VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED - Softcover

Gordon Thomas

4.05

1,063 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044922449X ISBN 13: 9780449224496

On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner "St. Louis" sailed from Hamburg, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany before World War II erupted. Aboard were 937 Jews--some had already been in concentration camps--who believed they had bought visas to enter Cuba. The voyage of the damned had begun.Before the "St. Louis" was halfway across the Atlantic, a power struggle ensued between the corrupt Cuban immigration minister who issued the visas and his superior, President Bru. The outcome: The refugees would not be allowed to land in Cuba.In America, the Brown Shirts were holding Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden; anti-Semitic Father Coughlin had an audience of fifteen million. Back in Germany, plans were being laid to implement the final solution. And aboard the "St. Louis," 937 refugees awaited the decision that would determine their fate.Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts have re-created history in this meticulous reconstruction of the voyage of the "St. Louis." Every word of their account is true: the German High Command's ulterior motive in granting permission for the "mission of mercy;" the confrontations between the refugees and the German crewmen; the suicide attempts among the passengers; and the attitudes of those who might have averted the catastrophe, but didn't.In reviewing the work, the "New York Times" was unequivocal: "An extraordinary human document and a suspense story that is hard to put down. But it is more than that. It is a modern allegory, in which the SS "St. Louis" becomes a symbol of the SS "Planet Earth." In this larger sense the book serves a greater purpose than mere drama."

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Review:

Everything about Voyage of the Damned has been touched with greatness.

Probably the last great untold spy story to come out of the eve of World War II.

About the Author:

Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts are authors of four previous books, all highly successful in bookstores and book clubs, all acclaimed in the United States and abroad. "The Day the World Ended" and "Voyage of the Damned" were made into major motion pictures; "Shipwreck "won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1973; and "The San Francisco Earthquake" has been hailed as a major achievement of reporting and writing.

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