"Memoirs: Ten Years and 20 Days" is the autobiography of Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, who commanded the German U-boat fleet from 1935 to 1945 (for ten years and 20 days - hence the title). Winston Churchill said that Doenitz's U-boats in the Atlantic were the only military threat that ever had him really worried, and this is an inside look at the man behind it. Doenitz, a U-boat commander in WWI, was captured and became a POW. He rose slowly in the peacetime navy, and then became commander of all U-boats just as Hitler's re-armament went into high gear. Still Doenitz describes how he had to struggle against the land mentality of the German military and Hitler (the navy never got more than 5% of German war production), and a woefully small U-boat fleet in the first few years of the war. Then allied countermeasures became so strong that after May 1943 the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic had clearly turned against the U-boats, their effectiveness dropping each month in tandem with their increasing casualties. The vast majority of his crews died in battle - a higher percentage than any other field of service. Yet his crews never faltered in their volunteer service, despite the suicidal losses. That he could inspire such loyalty is a tribute to his leadership skill and style, which he discusses in detail. Considered a war criminal and submarine warfare considered piracy by the allies, he was tried and convicted at Nuremberg, where one of his chief defense witnesses was US Admiral Nimitz, whose submarine war in the Pacific against Japan was, if anything, even more ruthless. The book contains many interesting insights and details from a man who, by all accounts, was a principled warrior devoid of Nazi beliefs or political ambition - an apolitical approach to command that won respect and trust from an unusual corner: Hitler. Doenitz ended up succeeding Hitler as Fuhrer, during which, among other things, he fired Himmler (Doenitz conducted the actual surrender to the allies). The book is well written, and a good insight into 'the other side'. He is clearly defensive about being a convicted war criminal, and makes and interesting and impassioned case that the US was grossly violating neutrality long before its entry into WWII (most historians agree). He was also unaware of how totally compromised his radio traffic was ('Ultra' was still secret when he wrote his memoirs), so there is no reflection on how his gabby, tightly centralized (and therefore radio traffic intensive) command style contributed to his defeat both through decrypts and radio direction finding. Like any commander's memoirs, this is not the balanced history a 'first timer' in the subject should read, but it is an interesting and important read for anyone interested in either WWII sub warfare or the dynamics of command, as long as one already has some background in the subject.

With all due respect, and Doenitz in his postwar years did command a great deal of respect in Germany, and still does today amongst German Naval Officers....As a soldier who had done his best under the circumstances.`

The original (German) edition of his book is well written and easily understood, and there is no question about the man's genius as a naval tactician. Doenitz had maximized the effectiveness of limited U-Boat resources by pack attacks on allied convoys. But he had sat on his laurels for too long.

The troubling part of his tactical strategy was that after the "happy times" in 1942 and to the end he continued to send his U-Boat men on virtual suicide missions into the North Atlantic. The man was too naive to accept the allies' upper hand in surface detection radar technology and in communications intercept and code breaking successes. After adding another rotor to the navy's enigma machines, he continued business as usual: Incessant radio communications with his commanders at sea. Instead of giving U-Boat commanders a free hand, (running silent) he attempted to micro manage every U-Boat's mission from shore. Recognizing and adopting to technological changes quickly obviously had strained his intellectual capacity. He could have saved thousands of young submariners by halting these reckless pursuits of heavily defended allied convoys, especially by mid 1944 when it became common knowledge that Germany had lost the war.

Although Doenitz had distanced himself from the Nazi political gangsters and Hitler's OKW toadies like Keitel and Jodl, he nevertheless remained a true believer and admirer of the Fuehrer. Going so far as to risk personal injury or death on a difficult journey to the Fuehrerbunker, a madhouse fifty feet below the rubble of Berlin, April 20th, 1945, not to miss Hitler's final birthday. And there and to the end it was: "Heil Hitler" as usual for the Admiral.

And so Doenitz had soldiered on, ignoring the ugly cancer that had grown on his country.

Karl Doenitz was the mastermind of the German U-Boat Campaign in the battle of the Atlantic. He was a fanatical Nazi and his loyalty to Hitler led to him being named his successor and he rang what was left of Germany for a few days prior to surrender.

His memoirs are well written interesting and clearly the work of an intelligent man. Doenitz was a officer on U-Boats in the first world war. In that war the convoy system had defeated the U-Boats. Anti submarine techniques were ineffectual but the concentration of merchant ships in conveys emptied the seas of ships and meant that most U-Boats were unable to find targets. In the inter war period the British developed ASDIC a sonar system which enabled them to locate submarines under water. The invention of ASDIC made the British confident and as a result the naval agreements negotiated with Germany in the thirties allowed Germany to construct submarines.

Despite this Germany decided to give only a small priority to submarine construction favoring the development of a battleship fleet. At the outbreak of war there were only some 30 submarines in service. Germany's naval construction had been predicated on a war in 1942. As a result the surface navy was small and it only had 4 battleships by 1941. It became clear quickly that the U-Boat was a potent weapon.

Doenitz who had risen to command the U-Boat arm worked out the strategy to make the U-Boat a success. His strategy was to have the U-Boat used as a surface weapon at night. U-Boats were difficult to see and could slip past escorts and sink ships before they were detected. He further developed a tactic which set up a patrol of boats which acted as a picket line and allowed him to direct boats to intercept conveys as they were found.

The book is fascinating as it reveals the development of U-Boat tactics and the miniature of the process of running the U-Boat war. Doenitz describes the training process, how many boats he had to have for those purposes, the design of the optimal boat, problems with torpedoes and the ebb and flow of war.

The problem with the book is that it only gives one side of the campaign. Doenitz himself never really learnt the reason for his defeat.

Technology was one of the big reasons for the German defeat. By 1942 the Allies had started to employ radar which allowed them detect U-Boats shadowing conveys and in conveys. As the Germans developed techniques to detect radar the Allies developed tighter band radar to avoid detection. Radio detection techniques also allowed them to locate U-Boats to avoid them or to sink them. The use of Ultra allowed the penetration of the U-Boat cipher and allowed re-routing of conveys. In addition there was a continual development of weapons technology with the development of hedgehog depth charge systems, Very Lights and Contact fuses.

The best book on the U-Boat campaign is Clay Blair's magnificent two-volume study. Despite that this book is a fascinating portrait of one of the more important German commanders in the war. It is also a good picture of the mechanics of naval command.