Vikings to U-Boats explores the colony's hidden multicultural history, examining both sides of the German-Newfoundland/Labrador experience. From first recorded contacts to the end of World War II, Bassler traces the lives of German-speaking fishermen, musicians, doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs. He reconstructs the historical reality behind U-Boat and spy stories and analyses the change in status of the colony's German-speaking people from neighbours to "enemy aliens." Vikings to U-Boats challenges the assumption that the history of Newfoundland and Labrador was shaped solely by English-speakers from the British Isles.