As the father of the wolfpacks, Karl was admired by his men and feared by his enemies. It was ten years as U-boat commander and twenty days as President of Germany. This book was written in 1958, so he didn't have all the information of what happened during the war.
The book is very thorough when it comes to the U-boats. It gets really dry after a while. It seemed like a significant portion of the book was "U-boat 123 (Lieutenant Soandso) found a convoy and sunk 10,000 tons." And it felt like it was that over and over and over. There were little parts sprinkled in there that were a bit interesting, but then it was back to convoys and tonnage. I stuck with it because I wanted to find out about what happened after the war when he was President.
Toward the end. I was interested in the story, but it felt pretty sugar-coated. He claimed he didn't know anything about what was going on in the camps. He was on his boats and isolated to the point he couldn't have heard anything. By his own words, he was summoned to Hitler's presence more than once, and that wasn't on a U-boat. Other sources are claiming Karl was a dedicated Nazi and anti-Semite. These are things he didn't really address, and when he did, he acted like he was on the fringes of it. I've found that in a few of the German autobiographies I've read. I also found it interesting how he'd bring up attacks by the Allies he felt were inappropriate, but he wouldn't acknowledge the loss of life created by the war in the Atlantic. It was all about the tonnage.
The book was rough for me. I stuck with it mostly to read the recollections from postwar Germany. The problem is, when I feel like I'm slogging through a fairy tale from an unreliable narrator, I feel like I've wasted my time. I actually think I fell asleep three or four times while reading this. I don't doubt the accuracy of the submarine information at all. But once I got past that, I ended up being disappointed. I can't deny that he was a genius naval tactician, but I can't praise him for his regard for Hitler. If you're interested in the details of wolfpack tactics and the chaos they wrecked on shipping in the Atlantic, I think you'll get the information you're seeking here. Otherwise, you might want to skip this one.
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