The author of the German war novel "Das Boot", Lothar-Guenther Buchheim, has died, his spokeswoman said on Friday. He was 89. An artist, art collector and director of his own museum, Buchheim will be best remembered for the 1971 novel that presented a new perspective on the Nazi era by detailing the claustrophobic life on board a war-time submarine, or "U-Boot". In 1981, director Wolfgang Petersen turned the book into a six-hour film, which at the time was the most expensive movie in German history. Unlike Hollywood war films, with their stereotyped Nazi characters, Petersen portrayed the universal suffering of...