Lueddecke, Werner Jorg Morituri

A German living in India during the Second World War is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer and sail aboard a German freighter on a voyage out of wartime Tokyo bound for Germany with a cargo of much-need raw rubber for the Nazi war effort. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges set in various locations in the ship so that vessel’s captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by Allied warships. Also aboard are a mutinous German crew bound for Nazi work camps as well as a young Jewish German woman refugee who obviously does not wish to reach the Fatherland, either. Turned into an all-star 1965 film (originally titled simply “Morituri,” but later re-titled “The Saboteur, Code Name Morituri”) starring Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Trevor Howard and Wally Cox. Brando plays the part of the saboteur and is unintentionally hilarious in the role speaking as he does (actually mumbling is more like it, think of him in this role as a German Don Corleone!) with such a phony German accent – none of the other principals playing Germans have fake German accents– that it’s at times impossible to know what he’s saying! Morituri was evidently published only in this U.S. paperback edition and it is possible that the book was a novelization of the movie.