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Otto Kretschmer: The Life of the Third Reich's Highest Scoring U-Boat Commander. By Lawrence Patterson. (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2018. Pp vii, 268. $39.95.)

“From captain to captain: Please save my men drifting in your direction. I am sinking.” Thus signaled Otto Kretschmer, Nazi Germany’s top U-Boat ace, to HMS Walker on the night of 16 March 1941. Depth charges from the British destroyer had fatally damaged Kretschmer’s U-99, forcing him to surface and abandon ship (200–4). The title is a misnomer. The author writes, “The majority of this book concerns Kretschmer’s time in action [during World War Two]” (xix). If the reader expects a biography of Kretschmer, this is not it. Those readers who want a primer on Kretschmer and the German U-Boat fleet will find this book useful, while those already deeply read in the subject may struggle to learn something new. While making a moral comparison between the Nazis and the US, the author misstates two key facts. He says the US conducted unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan from the day we went to war, and he is correct. But he claims this order came on 8 December 1941 from Admiral Nimitz, Commander-inChief of the US Pacific Fleet (27). The order was issued at that time, but it came from Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations. Nimitz only assumed command of the US Pacific Fleet on 17 December 1941 (https://www.history.navy.mil/ content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/n/nimitz.html). This book suffers from being a work of hagiography. It reinforces the popular myth that the men of Nazi Germany’s U-Boat force were a chivalrous brotherhood who did their duty to the end, exemplifying the highest virtue of a warrior. For whom they did their duty—the Nazi regime—is not considered significant. Kretschmer himself “displayed no particular affinity for, nor aversion to, Germany’s political leadership” (221). His duty was merely to sink ships, and that is what he did. In his work Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine, Michael L. Hadley of the University of Victoria exposes the deliberate creation of this myth. He traces the successful post-war efforts of veterans to change the reputation of the U-Bootwaffe from being a ruthless and dangerous foe to being a chivalrous band of brothers—albeit one promoting Nazi ideals. The myth dissociates men like Kretschmer from the Nazi regime, allowing people to admire these men without moral judgment. This author is one of them. He writes of