Buchheim was a Sonderführer in a propaganda unit of the Kriegsmarine in the Second World War, writing as a war correspondent about his experiences on minesweepers, destroyers and submarines. He also made drawings and took photographs.
As a Leutnant zur See in the autumn of 1941, Buchheim joined Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock and the crew of U-96 on her seventh patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. His orders were to photograph and describe the U-boat in action. From his experiences, he wrote a short story, “Die Eichenlaubfahrt” (The Oak-Leaves Patrol; Lehmann-Willenbrock had been awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oakleaves). Buchheim ended the war as an Oberleutnant zur See.
In 1973, he published a novel based on his wartime experiences, Das Boot (The Boat), a fictionalised autobiographical account narrated by a “Leutnant Werner”. It became the best-selling German fiction work on the war.
His novel was followed by a non-fiction work, U-Boot-Krieg (U-Boat War) in 1976, which became the first part of a trilogy, together with U-Boot-Fahrer (U-Boat Sailors, 1985), and Zu Tode Gesiegt (Victory in the Face of Death, 1988). The trilogy includes over 5,000 photographs taken during World War II. He is also the author of the novels Die Festung (The Fortress, 1995), based on travels home across France in 1944, and Der Abschied (The Parting, 2000), about the nuclear-powered cargo vessel NS Otto Hahn.
