Author : Dan Van der Vat
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers
Page : 478 pages
File Size : 28,21 MB
Release : 1988
Category : History
ISBN : 9780060159672
A brilliantly readable account of the complex, important campaign that came closer than any other to ending World War II in Germany's favor. Van der Vat's comprehensive history is based on extensive research in American, Canadian, British, and German sources. Illustrated.
Author : Marcus Faulkner
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 48,86 MB
Release : 2019-05-17
Category : History
ISBN : 1949668037
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War. This volume highlights the scale and complexity of this bitterly contested campaign, one that encompassed far more than just attacks by German U-boats on Allied shipping. The team of leading scholars assembled in this study situates the German assault on seaborne trade within the wider Allied war effort and provides a new understanding of its place within the Second World War. Individual chapters offer original perspectives on a range of neglected or previously overlooked subjects: how Allied grand strategy shaped the war at sea; the choices facing Churchill and other Allied leaders and the tensions over the allocation of scarce resources between theaters; how the battle spread beyond the Atlantic Ocean in both military and economic terms; the management of Britain's merchant shipping repair yards; the defense of British coastal waters against German surface raiders; the contribution of air power to trade defense; antisubmarine escort training; the role of special intelligence; and the war against the U-boats in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.
Author : Jonathan Dimbleby
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 585 pages
File Size : 10,79 MB
Release : 2016
Category : History
ISBN : 0190495855
"The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril," wrote Winston Churchill in his monumental history of World War Two. Churchill's fears were well-placed-the casualty rate in the Atlantic was higher than in any other theater of the entire war. The enemy was always and constantly there and waiting, lying just over the horizon or lurking beneath the waves. In many ways, the Atlantic shipping lanes, where U-boats preyed on American ships, were the true front of the war. England's very survival depended on assistance from the United States, much of which was transported across the ocean by boat. The shipping lanes thus became the main target of German naval operations between 1940 and 1945. The Battle of the Atlantic and the men who fought it were therefore crucial to both sides. Had Germany succeeded in cutting off the supply of American ships, England might not have held out. Yet had Churchill siphoned reinforcements to the naval effort earlier, thousands of lives might have been preserved. The battle consisted of not one but hundreds of battles, ranging from hours to days in duration, and forcing both sides into constant innovation and nightmarish second-guessing, trying desperately to gain the advantage of every encounter. Any changes to the events of this series of battles, and the outcome of the war-as well as the future of Europe and the world-would have been dramatically different. Jonathan Dimbleby's The Battle of the Atlantic offers a detailed and immersive account of this campaign, placing it within the context of the war as a whole. Dimbleby delves into the politics on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the role of Bletchley Park and the complex and dynamic relationship between America and England. He uses contemporary diaries and letters from leaders and sailors to chilling effect, evoking the lives and experiences of those who fought the longest battle of World War Two. This is the definitive account of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Author : Marc Milner
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 36,96 MB
Release : 2011-07-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0752466461
World War II was only a few hours old when the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest campaign of the Second World War and the most complex submarine war in history, began with the sinking of the unarmed passenger liner Athenia by the German submarine U30. Based on the mastery of the latest research and written from a mid-Atlantic – rather than the traditional Anglo-centric – perspective, Marc Milner focuses on the confrontation between opposing forces and the attacks on Allied shipping that lay at the heart of the six-year struggle. Against the backdrop of the battle for the Atlantic lifeline he charts the fascinating development of U-boats and the techniques used by the Allies to suppress and destroy these stealth weapons.
Author : John R. Bruning
Publisher : Zenith Press
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 42,40 MB
Release : 2013-06-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0760339910
DIVFrom 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Allied ships and planes fought U-boats and other German warships to protect merchant shipping on the unforgiving North Atlantic./div
Author : W. Gardner
Publisher : Springer
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 29,86 MB
Release : 1999-09-21
Category : History
ISBN : 0230510140
The German attack on merchant shipping in the Second World War, known as the Battle of the Atlantic, was countered partly by code-breaking intelligence known as Ultra. The dramatic revelation of this factor in the middle 1970s resulted in many works giving this as the most important cause of Allied success.
Author : Richard Freeman
Publisher :
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 42,46 MB
Release : 2019-01-28
Category :
ISBN : 9781792966729
No battle lasted longer than the 2075 days of the Battle of the Atlantic. Few battles are so apparently perplexing in their outcome. There was nothing in the dark days of September 1939 to February 1943 to suggest that the Allies could defeat the U-boat menace. Yet two months later the U-boats were tamed. 'Atlantic Nightmare' reveals the seven strategic errors in Hitler's approach to the U-boat war that helped deliver that victory to the Allies, starting with his decision to go war with only 21 ocean-going U-boats. At each stage of the long battle 'Atlantic Nightmare' demonstrates how Hitler, Raeder and Dönitz made mistake after mistake as they failed to develop a coherent strategy. This, and their failure to make the battle a priority, gave the Allies time to build up their anti-submarine forces. 'Atlantic Nightmare' shows how Churchill and his admirals took advantage of these errors to create escort ships and escort support units that overwhelmed the U-boats. Central to this success were fundamental research, operational research, technical wizardry, code-breaking and training. Each of these aspects of the battle is explored in 'Atlantic Nightmare'.Finally, 'Atlantic Nightmare' examines the crucial roles of the gifted people who took on the Nazi challenge, including Admirals Pound, Noble and Horton, plus a galaxy of trainers, escort commanders, brilliant scientists and code-breakers.Throughout 'Atlantic Nightmare' the words of the key participants - politicians, officers, seamen and researchers - are used to show how they responded at the time to the battle in its highs and lows.'Atlantic Nightmare's' mix of battle actions, human interest, and analysis provides a wide-ranging story of this momentous battle.
Author : Klaus H. Schmider
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 615 pages
File Size : 42,89 MB
Release : 2021-01-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1108890326
Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States has baffled generations of historians. In this revisionist new history of those fateful months, Klaus H. Schmider seeks to uncover the chain of events which would incite the German leader to declare war on the United States in December 1941. He provides new insights not just on the problems afflicting German strategy, foreign policy and war production but, crucially, how they were perceived at the time at the top levels of the Third Reich. Schmider sees the declaration of war on the United States not as an admission of defeat or a gesture of solidarity with Japan, but as an opportunistic gamble by the German leader. This move may have appeared an excellent bet at the time, but would ultimately doom the Third Reich.
Author : David Brown
Publisher : Seaforth Publishing
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 26,81 MB
Release : 2007-11-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1844157024
Winston Churchill famously claimed that the submarine war in the Atlantic was the only campaign of the Second World War that really frightened him. If the lifeline to north America had been cut, Britain would never have survived; there could have been no build-up of US and Commonwealth forces, no D-Day landings, and no victory in western Europe. Furthermore, the battle raged from the first day of the war until the final German surrender, making it the longest and arguably hardest-fought campaign of the whole war. The ships, technology and tactics employed by the Allies form the subject of this book. Beginning with the lessons apparently learned from the First World War, the author outlines inter-war developments in technology and training, and describes the later preparations for the second global conflict. When the war came the balance of advantage was to see-saw between U-boats and escorts, with new weapons and sensors introduced at a rapid rate. For the defending navies, the prime requirement was numbers, and the most pressing problem was to improve capability without sacrificing simplicity and speed of construction. The author analyses the resulting designs of sloops, frigates, corvettes and destroyer escorts and attempts to determine their relative effectiveness.
Author : Magnus Nordenman
Publisher : US Naval Institute Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 11,86 MB
Release : 2019
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
ISBN : 9781682472835
In his book Magnus Nordenman sets out to explore the emerging competition between the United States and its allies in NATO and the resurgent Russian navy in the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic played a key role in the two world wars and the Cold War as the strategic link between the United States and Europe that allowed reinforcements and supplies to flow to embattled allies. Nordenman shows that while a conflict in Europe has never been won in the North Atlantic it surely has been lost there. However the North Atlantic fell away from attention as the Cold War ended the Russian navy fell into decay and the United States and its allies turned to counter-terrorism and expeditionary operations in the far corners of the earth.With Vladimir Putin's Russia threatening the peace in Europe since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 the North Atlantic and other maritime domains around Europe are once again coming into focus. But this battle will be different Nordenman shows due to an overstretched US Navy disruptive technologies a NATO that woke up to the Russian challenge while essentially unprepared for high-end warfighting in the maritime domain and a Russia that commands a far smaller but more sophisticated navy equipped with long-range cruise missiles that have already been used in operations in Syria. Nordenman concludes that the new contest in the North Atlantic will not be about keeping the sea lanes open or facing down a Russian anti-shipping campaign in the vast expanses of the ocean. Instead the Russian threat comes from submarines operating in the far North Atlantic where they can strike at targets across Europe using long-range cruise missiles.Nordenman's book describes the evolution of warfare in the North Atlantic in the 20th century and points to the enduring strategic factors and dynamics in that maritime domain that must be kept in mind as the United States and NATO devises new strategies for defense and deterrence in the North Atlantic. He also highlights how the strategic and operational environment has changed since the end of the Cold War with the coming of new technologies new players in the North Atlantic and the new Russian way of war in the maritime domain. He concludes with a set of recommendations for the United States and its NATO allies on how to build an effective approach to ensuring that the North Atlantic remains an open bridge between North America and Europe in both peace and war.
