yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The Sinking of the SS Athenia | WW2 Hell Under the Sea


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

NARRATOR: As the opening day of the Second World War fades, Lemp strains to identify the ship in front of him.

CHRISTIAN JENTZSCH: It's behaving, in his opinion, like an auxiliary cruiser because it's zig-zagging and it's blacked out. And he even imagines to have seen gun platforms.

NARRATOR: In Lemp's mind, that is enough proof this is some kind of armed enemy ship fair game to be attacked without warning. With torpedoes ready-- [non-english speech]

NARRATOR: --a little before 8:00 PM Lemp fires the first two U-boat torpedoes of World War II. A hydrophone operator monitors them by the sound of their propellers. One speeds towards the target. But there is a problem with the second. It should grow fainter but instead is getting louder. Fearing that it will circle back and strike them, Lemp orders the U-boat deeper. It is a scenario they train for, even in peacetime. The standard procedure is to dive below the depth that a torpedo would pass.

NARRATOR: It could be tight. U-30 is more than 210 feet long. And as the bow angles down, the stern goes up. They must get the whole U-boat out of danger. They have no way to visually monitor the threat. Their only source of information is what the hydrophone operator can hear. [propeller whirling] When the noise finally fades away, the torpedo no longer poses a threat. Relieved, Lemp surfaces to investigate. With darkness falling, he moves in for a closer look.

The first torpedo had struck the ship. But as Lemp surveys the crippled vessel, he realizes that something is wrong. They check the silhouette of the large ship against the Lloyd's Register of vessels. When he saw the scene of action, he realized that he was mistaken. It wasn't an auxiliary cruiser. It was a steamer with a lot of civilians in the water.

NARRATOR: An intercepted radio transmission confirms his fears. It identifies the ship as the passenger liner SS Athenia bound for Canada. Lemp has made a huge mistake. His orders were clear. Sink only warships, troop ships, and enemy merchant vessels. Hitler and the German government still hope for some kind of settlement agreement with Britain. And so they don't want to aggravate the British more than necessary.

NARRATOR: Now, on the very first day of the war, Lemp has sunk a passenger vessel without warning. Comparisons are immediately made to the sinking of RMS Lusitania by a U-boat in World War I, an act that helped end American neutrality and brought the United States into the war against imperial Germany-- the exact scenario Hitler hoped to avoid with his strict instructions. Now the sinking of Athenia sets off a new political firestorm. Many of the 1,103 passengers aboard are Canadians, Americans, or European refugees escaping the war. 118 civilians are dead. Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, vehemently deny German responsibility for the attack. The man responsible for Hitler's headache is 26-year-old [inaudible] Fritz-Julius Lemp.

CHRISTIAN JENTZSCH: He was born as a son of an army officer in China before the First World War. He entered the [inaudible] Marina in 1931. And he went to the newly created submarine arm in 1936.

NARRATOR: He was assigned command of his own Submarine U-30 in 1938. Lemp recognizes the potential fallout from his error. He makes no radio report of the sinking and continues his patrol. He has to keep it secret. And he decides to stick exactly to the submarine protocol for his future attacks.

More Articles

View All
First Week of Medical School VLOG *in person*
Wow [Music] I don’t have a friend. Good morning, guys! It’s me, Jody. Today is the first day of med school. I can’t even speak. Today is the first day of med school. I just woke up, as you can probably tell. I’m currently at a hotel because I couldn’t fin…
Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Is A MISTAKE! | Sen. Lummis Crypto Policy Interview
[Applause] [Music] The Biden administration is leaning towards ten thousand dollars in student loan forgiveness. For more on this issue and a look at the best path forward, let’s bring in O’Leary Ventures chairman Kevin O’Leary. He’s also a CNBC contribut…
What's The Brightest Thing In the Universe?
Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. This symbol, commonly called a Yin Yang symbol, is a taijitu meaning diagram of the supreme ultimate. The principle of Yin and Yang, opposites existing in harmony, is associated with ancient Chinese philosophy. But the very firs…
Unreplaceable Skills: AI's Limits
Yesterday we talked about 10 skills that are now almost useless thanks to the rise of AI. Now, it’s only natural to talk about what particular skills an AI could never replace. These are the skills that even the most advanced robot cannot replicate, and p…
Free energy of formation | Applications of thermodynamics | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
[Instructor] Free energy is symbolized by G. And the change in free energy is delta G. When there’s a subscript of F, this is talking about the change in the free energy of formation, which refers to the change in the free energy for the formation of one …
How To Use ChatGPT To Become A Millionaire
I mean, we’ve all seen this new wave of artificial intelligence that’s taking over pretty much everything. It’s like a company can just throw the word AI into their marketing materials and everyone eats it up because AI is the future and it’s revolutionar…