Taken in its proper context, a real gem of a book

books:


	• Hitler's U-Boat War : The Hunters, 1939-1942 (Hitler's U Boat War) (Hitler's U Boat War) Clay Blair Random House, 1996 - 809 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Reference Text

This is definitely a must-have for anyone seriously interested in the U-boat war of the Atlantic. Actually, this is the first book I've read on U-boats but I can imagine that this may well be the all-encompassing reference text. The book is well written and gives an excellent account of what happened. For a novice wanting to get the general idea it's perhaps a little too detailed. The accounts of the exact amount of tonnage sunk by each and every U-boat gets a little tiresome after a couple of hundred pages, but what can you do? You don't have to memorize them. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how most U-boat commanders overstated their kills.

I got to this book after reading SHADOW DIVERS which is absolutely the best book on diving written so far. (You do not have to be a diver to dig this)

There are two parts to Hitler's U-boat War, The Hunters 1939-1942, and The Hunted 1942-1945 and I have no idea why both volumes aren't available by the same publisher. The second volume is only available used at approx. three times the price of a new edition of the first volume(?) It took me a while to figure this out so I got the second volume from Weidenfeld & Nicholson military who sell only the second volume. Here at Amazon the title of this second volume is merely given as Hitler's U-Boat War which is confusing because from that you don't initially know that there are two volumes and which one this one is. Only when you see the actual photo of the bookcover you see that it says The Hunted 1942-1945. Why make life easy?

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Taken in its proper context, a real gem of a book

This is not a casual, oversimplified or high school-level history tome. The reader will find no novel-esque account of the perils of underwater warfare and the tragedy that Döenitz's U-boat campaign unleashed upon the britons. Instead, the reader will be given an impartial, well-written and thoroughly investigated historical account that provides great insight into military strategies and tactics, helping to dispel common prejudices and misunderstandings associated with this part of the conflict.

This is a great book for military history buffs or for the casual reader who is really interested in knowing the actual history in facts and numbers. For thrills and suspense, stick to the Discovery Channel.

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Long book but an exhaustive and exceptional one.

Clay Blair has done an outstanding work on his first volume: "Hitler's U-boat war, The Hunters". The appendix alone contains a large sum of information about the first half of the U-Boat war. No one book should ever be considered as "the definite volume", but these works are about as close as it is possible to get. While Clay Blair describes on every U-boat operation, he also sets on destroying several myths about the U-boat war (such as the unnecessary criticisms on Admiral King).

His style of writing can sometimes be "dry" as he tends to repeat the same words over and over but that would be the only negative part about this otherwise wonderful book.

This book is highly recommended for anyone seeking for an exhaustive book on the evolution of the U-boat war and of the people involved.
I would give this book 4.5/5 but since it's limited to either 4 or 5, I'l go with the 5 stars.

Sadly, the 2nd volume of Hitler's U-boat war doesn't seem to be available on Amazon.ca... I guess I must go look elsewhere to purchase it.
~Shc~

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Very good book!

This a very good book about the U-Boat history in the Second World War!
I recomend!
Best regards,

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Clay Blair's best-selling naval classic Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, is regarded as the definitive account of that decisive phase of the war in the Pacific. Nine years in the making, Hitler's U-boat War is destined to become the definitive account of the German submarine war against the Allies, or "The Battle of the Atlantic."

It is an epic sea story, the most arduous and prolonged naval battle in all history. For a period of nearly six years, the German U-boat force attempted to blockade and isolate the British Isles, in hopes of forcing the British out of the war, thereby thwarting the Allied strategic air assault on German cities as well as Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France. Fortunately for the Allies, the U-boat force failed to achieve either of these objectives, but in the attempt they sank 2,800 Allied merchant ships, while the Allies sank nearly 800 U-boats. On both sides, tens of thousands of sailors perished.

The top secret Allied penetration of German naval codes, and, conversely, the top secret German penetration of Allied naval codes played important roles in the Atlantic naval battle. In order to safeguard the secrets of codebreaking in the postwar years, London and Washington agreed to withhold all official codebreaking and U-boat records. Thus for decade upon decade an authoritative and definitive history of the Battle of the Atlantic could not be attempted. The accounts that did appear were incomplete and full of errors of fact and false interpretations and conclusions, often leaving the entirely wrong impression that the German U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies, a myth that persists.

When London and Washington finally began to release the official records in the 1980s, Clay Blair and his wife, Joan, commenced work on this history in Washington, London, and Germany. They relied on the official records as well as the work of German, British, American, and Canadian naval scholars who published studies of bits and pieces of the story. The end result is this magnificent and monumental work, crammed with vivid and dramatic scenes of naval actions and dispassionate but startling new revelations and interpretations and conclusions about all aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Blair history will be published in two volumes. This first volume, The Hunters, covers the first three years of the war, August 1939 to August 1942. Told chronologically, it is subdivided into two major sections, the War Against the British Empire, and the War Against the Americas. Volume II, The Hunted, to follow a year later, will cover the last years of the naval war in Europe, August 1942 to May 1945, when the Allies finally overcame the U-boat threat.

Never before has Hitler's U-boat war been chronicled with such authority, fidelity, objectivity, and detail. Nothing is omitted. Even those who fought the Battle of the Atlantic will find no end of surprises. Later generations will benefit by having at hand an account of this important phase of World War II, free of bias and mythology.

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