NEWPORT, R.I. – Werner Rahn, retired captain in the Germany navy, leading German naval historian and former director of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office, has been named 2016 recipient of the U.S. Naval War College’s (NWC) “Hattendorf Prize,” an international award that aims to recognize original research contributions in the field of maritime history.
In a letter of congratulations, NWC President Rear Adm. P. Gardner Howe III invited Rahn, who was selected to receive the award for his series of original achievements in maritime scholarship, to visit the college later this year to be recognized.
“This prize honors original research in maritime history, one of the basic functions for which the Naval War College was established in 1884,” said John B. Hattendorf, the award’s namesake and Ernest J. King professor of maritime history at NWC.
The award was established in 2011 as recognition of Hattendorf’s legacy of scholarship and decades of service at NWC.
The two previous recipients have been N.A.M. Rodger, University of Oxford, Great Britain, and professor Paul M. Kennedy, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Nominees are selected from among distinguished academics for the quality and depth of their original scholarship.
“In selecting Werner Rahn as its 2016 Hattendorf Prize Laureate, the Naval War College honors him as an exemplary scholar, whose work ranges in depth across the full range of German naval history," said Hattendorf, who was a member of the academic panel that chose Rahn along with two other college faculty members and the two prior prize recipients.
Among Rahn’s critically acclaimed works is the 68-volume, annotated facsimile edition of the War Diary of the Germany Naval Staff, 1939-45 (published in German, 1988-1997). This work has been called the single most important document for understanding the decisions of the German Naval High Command during World War II.
In addition, Rahn contributed the major naval sections to the monumental, multi-volume series produced by the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office and published in both English and German “Germany and the Second World War.”
The award is made possible with the support of the Naval War College Foundation and is intended to honor and to express appreciation for distinguished academic research, insight and writing that contribute to a deeper historical understanding of the broad context and interrelationships involved in the roles, contributions, limitations, and uses of the sea services in the field of maritime history.