The U Boats Threat

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle of the Second World War and it was also the most important battle during these times because the success of any other campaign in during this war depended of its success. Many experts agree that defeat of the German U-Boats and control of the shipping sea routes that linked the allied nations of Great Britain, United States and Canada was essential if what the Allied nations wanted was to invade occupied Europe and the German territory. This battle was for commerce and it was waged by the German U-Boats that fought against Britain’s merchant marine. For almost six years, Germany launched over 1,000 U-Boats into combat, in an attempt to isolate and blockade the British Isles, forcing the British to withdraw from war. It was a fight which nearly obstructed the shipping sea routes of Great Britain, cutting off required supplies of food, fuel and raw materials needed to continue fighting. 

By the end of the war, U-Boats of the Kriegsmarine, in the Battle of the Atlantic had sent over 2,900 ships and 14 million tons of Allied shipping to the bottom of the sea. In exchange, the Allies sank almost 800 U-Boats and over 30,000 of the 39,000 German sailors who put to sea, never returned, this was the highest casualty rate of any armed service in the history of modern war. 

During the early year of war, German U-Boat successes against British and American shipping were so remarkable, that on January 1943, the Allies issued a decree in Casablanca which made the defeat of German U-Boats a number one priority. 

The Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill once wrote: “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril”. In this phrase, he remarked the importance of the threat that set during World War Two by the Germans to the British. If Germany would had prevented merchant ships from carrying food, raw materials, troops and their equipment from North America to Britain, the aftermath of World War Two could have been completely different. People in Great Britain might have been starved, and its armies would not have been equipped with American-built tanks and vehicles needed in the combat. 

Also, if the Allies wouldn’t have been capable of moving ships over the North Atlantic, it would have been impossible to launch British and American land forces into the Mediterranean territories or in the D-Day. Germany’s best hope to be able to finally defeat Great Britain was to win the “Battle of the Atlantic”, named like this by the British prime minister of the time Winston Churchill. In World War One, Germany waged a very similar campaign, and in 1917 Germans were pretty close of defeating the British. But when this Battle of the Atlantic happened in 1939 neither side was well prepared for what was going to implicate this big war. 

Germany underestimated the impact U-boats caused in the British, and was fighting with only 46 operational ships, using majorly surface ships than submarines to fight the Atlantic. On September 3 of 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany, the British craft, “Athenia”, was torpedoed by a U-boat. This marked the beginning of the second Battle of the Atlantic.

                                                                               

                                                                                     Lucia Valdivia