The Sinking of the Laconia

2011
The Sinking of the Laconia

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
  • 0

EP1 Episode 1 Jan 06, 2011

On the 12th September 1942 the Laconia - a cruise ship turned troop ship - was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-156 commanded by Werner Hartenstein. She carried a motley crew of women, children, wounded soldiers and Italian Prisoners of War. Having sunk the ship, Hartenstein should have left them to their uncertain fate in the water, but instead he made the incredible decision to save as many lives as he could. A true story of unexpected gallantry and humanity in the fog of war.

EP2 Episode 2 Jan 07, 2011

U-boat commander Werner Hartenstein has torpedoed the Laconia and mounted an extraordinary rescue operation. U-156's deck is crowded with Allied survivors fished out of the South Atlantic. But in the fog of war confusion reigns and U-156 is spotted by an American bomber which moves in to attack.
7| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 06 January 2011 Ended
Producted By: teamWorx
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xgjnm
Synopsis

The true story of the Allied ship Laconia, sunk in WWII by a German U-Boat, which then surfaced against orders to rescue the civilian crew

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winopaul Thank gosh the librarians put this out on the end cap, or I would have missed this gem. Don't be put off by the clunky cover art. This is an excellent dramatization of the Laconia Incident, see Wikipedia for the details.This was done back in 2010, and I don't know that is before everyone starting saying TV is getting more important than movies, but this sure builds the case. It is after the The Wire and during Breaking Bad and all the other things people credit for TV's ascendancy.Do get the 2-disk DVD so you can enjoy this at your leisure. The actors were unknown to me, but of such great talent it did not matter. I agree this was not an anti-American film, after all, the consensus is it was an American war crime to attack the rescue effort. More disturbing than the war crime was the cover-up. Anyone can make a mistake in the heat of battle, but only a corrupt organization pretends it did not happen.Rather than getting all cronied up, I think this is less about choosing sides than a study in the variability of human behavior. It shows how middle management in a vicious organization can act with decency, and middle management in a virtuous organization can act shamefully. How both those organizations reacted to these events gives food for thought.Another real plus is that the DVD comes on two disks. This means they spent more money rather than use strong compression. As a result, the rippling ocean and other high-bit-rate scenes look great, even up-scaled to HD.
garundaboink The portrayal of the American flyers bombing the sub was over the top. Some Germans like to say 'You had your murderers too' which seems to assuage guilt for them for their ancestors' crimes against humanity. Unless one cannot see the difference between the two sides, let me state it clearly - The Germans had institutionalized murder from the very top to the bottom, with the occasional protesting humanitarian below, their opponents were institutionalized humanitarians with the occasional murderer in the ranks. I'm sorry, but having American flyers laughing after the bombing and saying "Let's go back and strafe them", that ranks in my book as propaganda and if it were more truthful it's probably something a German flyer would have said, since it was part of all their campaigns to strafe civilians fleeing the fighting. They strafed, in order, Polish, Belgians, Parisians, and Russians to clog the roads with panicked civilians, and to force them in a given direction to block advancing armies, much like a sheepdog biting at the heels of animals. It's not possible to enjoy this movie while knowing the facts of how the Germans behaved in WWII. Also not historically accurate is the fact that an odd triangular cross exists in place of the Nazi swastika, and the Kapitaen gives a traditional instead of the 'Heil Hitler' salute while receiving a medal from Doenitz, due to the fact that both are illegal to portray in Germany today. With good reason.
wbc7216 Just happen to watch this movie about 2 months ago. I really enjoyed it, I didn't think for one second it was anti American. In the movie the scene people are referring to they were given direct orders to bomb, they reported what they saw. But in general I thought it was a great TV movie. People take stuff so serious. Just relax and take in the show. I'm starting to really enjoy international movies, to me just more depth. It's nice to see at war time what went on behind the scenes in other countries. Germany could have easily said screw those people but they showed compassion. Just think the world was at War, they stopped what they were doing and helped the enemy.
vikpk I will not focus on the qualities of this movie -- just on its unfair anti-American sentiment. It is done in the better tradition of the European cinema. However, I cannot but underrate it for its anti- American sentiments. It shows the Americans trigger-happy backward country bumpkins at the backdrop of the sophisticated moral issues the German skipper of the U-Boat and his British counter parts struggle with. The movie successfully shows the human suffering at war. Yet it seems to me quite preachy at times (the words of the skipper of the Laconia before it sinks, for example.) It is blowing out of proportion the supposedly kind act by the Nazi U-Boat captain. The flat, one- sided portrayal of the Americans came not to show that war can produce stupid mistakes but to juxtapose the Germans and British against the Americans. Let us not forget that this one act of kindness by a German U-boat captain has to be measured against the tons of reckless torpedoing of passenger ships by German submarines during the blockade of the UK in WW2. It was also unrealistic how the US bomber approached the U-boat dropped five bombs then all of a sudden, without sinking the submarine, the chief pilot said "Mission accomplished" and they flew back (supposedly low on fuel). Not sure how true to the historical fact this is but it is proper to remind the British and German directors that regardless of all the Nazi-British comradery shown in the film the actual goal of the 3rd Reich was to subject all nations to its ideological and military superiority. This does become clear to an extent in the film but the attempt to water down the historical role of the various parties in the war diminishes the film's potential.