From the Bookshelf of Reading Book Club…

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Mar 12, 2015 Elena rated it really liked it

I finished Erik Larson's book about the Lusitania ( I do not recommend reading it while flying home on a propeller plane as I did...much less reading it while on a ship) and I went straight into the Hoover archives at Stanford. Larson used the English translation of U-Boot Captain Schwieger's log that came to the Hoover Archives, there's also a microfilm copy in the US National Archives. The typescript German original survived in the German navy archives. The log first surfaced in 1920 when the I finished Erik Larson's book about the Lusitania ( I do not recommend reading it while flying home on a propeller plane as I did...much less reading it while on a ship) and I went straight into the Hoover archives at Stanford. Larson used the English translation of U-Boot Captain Schwieger's log that came to the Hoover Archives, there's also a microfilm copy in the US National Archives. The typescript German original survived in the German navy archives. The log first surfaced in 1920 when the journalist Frank Mason was loaned the original for 36 hours by the German archives to photograph during the war guilt debates. Mason published his take on it in the Hearst press: basically the Lusitania sinking was a tragedy of war, a chance encounter between a German submarine going back to port after sinking few enemy ships and a British passenger ship taking the riskier of two routes,--not a premeditated atrocity. Another copy of the German log was supplied to Stanford historian Thomas A. Bailey during the isolationist debates in 1935. Again, Bailey felt the diary showed the casual cruelty of war, but no secret plots. The British had blockaded Germany, not letting food or agricultural supplies into the country. They also initially blockaded food supplies from reaching occupied Belgium, harder to justify. Germany defended the unrestricted submarine warfare as self-defense against a threat to its food supply. Still, sinking a passenger ship is hard to justify. Churchill probably would have been pleased if the Lusitania tragedy had pulled the US into war (that had to wait another couple years for the Zimmermann telegram). American public opinion was against blockading food supplies, both for humanitarian reasons, but also for economic motives. Americans and also some Germans (including the Kaiser) were appalled at the loss of life when the ship rapidly sank, especially so many innocent children. The British rioted in anger. There have been endless debates on who's guilty, the evidence has been combed over carefully by all sides, but it seems there is enough guilt to go around. But the accusations of deliberate plots don't hold up well to scrutiny of the log. The log seems to be authentic, but that does not mean the captain was telling the truth. (My one beef: I just wish Larson had directly used more German-language sources....but that is my thing...)
Larson is a good storyteller, and he has an endearing way of bringing out the personalities of the victims. It's kind of a memorial to the civilian casualties of war. ...more

12 likes · Like · see review