beginning of world war II

Photo of Joseph P. Kennedy

Cables Show Confused Picture of Athenia Torpedoing

by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, War History • Leave a Comment

Early Monday morning, Sept. 4, 1939, the American ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, was awakened by an assistant with the news that a British passenger ship carrying several hundred Americans from England to Canada had been torpedoed and was sinking in the North Atlantic. This tragedy is the central event of my forthcoming historical novel Without Warning.

Joe Kennedy was personally opposed to the war that England had declared against Germany less than 24 hours earlier. He knew President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sympathetic to the British cause, although Roosevelt had declared America would remain neutral in the European conflict. Read More

Gustav Anderson affidavit

The Curious Case of SS Athenia Passenger Gustav Anderson

by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, War History • Leave a Comment

Thirty Americans died when the British passenger liner Athenia was torpedoed on Sept. 3, 1939. Charges and counter-charges flew back and forth between England and Germany regarding responsibility for the sinking. The British said a German U-boat had attacked the defenseless ship without warning. Germany denied responsibility and accused Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, of planting a bomb on board the ship to kill Americans and bring the United States into the war.

While the German claim sounded preposterous, the U.S. had declared its neutrality and the strength of popular isolationist sentiment made American officials hesitant to jump to conclusions. In an effort to sort out the cause of the sinking, the U.S. State Department asked surviving American passengers to submit their observations in the form of affidavits explaining exactly what they saw. Read More

Nazi Denials of the U-30 Attack on the SS Athenia

by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, War History • Leave a Comment

In 1946, as prosecutors prepared for the war crimes trials at Nuremberg following World War II, they discovered discrepancies in the war diary (logbook) of U-30, the German submarine whose combat patrol zone was closest to the location where the British passenger ship Athenia had been torpedoed on the first day of the war. The first two pages were a different quality paper than the rest of the book. On these pages, the months were recorded in Arabic numerals, while Roman numerals were used for the months in the rest of the book. Also, the signature of the boat’s commander, Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, was an obvious forgery. The new pages showed U-30 nearly 100 miles from the spot where Athenia was attacked on Sept. 3, 1939. The alteration was part of an elaborate, if clumsy, subterfuge started within 24 hours of Athenia’s sinking to convince the world that Germany wasn’t at fault. Read More

torpedo tube

The U-30 Attack on Athenia: A Question of Torpedoes

by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, War History, Without Warning Book • Leave a Comment

We will never know exactly why the commander of U-30, Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, decided to attack an unarmed British passenger ship on the first day of World War II — the central event in my book, Without Warning. Lemp’s motivation, however, isn’t the only element of this event that is shrouded in mystery. In keeping with the “fog of war” that tends to cloud witness perceptions, descriptions of U-30’s attack on Athenia come in many versions and in varying degrees of detail. This presented a challenge for me to write a vivid and credible description of the attack. Read More

Russian invasion of Ukraine (map)

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Echoes from World War II

by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, War History • Leave a Comment

Soldiers massed along a border, threatening an invasion to protect their ethnic brothers from harm. A referendum in which citizens decided to become part of a larger, more powerful neighboring country. A once-proud nation, moving boldly to regain its influence over a region of Eastern Europe.

These developments could be taken from today’s headlines involving the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but they also are echoes from nearly a century ago, when the principal actor was not the Russian bear, but the German eagle. Read More