Bottom Line Up Front: There is not a lot of material drawn straight from Donitz's memoir. Reference to that source consists mostly of the author paraphrasing Donitz. Second, and much larger oversight, this book essentially stops chronicling events in September 1943.
I figured there would be a great deal of comparison and contrast between what Donitz wrote after the war and what the British experienced during the war. But there is not. Its almost as if both sources have been edited so they agree on most things, with the exception being that Donitz did not know about ULTRA or some of the radar systems. So I am docking one star for objectivity and somewhat overzealous editing/interpretation/paraphrasing by the author.
Am also not sure this book would appeal to anyone other than a specialist. The author has fallen somewhat short of the mark while attempting to amalgamate his sources. I cannot tell if Donitz has been paraphrased but it appears that is the case. The British accounts seem to be written in both past and present tense, so I cannot tell if the author has edited them or not. The author does inject some commentary and correct mistakes, but not on a regular basis.
Finally, either the editors or the author failed to do a good job proofreading. We find "but" replaced by "hut" and "and" replaced by "arid" plus other examples.
In summary, this book reads like it started off as one thing but the publishers told the author it wouldn't sell so he added some more material to it plus some commentary. The British antisubmarine reports that comprise the core of the narrative, however, are well worth acquiring. Only for the specialist - which is not the case for some of his other books as I bought this one based on earlier acquisitions of works by the same author.
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