German Submarine Warfare in World War I

The Onset of Total War at Sea

Inbunden, Engelska, 2017

679 kr

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This compelling book explores Germany’s campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare in World War I, which marked the onset of total war at sea. Noted historian Lawrence Sondhaus shows how the undersea campaign, intended as an antidote to Britain’s more conventional blockade of German ports, ultimately brought the United States into the war. Although the German people readily embraced the argument that an “undersea blockade” of Britain enforced by their navy’s Unterseeboote (U-boats) was the moral equivalent of the British navy’s blockade of German ports, international opinion never accepted its legitimacy. Sondhaus explains that in their initial, somewhat confused rollout of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, German leaders underestimated the extent to which the policy would alienate the most important neutral power, the United States. In rationalizing the risk of resuming the unrestricted campaign in 1917, they took for granted that, should the United States join the Allies, German U-boats would be able to stop the transport of an American army to France. But by bringing the United States into the war, while also failing to stop the deployment of its troops to Europe, unrestricted submarine warfare ultimately led to Germany’s defeat. Because US manpower proved decisive in breaking the stalemate on the Western Front and securing victory for the Allies, Sondhaus argues that Germany’s decision to stake its fate on the U-boat campaign ranks among the greatest blunders of modern history.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2017-08-11
Mått157 x 237 x 26 mm
Vikt558 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieRowman & Littlefield Publishers
Antal sidor278
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781442269545

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Lawrence Sondhaus was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his BA at Elon University and, after studying as a Fulbright Scholar in Austria, he obtained his PhD at the University of Virginia. Since 1987 he has been on the faculty of the University of Indianapolis, where he currently serves as professor of history and director of the graduate program in history. He is the author of thirteen books on naval and military strategy and policy, including Strategic Culture and Ways of War, World War I: The Global Revolution, and The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War. He lives in Indianapolis.

Sondhaus, professor of history at the University of Indianapolis, concisely and perceptively analyzes Germany’s U-boat campaign during WWI. He correctly describes the genesis of total war at sea as a response to a British surface blockade that, from the war’s beginning, was an ever-tightening noose around the Reich’s economic windpipe. The German navy’s relative ineffectiveness against its opponent further encouraged the German high command to seek an alternative—even at the risk of offending the U.S., whose economic interests were linked to the principle of freedom of the seas. Germany’s submarine force was small; its primary objective was intercepting warships, not merchantmen. Doctrine and policy for the projected campaign were embryonic, and, as Sondhaus shows, the resulting false start culminated in the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania and significantly antagonized America without seriously troubling Britain. By 1916, with the war stalemated, the German government saw ‘no alternative’ to unrestricted submarine warfare, whatever the risks of U.S. intervention. The results were immediate, Sondhaus notes: America’s declaration of war and the Royal Navy’s adaptation of ‘convoys, countermeasures, and [mine] barrages.’... [Sondhaus] persuasively demonstrates how Germany’s submarine policy cost them the war.