Wolfgang Luth was one of only seven men to win Germany's highest combat
decoration. He operated in almost every theater of the undersea war from
Norway to the Indian Ocean and he was the second most successful German
U-boat ace in World War II. Luth is credited with sinking 47 Allied
ships and a submarine - a record topped only by Otto Kretschmer. In
1944, after 16 war patrols, including one that lasted a record 203 days
at sea, he was named the youngest Commandant of the German Naval Academy
at age 30.
Until the publication of this comprehensive study his accomplishments
were overshadowed by other aces, to correct the neglect, Jordan Vause
provides an entertaining, authoritative biography. Vause was intrigued
after seeing a portrait of Luth as a midshipman on display and set out
to learn all he could, tracking down some of Luth's crewmen and fellow
U-boat commanders. He draws on their firsthand information and a variety
of written documents to provide a fascinating character analysis. In
doing so, he encapsulates the paradoxes inherent in so many German
submarine commanders, men spawned by the Nazi regime yet not entirely of
it. Vause portrays Luth as a man of contradictions: an agent Nazi
ideologue who could bend the rules for a slack sailor, a U-boat ace who
could treat survivors of his attacks with clemency but then impetuously
gun down other victims in cold blood. Even his best friend admitted that
Luth had no remorse for the misery he inflicted on the crews of sunken
ships. On the night of May 13th 1945 he was accidentally shot and killed
by a German sentry. On May 16th 1945 he was given the Third Reich's last
state funeral.
