Customer Reviews

Hitler's U-Boat War : The Hunters, 1939-1942 (Hitler's U Boat War)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Clay Blair has written a masterful account of the German submarine war in WWII. While it is extremely thorough, the level of detail can become cumbersome to the amateur historian. Mr. Blair outlines every mission undertaken by a German submarine during the entire war; a blessing for other researchers in naval history but a curse to the lay reader. The author does a commendable job outlining the major campaigns and summarizing the effects of the submarine war. He even comes to the conclusion that the feared "wolf packs" and the submarine war in general never posed the serious threat that the Allies believed it did. Perhaps the most interesting portion of the book is the chapters devoted to describing the development of submarine/ASW technology and the encryption/decoding efforts of both sides. The author does an average job as far as the "characters" are concerned. For most people he simply describes their military careers and follows their progression through various commands and notes the awards they receive. Very few players get the background coverage that makes them come alive and seem like real people.

I highly recommend this book for any reader of history interested the German submarine war. However, the casual or amateur reader will do well to skim through the endless details.

This is a very comprehensive work! The author is not only meticulous in describing practically each u-boat sailing during this period, but he tends to keep the reader's interest in what could be a dull assignment, by explaining pertinent background information and providing in-depth detail on various crew members, making many of them "come to life" in the words on the page. At the same time, he keeps the reader informed on what is going on in other parts of the war that could affect u-boat and ASW (anti-submarine warfare) operations and practices, such as code breaking, Hitler's rash decision-making, Operation Torch, dropping off of secret agents, sabateurs, and/or commandos into enemy territory, development of radar and sonar and HF direction finding, u-boat activity on the U.S. coast, military officials involved, etc. This book is important historically since it not only provides an extremely detailed account of operations, but it reviews it from an American standpoint based on the author's incredible current research and his reading of British historians, and then commenting on divergences of viewpoint or, in some cases, the lack of British commentary on certain embarrassing happenings. - As some reviewers have noted, Blair tends to "stick with the facts" instead of sensationalising, and in the process gains the reader's trust. Excellent u-boat history, engrossing reading.

You probably can't find a more exhaustive detailing of the Atlantic U-boat war. And generally speaking, this work makes for good reading and good history. What is excellent here is the overall strategic view of the war and the surrounding attempts to stay one step ahead of the enemy. The book has two flaws (they are inter-related): The mass of tonnage statistics begins to lose relevance after a while to a casual reader and also de-humanizes the story. Missing from this book is a good description or feel for any but the most famous of U-boat captains, or descriptions of individual patrols that brings them to life.

Blair does a significant job detailing the almost daily events of the U-boat war. He lets the reader understand the effects of technology, code-breaking, politics and other historical events on the U-boat struggle. This in turn allows the reader judge the impact that German submarines had on the war. The basic thesis of the book is that even at their height, German U-boats only sunk 5 percent of allied shipping. However, the allies expended a significant amount of men and materials to stop the U-boats. The only point lacking in the book is the human experience. Blair does not go into alot of anecdotal accounts of U-boat service. Generally the book is a decent read.

Gives an excellent view of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of the Germans. Having read Silent Victory, I was amazed how much the Germans' submarine war paralleled the submarine war fought by the United States Navy in the Pacific against the Japanese in certain particulars, namely torpedo problems. It also outlined many, if not all, of the mistakes made by Hitler and Doenitz during the Battle of the Atlantic as well as those of the Allies.

For readers of Das Boot and viewers of 1940's submarine movies, this is probably not the book for you. For those who want the "real story," however, this work provides the definitive history of the terrible period in history where men went down to the sea in little boats and fought to the death. This book starts with a general summary of the beginnings of submarine warfare. It traces the earliest submarine experiments up to the start of World War II. The central core of the book, however, is a detailed, well researched history of the German U-Boat fleet during World War II. The author has read and reviewed the extenstive files and records of U-Boat activity. The story then describes the missons of the U-Boats for each month between 1939 and 1942. A second volume is promised that will cover from 1942 until the end of the war. The work is sufficiently detailed to allow the reader to trace the history of individual U-Boats and their captains from the first sailings until they are "lost with all crew." The quality of the book is found in the way it is written. There is little emotion revealed in the passages, but there is honest reporting of the events that occurred. Such a clear writing style speaks better of the horror that must have been a part of the life of those in the U-Boats and the crews of the ships that they hunted. A second feature of value of the work is that it offers something of a fresh view of the events of the Battle of the Atlantic. Many of the histories of that period have been written by Europeans. Their view of that scene and the American role in it is somewhat tempered by their own backgrounds. A good representative sample of such a writing can be found in "The Price of Admiralty" by John Keegan. His chapter on the Battle of the Atlantic reports the war from the view of one of England's foremost military historians. Mr. Blair is an American who served in the U.S. submarine service during World War II and his views have a decidedly "American" flavor. He presents the American effort during the Battle of the Atlantic with some concern over the U.S. broader involvement world wide. In short, the first volume of this extensive work is a wonderful history. The second volume is anxiously awaited.

"Hitler's U-Boat War" (this review actually refers to both volumes of the trade paper edition) stands as an impressive achievement of a naval historian who pored over mountains of Kriegsmarine records and Allied intelligence reports and distilled them into 1600 pages of the most comprehensive treatment of the U-Boat war ever offered. Every tour and patrol of the main line U-Boats (Types VII, IX and XIV, and variants) is listed in the appendices. The boat logs offer a staggering amount of detail and, in Blair's hands, paint a vivid picture of life inside an "iron coffin."

The reader is provided with meticulous treatments of the torpedo design defects, the ineffective Naxos radar detector, Huff Duff, and, of course, the constant struggle to keep up with naval Enigma, all of which underline the distinct technological advantage the Allies possessed. Yet, due to America's delayed entry into the war, mistrust among the Allied intelligence agencies, and the difficulties with instituting an effective transatlantic convoy system, it was not until late 1942 that the tide began to turn against the Kriegsmarine. However, argues Blair, the U-Boats were never in any danger of winning the Atlantic war. Instead, their chief benefit to Germany was psychological. Since "death from below" could strike without warning, the Allies tied up vast amounts of materiel and manpower in convoying and anti-submarine warfare, reducing the efficiency of the transatlantic lifeline sustaining Britain.

The eventual outcome, though, was never truly in doubt. The Kriegsmarine suffered from a lack of inter-service coordination, was low on experienced commanders, and, of course, was saddled with a hideously-high casualty rate. By mid-1944, the Allies had tracked down and sunk every dedicated U-Tanker in the German arsenal thanks to the Kriegsmarine's own decoded position reports, thereby crippling the strategic value of the remaining U-Boats. By the time the Germans got around to production of the electro-boats, the war was virtually over.

I can vouch for the fact that you will not agree with all of Blair's positions, and the one on whether Doenitz was a war criminal is possibly the most contentious in the book. But it will make you think, and that's the mark of a good historical text.

I make one caveat. My five-star rating is for the serious naval history buff only. This is a very technical book, and the style becomes quite repetitive after a while. It is valuable for what it does--a comprehensive, meticulous survey of the U-Boat war. What it does, it does well. It is not a casual read, though. For the general reader, I'd drop this down to three stars, primarily because of the style. If you're really fascinated by this branch of military history, though (like I am), you will take a lot away with you when you finish.

Clay Blair's two-volume history "Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942" and "Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunted, 1942-1945" is probably the definitive history of the German U-Boat war during World War II. These books are an excellent resource on this campaign, but are extremely long and detailed--and at 700+ pages of tiny text (for each volume), much too long and detailed for anyone except hard-core readers interested in this campaign.

Blair's style is simple, straight-forward, and repetitive: the books recount nearly every single U-Boat patrol, every single U-Boat sinking, every single convoy attack, and every single U-Boat success. The chapters are organized logically with sections on patrols in the North Atlantic, patrols to the Americas, patrols to the Arctic, patrols to the Mediterranean, and patrols to far-flung theaters (the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Asia). Blair also does a very good job placing the U-Boat battle into proper context of the larger naval war and overall war by giving brief synopses of the bigger picture of the fighting in Europe and, where appropriate, the U-Boat reactions to the campaigns.

Blair also gives detailed accounts of the "cipher war," describing in technical detail how the Ultra machines worked to decode Enigma transmissions and how the Germans were ignorant that their transmissions were being read by the Allies. He also fills each book with charts, appendices, and copious amounts of raw data detailing every U-Boat loss, monthly shipping losses, and many other illuminating aspects of the campaign.

Although primarily a narrative, Blair does include some analysis. Most interestingly, Blair argues that most historians of World War II greatly overstate the threat that the U-Boats posed and concludes that at no point during the war did the U-Boats come close to being the decisive weapon many claim. Blair also defends Admiral King's decisions and the overall U.S. effort early in the war against many who argue that the U.S. was caught flat-footed and unprepared and failed to take simple measures such as convoying or blacking out the East Coast, resulting in huge shipping losses off the East Coast in 1942.

Also, while writing two volumes that cover every almost every aspect of the U-Boat war, Blair does not do a very good job describing the tactics and capabilities of the U-Boats and the escorts. While describing the campaign at the operational level, he never gives the reader a good picture of the tactical capabilities of the U-Boats or their equipment and weapons, or of the men who crewed them on the almost-suicide missions.

Blair has written an incredibly detailed and well-researched account of the U-Boat war. These books would serve anyone interested in a detailed, blow-by-blow, patrol-by-patrol account of the U-Boat war, and they would serve well as a resource for someone studying this campaign. However, these books are too detailed for most readers.

Blair's two works on the Battle of the Atlantic rightly deserve to be considered the definitive work on this topic, and have sparked a long-overdue re-evaluation of the Battle, where fact is fast replacing views which arose out of the terror and propaganda of the time. As an example of this influence, the chapter on the Battle of the Atlantic in John Keegan's book 'Intelligence in War' draws very heavily on Blair.

Ignore the folks who claim that Blair's theisis is 'controversial' - Blair backs it with cold hard statistics, and is by no means the first author to do so - for instance, the British offical history 'Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping' made pretty much the same points Blair makes. Indeed, the reason Blair only gets 4 stars is that he over-sells his views by over-stressing their 'newness'.

As a caveat, it is important to note that these books are not easy reads, or are even remotely suitable for the casual reader. However, for the dedicated reader with an interest in this topic they are a very rewarding and informative read.

This book and its companion volume are the definitive history of the German U-Boat campaign. This book examines the initial more successful period of the campaign from 1939 to 1942, the second volume examines the defeat of the U-Boats. What Blair does is to examine every submarine log and the reports sent to U-Boat headquarters. These he then compares to allied logs and shipping manifesto to work out what occurred with every encounter in the theatre.

There have been previous histories of the campaign which have been mainly a narrative. In general terms the story is that Germany started the war with a very small number of submarines around 30. The mechanics of submarine warfare are that this translated into a small number of boats in action at any one time. Some boats were used for training, and the period of time taken to move into the battle zone meant that most boats were not on station for long.

After the fall of France the number of boats started to increase and the availability of French ports lessened the travel times. During the later part of 1940 and during 1941 the Germans were able to achieve some success. This was aided by a shortage of escort vessels after France left the war.

When America entered the war, U-boats moved to the American coast and targeted oil tankers. A large number were sunk in what was known as operation Drum Beat.

Blair analyses these operations and comes up with some remarkable findings. Those findings are basically that the U-Boat war never came close to threatening supply to England. The reasons for this are that even at the height of operation Drum Beat the movement of oil and other commodities was never even slowed. America was able to use its rail system to substitute for coastal shipping and easily offset any loses. American and British losses were never such that shipping could not be replaced.

The book might come across as slightly dry to some and certainly does not have the feel of a battle narrative. Despite that it is an outstanding history of an important campaign.