By Kevin Seabrooke

Unlike many contemporary historians, Admiral Karl Dönitz, supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat arm, did not see the Caribbean as an afterthought, a warm backwater far removed from the “real” war. In early 1942, he launched Operation Neuland (New Land) to cut the flow of petroleum from the Venezuelan oil fields and the large refineries of Aruba and Curaçao in the Dutch West Indies.

An author and activist from Dominica, Richards goes beyond the tactical in search of the impact the war had on those who experienced the rationing and fear of the u-boat campaign firsthand—covering the naval engagements, but examining how the war transformed the “paradise” of the Caribbean into a strategic frontline and how that affected local civilians.

Sea Wolves in Warm Waters: The U-Boat Battle in the Caribbean (Clement Richards, Amazon, 290 pp., maps/photos, May 2, 2026 $24.95 HC)