Werner Henke was born in 1909 in Thorn. His family moved to Celle after Thorn became a part of Poland in 1920. He worked in the merchant marine for some time before joining the Reichsmarine in 1934. He attended the Naval Academy, and served aboard a cruiser called Admiral Scheer. In May 1939 he was assigned to the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, where he participated in the first shots of World War II in the Battle of Westerplatte. He had spent five years in the Reichsmarine, only having one week of instruction on a submarine before being sent to submarine school. He was supposed to receive six weeks of training, but was convicted of desertion and sent to a punishment unit. He was then sent to submarine commander's school in 1941. He assumed command of U-515 in 1942.

U-515 joined in training exercises after it was commissioned, such as torpedo firing tests. It began patrols in the fall of 1942. During the first patrol, nine ships were sunk and another ship was damaged. (Two of those were American ships, the Mae and the Antinous.) During the second patrol, the Ceramic was sunk, which would cause Henke problems. (He did, in fact, save the sapper of the Ceramic. The other lifeboats and survivors did not make it through the night in the stormy seas. British propaganda reported that he had the survivors shot, and Henke believed he would be tried as a war criminal even though he did not give any such orders.) After several repairs, U-515 went out on the sixth and final patrol. The submarine was attacked from the air, and also by four destroyers, including the USS Pope. Sixteen of the crew were killed, and forty four survived. U-515 ultimately sank 23 ships, damaged two ships badly enough that they later sank, and damaged two more ships.

Henke was taken prisoner and transferred over to the USS Guadalcanal. They used his fear of being tried as a war criminal by the British to coerce him to sign a document agreeing to cooperate with interrogators. They wanted to know about all the Naval operations, especially submarine warfare that he knew about in an effort to stop the Nazi war machine. His crew followed his lead and cooperated, though Henke was not nearly as cooperative as he said he would be. He was ultimately shot while attempting to escape the interrogation center in Virginia. He was buried in The Post Cemetery in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. (There are other German prisoners of war buried there as well.) He was awarded several things throughout his career and was posthumously promoted.

I had never heard of this man before I read this book, and I picked it up simply because I did not know very much about submarine warfare during World War II. I really do not know much about the German submarine operations, so this was invaluable for that information. It was great to learn about someone with such an interesting story, and I would suggest picking this up. I left out a lot of really cool information in my little summary. I liked the research that was done in this book, and the experience of how one becomes involved in the Reichsmarine.