War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome to key films of World War II in Europe.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

And I've got Sean McIver, as always, with me.

We are looking at a completely different movie from what we did

last time. We're going a little bit out of historical order here. We've got two movies we're going to

discuss that relate to the Battle of the Atlantic, the early Battle of the Atlantic. This is one of

them. So even though we're not going to be talking about that for a couple more weeks, we are going to

go ahead and discuss this movie,

and the movie is a German film from 1981 called Das Bolt, or in English, The Boat.

It is two hours and 19 minutes long. It is incredibly highly rated. We're going to do a lot of films, and I haven't seen the ratings on all of them yet, but I can't see how any of them

could be higher than this. There may be some that tie with it, but I don't know, ratings on all of them yet, but I can't see how any of them could be higher than this.

There may be some that tie with it.

But I don't know, Sean, this is incredible.

Rotten Tomatoes.

It gets 98% from the critics and 96% from the audience.

IMDB rating is 8.4, which is one of the highest I've seen. The director is Wolfgang Peterson, and it stars Juergen Krochnow, Herbert Grunemeyer, Klaus Veneman,

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