Greenhill have recently published two significant new books about U-boats in World War II and now comes another. The two newly available books are: Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two: German, Italian and Japanese Submarine Successes, 1939–1945 by Jürgen Rohwer German U-Boat Losses During World War II: Details of Destruction by Axel Niestlé and to be ready early in the new year will be: German U-Boat Commanders of World War II: A Biographical Dictionary by Rainer Busch and Hans-Joachim Röll This important biographical dictionary details the service records of the 1,411 officers of the German Kriegsmarine known to have commanded a U-boat between the commissioning of U-1 in June 1935 to the final surrender of U-977 to Argentina in August 1945. Full details of the careers of all Germany's U-boat commanders are provided: each officer's date of birth; the highest rank he attained; details of any decorations he received; his service record; and his ultimate fate – whether killed in action, taken prisoner or detained after the war for Allied interrogation. In addition, an index gives a numerical list of U-boats along with their commanding officers. German U-Boat Commanders of World War II sheds light on personalities as diverse as Eck, executed for war crimes in November 1945; von Stockhausen, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; and Kapitzky, who fought a heroic last stand against Allied aircraft off Curacao. This outstanding, new reference book is a valuable addition to the key works on the naval history of World War II. Rainer Busch and Hans-Joachim Röll are noted authorities on the development of the German submarine arm and on U-boat activity in World War II. The book has been translated from the original German by Geoffrey Brooks. Some of the more curious items in the book include the following details from the biographical entries: that Kiesewetter at age 62 was the oldest, von Friedeburg at age 20 was the youngest, officer to command a World War II U-boat in commission; Radermacher served aboard U-5 in all grades from seaman to commander; Peters was in command of a U-boat in commission on every day of the war from first to last; and within the same fortnight of 1944, Ballert and Ballert had their commands U-1196 and U-1166 respectively seriously damaged and decommissioned as the result of a defective torpedo exploding. From recent Argentinian publications it would seem that the officers of the Admiral Graf Spee were given the option of returning to Germany to resume naval service or continuing the war as 'militant internees' in South America, a term of rather wide implications. Half returned within a year and a large number of these eventually gravitated to the U-boat arm. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 87 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com