The Enemy Below


The Enemy Below is a 1957 DeLuxe Color war film in CinemaScope, which tells the story of the battle between an American destroyer escort and a German U-boat during World War II. The movie stars Robert Mitchum and Curt Jürgens as the American and German commanding officers, respectively, and was directed and produced by Dick Powell. The film was based on a novel by Denys Rayner, a British naval officer involved in anti-submarine warfare throughout the Battle of the Atlantic.
For the audible effects, Walter Rossi received the 1958 Academy Award for Best Special Effects.

Plot

The American USS Haynes detects and attacks a German U-boat that is on its way to rendezvous with a German merchant raider in the South Atlantic Ocean. Lieutenant Commander Murrell, a former officer in the merchant marine now an active duty officer in the Naval Reserve, has recently taken command of Haynes, even though he is still recovering from injuries incurred in the sinking of his previous ship. Before the U-boat is first spotted, one sailor questions the new captain's fitness and ability. However, as the battle begins, Murrell shows himself to be a match for wily U-boat Kapitän zur See von Stolberg, a man who is not enamored with the Nazi regime, in a prolonged and deadly battle of wits that tests both men and their crews. Each man grows to respect his opponent.
Murrell skillfully stalks the U-boat and subjects von Stolberg and his crew to hourly depth charge attacks. In the end, von Stolberg takes advantage of Murrell's too-predictable pattern of attacks and succeeds in torpedoing the destroyer escort. Although the Haynes is fatally wounded and sinking, it is still battle capable, and Murrell has one last trick up his sleeve. He orders his men to set fires on the deck to make the ship look more damaged than it actually is. Then he orders the majority of his crew to evacuate in the lifeboats, but retains a skeleton crew to man the bridge, engine room, and one of his ship's guns. As Murrell had hoped, von Stolberg decides to surface before firing his torpedos, keeping the deck gun trained on the ship. Murrell orders his gun crew to fire first at the U-boat's stern to immobilize it, and then at the deck gun. Murrell orders his executive officer, Lieutenant Ware, to ram the U-boat. With his boat sinking, von Stolberg orders his crew to set scuttling charges and abandon ship.
Murrell, the last man aboard, is about to join his crew in the lifeboats when he spots von Stolberg standing on the conning tower of the sinking U-boat with his injured executive officer, Oberleutnant zur See Heini Schwaffer. Murrell tosses a line to the submarine and rescues the pair. It is clear that Schwaffer is dying, but von Stolberg refuses to leave his friend behind. Ware returns with American and German sailors in the captain's gig to take the three men off before the U-boat's scuttling charges detonate. Later, aboard another American ship, the German crew consigns Schwaffer's remains to the deep in a traditional ceremony, as the American crew respectfully watches.

Changes from the book

The movie script differs substantially from the original book. The ship is changed from British to American. More important, the final scenes of mutual respect and potential friendship between the protagonists is not how the book ends. In the book the destroyer captain hates the German captain so much he takes a swing at him while they are in the lifeboat. The movie also vaguely alludes to the "enemy" being evil, not particularly the Nazis. This gives the title "The Enemy Below" a double meaning not present in the book.

Cast

Curt Jürgens was imprisoned in 1944 by order of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. He was released when World War II ended. Theodore Bikel was a Jew who was born in Vienna, Austria, and taken as a child to America in 1937.

Production

The destroyer escort USS Haynes was portrayed by the, filmed in the Pacific Ocean near Oahu, Hawaii. Many of Whitehursts crewmen acted in the film: The phone talkers, the gun and depth charge crews, the sailor fishing, and all of the men seen abandoning ship, were real Whitehurst crewmen. The ship's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Walter Smith, played the engineering officer. He is the man seen reading comics during the lull before the action. In the same scene an enlisted man can be seen reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The USS Whitehurst was sunk as a target in 1971.
The lead ship of the destroyer escort class portrayed in The Enemy Below,, actually rammed a U-boat in combat and sank it on 6 May 1944, capturing many of the German crew. The actual DE-181 was a,.

Music

The tune sung by the U-boat crew on the ocean floor between depth charge attacks is from an 18th-century march called "Der Dessauer Marsch". As a more popular song, it's also known by the first line of lyrics as "So leben wir". The burial hymn in the final scene is "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden"

In popular culture