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World War II at Sea: A Global History
World War II at Sea: A Global History
World War II at Sea: A Global History
Audiobook25 hours

World War II at Sea: A Global History

Written by Craig L. Symonds

Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 4, 2018
ISBN9781684415458
World War II at Sea: A Global History

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Reviews for World War II at Sea

Rating: 4.534090977272727 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very approachable, yet filled with fascinating details that even history buffs are probably unaware about. Also, the orator was fantastic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is a long listen, but I would consider it one of, if not the, best comprehensive yet approachable WWII naval history books written. The narration can be a bit dry at times, bordering on monotone, but I still highly recommend this book based on content.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a book about events that took place between August 1939, and September 1945. Given a copyright of 2018, that means it's about events between 73 and 79 years ago. That is history. The author is quite meticulous in reporting facts without editorializing. The author quotes Samuel Elliott Morrison's 15 volume work about the same period written about 50 years ago. What we have is a fuller reporting of what actually happened without attempts to enhance or diminish the activities of the actors involved. And that's what history does. Wanting to know right away is a mark of our human impatience but in attempts to satisfy that impatience some facts are omitted altogether, others are distorted, and others are really not facts at all.Symonds has done an excellent service and is to be commended for his work.The Battle of Midway has frequently been cited as the turning point in the naval war in the Pacific. What Symonds reveals is just how incredibly lucky the US forces were to catch the Japanese forces in the few minutes when they were most defenseless. One must not diminish the role of the naval aviators, for it was great and decisive.Midway was spectacular but the grinding battle of the North Atlantic, though less glamorous, was spectacular in another way with men fighting the elements as they fought above and below the waves. One of my cousins married a man who had three ships sunk under him and yet he kept going out.It is sad that so much of naval strategy was based on how the previous war was fought. That was probably inevitable. Still, it was costly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    World War II at Sea from Craig Symonds is a comprehensive (not exhaustive) history of the naval war in its entirety told chronologically. In other words, a section about the North Atlantic will be followed by a section on the Pacific if there were events that occurred simultaneously or one right after the other. So told as the war unfolded, which means taking into account what is happening in other parts of the world.The purpose of this book is to tell the story in a more realistic manner than the books that have focused on specific battles or theaters, not to break new ground with a new piece of information. Having one comprehensive narrative is breaking new ground and the failure to realize that is not the fault of either Symonds or the book. Those volumes are tremendously important because they are so focused but they also often lose sight of the big picture: the war as a whole. This volume places the war as a whole at the center and shows how the war at sea unfolded in all waters and for all navies. To criticize this book for not getting every bit of minutiae right is petty at best and empty chest-pounding at worst (and most likely). There are thousands of books with the minutiae, enjoy them, they are wonderful books. But this wasn't trying to be like them.I would recommend this to anyone interested in World War II, from introductory to historian. As an introduction it allows a person to have a perspective on the battles and events they have or will learn more about. For a historian, professional or amateur, this serves as a reminder that the war was not a collection of separate battles in isolation but very much a series of events that were influenced by previous and concurrent events and thus affected future events. We often, when looking at specific moments, lose track of the whole. This book puts the whole back in focus. In doing so, it will allow the more focused books to be better understood beyond the simple-minded regurgitation of numbers and gun size.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.