Günter Hessler
Günter Hessler (14 June 1909 – 4 April 1968) was a German naval officer who served in World War II. He joined the Reichsmarine in 1927 and spent his early years training on various ships and at the Naval Academy. In 1937 he married Ursula Dönitz, the daughter of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, and they had two sons and a daughter.
During the war Hessler commanded the torpedo boat Falke from 1938 to 1940, earning the Iron Cross 2nd Class. In 1940 he moved to the U-boat arm and, unusually, took command of U-107 in early 1941 without the typical prior U-boat training.
On his three patrols, U-107 sank 21 ships totaling 118,822 GRT. The second patrol (March–July 1941) was the most successful of the war, sinking 14 ships. His third patrol added three more ships. Among his victims were two Royal Navy ships, HMS Crispin and Manistee.
After his patrols Hessler served on the BdU staff for the remainder of the war. He was captured, spent more than a year in Allied captivity, and testified at the Nuremberg Trials on behalf of the U-boat force and Dönitz.
In 1947 the British Royal Navy commissioned him to write The U-Boat War in the Atlantic, an account of the German U-boat war; he completed the three-volume work in 1951, with help from Alfred Hoschatt.
Günter Hessler died in 1968 in Bochum at the age of 58.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:48 (CET).