Al estallar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en 1939, la flota alemana apenas disponía de unas pocas unidades listas para el combate. El peso de la guerra, pues, hubo de reposar en unos cuantos submarinos, en los buques auxiliares adaptados a objetivos bélicos y en los cruceros ligeros. Entre estos últimos, el que se haría más famoso, llegando a convertirse en una pesadilla para la Marina británica, fue el crucero auxiliar Atlantis. Camuflado como un inocuo barco mercante, se especializó en atacar a mercantes aliados a lo largo de todos los océanos, llegando a capturar o hundir veintidós de ellos, una hazaña no igualada por ningún otro navío. Al mando iba el capitán Bernhard Rogge, que a sus dotes como marino y a su excepcional astucia unía un alto sentido del honor y respeto por las leyes internacionales. Tras viajar más de 160.000 kms en 602 días, el Atlantis fue hundido por el crucero británico Devonshire en noviembre de 1941. El caso de Bernhard Rogge, de irreprochable actuación durante la guerra, y las extraordinarias proezas que llevó a cabo constituyen dos casos legendarios en la historia militar de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, por lo que no es de extrañar que aún, en 1960, su odisea fuese todavía recordada y llevada a la pantalla con el título de Bajo diez banderas.

Arthur Koestler wrote of a “coincidence field”, which caused coincidences to happen through quantum mechanical armwaving. Seem unlikely. However, I have been finding books on German commerce raiders in every used bookstore I visit. This one is very similar to the recently reviewed Sea Raider Atlantis; The German Raider Atlantis is by the Atlantis captain, Berhard Rogge, while Sea Raider Atlantis is by her XO. They were originally published a few years apart, in the 1950s; I wonder if Captain Rogge was dissatisfied with his XO’s account or just decided to jump on the bandwagon? At any rate, there’s not much to choose between the books; The German Raider Atlantis focuses more on the Atlantis while Sea Raider Atlantis gives more extensive accounts of the independent voyages of her prize ships. German Raider has line drawing illustrations vaguely related to the text – a Mauser ’96 pistol, a He-114 seaplane – and nice maps, including a ship position plot of the sinking of Atlantis by HMS Devonshire. ( )

For a raider, Rogge and his ship fought a pretty clean war. After the war, he rose to high rank in NATO. A good book for those who believe that all the Germans did at sea in WWII was the Bismarck and the U-boats. ( )

1114 The German Raider Atlantis, by Wolfgang Frank and Bernhard Rogge (read 3 May 1971) I found this a surprisingly interesting book. It is an account by the captain of the German raider Atlantis, which from March 1940 till Nov 22, 1942, (when it was sunk by a British cruiser) preyed on merchant ships. The book reeks with German arrogance and of course the most delightful part of the book is the account of the sinking of the Atlantis. It spent much of its time in the Indian Ocean and at Christmas time 1940 got stuck on a reef at the Kerguelen Islands--which I did not know were. They are uninhabited French islands in the South Indian Ocean. ( )