Hello Joseph

Thank you for your interest. It was an unplanned book which crept up on me. What I decided to write was not a conventional history, but a personal view of the events that were integral to the Gerth brothers, to see how they were changed by what they heard, were taught and experienced. It is a true story about real people and has the benefit of interviews with the children of both men. There was no deliberate reason to choose the Gerth brothers. Other crews, another family, might have done just as well. Perhaps that is the point. When politics and profit come to play in war, as they must, it is ordinary families that are caught in the chaos. And Erich and Georg Gerth do provide an exciting and interesting story as well as a helpful literary device.

The following is taken from the Introduction:

I fell across by chance two ordinary German participants - as much as two brothers from Berlin who were u-boat commanders can be described as ordinary. The more that I learned about Erich and Georg Gerth, the more interesting they became. I decided to explore their early lives. Why did they made the choices that they did? What influenced them? How did their decisions fit the evolving politics of the time? What was their level of commitment when they went to war? I tarried in the places, with the people and the attitudes that mattered to them: their nineteenth-century family and school, the elitist German naval college, their commitment to the monarchy and the Prussian military system, the German drive for world-wide trade dominance, Admiral Tirpitz’s naval adventure, the Kaiser’s attempt to unsettle the Middle East and to inflame the Muslim diaspora, and the development of the African colonies.

From there it was a short step to the Gerths’ day-to-day war experiences, the economic blockade of Germany, the boredom of the Baltic, the founding of the Flanders u-boat bases, unrestricted submarine warfare, the virulent propaganda war, French prisoner of war camps, watching families deal with desperate food shortages.

The brothers both survived by luck and judgement and faced immediate choices in the post-war fight to the death between a new socialist republic, Bolshevism, and the die-hard right-wing they never admitted defeat or blame. Erich's falling out with the Nazis and his fight to save his family is a parable for our times.

I hope that helps!

Best wishes
Chris