FILM · 1981 · GERMANY
Das Boot
- Directed by
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Runtime
- 150 min
- Studio
- Radiant Film, Bavaria Film
113 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
113 Interesting Facts About Das Boot
Interesting Facts (14)
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The film and Lothar G. Buchheim's book it is based on are loosely adapted from the wartime career of the Type VIIC boat U-96 and its captain, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock. Buchheim, then a war correspondent in the German Navy's propaganda office, joined the crew of U-96 for a tour in the Battle of the Atlantic in late 1941. That tour became the basis of Buchheim's book. (The character Lieutenant Werner in the film was inspired by Buchheim.) During the war, Captain-Lt. Lehmann-Willenbrock ranked seventh among U-boat captains in tonnage of shipping sunk (183,223 tons, in three boats: U-5, U-96 and U-256). After being transferred to a new captain, U-96 was decommissioned on 5 February 1943; it was one of the few submarines to actually survive its tour of duty in the Atlantic. Far from being killed in an air attack as depicted in the film, Lehmann-Willenbrock survived the war and later served as captain on various German commercial cargo ships. Lehmann-Willenbrock and Buchheim served as technical advisers on this film (although the volatile Buchheim fell out with director Wolfgang Petersen, who refused to let the author write the screenplay based on his book). Lehmann-Willenbrock died in Bremen in 1986. Buchheim died in Bavaria in 2007.
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American director John Sturges was initially brought in by Edward R. Pressman to make the film. He was unhappy, however, with what the Germans wanted to do with the screenplay, which for him was too close to the novel. So he decided to withdraw from the project. When he later saw the film, which he liked very much, he was genuinely in awe of the work Wolfgang Petersen had done. Sturges admitted he could never have created such a realistic and claustrophobic masterpiece.
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When Wolfgang Petersen set out to cut the German TV miniseries version of the film from the 3-hour 26-minute feature director's cut, he discovered that the original music score had been lost because the film had melted. Original composer Klaus Doldinger had meticulously archived the entire original score and remixed all the melted music cues in a 6-track format. The music editors were then faced with the inevitable task of re-cutting the music to fit the film's new feature length.
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The original TV miniseries was heavily criticized in Germany for portraying Second World War Germans sympathetically. When the film screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, no one was sure how it would be received in a city with a large Jewish population, formerly an enemy nation. The audience applauded the opening title card, which stated that of the 40,000 German men who went to war in submarines, 30,000 never returned. In the end the audience gave the film a standing ovation.
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Three scale models were built for the special effects work. The first, a 35-foot radio-controlled model, could sail and dive on the open sea; the other two, 18 feet and 8 feet long, were used for underwater shots. Scale models of tankers, destroyers and other ships were also built to complete the fleet.
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Production Story (1)
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Most of the film's $15 million budget went into building the submarine. The technical specifications of the original Type VII-C U-boat were found at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The plans were taken to the submarine's original builder, who was commissioned to construct a full-size, seaworthy replica — the first such undertaking since the end of the war. A second full-size model was built for interior shooting.
Behind the Scenes (33)
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The submarine models were later used in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
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For the Atlantic storm, a model of the conning tower was drenched with water from a large tank. Jan Fedder slipped and fell from the railing and broke several ribs. An actor shouted, "Man overboard!"; Wolfgang Petersen, not taking it for an accident, said, "Good idea, Jan, do it again!" Petersen kept the shot and rewrote Fedder's character to spend time in bed. The actor, who had suffered a concussion, went back and forth to the hospital every day; the pain on his face was real, and the bed scene was included in the uncut version.
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The Steadicam was not yet in use; Vacano, together with his father, created a gyro-stabilized system that kept the camera steady while running through the corridors. The U-boat set was built slightly oversized to give Vacano room; even so, he had to wear a helmet to avoid hitting his head.
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The actors in Das Boot were encouraged to stay out of the sun and asked to grow their beards to better reflect the hell of life at sea. All the food in the submarine was real and began to rot as filming progressed. Claude-Oliver Rudolph, who played the burly mechanic Ario, recalls in a 2021 documentary, "Disgusting but very authentic." Prop master Peter Durst even remembers pouring large amounts of cologne into the foul-smelling water to improve working conditions.
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Jost Vacano shot mainly with a handheld 35 mm camera he designed with ARRI. This camera was slimmer than the Steadicam and equipped with gyroscopes for balance, which made sound recording on set impossible. Since remote focus tracking had not yet been invented, the corridor tracking shot was difficult for Vacano at first. In a 2011 talk to the Society of Camera Operators, he explained his solution: "After three or four weeks of shooting inside the submarine, I had gotten so used to the surroundings that I could almost run with my eyes closed. I grabbed the camera and started running." Then he adds: "And try to survive."
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Ludwig Huppmann was crammed inside an 11-metre model submarine almost every day for more than a month. The team sought harsh conditions to simulate open-sea storms; production assistant Jan-Michael Brandt recalls, "When the fishermen came in to shelter, we went out to shoot." While Huppmann steered the boat (and pumped his vomit out through the bilge pump), the mini submarine was towed on a 300-metre line. At least once the line snagged on the ocean floor and dragged the stuntman underwater. Huppmann remembers being told, "Ludwig, you have the most expensive coffin!"
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A full-size steel replica was used for the submarine's interior shots in the largest studio space on the European continent. The ship was mounted on a hydraulic gimbal that mimicked the sea's rolling motion. Jan Fedder, who played Pilgrim, recalls in Das Boot: Revisited that at one point the boat tipped completely to one end: "Jurgen flew over the side. If he had fallen, we would have been crushed under 80 tons of steel. We would have died."
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Several of the models used in the film can still be visited at Bavaria Filmstadt Geiselgasteig near Munich, except for the full-size boat, which was scrapped after shooting. The model used for interior shots is only 8 metres shorter than the original VIIC boat, having been cut down for the oil bunkers and parts of the torpedo room.
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The only surviving Type IX U-boat is on display in a museum in Chicago; for this reason, a full-size, floating replica was built for the film's exterior shots. Thanks to skilful editing, this replica appeared as three different boats in the bunkers at La Rochelle. Before shooting, it was used by Steven Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The replica consisted of three sections and began to break apart while filming at sea. Immediately after the scene in which "It's A Long Way From Tipperary" is sung, a crack can be seen between the first and second sections. That night the replica drifted out to sea and broke apart, but enough pieces were recovered from the surrounding shores to rebuild about 2/3 of it, this time requiring additional buoyancy arrangements.
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The power of the claustrophobic interior shots rests on the work of cinematographer Jost Vacano. In Das Boot Revisited, Vacano explains his creative goals: "The camera must be squeezed into a narrow space and be limited by that space just like the people inside it. At no point is it allowed to leave that space." Wolfgang Petersen tells CraveOnline: "At first we thought we might kill ourselves after a few weeks because it was so small. But because we shot in sequence, the actors gradually grew into their roles."
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Production began in earnest in the Helgoland archipelago in the North Sea. As art director Götz Weidner explained in a 2021 documentary, the aim was to capture convincing shots in stormy conditions without damaging the large replicas. Long shots of the crew on deck were done with modified radio-controlled dolls. A 1/12-scale (~6 feet) model was used for the underwater scenes, and a smaller 1/24-scale model for the Vigo Harbour, Gibraltar, convoy attack and burning tanker scenes.
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American director John Sturges was brought in by Edward R. Pressman to direct the film, but he withdrew from the project, unhappy with the Germans' desire to keep the screenplay very close to the novel. When he later saw the film, he liked it very much and admired Petersen for creating such a realistic and claustrophobic masterpiece; he admitted that he could never have made such a film.
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The original TV miniseries drew harsh criticism in Germany for portraying World War II Germans sympathetically. When it was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival, there was curiosity about how the former enemy nation would be received, especially in a city with a large Jewish population. The audience applauded the opening text stating that 30,000 of 40,000 German submariners died, and the film received a standing ovation at the end.
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Several additional scenes based on the novel were scripted but not shot due to budget and time constraints. In the original screenplay, the U-boat leaves St. Nazaire, takes heavy damage and puts in at La Rochelle; during the escape from Gibraltar it stops and nearly sinks a passenger ship, only to realize the ship is flying the Spanish flag. At the entrance to La Rochelle it encounters another submarine with an inexperienced crew, which strikes a mine and whose crew is rescued. The character of Lieutenant Werner was developed in more detail with a subplot in which he has a love affair with a French girl and suspects she is a member of the resistance.
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According to Bavaria Filmstadt's press kit, the film and TV exhibition complex in Geiselgasteig (near Munich) was founded in 1981 after two young crew members learned that the 55-metre, fully detailed U-boat interior set was to be sold for scrap. As of 2023, the set is still one of the main tourist attractions.
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Before the screenplay was finished, two steel replicas of the Type VIIC submarine were built at Bavaria Studios in Munich. The 70-metre interior and exterior reconstructions cost a total of 2.5 million Deutsche Mark (about 5.5 million USD today). When the production was shelved (for reasons including the failure of an attempt to bring in an American director), the replicas were left to rust and rot on the studio lot.
Characters & Cast (53)
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In the scene where the boat returns to La Rochelle, most of the extras in the lower shot and around it were French. Wolfgang Petersen stated that he, the crew and the main cast could feel the tension in the air, because resentment against Germany still lingered over how the Nazis had treated them during the war. He also said, however, that when it came time to shoot the British air raid on the port, they did an extraordinary job.
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The Knight's Cross worn around the Captain's neck was awarded for 'extreme battlefield bravery or outstanding military leadership,' while the U-boat War Badge was given after two successful patrols. On the Engineer's tunic, the German Cross in Gold sits on the right and the Iron Cross First Class on the left; both were decorations for repeated acts of bravery.
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The character of Phillip Thomsen is very loosely based on the real U-572 commander Heinz Hirsacker. Hirsacker was not as noble or brave as Thomsen in the film; he never received a combat decoration for submarine service, let alone the Knight's Cross. In 1942 he was accused of cowardice after repeatedly evading enemy ships and returning to base at the first sign of pursuit. He was sentenced to death by a military court, but took his own life in 1943 before the sentence could be carried out.
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U-96's real first watch officer ('Number One') was Gerhard Groth, born in 1917, who emigrated to Mexico as a child. As in the film, he returned to Germany in the late 1930s and joined the Navy just before the war. He was a staff officer in a submarine flotilla before joining his first submarine, U-96, as 2nd Watch Officer. He was promoted to 1st Watch Officer in October 1941 and became captain of U-143 in April 1942. After commanding three boats until the end of the war, he returned to Mexico City.
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Klaus Wennemann, who played the Chief Engineer, was forty-one years old when the film was shot. U-96's real Chief Engineer, Hans Peter Dengel, was a little over twenty-five on his first patrol. Dengel survived the war, was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1943, and became Chief Engineer of the Type IX submarine U-543. He died when the boat was sunk by an Allied air attack in July 1944.
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Most of the $15 million budget went to building the submarines. The specifications of an original Type VII-C U-boat were found at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The plans were taken to the submarines' original builder, who was asked to construct a full-size, seaworthy replica for the first time since the end of the war. A second full-size model was built for interior shots.
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To simulate the storm in the Atlantic, a model of the conning tower was drenched with water from a large tank. Jan Fedder lost his grip on the railing and fell off the model, breaking several ribs. An actor immediately shouted, "Man overboard!" Not realizing it was an accident, Wolfgang Petersen enthusiastically said, "Great idea, Jan, we'll do that once more!" Petersen kept the shot and rewrote Fedder's role so that his character would spend part of the film in bed. The actor, who had suffered a concussion, went back and forth to the hospital every day. The pained expression on his face is real. The scene in which he is in bed appears in the uncut version.
- #063
The film and the Lothar G. Buchheim book it is based on are loosely adapted from the wartime career of the Type VIIC boat U-96 and its captain, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock. In late 1941, Buchheim, a war correspondent in the German Navy's propaganda office, joined the crew of U-96 for a patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. This patrol formed the basis of his book (the character Lieutenant Werner in the film is based on Buchheim). During the war, Captain Lieutenant Lehmann-Willenbrock ranked seventh among U-boat captains in terms of the tonnage of ships he sank (183,223 tons in three boats: U-5, U-96 and U-256). After being handed over to a new captain, U-96 was decommissioned on 5 February 1943 and became one of the few U-boats to survive its service in the Atlantic. Far from dying in an air attack as depicted in the film, Lehmann-Willenbrock survived the war and later served as captain on various German commercial cargo ships. Lehmann-Willenbrock and Buchheim served as technical advisers on the film (although the cantankerous Buchheim clashed with director Wolfgang Petersen, who would not let him write the screenplay based on his book). Lehmann-Willenbrock died in Bremen in 1986, and Buchheim in Bavaria in 2007.
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In the scene where the boat returns to La Rochelle, most of the extras inside and around the submarine pen were French. Wolfgang Petersen stated that he, the crew and the main cast could feel the tension in the air, because there was still resentment over the Nazis' treatment during the war. However, he also said that when the time came to film the British air raid on the port, they did an excellent job.
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When Wolfgang Petersen set about reducing the German TV mini-series version of the film to a 3-hour 26-minute director's cut, he discovered that the original music soundtrack had been lost due to film decay. The original score's composer, Klaus Doldinger, had carefully archived all of the original music, and he remixed all the decayed music cues in 6-channel format. The music editors were then faced with the difficult task of re-cutting the music to fit the film's new length.
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Because Steadicams were not yet in use, cinematographer Jost Vacano developed a system of heavy gyroscopes together with his father. This system kept the camera steady while running through the corridors. The U-boat set was deliberately built somewhat oversized to give Vacano more room; even so, he had to wear a helmet because he frequently hit his head.
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Klaus Wennemann, who played the Chief Engineer, was 41; the real Chief Engineer, Hans Peter Dengel, was 25 on his first patrol. Dengel survived the war, was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1943 and became Chief Engineer of U-543. He died when his boat was sunk by an air attack in July 1944.
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Several additional scenes written from the novel were not shot due to budget and time constraints. In the original script, the U-boat leaves St. Nazaire and docks at La Rochelle; the escape through Gibraltar is extended. A Spanish-flagged ship is also nearly sunk, the crew of a submarine that hits a mine at the entrance to La Rochelle is rescued, and Lieutenant Werner has a love story with a French resistance fighter.
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Ludwig Huppmann stayed inside the 11-metre model submarine for more than a month. While the crew sought harsh conditions, the mini submarine was towed on a 300-metre tow line. When the line caught on the ocean floor, Huppmann was pulled underwater and heard the words 'you have the most expensive coffin'.
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The sixth officer mentioned in the novel is the 2nd Engineer, who joins the training to replace the Chief Engineer at the end of the patrol. He does not bond with the other officers, the Captain does not like him immediately and swears to prevent him from becoming the new Chief Engineer. In the film, many of this character's antagonistic traits were transferred to the First Officer.
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Of the models used in the film, the full-size submarine was scrapped after shooting, but others can still be visited at Bavaria Filmstadt Geiselgasteig near Munich. The model used for the interior shots is only 8 metres shorter than the original VIIC submarine, with the oil bunkers and some parts of the torpedo area the crew could not reach cut away.
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The only surviving Type IX submarine is in a museum in Chicago, so a full-size floating copy was built for the exterior. Thanks to clever editing, this copy appeared as three different boats in the port of La Rochelle. Before shooting began, the copy used by Steven Spielberg for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) consisted of three sections and began to break apart during the sea shoots. After the scene in which the crew sings 'It's A Long Way From Tipperary', a crack can be seen between the first and second sections. That night the copy drifted out to sea and was lost, but about 2/3 of it was rebuilt from parts salvaged from nearby beaches; this time it required additional flotation devices.
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A fleet of miniatures was used for the exterior shots to create the illusion of a seaworthy German submarine. Historical advisers Hans-Joachim Krug (first officer of U-219) and Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (captain of the historical U-96) served on the film. The only surviving IX-C submarine, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, was also an indispensable resource.
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The claustrophobic interior shots owe a debt to the genius of cinematographer Jost Vacano. In Das Boot Revisited, Vacano says the camera had to be squeezed into the confined space and never leave it. In an interview with CraveOnline, Wolfgang Petersen recounts that at first they thought shooting in such a small place could kill them, but because they shot in sequence, the actors became increasingly immersed in their roles.
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Before the screenplay was finished, two steel copies of the Type VIIC submarine had been built at Bavaria Studios in Munich. The 70-metre interior and exterior copies cost 2.5 million Deutsche Mark (~5.5 million USD today). When the production of Das Boot was shelved, the copies were left to rust on the studio grounds.
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Production began in earnest in the Heligoland archipelago in the North Sea. As art director Götz Weidner explains in the documentary Das Boot Revisited, the aim was to capture convincing shots of the submarine in stormy conditions without damaging the large copies. Long shots of the crew on deck were done with modified radio-controlled dolls. For the underwater scenes, a small 1/12-scale (~6-foot) model was used, and for the Vigo Harbour, Gibraltar, convoy attack and burning tanker scenes, an even smaller 1/24-scale model was used.
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While the captain expresses his disgust at the Nazi leadership, a photograph of Admiral Karl Dönitz hangs on the wall behind him. After Hitler's suicide, Dönitz became the last president of the Nazi regime, escaped imprisonment and lived until 1980. Since the book Das Boot was published in 1973, Dönitz is likely to have read it.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
Deeper Meaning (10)
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The sixth officer, who appears in the novel but was cut from the film, is the Second Engineer, who joins the boat on a training cruise to replace the Chief Engineer at the end of the patrol. He does not bond with the other officers, does not eat with them, and is not immediately liked by the Captain, who promises to prevent this man from becoming the new Chief Engineer. In the film, most of the Second Engineer's antagonistic traits were transferred to the First Officer.
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The photograph hanging on the wall behind the Captain as he describes his disgust with the Nazi leadership belongs to Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of Germany's submarine fleet. He would become the last leader of the Nazi regime after Adolf Hitler's suicide, escape imprisonment, and live until 1980, the year the film was released. Since the novel Das Boot was published in 1973, Dönitz is likely to have read it.
Career & Awards (1)
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