Books like Zehn Jahre und zwanzig Tage by Karl Dönitz

Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, written after a 1910s journey to India, follows a young boy’s quest for spiritual enlightenment during Gautama Buddha’s era.

Hermann Hesse’s German Bildungsroman Demian follows the youth Emil Sinclair as he confronts the limits of his upbringing and searches for a deeper sense of self with the help of his enigmatic classmate Max Demian.

Thomas Mann’s classic novel traces four generations of the wealthy Buddenbrook family in 19th‑century Lübeck, illustrating the rise and decline of German bourgeois society.

A gritty portrait of a former convict navigating the chaotic streets of Weimar Berlin, where crime, politics, and economic hardship collide.

Examines U-boat technology and warfare and describes the adventures of U-123 in American waters during WW2.

Cultivated by the Allied press during the war and fostered by movies and novels ever since, the image of a U-boat skipper held by most Americans is the personification of evil: the wolf who stalks innocents. Quite the opposite image is shared by U-boat veterans and others sympathetic to their work: the knight who endures unrivaled danger and fights nobly. Yet another popular image depicts the submarine operator as a beleaguered sailor swept along by events beyond his control. This book examines the lives of many U-Bootwaffe officers, including the famous and the not-so-well known, to see if these, or any other single image, can be considered representative. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents and, when possible, interviews or correspondence with the U-boat commanders themselves, Jordan Vause follows individual officers from their youth and early naval training through their wartime experiences and into the often bitter peace that followed. His close examination of their lives reveals that many were extremely different from the pictures typically drawn of them. They were as varied in their thoughts and actions as other fighting men on both sides of the war. Particularly valuable is the author's use of new information in his portrayal of Karl Donitz and other prominent commanders to correct and enhance characterizations presented in earlier books. His use of personal letters and unpublished manuscripts loaned to him in Germany adds special significance to this study and its appeal to all those interested in World War II, submarines, and the U-Bootwaffe.

This is the story of the legendary German battleship that sunk the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, on May 24, 1941, and three days later was hunted down and sunk by the British during one of the most dramatic pursuits in naval history. Told by a German naval officer who witnessed both sinkings, the book chronicles the brief but sensational career of what was thought to be the grandest weapon of the Third Reich. Burkard Baron von Müllenheim-Rechberg, the Bismarck's top-ranking survivor, tells the battleship's story from commissioning to the moment when the captain gave a final salute and went down with his ship. The epic battle between the two great enemy ships captured the imagination of an entire generation and became a popular subject for movies and songs. With the discovery a few years ago of the Bismarck's sunken hull off the coast of France, worldwide attention has focused again on the famous ship. Reprinted now in paperback for the first time, the work presents the human dimensions of the event without neglecting the technical side and includes information on rudder damage and repair, overall ship damage, and code breaking. The book also provides insights into the author's life as a prisoner of war in England and Canada and the friction that existed between the Nazis and non-Nazis Germans in the camps. Such a personal look at one of the most famous sea encounters in the history of World War II makes absorbing reading.

An exhaustive account of Germany's U‑boat campaign during World II, charting the rise, reversal, and eventual collapse of the Kriegsmarine’s submarine force from 1939 to 1945.

Because I was one of the few U-boat commanders who fought through most of the war and who managed to survive, I felt it was my duty to my fallen comrades to set the record straight. Very much to the point, duty was the first and last word in the lexicon of the U-boat men; and, remarks to the contrary notwithstanding, we did our duty with a correct gallantry unsurpassed in any branch of service on either side. We were soldiers and patriots, no more and no less, and in our dedication to our lost cause we died in appalling numbers. But the great tragedy of the U-boat Force was not merely that so many good men perished; it was also that so many of our lives were squandered on inadequate equipment and by the unconscionable policies of U-boat Headquarters. - p. [xiii].