Word: athenia
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...little (13,500 tons) single-stacked British liner Athenia was known for comfort and informality-her slow crossings rarely attracted millionaires or celebrities. She sailed from Liverpool with 1,102 passengers (including 311 Americans) the day before Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, and she had hardly pushed into the Atlantic when Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, commanding the Nazi submarine U-30, got orders to open hostilities. It was twilight, and Lemp thought she was an armed merchant cruiser-legitimate prey...
...which goes to show that ordinary people behaving quite naturally can produce a move excellently acted all the way through, even down to the smallest character role. If there is a central figure, he is the misguided youth--the son of a naval hero who "went down with the Athenia"--duped into the service of the party. He dies tapping out a wireless message which leads to the apprehension of his former associates...
...bewildering. Was not Mexico at war with Germany? And had not Germany been charged with the brutal sinking of the Athenia, back in 1939's fateful September? And had not Owner Axel Wenner-Gren providentially happened along in the Southern Cross and picked up 399 of the Athenia's survivors...
...trotted back & forth between Göring and Chamberlain, doing all he could for peace in our time. When the German-Soviet Pact was announced, Wenner-Gren knew the jig was up. Three days before the war's outbreak he sailed in the Southern Cross. After the Athenia rescue he sailed to his island in the Bahamas...
...gimpy little Paul Joseph Goebbels, though he publicly blamed the Athenia disaster on Britain, reportedly assailed Doenitz in a Cabinet meeting for "the ruthless sinking of the Athenia which has prejudiced neutrals." Propaganda Minister Goebbels is said to be coldly suspicious of the U-boat Admiral's close friendship for the daring onetime U-boat commander Pastor Martin Niemöller, whose services in Berlin Karl Doenitz attended right up to the time when Pastor Niemöller was jailed for preaching against the Nazis...