The Nazi Titanic: The Incredible Untold Story of a Doomed Ship in World War II, Roert P. Watson, author, Tom Perkins, narrator
I thought I knew pretty much all of the gory details of the Holocaust, but this book proved to me that there is always a new horror to discover. There seems to be no end to the grotesque behavior that was recorded about that time. Watson has opened my eyes to another incident of brutality committed by Hitler and his followers, brutality that I thought was beyond the imagination of normal people.
The Nazis wanted to create a propaganda film to mock the British. They decided to use the sinking of the Titanic to make the English look inept. The German shipbuilding industry was successful and well-known for their dedication to precision, record-keeping and excellence. For the movie, that was pushed insanely and not abandoned by Joseph Goebbels, obsessed with its production, in defiance of common sense, they used a cruise ship that previously set sail in 1927, the S.S. Cap Arcona built by the company Blohm+Voss. It was called back into service, after being allowed to rust when the war broke out, and was repaired and refurbished. It had once been a magnificent ocean liner. This same company also built the famed ship, the Bismarck, the terror of the seas during the war. The movie went over budget, abused the actors, ignored the rules normally followed during wartime and blackouts, had catastrophic results for the director, and eventually failed. The ship was later used as a German transport for troops and citizens escaping the danger. Then, defying imagination, it was finally called into service, with other cruise ships, to become floating concentration camps with the supposed intent of murdering those on board at sea.
Although the book is ostensibly about the ship and its history and purpose, Dr. Watson also tells the story of the Holocaust. He illustrates the hate, the maniacal behavior and the eventual reckoning that came to pass with the establishment of the State of Israel. He introduces another concentration camp that has not been widely publicized; he introduces different commandants and kapos, and illustrates broadly, the capacity for man to be inhumane toward man.
In the book, he also opened my eyes to what we are witnessing today, in real time, regarding the invasion of Israel, on October 7th, 2023. Although he does not mention it, it was impossible for me not to see the comparison of the events, then and now, and also impossible for me to understand that the world watched them with glee, as the people of Gaza, who follow Hamas, committed murder with abandon, tortured and raped innocent people with joy, and then cheered them. The support was for the Palestinians, Arabs who were descended from those who supported the Holocaust, those who were actually carrying out another Holocaust, instead of defending the Israelis as they fought for their very continued existence after being attacked by barbarians.
How the times have changed since the aftermath of the Holocaust, when the entire world condemned the antisemitic behavior of the Nazis. Today, though, there are still Jews who are willing to “lie down with their enemy; that is why they come up wounded.” They have not learned to believe the threats against them, and instead keep hoping for a miracle that will make them acceptable to the rest of the world. They hope to inspire the miracle with their behavior, but it fails every time. The dream of peace and acceptance became a nightmare on October 7th. This book actually predicts and foreshadows those heinous events, because even after the Holocaust, the Jews were attacked, robbed of their heritage and belongings, abused and expelled from their homes, as their enemies sought to advantage themselves. Nothing really changed.
In this book, Watson has made the incomprehensible, comprehensible, though not acceptable. The barbarism is writ large with his descriptions of the abuses and torture of the prisoners in the concentration camps, with his focus on the efforts of those who tried to rescue those in the crosshairs and those who tried to prevent the effort. Not only Jews needed to be rescued. Yet the very same world that vowed not to forget, has been forced to remember and witness, once again, human beings who have gone mad with mass hysteria, supporting evil rather than virtue, supporting criminals rather than their victims. The world was collectively deranged when it supported Hitler, and is now, once again, deranged as it supports the terrorists from Hamas, most of whom do live in the Gaza Strip, adjacent to Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people. It is the very homeland they wish to destroy, from the river to the sea, and thus make the Jews extinct.
That Jews and others can support this heinous behavior toward the Jews, before the Holocaust and now, that they try to understand their own behavior instead of condemning that of others who harm them, defies common sense. It proves there is a delusion that is still alive and well. To think that you can make your enemy your friend, that if you set a good example, others will follow, is a delusion, an impossible dream. The only thing that will change minds is wiping out the pandemic of hate by removing the enemy, not trying to understand or placate it. It seems to be incurable.
History has shown us how duplicitous humans can be. The Japanese were at the negotiating table with the United States at the same time they bombed Pearl Harbor. The Jews and heads of countries negotiated with the Germans as they were experimenting upon and murdering the innocent, the Jews in Israel were working with the Gazans when they invaded and committed atrocious crimes against them, and during WWII, the British may have known they were murdering prisoners as they bombed the ships trying to destroy the maritime industry of Germany. Will this book help us to learn that we have to fight and destroy evil, not try to ameliorate it?
When dreams turn into nightmares, will the world and the Jews wake up? Watson names people and places I had never heard of like the Neuengamme Concentration Camp and its commandant, Max Pauly, like the director of the film, Herbert Selpin, or Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, of Sweden, who rescued so many Scandinavians and also thousands of non-Jewish prisoners from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. However, he was explicitly forbidden from rescuing Jewish prisoners, and therefore did not, so as not to jeopardize his mission.
I had never heard of the ships, *S.S. Cap Arcona, Thielbeck or Athen, the floating concentration camps that were to be used to evacuate and murder the thousands of largely Russian and Jewish prisoners from the Neuengamme, Mittelbau-Dora and Stutthof concentration camps, to hide the evidence of Hitler’s atrocities. After the carnage, when the ships were bombed by the Brits, perhaps without the pilots knowing who were the passengers in them, few were allowed to actually help the victims of the bombing of these ships, just because so many were Jews.
Watson introduces new villains and new heroes, new grotesque behavior, like using human flesh to make soup that is then sold to others as meat based; he highlights the atrocities committed but also highlights those who tried to stop them. Some hateful names were familiar, like Himler and Goebbels, but I had never heard of many, though I have read about the Holocaust widely. Watson takes us from the Holocaust to Truman who made America the first country to recognize Israel and then he goes beyond to reveal how some of the people he highlights survived
People do not face their heinous behavior unless forced to, as the world was when WWII ended. Then they came to their senses, but not because they became more virtuous, but because they had to face their shame and guilt in public, deal with their revolting behavior and monstrous acquiescence to barbarism. I could never have imagined that any human could have the base instincts of the masses in Germany, but I could never have imagined October 7th either. Watson opened my eyes to more horror than I could have dreamt in a nightmare. The author has authentically captured the times and described the actions and the grotesque behavior so that it reads like a novel, since what sane person could imagine such barbarism? Today, we are more adept at hiding evidence, even as technology makes it possible to expose it. The madness did exist then, as it does now, and yet, so many are still blind to it as they let their prejudices guide them instead of their “better angels”.
Perhaps those who read this will open their eyes to the truth, will wake up and find their moral compass once again. Otherwise, we are all doomed, in the end, because as Pastor Martin Niemöller said, “when they came for me, there was no one left to care”. Will we wait for that moment to awaken, when it is too late, or stop the mass hysteria spreading throughout the world, whipped up by the least able to see the light of love and peace, by those who thrive on chaos and worship death, instead.