity in the US and an outbreak

Entrance to the escape tunnel

Wattenberg and the other prisoners from his submarine were brought to the United States, where Wattenberg in September 1942 at the interrogation center Fort Hunt in Alexandria ( Virginia arrived). After completing the interrogations, he was taken to a prison camp in Crossville ( Tennessee ), where he was among others with Lieutenant zur See Hermann Ritter (1891-1968), the former commander of the weather observation ship 1 Hermann . Since he, as a devout Catholic, did not sufficiently support the National Socialist ideology, Wattenberg suspected him of being a spy for the Americans. According to Ritter's statements, Wattenberg is said to have also tried to hang a German Nazi opponent in Crossville.

Although he was a prisoner, he was promoted to sea captain on April 1, 1943.

On January 27, 1944, Wattenberg came to Camp Papago Park ( Scottsdale ) on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix ( Arizona ), which was approved by the US Department of War as a camp for all submarine prisoners in January 1944, but on March 3, 1944 was designated as a prison camp for all German prisoners of war from the navy. As usual in all prison camps, the prisoners were kept strictly separated according to officers and men. In spite of this, officers and men managed to communicate with one another using hidden notes, throwing bottles with notes or using light signals with mirrors. Wattenberg became the camp spokesman and, as a staunch National Socialist, exercised effective control over fellow prisoners through his supporters among the officers and men. Many prisoners were prepared to earn 80 cents a day by working in the canteens, laundries or car garages, but also in the cotton fields or elsewhere in agriculture and to bring variety to their camp misery. However, Wattenberg rejected any such cooperation with the Americans and viewed activities such as cotton production, which he believed to be important for the war effort, as high treason . He also made this clear to his fellow prisoners and exerted pressure so that comparatively few prisoners pursued these activities in Camp Papago Park.

On March 12, 1944, the prisoner from U 118 , Werner Drechsler , who worked as an informant for the US authorities, was lynched by seven fellow prisoners on the day of his arrival at Camp Papago Park . Wattenberg was also interrogated, but claimed that he had no contact with the soldiers on the day of the crime and did not know whether Drechsler had been killed or whether he had committed suicide. Helmut Fischer, who was involved in the act and was later executed, stated during interrogation that he had heard Wattenberg say that he was happy about Drechsler's death and that all anti-fascists would have to be hanged. Some prisoners expressed very critical views of Wattenberg during interrogations. The prisoner Oskar Meyer claimed that Wattenberg had said that there were some prisoners who did not think like good soldiers and who therefore had to be treated in such a way that they could no longer talk. The prisoners Johann Neumair, Günther Albrecht and Leutnant zur See Hermann Ritter , who, unfortunately, had been transferred to Camp Papago Park and thus back to Wattenberg in March, declared that Wattenberg had encouraged the soldiers to act or even gave the order. Günther Albert was removed from Camp Papago Park because of his anti-fascist stance. Hermann Ritter also feared for his life and tried in vain to be separated from Wattenberg. After the fiasco of the " Fememord " against Drechsler, Colonel George Barber was deployed as camp commandant in March 1944. He cracked down on the troubled Wattenberg and isolated him from the other prisoners. However, on August 1, 1944, Colonel William A. Holden became the new camp commandant, under whose leadership, at Wattenberg's insistence, morning roll calls were abolished on Sundays and public holidays. Briefly, Lieutenant Captain Hellmut Rathke from U 352 replaced Wattenberg as camp spokesman. However, with threats and the accusation that Rathke was an anti-fascist, the latter managed to start a hunger strike to get out of the camp and away from Wattenberg.

Wattenberg was one of the officers at Camp Papago Park who began planning an escape soon after arriving. As a starting point for his escape, he chose a small barrack that was used for showering. Wattenberg asked the camp management for shovels and other tools, supposedly to create a fistball field. This made it possible to inconspicuously distribute the earth produced during the tunnel excavation.

The actual work began in September 1944 and was carried out during the night in three shifts of three men each. On December 20th, the tunnel with the 1.8 m deep entrance shaft and a length of 54 m was completed. A group of three had even built a raft to go down the nearby Salt River. Under the pretext of sealing walls in the bathhouse, the camp administration had given them covering material. Wattenberg had ensured that all those who escaped were provided with new clothes, forged papers and contact addresses in Mexico .

In order for the escape to remain undetected for as long as possible, Wattenberg and the other submarine captains had enforced with the camp supervisor that the morning roll call was dropped on Sunday morning. The escape was set for Saturday evening on December 23rd. The outbreak began at 9 p.m. in groups of two or three, at half past two on the 24th all 25 people, four captains, including Friedrich Guggenberger , other officers and crew ranks, were outside. The Salt River hardly had any water at that time of year, so the raft was not very helpful. After the lack of those who had escaped was noticed during the course of the day, a comprehensive search was initiated. Most of the fugitives did not get far and were caught after a few days.

Wattenberg, who had two of his crew members with him, did not make his way south towards Mexico, but instead hid in the north to let the anticipated searches fade away. One of his companions managed to get back to the camp several times in exchange for a comrade who worked outside during the day to get food. But then he was discovered and arrested. Wattenberg was the last to be arrested on January 28, 1945.

After the war

After the end of the war, Wattenberg was first transferred to Camp Shanks in February 1946, then to a camp in the British zone of occupation in Germany, before he was finally released and returned to Schleswig-Holstein.

He later became manager of the Lübeck department at Bavaria-St. Pauli brewery .

literature

• Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. Preface by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rohwer, Member of the Presidium of the International Commission on Military History. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, p. 249. ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
• Melanie Wiggins: Getting away: the fate of German submarine drivers in World War II. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2007, pp. 13–23. ISBN 978-3-8132-0875-7 .
• Jane Eppinga: Death at Papago Park POW Camp: A Tragic Murder and America's Last Mass Execution . The History Press, Cheltenham 2017, pp. 54-58, 67f., 78f. ISBN 978-1-4396-6086-7 .
• Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunters 1939–1942 . Heyne Verlag, 1998. pp. 596, 598, 679, 783, 791-793, 804. ISBN 3-4531-2345-X .
• Arnold Kramer: PW - Trapped in America . Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart, 1982. ISBN 3-87943-802-1 .
• John Hammond Moore: The Fistball Tunnel. Bluejacket Books, 2006. ISBN 1-59114-526-0 . Reprint of the original edition from 1978.

Web links

• German U-Boats 1935–1945, Jürgen Wattenberg
• Jürgen Wattenberg on Uboat.net
• Obituary in the mirror

Individual evidence

1. ^ Report on the Interrogation of Survivors From U-162 Sunk on September 3, 1942. Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Washington, Op-16-Z, ONI 250 - G / Serial 6. U-162, Uboatarchive.net .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 79.
3. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 52.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 57f.
5. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), pp. 55f.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 67f.
7. ↑ Jane Eppinga (2017), p. 78.
8. ↑ Paul Carell , Günter Böddeker : The prisoners - life and survival of German soldiers behind barbed wire . Ullstein, Berlin 1990. Chapter A Fememord and Its Consequences , pp. 77–91.

Remarks

1. ↑ Camp Shanks was a military facility in Orangetown, New York State. Named after Major General David Carey Shanks (1861-1940), it was the largest facility for the deployment of troops overseas during the Second World War, with a capacity of 50,000 soldiers and an area of ​​8.3 km².