Sea Wolves Savage Submarine Commanders of WW2 written by Tony Matthews
and published by Pen & Sword Books - £25 - Hardback - Pages 272
From the heart-rending account of the sinking of the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945 — the worst maritime disaster in world history — through to a variety of other brutal actions carried out by numerous submarine commanders, including the sinking of the hospital ship Centaur in 1943, this book comes from the deep shadows of a tragic past to reveal the terrible truth of a secretive war that was responsible for the deaths of unimaginable numbers of innocent people.
Discover how merchant seamen were savagely machine-gunned in the water, callously
slaughtered with hand-grenades or simply left to the circling sharks. Elsewhere, hundreds
of doctors, nurses, ship’s crew, ambulance drivers and hospital orderlies were viciously
killed without compassion, despite being protected by the Geneva Convention.
Sea Wolves: Savage Submarine Commander of WW2 features true stories of deeply
murderous intent that lurked menacingly beneath the waves.
You could argue that this is a rather gloomy book and you could say that war is dark, but this book does look at 4 military situations in which a lot of death occurred. The four commanders were Nakagawa, Eck, Ariizumi & Marinsko and these commanders were involved in the sinking of a hospital ship, killing or torturing survivors and evacuating civilians. The stories or incidents were very well told and I suppose we have to remember the bad things that happen in the hope of never repeating them or just because everyone deserves to be remembered no matter how they killed. While this is a good book, if you want a broader telling of submariners at war, you would go for a different title. But the book does stand as a good and well-researched book and one I would be happy to recommend.
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