The Battle Of The Atlantic

[Sailor Steve]

I just started reading this fine book yesterday, The Battle of the Atlantic: The First Complete Account of the Origins and Outcome of the Longest and Most Crucial Campaign of World War II; by Terry Hughes and John Costello. Even though it was published thirty years ago, I'm still learning new things.

We were assembled aft and the Emden's Executive Officer told us that England had declared war on Germany. It was not a happy moment. We recalled that our fathers had told us how they cheered on the declaration of war, but nobody knew now what to say. We all thought "Now we're in a mess".
-Werner Schuenemann, Wilhelmshaven, 3 September 1939

The sinking of the Athenia by U-30:

I was standing on the upper deck when suddenly there was a terrific explosion. I reckon I must be a very lucky woman because when I recovered from the shock I saw several men lying dead on the deck.
-Mrs Elizabeth Turner, Toronto

In an effort to hide the fact that Fritz-Julius Lemp had torpedoed a liner, he was made to destroy that page from his patrol log and substitute a fake one. The German Propaganda Ministry even went so far as to accuse Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) of planting a bomb on the liner to make the Germans look bad and gain sympathy for the cause of the British. On 13 September Admiral Raeder told the US Atache in Berlin "It could not possibly have been caused by a German submarine, since the nearest one was 170 miles away".