Customer Reviews

Knights of the Wehrmacht: Knight's Cross Holders of the U-Boat Service

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The work made in this book by Mr. Kurowski is a masterpiece, that must be read by all u-boat historians. He gives a complete look on every winner of the knight cross. After almost six decades, we still can meet those brave men introduced by Mr. Kurowski.

This is the only such title on this important group of distinguished warriors. Sadly, it falls far short of approaching a definitive or even scholarly effort at what it attempts to be. Indeed, it is barely useful.

There are a few redeeming aspects. The biographical sketches (which are 1-2 pages each) are alphabetically arranged and photographs of each man are included. This makes sense. Unfortunately, however, the publisher did not include an Index(!), even though there are enough blank pages in the rear of the book to have done so. It was either a rush job or the publisher was too cheap. Either way it is unforgivable. Why? Because the publisher did not include a Table of Contents, either! (One would have thought a TOC, at the LEAST, was indispensable.) The result is that it is impossible to look up a commander unless you know his last name. Maps of operating areas would have been helpful (there are none), and there are no tables or appendices of statistical data comparing these men (boat types, losses, time at sea vs. kill rate, etc.)

As if this was not enough, the text coverage, commander by commander, is incredibly inconsistent. Important information for some commanders is included, while similar information on others is simply . . . left out. The fate of those who survived is occasionally discussed--or not, as the author saw fit. The overall editing is lackluster at best, and completely AWOL at worse, which accounts for these and other problems (inaccuracies, for example).

Overall this is a poor job that could have been thrown together in a few weeks by anyone with a handful of books on the subject and a little time on his hands.

I bought this book expecting to find well written biographical data of the various U-Boat skippers who won the coveted Knights Cross but I was let down by the poor presentation of the subject. The photos are not always from the captains wartime carrer, the text is very short (one or half page for every individual) and the only useful aspect of the book is the trivial data, like date of birth, date of awards, promotions etc.
U-Boat aces deserve a better book.