After Robert Watson, historian and professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton, stumbled across a letter by a soldier from World War II recounting one of the most tragic, but lesser known maritime disasters in history - the destruction of an ocean liner carrying prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps - he decided to investigate further.
As an historian, the letter piqued his interest and he called scholars at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, but no one was familiar with the events recounted in the soldier's letter.
"This was an unknown tragedy in final moments of World War II," Watson said. "But it was a story that was locked away, sealed and classified in the British archives since 1945."
What he uncovered in the archives, he retells in his latest, book "The Nazi Titanic."
"This is the 41st book I've written, and I'm more excited about this story than all the others put together," he said. "In my 26 years as a history professor and writer, this story is the most unbelievable I have ever encountered."
"Utilizing heretofore unavailable British archives, Dr. Robert Watson has written a valuable and important book," said Alan Berger, professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University."'The Nazi Titanic' describes one of World War II's bloodiest massacres. Dr. Watson has brought this long buried information to light and his book will be of great interest both for scholars and others."
Thanks to help from Deborah Oppenheimer, board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Academy Award winner for her 2000 documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," Watson was granted access to the sealed British archives.
"The idea that such a horrific, unspeakable tragedy, one of the worst of the war, was a secret for seven decades, is remarkable," Watson said. "We think we know all there is to know about World War II and the Holocaust, but this incident has remained unknown."
What Watson uncovered is the story of the Cap Arcona, one of the world's premier and luxury oceanliners, nicknamed the "Nazi Titanic."
Built in 1927 for the Hamburg-South America Line whose main ports of call were Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aries, the ship was a symbol of German power.
According to Watson, Clark Gable and other actors sailed on the ship. When Adolf Hitler came to power, he redeployed the oceanliner, using it as a floating barracks and means to transport troops.
Watson uncovered documentation showing that at end of war, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler had a plan to kill thousands of Holocaust survivors as the peace treaty was being signed, in one final desperate gesture.
In the Bay of Lübeck in the southern Baltic, the ship was loaded with thousands of survivors of the death camps, waiting for the end of the war. Hitler planned to send a U-boat to blow the ship up while the treaty was being signed.
In crossed signals, a British tanker from the port sank the U-boat, but not knowing this, the British Royal Air Force blew up the ship, killing everyone onboard.
Because of the embarrassment, the British government sealed all documents relating to the incident.
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"In a single hour the worst massacre of Jewish survivors occurred; the last major disaster of World War II, and the record was set for friendly-fire accidents in the second World War," Watson said.
Severely damaged and set on fire, the Cap Arcona eventually capsized. The capsized hulk later drifted ashore, and the beached wreck was finally broken up in 1949. For weeks after the attack, bodies of victims washed ashore, where they were collected and buried in mass graves. Parts of skeletons washed ashore over the next 30 years, with the last find in 1971.
Watson sent the manuscript to Alan Dershowitz, Michael Berenbaum, a prominent Holocaust scholar, author, filmmaker and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, and others to verify the facts.
Ann Bocock, host of WXEL's "Between The Covers," which airs on Ch. 42, said, "Robert Watson is one of my favorite interviews. As soon as people heard he was speaking, the phones started ringing."
"He's a true history detective. If we all had teachers like him, we would know so much more about American history," she said.
"He's extraordinary. He writes for us [laypeople], not the academics," Bocock said. "The book reads like a novel. It's one of the most tragic episodes from World War II, but he writes it in a way that is entertaining. I couldn't stop reading."
The show will air on June 24 on "Between the Covers." Visit wxel.org. For a list of Watson's speaking events, visit nazititanic.com.