Which Lovecraft short story is narrated by a German submarine officer?

The Lovecraft short story narrated by a German submarine officer is “The Temple.” It takes the form of a found manuscript written by Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial German Navy.

Altberg records the doomed voyage of his U-boat during World War I. After his crew sinks a British freighter, they discover an ivory carving on the body of a dead sailor. Strange events follow: the submarine is drawn southward by an unexplained current, crewmen suffer nightmares and hallucinations, and the vessel eventually becomes trapped in the deep ocean.

The submarine finally reaches the ocean floor, where Altberg finds the ruins of an ancient underwater city and a mysterious temple. The story blends wartime naval fiction with cosmic horror and the Atlantis tradition. Its narrator is not a neutral observer: Altberg is authoritarian and brutal, and his decisions help destroy the crew.

Lovecraft wrote the story in 1920, but it was first published in Weird Tales in September 1925. Readers sometimes confuse it with “Dagon,” another nautical story, but “The Temple” is the one specifically framed through a German U-boat commander’s manuscript.