Review: Bismarck 2013 fascinating take on WWII
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 15, 2012
If you've ever read any book set in WWII, you've probably had mixed emotions.  You may have been saddened by all the loss of life, but you were also proud of the young American soldiers who fought so valiantly.  Reading Robert Walker's Bismarck: Hitler's Curse gives readers an entirely different experience.  Not only does the book contain paranormal elements, we see the war through the eyes of German soldiers, many of them fighting a war they don't understand, for reasons they do not believe in, with more fear than faith in their Fuhrer.  It's hard not to admire the brave sailors aboard the ship and impossible to not feel repulsion at those who embrace the Nazi philosophy, especially Herr Hitler and the SS Officer from the Bismarck.  Walker makes us see that although the Nazi movement created a tragic, unimaginable disaster, many of the people swept up in the fighting were just average people, forced to defend their nation.The book puts us aboard the Bismarck, the greatest ship in the German fleet at the time.  The ship could be vital to Germany's victory, if all goes well.  Walker takes a few liberties with history and makes sure it doesn't go well, of course. He uses his creatively twisted imagination to give the ship an evil presence that threatens to overcome and destroy every man aboard the ship, as well as the ship itself.  And who has brought the evil aboard?  None other than the Fuhrer himself, disguising the horrific artifact as a crate of oranges being presented to an admiral aboard the ship.Once the evil is deposited aboard the Bismarck, we travel ahead in time to the year 2013, where a group of divers aboard the Windwalker are planning to explore the recently discovered remains of the Bismarck, long lost to the depths of the ocean.  The divers range from historians to those who seek a great fortune aboard the once formidable ship.  Just before the dive, the captain of the ship presents the divers with a mystery.  He has found a set of tapes recorded from transmissions coming from aboard the Bismarck during those final days before the ship was sunk.  The transmissions were sent from a spy for the Allies, German Captain Erwin Hulsing.  Hulsing used cutting edge technology to send information from aboard the Bismarck to the Allies.  More importantly, what was the terrible evil that Hulsing swears is taking over the minds of the captain and admiral of the ship?As the crew reviews the recordings, it becomes increasingly obvious that Hulsing was describing very real occurrences, evidently caused by the artifact Hitler secretly placed on the ship.  Despite their fears and concerns, the crew continues on their dive, hoping to find historical and monetary treasures.The dive is already quite dangerous, and the divers must keep their wits about them, no matter what they find.  Almost immediately, that seems impossible, as one by one, the divers are taken over by a repulsive condition that destroys them yet keeps their body moving around inside their dive suits, luring other dive team members away from the group to face  the same fate.  The action is breath-taking, the danger real but illusive, something they see with their eyes but that their minds can barely believe.Walker keeps the action moving between 2013 and 1941, with exciting cliffhangers and unanswered questions that makes one want to race through to the next section.  Of course, then we'd miss the action in the other time period, so we need to read every word and, trust me, you'll be on the edge of your seat throughout the book.  Walker is truly a master at suspense and his imagination spits up some of the most repulsive, frightening monsters I've ever read about.  The contents of the "orange crate" are so frightening and disgusting, it seems perfectly possible that even the evil Hitler would fear the power of the artifact and want it to be tossed to the bottom of the sea.I enjoyed both storylines, but I must admit I preferred Walker's handling of the scenes from 1941.  Hulsing is a fascinating character, as is his friend, Baron Buckard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg who exemplifies the sense of conflicting loyalties aboard the ship. They are both  good men caught in a bad situation, through no fault of their own.  Walker's descriptions of the interior of the magnificent Bismarck are extremely interesting and he gives a sense of the day-to-day life of a crew expecting to be at sea for many weeks.Bismarck: Hitler's Curse is a follow-up to Walker's Titanic 2012: Curse of R.M.S. Titanic, which describes a tragic attempt to explore the remains of the sunken ship, also doomed by the presence of an unspeakable evil.  It's not essential to read the Titanic first, as the Bismarck: Hitler's Curse is a complete story in its own right.  However, most people I know can't read just one Walker book -- they are well-crafted, with often two or more storylines weaving seamlessly throughout the books, and characters you will love or hate, but they all come to vivid life under Walker's deft touch with a story.