BISMARCK 2013 - Hitler's Curse

When Adolf Hitler is afraid of something, people take notice . . . but what could be so horrendous as to terrify the most evil man in all history?

Bismarck 2013 is two novels in one, each story alternating between the two time periods, one being1941 and Germany's attempt to control the North Atlantic shipping lanes when the infamous Bismarck is mysteriously sunk. History provides one answer to why and how the huge battlesthip was sent to her watery grave. At the same time, story number two is set in the future of 2013 when salvage operation divers go into the interior of the sunken destroyer named Bismarck.

In 1941 Hitler ostensibly visits to inspect the Kriegsmariners, but he secretively leaves an unusual metal box hidden on board the infamous German battleship with the proviso the admiral drop the little 'coffin' in the deepest part of the North Atlantic. The top-secret mission Bismarck is on is soon compromised by Hitler's curse as well as a German-born British spy named Hulsing, a Lt. Commander on board who is soon drawn into the mystery of the unusual box left by Hitler. Lt. Hulsing is soon witness to an outbreak of insanity among the ship's leaders and SS Officer Bonekemper. It was a ship destined to dominate the high seas in the name of Der Fuhrer and Nazi Germany, but that can't happen if the ship can't survive Hitler's Curse. Before it is over, Nazi naval officers are turned into mindless beings controlled by an entity of pure evil.

In the future alternating chapters set in 2013, a huge salvage operation to plunder the sunken destroyer is well-planned and organized until it slowly begins to crumble due to a curse older than 70 years. When divers Marshall Bradshaw, Deanna Burlingame, and four others go into and through the INTERIOR of the ship (three miles below the surface), they learn the 'superstitions' surrounding the ship had their basis in fact! In other words, the evil that had so frightenend Hitler still lurks in the depths to which it was consigned in 1941. With new 'blood' inside the ship, the entity that terroized the German sailors in '41 takes glee in introducing Bradshaw and company to the nature of horror. Can anyone survive the curse of Hitler? Hitler lost control of the North Atlantic, which led to his demise--some believe as a direct result of the thing in the box left on board the Bismarck. This begs the question, will anyone survive?

Something of a 'companion' piece to Robert W. Walker's Titanic 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic, Bismarck 2013 while not a sequel, is yet another seagoing suspense with historical accuracy blended in a mixer with a large dallop of weird Twilight Zone occult twist. The novel clarifies what could possibly have brought the greatest battleship of its time to its final resting place at the bottom of the North Atlantic. For the reader the question becomes which story is more compelling, and why is it that while in the past story, the reader wants the future story, and when in the future story why s/he wants to return to the past story . . .

In the end, the sea suffers no fools, and the story pulls back a curtain on the those who do good and die for it, those who do evil and die for it, the weak, the vain, the villainous, and those who are heroic come forth in two tales in two eras.