Mr. Paterson, has provided a fuller understanding of the German Kriegsmarine U-Boat campaign. Wide-ranging and inclusive of all theatres of war in which U-Boats operated as well as an analytical explanation of the failures of that naval strategy.

This was an enthralling book about the ‘other side’ of the U-Boat operations during WWll. The history of the evolution of the German U-Boat force in WWl set the scene for their next battles 25 years later and it was that connection and the doctrine in the minds of the then senior submarine officers that drove the way operations were conducted in1939 onwards. I have read many books on the allied submarine offensives and operations in all theaters of war, but this book closed the loop by setting out the deficiencies in U-Boat development and the dictatorial and uninformed dictates from Hitler that prevented a cohesive strategy to be pursued by Raeder and Doenitz. The total belief by the German High Command that their Enigma encoding was unbreakable was a fundamental flaw that led to many U-Boats to be detected and lost directly due to Bletchley Park deciphering U-Boat signal traffic.
The reader cannot but admire the bravery of the commanders and men that sailed their boats, often alone, into the expanse of the North and South Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean. The terrible conditions were graphically described by survivors in such terms that the reader wonders how men endured the worst of times; possibly they were offset by the good times in warmer climates however from late 1943 the Allied anti-submarine assets hounded the U-Boat force all over the world.

I very much enjoyed this book. My wife at one point asked me what I was reading and I told her it was a book about submarines. She responded, "Who else reads books about submarines?" in the tone of the famous commercial. That alone was worth 5 stars.

I enjoyed that this book made technical topics accessible and not overwhelming as they often are in military history books. While I'm no subject matter expert who can comment on the accuracy of the material, I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the read.

Copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I just finished my read of an ARC of "The U-Boat War: A Global History, 1939-1945," written by Lawrence Paterson and published by Osprey (to whom I am grateful for providing me with the ARC this review is based upon). Most readers who have an interest in U-Boat operations during World War II are familiar with what is broadly described as "The Battle of the Atlantic." Lawrence's text is particularly useful to readers with this familiarity because his project is to contextualize the U-Boat war within the strategic boundaries of the larger struggle involving all of the war"s major combatants and weapons. In other words, while the Battle of the Atlantic is not ignored, it is viewed through a very different perspective from that which most of us are familiar with. I found it refreshing to shift from the tactical emphasis which has dominated studies of the U-Boats at war to a more macroscopic overview much like that we are beginning to see in discussions of the Allies' Combined Bomber offensive against the German homeland, again, one which has long been dominated by tactical rather than strategic discussions. In this sense, Lawrence has done us all a great service. The work includes fascinating detail on German management as well as objectives and shortcomings that tend to become obscured in works which focus much more closely on the tactical level of things. It is always refreshing to see a historian opening up a relatively underrepresented perspective to the popular consciousness, and this is just the sort to book to accomplish that for the U-Boat war.
I recommend it to anyone looking for a fresh perspective that works to extend our understanding of U-Boats at the operational level and their integration into broader national and international themes. Well done.