U-Boat Adventures: Firsthand Accounts from World War II
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Overview
Twenty-two U-boat veterans tell their chilling stories in this collection of their combat experiences in World War II, recorded by the author during several years of travel throughout Germany. It is one of very few books to examine the lives of the enlisted crew in the infamous submarines. Melanie Wiggins interviewed seventeen men and five of their commanders to take readers into the terrifying world of underwater warfare where every man helped determine the fate of his boat.
While tracking down the U-boat veterans, Wiggins came across photographs and secret diaries and gained access to personnel records. A reunion of the U-682 crew and interviews with Admiral Otto Kretschmer two months before his death and the ninety-four-year-old Commander Jürgen Wattenberg netted a wealth of information. Among the individual sagas included are Radioman Hans Bürck's description of his 1942 patrol to Aruba and Herman Wien's description of U-180 transporting an Indian anarchist to Madagascar.
Synopsis
Twenty-two U-boat veterans tell their stories in this collection of their experiences, recorded by the author during several years of travel throughout Germany. While many books have been written about the U-boat war, this is one of the few that focuses on the lives of the submariners, and rarer still is its concentration on the crewmen rather than the officers. Melanie Wiggins interviewed seventeen men of the enlisted ranks, along with five commanders, to take readers into the terrifying world of underwater warfare, where every single crewman made a crucial difference in the fate of his boat.
As she searched for and interviewed U-boat men, Wiggins also collected photographs from scrapbooks and archives, and consulted war-era personnel records and secret diaries. Her attendance at a reunion of the crew of U-682 netted a wealth of information as did her interviews with submarine veterans in Görlitz, former East Germany. Her interviews with Admiral Otto Kretschmer just two months before his death and ninety-four-year-old Commander Jürgen Wattenberg in Hamburg add important dimensions to the work.
Among the individual sagas included are Radioman Hans Bürck's description of his 1942 patrol to Aruba and the visit of Japanese submarine I-30 at Lorient; Fireman 2nd Class Josef Erben's explanation of how his boat, U-128, got stuck on a large rock and had to be hauled free; POW Ernst G&uoml;thling's memories of being wounded in a British prison camp when German planes mistakenly dropped bombs in the area; and Herman Wien's description of U-180 transporting Indian anarchist Subhas Chandra Bose to Madagascar. Every account gives new details about the crews' activities at sea and their experiences in prisoner-of-war camps.
Library Journal
In her latest book, Wiggins draws on 22 interviews (with 17 enlisted men and five commanders) that she conducted for her previous book, Torpedoes in the Gulf. She devotes a chapter to each crewman's particular story and provides photographs of the crewman and his submarine. Wiggins then supplements these oral accounts with research from personnel files and archives. Together, these amazing stories show the true horror of submarine combat: well over half of the men who entered the U-boat service never returned. No wonder submarines were called "iron coffins." Surprisingly, most of these German soldiers had no great love of Hitler, and some were even tried for treason. Numerous books have been written about U-boat commanders, but few have featured the enlisted men as Wiggins's has. Recommended for both academic and public libraries.--Mark E. Ellis, Albany State Univ., GA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.