The last time we saw him was in episode five as he was ordered off his own submarine after the mutiny, led by Wrangel and Karl Tennstedt (August Wittgenstein). Stranded in the middle of the ocean on a lifeboat, it's unclear just how Hoffmann survived and ended up in the US.

What happens to Captain Hoffman in Das Boot?

So when a mysterious visitor turns up at his office, the surprise isn't that it's a German – after all, they're secretly helping their war effort. It's that it's Hoffman, who was set adrift in a lifeboat after the mutiny mid-season and hasn't been seen since.

Does the captain die in Das Boot?

After the raid, Werner leaves the U-boat bunker in which he had taken shelter and finds the captain, badly injured by shrapnel, watching his U-boat sink in the dock. Just after the boat disappears under the water, the captain collapses and dies.