Fritz

Not to be confused with Blitz Stanford.

Fritz
Name	Fritz
Nihongo	フリッツ
Information
Gender	Male
Affiliates	Wentzel H. Ahbe Unnamed sonar operator Sören Schultz Helmut
Affiliation	Nazi Germany (Kriegsmarine)
Weapon	Pistol
Race/Nationality	German
Status	Deceased
First Appearance
Manga	Chapter 05: Das Wieder Erstehen Des Adlers Part 1
Anime	Episode 04: Die Rückkehr des Adlers
Anime Voice
Japanese Voice	Tōru Nara
English Voice	Alistair Abell
Image Gallery

Fritz (フリッツ Furittsu) was a Kriegsmarine officer and crew member of the U-234 who fought in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Appearance

Fritz was a young German man with a skinny build, short brown hair, and pale skin. He wore a midnight blue smock coat and a midnight blue peaked cap with the Kriegsmarine insignia. He carried a pistol for a weapon.

History

Das Wieder Erstehen Des Adlers

Under command of his superior Lieutenant Commander Wentzel H. Ahbe, Fritz was assigned to help him escort Lieutenant Colonel Matsudo of the Imperial Japanese Navy to Batavia (now Jakarta), and Lieutenant Colonel Spielberger of the Nazi SS also forced his way onboard the U-boat. Leaving the German Navy base at Kiel in 1945, Fritz looked back at land while on the conning tower, and he remained silent as Ahbe conversed with Matsudo. Once they got near the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's coast, Fritz played shogi with Matsudo in the hold. Matsudo attacked Fritz's king in a check, impressing the U-boat officer. Later in the Indian Ocean, Fritz kept watch of a British freighter using binoculars, noting to Ahbe that the freighter was heading to Ceylon from South Africa.

He then listened to Spielberger ask Ahbe if he was truly going to ignore his orders to attack the ship. In response, Fritz asked his captain what they would do next. Declaring that he would get Spielberger to Batavia without a problem, Ahbe looked at Fritz and rhetorically asked him if he was incapable of greeting the enemy without confirmation. Smiling and realizing his mistake, the officer assured his captain that he would order the crew below deck to hurry up with loading the torpedo under maintenance. Some day later after firing a torpedo at the British ship, U-234 finally sailed near the Nicobar Islands in Indonesia, but she remained underwater due to the presence of several enemy ships of the United States Navy.

On March 25, 1945, Fritz measured the angles of U-234 for navigation purposes. When Ahbe ordered him and the garrison crew to set course to two-zero-zero, the officer looked at his map and assessed that they could get behind the enemy if U-234 turned twice, adding that the second turn would be in four minutes. At that point, a sonar operator detected more ships in the area, so Ahbe ordered the U-boat crew to set both engines to full power and set course to one-seven-zero. U-234 fired a torpedo at one of the Allied ships, which moved away. At that point, the crew members stopped the U-boat to make it silently run, with Fritz and the others being silent in anxious anticipation. As Fritz noted one ship right above them, the same ship immediately deployed several depth charges and damaged U-234 before she could turn to port and dive further. The U-boat crashed on the sea floor at 57 meters, flooding the torpedo room and damaging the engines and electric generator beyond repair.

Fritz grimly reported the severe damage to Ahbe, who expressed disappointment that they could not bring Matsudo to Batavia. The officer then informed Ahbe that Matsudo had already committed suicide using his sword. With two hours of air left in the submarine, Ahbe commended Fritz and the crew for their service throughout WWII, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and dismissed them of their military duties, allowing them to choose how they would die. In his final moments, Fritz conversed with another sailor while Ahbe got into an argument with Spielberger about Nazi Germany's fate, causing a furious Spielberger to shoot Ahbe and another seaman dead. Hearing the two gunshots, Fritz prepared his pistol and ran into the quarters only to be immediately shot in the right shoulder by Spielberger, felling him. As he laid upright against the barracks, another sailor shot Spielberger, who also shot back while profusely bleeding from his chest. Fritz soon died due to his wound and the loss of oxygen in the submarine.

Fritz's skeleton

50 years later in March 1995, Rock and Revy entered the sunken U-boat to steal a painting which Spielberger brought with him. In the room where the shootout occurred, the two pirates saw Fritz's skeleton lying against the barrack. When Revy left to pillage the medals from the U-boat's crew members, Rock looked at Fritz's skeleton and felt eerie, asking him not to look at him weird since he also thought that pilfering the medals was wrong. Minutes later when neo-Nazis entered the U-boat and stole the painting from the pirates, Revy's grenade caused water to rapidly flood the U-boat as she and Rock escaped, engulfing Fritz's skeleton in water.