![The Sinking of the Laconia [DVD] [2010]](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20241006015434im_/https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81CXORyzaOL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
I found the film thoughtful, exciting, moving and memorable and did not find it at all slow as some critics did. I think they may have expected or wanted an action packed war film, the kind that has been churned out by Hollywood for decades where there are plenty of bangs for your bucks and where there is no need for the audience to use too much grey matter but thank God it wasn't that kind of a film.
The Laconia incident which took place in the second world war on 12 September 1942 is little known by the public for reasons that are not difficult to understand but it was an extremely significant episode and had very important consequences. After it happened the allied authorities did not want the public to know that a U-boat commander could be humane and had given survivors food and water after a ship was torpedoed. If such acts did become widely known it would be more difficult for the British public to hate all Germans and this would not help the war effort. The German authorities also did not want the incident known by their public because it could be perceived as a weakness and lack of resolve so it suited both sides not to publicise the incident too much and so it did not become widely known until long after the war.
The Laconia, an old Cunard ocean liner of 20,000 tons had on board about 2,000 civilians and Italian prisoners of war and was heading back to England from the middle east and in the middle of the south Atlantic U-156 under the command of Captain Werner Hartenstein hit the liner with two torpedoes believing it was a troopship and therefore a legitimate target in wartime. The prisoners of war in the hold tried to escape and some were shot by their Polish guards but they were eventually released. When Hartenstein found out that it wasn't a troopship but a passenger liner containing many civilians including women, children and prisoners of war of their Italian allies he stopped and aided the survivors at considerable risk to his own vessel.
He took some people on board, gave them food, water and medical treatment and others he towed behind his vessel in four lifeboats attached to each other. He contacted his superiors in Europe and ships from Vichy France and Italy were sent to rescue the survivors. He also sent out a signal in English to show his position and enable the allies to mount a rescue operation. The British suspected a trap so they informed the Americans on a secret air base on Ascension Island as they were nearest to the scene but mentioned that there were survivors of a sinking but did not mention that a submarine was aiding them. The Americans sent a plane which dropped several bombs close to the U-boat killing passengers in two lifeboats. After this happened Hartenstein, not surprisingly made the decision not to expose his vessel and its crew to any further risk so he cast adrift the survivors in their lifeboats. After four days during which time several people in the lifeboats died they were located by a Vichy French ship and taken on board.
The head of the German Navy, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, then issued the notorious Laconia Order forbidding U-boats to continue aiding survivors of torpedoed ships so assistance was never provided again by the Germans during the war. The Americans also pursued this policy in the Pacific with regard to Japanese ships they torpedoed. After the war at the Nuremberg Trial in 1947, Doenitz was found guilty of war crimes and served many years in prison. Hartenstein never survived the war and he was later killed when his U-boat was sunk in the West Indies by an American aircraft.
A survivor of the Laconia incident, Commander Geoffrey Greet, met Hartenstein aboard the U-156 and he said "he had just sunk 2,000 people, so my initial reaction to him was hatred but when I found he really believed in what he was doing then I changed my mind completely. And now I think he was a marvellous man. He was humane, and he believed in the brotherhood of the sea: we treat sailors of other nations as sailors first, because we're all in the same situation." Amen to that.
The film graphically reconstructs the Lakonia incident and examines the issues raised by such an unusual event and the acting is superb all round, especially Ken Duken as Hartenstein. It was particularly good to see Germans for a change portrayed as three dimensional human characters, not as the stereotypical fanatical, heel clicking nasty Nazis we are so used to seeing. It was also much better to see Germans played by real Germans as efforts by British and Americans to play Germans are usually pretty unconvincing. Alan Bleasdale's script is superb and gives the audience plenty to think about when describing the contradictions and complexities of incidents that happen in wartime.
The message of the film is that even in war when the object is to destroy the enemy by any means available there is still room for compassion and humanity where for a brief moment enemies can respect each other and in any other situation might have become friends. It demonstrates if it ever needed to be that war is collective insanity but even then the spirit of humanity can occasionally shine through.
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amica di gatti
packendes Kriegs-Drama mit historischem Hintergrund,kein typischer Männerfilm,einfach nur Klasse !
Reviewed in Germany on 8 July 2020G. D. lewis
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Reviewed in the United States on 24 May 2017Thrasybule
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Reviewed in France on 4 August 2013
