The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War, by Jonathan Dimbleby: Book review

Winston Churchill once wrote: “The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.”

Like the wartime Prime Minister, Jonathan Dimbleby believes fervently that – though often overlooked – the campaign to defeat the German threat on the high seas was crucial to the Allied victory in 1945. In his compelling new account of the struggle for supremacy in the Atlantic, the writer and broadcaster argues that if the submarines of the Kriegsmarine had prevailed, the maritime supply lines across the Atlantic would have been severed, mass hunger would have consumed Britain and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe. “There would have been no D-Day,” he asserts.

The Battle of the Atlantic lasted as long as the war itself. By summer 1942, one Allied ship was going down every four hours. The 100 or more convoy battles which took place cost the Merchant Navy an estimated 30,000 men and around 3,000 ships; the equally terrible cost for the Germans was 783 U-boats and 28,000 sailors. Dimbleby notes that this was “a higher death rate than that of any branch of the armed forces on any side of the conflict between 1939 and 1945”.

“Most of those who perished at sea lost their lives in the grimmest circumstances,” he writes. “The fortunate ones died swiftly, blown up by torpedoes or, in the case of the U-boat crews, by depth charges or machine-gun fire. Others were trapped in sinking hulls or asphyxiated by toxic fumes. Some died from their wounds in vessels which lacked anaesthetics or surgeons or, very often, both; some drowned because lifeboats had been smashed into flotsam or because, after days or weeks adrift without food and water, they succumbed to insanity and threw themselves overboard.”

Dimbleby charts the competing strategies at play and the changing fortunes of the opposing sides. Early German operations from French bases, for example, were spectacularly successful and the great U-boat aces such as Günther Prien of U-47, Otto Kretschmer (U-99) and Joachim Schepke (U-100) became newsreel heroes in Germany. Between June and October 1940, at least 270 Allied ships were sunk in a period referred to by U-boat crews as “the Happy Time”.

Dimbleby's incisive, gripping narrative uniquely places the campaign in the context of the entire war as it recounts the horror and humanity of life on those perilous oceans.

Viking, £25. Order for £20 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030