A mess of storytelling. The eyewitness accounts were jumbles and hard to follow. I actually gave up trying to follow who was who to just get the gist of what they were saying. Almost stopped reading when Ms. Prince gave the speed of the ship as "Knots per Hour." It made me want to read something that gave me more facts and descriptions in a less difficult to read format. Knots per hour . ( )

Interesting book on a topic that has not received much attention in either academia nor popular media in the English-speaking world. Indeed the book exposes tragedy that the years 1941 to 1945 was the peoples of Eastern Europe including ethnic Germans who were uprooted in their millions as German armies retreated (This in no way is meant to minimise the suffering of other peoples). The book however tends to be a little on the elementary side but perhaps this is a particular to the reviewer. ( )

What a mess of a book. Okay where to begin? The jacket copy trumpets eyewitness sources but they're not really long enough to fill out this short book. In many places this thing reads like a stretched magazine article. The length is padded with superficial background material. Instead of providing context and often just got in the way.

The book is about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff Prince points out repeatedly that the loss of life was worse than the Titanic. Yes it's the largest ever maritime disaster. Curiously the actual sinking takes just one short chapter. We hear more about the individuals lives during World War II than anything else. There's also repeated statements that the history has been buried or somehow suppressed. No to my knowledge there have been at least two English-language books on the sinking although admittedly not in the last 30 years. Also the idea that the government would suppress discussion of it after the war seems strange.

The terrifying thing is that the book has some hilariously bad errors. That 5 seconds on Google should have obliterated from the text. This says something both about Prince and Palgrave Macmillan who really don't care at this point. For instance Regina is in Saskatchewan not Ontario. Contradictions between the eyewitness accounts aren't dealt with. Either pointed out or balanced. For instance just how many torpedoes hit the ship? At one point it says there were 69 people in a lifeboat but some of them fell off before they could be rescued. However several pages later it says that 70 people were rescued from the same lifeboat. So which is it? I understand this is a chaotic event that's being remembered 70 years on but at least try to deal with the contradiction. Part of the historians job is to come to a determination on these things.

The book concludes with a very abbreviated discussion of whether or not the sinking was justified. Considering that this was still during wartime where the ship was carrying at least some military personnel as well as sailing under blackout conditions. I am left completely baffled as to what exactly the Soviet submarine captain was supposed to do instead.

Not recommended avoid.

Death in the Baltic brings the story of the sinking of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff during World War II into fresh light with personal tales of some of the survivors. Ms Prince recounts the final days of the Third Reich and the sense of urgency that the German nationals in East Prussia had in the face of the Russian onslaught. She traces several survivors from their confusion at the port, the rush to board the ship, refugee life aboard the ship and the final chaos and pandemonium as the Russian sub torpedoed the ship. The book is replete with historical photos, footnotes, a bibliography of the author's sources and an index. It was an enlightening account of a lesser known tragedy of World War II. Although readable, Ms. Prince's telling of the personal stories is somewhat disjointed and overall one did not sense the real magnitude of this maritime disaster.

Perhaps It was too much to expect a book's entire 201 pages be dedicated to the actual war time torpedo sinking of a passenger ship during WW II --- especially since the waring parties themselves did not care to publicize the event. The author attempts to fill the pages with the many individual stories of the survivors as well as setting the sinking in it's historical setting.

The individual memories of the survivors are understandably short stories---- but they are too Individualized to give a unified point of view of the sinking itself and simply fill space in this book. They are necessarily too fragmented to hold ones attention. ( )