I have just read a free ebook and I cannot determine if it is factual or not. If anyone else is familiar with it, or looking for a distraction, I’d appreciate another’s opinion edit: no need; I’ve worked it out.
Title: The Diary of a U-boat Commander
By: Sir William Stephen Richard King-Hall
Described on FeedBooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/4208: “The diary of a World War One U-Boat commander. As well as being a fascinating glimpse of life on the German U-boats during the intense submarine blockade, this also reminds us there were humans involved – on both sides of the action – as we read too of the intimate thoughts and intense love of a man longing for his sweetheart.”
It begins after World War One with a U-Boat commander requesting a British officer returns another U-Boat commander’s personal diary. The British officer refuses and decides he will get it translated and published. What follows is the German’s diary, with translator’s notes.
It is categorised in the ebook collections as non-fiction. But reading it, it doesn’t feel right. It feels like someone writing a fictitious diary designed to show what a horrid man a German U-Boat commander is, but who could not get it published before the war ended and published it as it is instead. As if it was meant as propaganda: “Look what we found”.
It is by (note I am careful to say he is not the author) Sir William Stephen Richard King-Hall. He was a journalist, politician and playwright, suggesting he may have made the book up. But he was a naval officer until 1929.
Wikipedia lists this book against Stephen King-Hall link and suggests he was the translator, for what that’s worth.
On ManyBooks, it is listed under ‘Fiction and Literature’ and the reviewers conclude it is fiction, yet plausible.
A quick skim through A North Sea diary, 1914-1918 by Commander Stephen King-Hall, does not refer to the incident of him getting access to a U-boat commander’s stuff.
A description on Archive.org suggests it is fiction – warning contains spoilers. They have an online copy of the original, with one review which also cannot determine if it is fiction or not.
A search for the details of the U-boat commander, Karl von Schenk of U122 … gives me the answer. Of course there are fanatics who trace every ship and its commanding officer, duh. I knew that. Should have done that first. He never existed.
Now, having written all that, I’m going to post it anyway, just as a way of reinforcing the message to myself: do not automatically trust sources that say they are genuine, even when published by distinguished honourable gentlemen with titles, honours and military careers. (After all, he was also a politician… )
Advice given to me:
For what it’s worth, Simon, I tend to look for reviews of books about which I have doubts in academic journals. If no academics have reviewed the book then I start to wonder. Obviously with so many books being published, many will not be reviewed so that’s not the end of it. In this case, I would have wondered about the fact that the author also wrote plays, children’s books and for Children’s Hour. Again, no doubt there are excellent historians who also write or wrote fiction, but, again, it raises a question. However, I gather from the reader reviews that it becomes obvious as you reach the final chapters that the book you asked about is fiction.
But even that isn’t enough to discredit it. King-Hall was apparently awarded a gold medal by the Royal Institution of International Affairs for his thesis on submarine warfare and served in the 11th submarine flotilla in the First World War. There is a possibility, therefore, that the technical detail could be accurate.
On the whole, though, if I had been faced with this question I would probably have put the book aside on the basis that I’ve got too much information from reliable sources without getting bogged down in figuring out how good this is.
My response:
You’ve described the path I took very accurately. I bounced up and down on that see-saw of doubt many times. I would have put it aside as irrelevant but for an essay but I wanted to use to practise determining the veracity of sources. I get the impression part of A327 is teaching us to think “just who really wrote this, and why?“*
I particularly wanted to know because the main character is not at all likeable, but totally plausible. As a Prussian Junker, he gave opinions that seemed to explain how Germany was led by the sort of people who would start a war of conquest as a matter of entitlement. What made me suspicious was the main character got to do a couple of cross-service activities on short postings and that felt unlikely.
But it was the consequences of its accuracy that bothered me. Either I was learning valuable insights about German society and culture from a painfully honest artefact written from the heart, or I was being misled by a disingenuous and fatuous work of propaganda or revenge from an embittered victor.
Upon reflection, now knowing it is fiction says more about its author than it does about the Germans. Knowing it to be fiction being passed off as factual diary, one could use it as evidence to claim “Look how the British want to blame the Prussians for the war, rub Germany’s nose in their loss, obviously the British wanted revenge out of hatred, and would make up lies to show how bad the Germans were, no wonder the Germans complained about the reparations, the reparations must have been unfair, WW2 was the fault of the British“. Same artefact, totally opposite potential interpretation of history from the one deviously intended by the author.
Was there much material like this? Were loads of people putting out anti-German literature or was this unusual? Did it influence the Paris peace talks and European relations in the next two decades? Alternatively, would anyone reading it at the time have laughed it off knowing full well it was just a light-hearted jab at the nasty stereotypical Hun by another veteran letting off steam? I don’t know, and it makes me wonder. What I suppose I’d need for that would be reviews of the book written at the time.
* They are. Learning outcome 4: The ability to identify, gather and evaluate historical evidence and the work of historians critically; to appreciate the qualities of different kinds of texts, images, audio and visual sources; and see the need to adjust your approach in line with purpose.