Möltenort U-Boat Memorial

Kiel, birth place of the German U-Boot

An eagle atop a 15-meter-high pillar was inaugurated in 1930 and originally commemorated German marines killed aboard a submarine during World War I.

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There are two monumental memorials to sailors of submarines just near Kiel because the first German submarine - the SM U-1 - was built in Kiel in 1906.

Submarine base

The German city was given its first submarine base and a Ubootschule. It was the most critical place for the construction of German submarines with Hamburg. The photo shows German submarines around 1914 in the port of Kiel (photo public domain, Wikimedia).

Two hundred sunken submarines

During World War I, more than three hundred submarines of the German Kaiserlichen Marine made the North Sea and its surroundings unsafe. They managed to sink more than six thousand civilian ships.

The underwater battle also saw German submarines come under fire. Two hundred of them were sunk, in which some five thousand German marines drowned.

The Möltenort U-Boat Memorial commemorates the 4,744 German victims of the First World War. After World War II, another 30,000 casualties were added after more than seven hundred submarines were sunk between 1940-45.

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Kiel, birth place of the German U-Boot

Submarine base

Two hundred sunken submarines

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Industrial Heritage

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