The U-Boat War - A Global History 1939-45

The U-Boat War during the 1939-45 conflict continues to fascinate readers with a plethora of historical accounts of individual actions or entire campaigns, biographies of famous commanders, technical analyses of the weaponry employed and so on. Often these studies concentrate exclusively on aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic which, of course, lasted the duration of the war. Lawrence Paterson’s book sets out to deliver what could be described as a revisionist history. The author challenges what has become the accepted historical narrative that the German campaign to disrupt the Atlantic supply route somehow existed in isolation from the other battles taking place in different parts of the world. Rather, as the title states, this was a war of global proportions which lasted from the first day of hostilities until the final sinking by torpedo on the 7 May 1945. It also encompassed lesser but nevertheless not inconsiderable campaigns in the Mediterranean, the Arctic, Indian and Southern African Oceans. Paterson is ready to contradict some familiar assumptions about the Atlantic battle. He counters what he calls the ‘myth’ of the U-Boat’s ‘happy time’ between July – October 1940, stating, ‘Though sometimes bloodily successful, it was fleeting and by no means as one-sided as frequently represented’. He attributes the cause, among other factors, to many U-Boat commanders’ over-reliance on making transmissions which either attracted anti-submarine forces or allowed convoys to divert. As the war progressed the U-Boats began to widen their areas of operations, further west and south in the Atlantic and into the Caribbean and fatefully to the Mediterranean where conditions including relatively constricted sea room and clear waters made submarine operations hazardous. In the meantime, according to Paterson, the increasing successes of the Ultra code-breakers were due at least in part to the German’s implacable belief in their own encrypted communication system. In the end, in common with their ally Japan, Germany’s ambitions over-reached their capabilities. Specifically he attributes the ultimate failure of the U-Boat campaigns to military and industrial mismanagement. The author’s extensive knowledge of his subject together with skillful editing enables him to describe a considerable number of campaigns and individual engagements both to advance his theories and to give the reader a comprehensive overview of what is a complex and many-faceted narrative. Osprey are to be congratulated for producing a high quality publication in which, ironically, the Nazi propaganda machine played its part by providing a range of excellent black and white photographs, including many of the famous U-Boat ‘aces’. It is perhaps understandable that it has taken the passage of time, some 77 years since the end of the war, for a truly dispassionate account to be written of what, for many, is an endlessly fascinating but perhaps misunderstood piece of history. In the end, in the face of one of the most well-known mythologies of World War II, that the Battle of the Atlantic ‘nearly brought Britain to its knees’ one is left to ponder Paterson’s statistic that of the 1,394 wartime U-Boat commanders commissioned, some 60 per cent failed to sink a single ship.