STetc ch 37 "new career of non-belligerence"

[Michael Bailey]

Hauffnitz is extremely forthcoming to Hicks, vis a vis his whole shtick. "Our client" (and who might that be, one wonders?) has told him to relay apologies, but Hauffnitz has taken that directive & run with it.

At the pivot point, or salient point, deciding not to turn in the sub as per orders -
He was already less than gung-ho for the K.u.K. - only able with difficulty to square his job in WWI with his conscience -

The War had ended in 1918, what were they doing all that time until 1921 when finally ordered to report for dismantling? "These things take time"...giving him 3 extra years to bond with the U-13, to the point that "to hand [it] over...to the ship-breakers makes no more sense than it would to commit suicide myself....that moment was the beginning of his new career of nonbelligerence, though other forces were already at work, running, you could say, deeper..."

(something very satisfying about that "running, you could say, deeper" here)

Although Hauffnitz sidesteps the called-for group method of beating swords into plowshares on a physical level, is his detournement of the vessel's remit a more sophisticated, less wasteful way to respond to the call of Isaiah 2:4? I tend to think so.

Is it also an assertion of individuality over groupthink, markets over command economy? Maybe a little? It's blurry anyway - in the public sector, armies and functionaries get paid to do what they do; in the private sector, clients (Hauffnitz's "our client" eg) give orders - beginning to look like a distinction without that much of a difference, operationally.

The thingamabob that makes a real difference is that "conscience" of Hauffnitz's "find[ing] ways to operat[e} inside history"



  *
"retractable wheels" is italicized. Is that mainly to provide an incentive to picture how deeply weird is a submarine rolling along a harbor floor? Or to contrast with Hauffnitz's impulses toward "running...deeper"?


  *
Valdivia Expedition of 1898-99 which "brought up into the daylight a pitch-black critter known as the Vampire Squid, by whose name, these days, the U-13 has since come to be known"
  *
It's not vampiric at all...so the non-belligerent U-13 is therefore a fitting namesake

https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2012/06/book-of-week-valdivia-expedition