Description

AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER (Shipping June 2025)

The story of the 4,500 Allied Merchant Seamen captured by the German Navy. Held hostage on makeshift prisonships, poorly fed and always at risk of attack by the R.A.F. and the Royal Navy.

Hidden by the Kriegsmarine!
Thrown into concentration camps and kept incommunicado for months to prevent the War Office learning of the success of the German Navy’s secret weapon – the Commerce Raiders.

Guarded by the Kriegsmarine!
MILAG – the PoW caviously untold story of Merchant Navy Prisoners of War.

Captured by the Kriegsmarine!
The story of the Allied Merchant Seamen held in one camp in Germany, where, guarded by elderly and disabled German sailors, more than 4,500 Merchant Seamen waited four years to regain their freedom.

MILAG – Captives of the Kriegsmarine.
The story of 4,500 British Merchant seamen, survivors of more than 200 ships, illegally taken prisoner in direct contravention of the Hague Convention. Held captive on Commerce Raiders and blockade running supply-ships in airless holds. Dressed in the rags of the clothing they were wearing when they abandoned ship they were glad to be issued with blood-stained Army uniforms.
In the camps with the seamen were: P.G, Wodehouse; Henry Mollison (Amy Johnson’s actor brother-in-law); commandos from the Dieppe and St. Nazaire raids; International Brigade volunteers from the Winter War in Finland and men from most Allied nations. Once Italy had surrendered, the Germans even sent their ex-allies to Milag!
Contemporary diaries, personal reminiscences and previously unknown extracts from the British Postal Censorship Office provide a unique insight into the private thoughts of these PoWs and their views on the lack of concern that they felt their Government and their employers had for their welfare and that of their dependents.

MILAG – Captives of the Kriegsmarine Hardback, 336 pages, 47 monochrome illustrations, 8 colour plates, indexed and referenced.

ISBN TBC