Operation Drumbeat

Operation Drumbeat PDF Author: Michael Gannon
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062039067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1269

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Book Description
An account of Germany's little known U-boat campaign against merchant shipping along the North American Atlantic coast during the first six months of 1942. It also documents the failure of the US Navy to meet the German attack.

Operation Drumbeat

Operation Drumbeat PDF Author: Michael Gannon
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062039067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1269

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Book Description
An account of Germany's little known U-boat campaign against merchant shipping along the North American Atlantic coast during the first six months of 1942. It also documents the failure of the US Navy to meet the German attack.

Operation Drumbeat

Operation Drumbeat PDF Author: Michael Gannon
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
In the first eight months of 1942, German submarines sank nearly 400 Allied freighters and tankers along the U.S. Atlantic coast with a loss of more than 5,000 merchant seamen and sailors--twice the number of fatalities at Pearl Harbor. This book helps readers understand the complexities of the long Battle of the Atlantic by examining those disastrous early days of war and following the U-boats into action. The book traces the voyages of five U-boats to their destinations as they sink twenty-five ships unmolested by the U.S. Navy, which failed to follow through on British intelligence warnings. It also provides a compilation of personal stories from crewmen and officers of U-123 and from the Allied sailors and merchant seamen cast adrift in lifeboats by the U-boat's torpedoes. A bestseller when first published in 1990, it is now back in print as a trade paperback.

Count Not the Dead

Count Not the Dead PDF Author: Michael L. Hadley
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773512825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Basing his study on literature and film, the author presents the exploits and images of U-boats and their intrepid crews.

Killing Shore

Killing Shore PDF Author: K. A. Nelson
Publisher: Brookline Books
ISBN: 195504130X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The shocking story of Nazi Germany’s naval assault in American waters, told through the eyes of seafarers who experienced it off the Jersey Shore. It is January 1942. Six weeks after the United States entered World War II, Imperial Japan is annihilating American forces across the Far East while the Nazis stand triumphant over much of Europe. Adolf Hitler’s forces are about to commence an assault along the East Coast of the United States, but this “Atlantic Pearl Harbor” would prove far more devastating than Japan’s attack on Hawaii. The wolves are closing in, and few Americans realize their beaches and coastal cities are about to witness the worst naval defeat in American history. The Western Hemisphere holds the key to victory for the beleaguered Allies, but only if the vast economic and military resources of North and South America can be carried across the Atlantic by Allied merchant ships. These civilian-manned cargo vessels are the backbone of the American war economy and the lifeline enabling Britain and the Soviet Union to survive—but Hitler’s favorite admiral also knows this, and he has set in motion a plan of unprecedented boldness. Germany’s dreaded submarines, or “U-boats,” are going to the United States. The fiery months that followed would pit American servicemen against German U-boat sailors in a desperate struggle that stained East Coast waters with oil and blood. In the crosshairs of this deadly cat-and-mouse game was a stalwart contingent of civilian mariners who crewed the tankers and freighters supplying the war against the Axis Powers. Thousands of them would perish as hundreds of merchant ships were sunk. Every American coastal state became a battlefront in 1942, and the events that transpired off New Jersey illustrate the perils and brutality of this forgotten campaign. The seafloor along the Garden State is today strewn with shipwrecks that bear witness to the innumerable ways to die faced by friend and foe alike only miles from the boardwalk. Though these seafarers’ lives were forfeit, the battle they fought would decide the fates of millions.

Military Law Review

Military Law Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Courts-martial and courts of inquiry
Languages : en
Pages : 1334

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Book Description


The Burning Shore

The Burning Shore PDF Author: Ed Offley
Publisher: Civitas Books
ISBN: 0465029612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun at Virginia Beach, two massive fireballs erupted just offshore from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. While men, women, and children gaped from the shore, two damaged oil tankers fell out of line and began to sink. Then a small escort warship blew apart in a violent explosion. Navy warships and aircraft peppered the water with depth charges, but to no avail. Within the next twenty-four hours, a fourth ship lay at the bottom of the channel— all victims of twenty-nine-year-old Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen and his crew aboard the German U-boat U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of the bloody U-boat offensive along America’s east coast during the first half of 1942, using the story of Degen’s three war patrols as a lens through which to view this forgotten chapter of World War II. For six months, German U-boats prowled the waters off the eastern seaboard, sinking merchant ships with impunity, and threatening to sever the lifeline of supplies flowing from America to Great Britain. Degen’s successful infiltration of the Chesapeake Bay in mid-June drove home the U-boats’ success, and his spectacular attack terrified the American public as never before. But Degen’s cruise was interrupted less than a month later, when U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Harry J. Kane and his aircrew spotted the silhouette of U-701 offshore. The ensuing clash signaled a critical turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic—and set the stage for an unlikely friendship between two of the episode’s survivors. A gripping tale of heroism and sacrifice, The Burning Shore leads readers into a little-known theater of World War II, where Hitler’s U-boats came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic before American sailors and airmen could finally drive them away.

The Nazi Spy Pastor

The Nazi Spy Pastor PDF Author: J. Francis Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
One man could have enabled the most audacious terrorist threat against America prior to 9/11 and helped the Nazis win World War II—the Nazi spy pastor, Carl Krepper. His riveting story brings to light a forgotten chapter in the history of the Second World War. As America continues to wrestle with issues surrounding the threat of sabotage and terrorism, this eye-opening work details a very real threat faced by our country in the Second World War, and the key aspects of the underground war that was fought in this country by Nazi agents. The Nazi Spy Pastor: Carl Krepper and the War in America presents the fascinating true story of a secret plot to be executed on American soil—a German sabotage operation with intended targets in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Illinois. This book chronicles, for the first time, the remarkable life of Carl Krepper—naturalized American citizen, Lutheran pastor, and the Nazi deep-cover operative who could have made possible the greatest terrorist threat on American soil prior to the attacks on September 11th. Historian J. Francis Watson draws on newly declassified archival and documentary materials to tell the full story of how a devoted clergyman lost his way and betrayed his calling, instead advocating an ideology that supported genocide and the deaths of innocent victims in America, and how he came to play a key role in the Pastorius sabotage plot. The book covers fascinating cloak-and-dagger details of submarine infiltrations, safe houses, and secret codes, detailing Krepper's life, his work as a Nazi agent, and the FBI sting operation that finally brought about his arrest in December of 1944. This little-known, real-life espionage story will serve students of World War II history and appeal to readers interested in immigration and the integration of immigrant populations as well as the histories of New York and New Jersey.

The Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic PDF Author: Jonathan Dimbleby
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190495855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
"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.

Why Germany Nearly Won

Why Germany Nearly Won PDF Author: Steven D. Mercatante
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
This book offers a unique perspective for understanding how and why the Second World War in Europe ended as it did—and why Germany, in attacking the Soviet Union, came far closer to winning the war than is often perceived. Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe challenges this conventional wisdom in highlighting how the re-establishment of the traditional German art of war—updated to accommodate new weapons systems—paved the way for Germany to forge a considerable military edge over its much larger potential rivals by playing to its qualitative strengths as a continental power. Ironically, these methodologies also created and exacerbated internal contradictions that undermined the same war machine and left it vulnerable to enemies with the capacity to adapt and build on potent military traditions of their own. The book begins by examining topics such as the methods by which the German economy and military prepared for war, the German military establishment's formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The book then takes an entirely new perspective on explaining the Second World War in Europe. It demonstrates how Germany, through its invasion of the Soviet Union, came within a whisker of cementing a European-based empire that would have allowed the Third Reich to challenge the Anglo-American alliance for global hegemony—an outcome that by commonly cited measures of military potential Germany never should have had even a remote chance of accomplishing. The book's last section explores the final year of the war and addresses how Germany was able to hang on against the world's most powerful nations working in concert to engineer its defeat.

World War II at Sea

World War II at Sea PDF Author: Craig L. Symonds
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190243694
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.