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WATERLOO, Aug 26, 1993 - A former German officer of a sunken World War II U-Boat rumored to be loaded with gold, art treasures or even escaping Nazi officials says that his boat was on no other mission than to surrender when it was sunk in the last days of the war.
"I don't think any U-boat would have taken a Nazi aboard at that time," says William Brinkmann, 82, who was first officer on board the U-534, which was raised from the bottom of the sea near Sweden by a Dutch salvage company this week. "The Nazis were never that popular among people in the navy."
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Brinkmann was born in Hesse, Germany but lived in Danzig Free State before the war, now the cityof Gdansk in Poland. "We were a free city for 200 years - we only became part of Germany in 1939 after Hitler had invaded us. We knew what was going on in Germany before the war because we got the papers from Berlin and Sweden." Speaking of life under the Nazis he said "We knew that there was something wrong, but it was a total dictatorship. You were a dead man if you said anything against them."