The Atlantic War, 1939–1945
This chapter by Marc Milner challenges the popular perception of the "Battle of the Atlantic" as a shooting war, and the notion that Allied strategy was impaired by the depredations of Germany's U-boats. He asserts that the Atlantic war of 1939-45 is better understood like the great maritime wars of the age of sail, in which battle played a small part in the larger struggle for resource accumulation and the application of power ashore. The British and Canadians understood the Atlantic war in precisely this way, and focused on avoidance of the enemy as their primary method of defending shipping. In contrast, the USN followed a Mahanian concept of naval warfare in which destruction of the enemy was the underlying concept of escort operations. In this "new" paradigm, the Allied (really British) victory over the U-boats in 1943 was not something that could be achieved quickly. Rather, like the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, it was the culmination of a long process that forced the enemy to stand and fight in a campaign he had already lost.