Iron Coffins

Brilliantly told and deeply tragic, Iron Coffins recounts the Battle of the Atlantic from the firsthand perspective of one of the few surviving German submarine captains.

Herbert A. Werner’s service took him on multiple tours, including the Mediterranean and various battlegrounds in the Atlantic, where he sank ships, dodged sub hunters, and watched the Third Reich crumble, all the while as his personal losses and wartime guilt mounted.

Being claustrophic, the title immediately caught my attention. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such small quarters and not being able to escape if you had a panic attack, especially while being under attack with depth charges. It takes a very special person to want to serve in a submarine. This is a fascinating autobiography written by a German U-Boat captain who survived the war to share his personal experiences in the German U-boat force in World War II. He is only one of a handful of U-boat captains that survived the war to… show more.

No such list could be complete without the inclusion of this book written by a U-boat commander of the later war years. Werner’s autobiographical story gives a genuine taste of what it was like, though it is not without its controversies. There is criticism of his factual inaccuracies, but people must understand that this book paints a picture, it is not a textbook. Werner’s opinions may not always completely chime with my own, but he was there. I was not. I have the benefit of hindsight, historical distance, and conversations with some of the men that he did not see… show more.