Otto Kretschmer: The Life of Germany’s Highest Scoring U-Boat Commander eBook

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Lawrence Paterson
Genre :

Summary : Otto Kretschmer was only in combat from September 1939 until March 1941 but was Germany's highest-scoring U-boat commander sinking 47 ships totaling 274,333 tons. This definitive work details his personal story and the political backdrop from his earliest days. After completing his officer training and time on the training ship Niobe he served aboard the light cruiser Emden. In December 1934, he was transferred to the light cruiser K�ln, then in January 1936 made the move to the fledgling U-boat service. Hisfirst operational posting was to the 2nd U-Flotilla's Type VII U35 where he almost being drowned during training in the Baltic Sea. During the Spanish Civil War, Kretschmer was involved in several patrols as part of the international non-intervention force. He demonstrated a cool approach to combat: his mantra 'one torpedo for one ship'proved that the best way for his boat to succeed against a convoy was to remain surfaced as much as possible, penetrating the convoy and using the boat's high speed and small silhouette to avoid retaliation. His nickname 'Silent Otto' referred to his ability to remain undetected and his reluctance to provide the regular radio reports required by D�nitz: he had guessed that the Allies had broken German codes. Alongside his military skill was a character that remained rooted in the traditions of the Prussian military.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Lawrence Patterson
Genre : Biography & Autobiography

Summary : Comprehensive biography of 'Silent Otto' from his English schooling to his death in 1998, First-person material from Kretschmer and his Kriegsmarine colleagues, Details of every combat by Kretschmer's U-boats, Patrol charts reproduced from Kretschmer's original War Diaries, Covers his capture, escape attempts and controversial activities as a prisoner Book jacket.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Teddy Shuren
Genre : History

Summary : Reinhard ‘Teddy’ Suhren fired more successful torpedo shots than any other man during the war, many before he even became a U-boat commander. He was also the U-boat service’s most irreverent and rebellious commander; his lack of a military bearing was a constant source of friction with higher authority. Valued for his good humour and ability to lead, his nickname was acquired because he marched like a teddy-bear. Despite his refusal to conform to the rigid thought-patterns of National Socialism, his operational successes protected him, and he found himself accepted in the highest circles of power in Germany. He was one of the lucky third of all U-boat crewmen who survived the war, largely because his abilities led to a senior land-based command. He was also one of the first to publish his reminiscences, his account being typically forthright – its German title, Nasses Eichenlaub, suggesting that although he was decorated with the Oak Leaves, he was always in hot water. He died in 1984 but interest in his career was revitalized by the discovery of photographs documenting one of his operations in U 564, published with great success in 2004 as U-Boat War Patrol by Lawrence Patterson.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Jeremy Dixon
Genre : History

Summary : Jeremy Dixon's highly illustrated book is the ideal guide to the Knight's Cross holders and their wartime service.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Alexander Wheelock Thayer
Genre : Biography & Autobiography

Summary : If for no other reasons than because of the long time and monumental patience expended upon its preparation, the vicissitudes through which it has passed and the varied and arduous labors bestowed upon it by the author and his editors, the history of Alexander Wheelock Thayer’s Life of Beethoven deserves to be set forth as an introduction to this work. His work it is, and his monument, though others have labored long and painstakingly upon it. There has been no considerable time since the middle of the last century when it has not occupied the minds of the author and those who have been associated with him in its creation. Between the conception of its plan and its execution there lies a period of more than two generations. Four men have labored zealously and affectionately upon its pages, and the fruits of more than four score men, stimulated to investigation by the first revelations made by the author, have been conserved in the ultimate form of the biography. It was seventeen years after Mr. Thayer entered upon what proved to be his life-task before he gave the first volume to the world—and then in a foreign tongue; it was thirteen more before the third volume came from the press. This volume, moreover, left the work unfinished, and thirty-two years more had to elapse before it was completed. When this was done the patient and self-sacrificing investigator was dead; he did not live to finish it himself nor to see it finished by his faithful collaborator of many years, Dr. Deiters; neither did he live to look upon a single printed page in the language in which he had written that portion of the work published in his lifetime. It was left for another hand to prepare the English edition of an American writer’s history of Germany’s greatest tone-poet, and to write its concluding chapters, as he believes, in the spirit of the original author. Under these circumstances there can be no vainglory in asserting that the appearance of this edition of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven deserves to be set down as a significant occurrence in musical history. In it is told for the first time in the language of the great biographer the true story of the man Beethoven—his history stripped of the silly sentimental romance with which early writers and their later imitators and copyists invested it so thickly that the real humanity, the humanliness, of the composer has never been presented to the world. In this biography there appears the veritable Beethoven set down in his true environment of men and things—the man as he actually was, the man as he himself, like Cromwell, asked to be shown for the information of posterity. It is doubtful if any other great man’s history has been so encrusted with fiction as Beethoven’s. Except Thayer’s, no biography of him has been written which presents him in his true light. The majority of the books which have been written of late years repeat many of the errors and falsehoods made current in the first books which were written about him. A great many of these errors and falsehoods are in the account of the composer’s last sickness and death, and were either inventions or exaggerations designed by their utterers to add pathos to a narrative which in unadorned truth is a hundredfold more pathetic than any tale of fiction could possibly be. Other errors have concealed the truth in the story of Beethoven’s guardianship of his nephew, his relations with his brothers, the origin and nature of his fatal illness, his dealings with his publishers and patrons, the generous attempt of the Philharmonic Society of London to extend help to him when upon his deathbed.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Max Nelson
Genre : Business & Economics

Summary : There has been a very long and rich European beer-making tradition which developed independently of any traditions in the Middle East or Egypt. This text demonstrates the important technological as well as ideological contributions made by the Europeans to the history of beer.

Please Disable Adblock to Show Download Link
DOWNLOAD eBooks
Author : Fridtjof Nansen
Genre : Travel

Summary : "In Northern Mists" is one of the best-known works by a Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. This carefully crafted DigiCat ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Volume 1: Antiquity, Before Pytheas Pytheas of Massalia: the Voyage to Thule Antiquity, After Pytheas The Early Middle Ages The Awakening of Mediæval Knowledge of the North Finns, Skridfinns (Lapps), and the First Settlement of Scandinavia The Voyages of the Norsemen: Discovery of Iceland and Greenland Voyages to the Uninhabited Parts of Greenland in the Middle Ages Wineland the Good, the Fortunate Isles, and the Discovery of America... Volume 2: Wineland the Good, the Fortunate Isles, and the Discovery of America Eskimo and Skræling The Decline of the Norse Settlements in Greenland Expeditions of the Norwegians to the White Sea, Voyages in the Polar Sea, Whaling and Sealing The North in Maps and Geographical Works of the Middle Ages John Cabot and the English Discovery of North America The Portuguese Discoveries in the North-West...