By Hazel Strouts
Pen and Sword Military, 2025
Reviewed by David F. Beer
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| Some Typical German Families During the War |
Initially I expected this book to be a rather prosaic family history. I soon found how wrong I was. After a page or two of reading it was hard to put Three Sons for the Kaiser down. Hazel Strouts has written a fact-filled and historical account that is both emotionally gripping and presented in a natural and very readable style. It is also crammed with documented information about the WW1 German submarine service, especially in the Baltic, plus intimate insights into the German soldier’s experience at the Marne, on the Somme, and at Verdun.
The author, who now lives in England, is the great-granddaughter of a remarkable German naval figure, Philipp Gereke. Philipp served in the Imperial Navy, was a friend of Prince Heinrich and of the Kaiser, and might well have become an Admiral had he not enjoyed alcohol so much. He and his wife raised three fine boys and later a capable daughter. Philipp’s career plus his family life makes for a fascinating story in themselves; however, the book’s focus is the lives and combat deaths of his three sons, Hermann, Georg, and Waldemar.
Like well-raised and privileged German boys, the three brothers become patriotically involved in Germany’s initial war efforts, although Georg, the artistic one, is the last to volunteer. All become officers: Herman, like his father, in the navy and the others in the army. They never forget their parents, and family ties remain strong through visits and mail. This family closeness makes the eventual fates of each son all the more moving. Only Herman manages to get married and have children before his U-boat is blown up by a British submarine on May 11, 1918. He is the grandfather of our author, through his daughter Ursula.
The youngest son, Waldermar, is the first to die. He was based near Gommecourt and on New Year’s Eve, 1914, went to a country church with many others “to mark the end of the first year of the war which was supposed to have been over long before Christmas” (p. 146). After the service they were all leaving when a shell exploded, “and a shower of iron shrapnel sprayed those exiting the church. Carnage. Suddenly there were eighty men dead or dying on the church steps, on the pavement and in the street” (p. 146). One of them was Waldemar. He was buried nearby until the late 1970s, when his remains were moved to a vast military cemetery in Neuville-St- Vaast where he now lies with 44,829 of his comrades (p 147).
The middle brother, Georg, was killed in late May 1916, while leading his men in an advance at Verdun. His father wrote in the chronicle he kept that
Georg wrote his last letter on the 18th May, and on the 20 th he fell. He fell while leading his company in an assault to take Toter Mann. Machine gun bullets had so ripped his body apart that it was difficult to recognize our brave son. Now he rests near Verdun, unburied and in an unknown place. Do not cry or mourn, all of you who knew and loved our Sunday child. He found himself alongside the best of comrades. Ah, you dear, dear boy (p. 184).
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Three generations later, our author of this excellent book read and studied testimonies, logbooks, letters, archive material, and more—and traveled to places where these brothers fought and where their lives ended. The book she has written is a tribute to them and to the parents who raised them. It is also a reminder to us of the humanity and decency of those we might have once considered enemies.
David F. Beer
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