Victory at sea : naval power and the transformation of the global order in World War II

Victory at sea Naval power and the transformation of the global order in World War II

Paul M. Kennedy, 1945-

Book - 2022

"In this engaging narrative, brought to life by marine artist Ian Marshall's beautiful full-color paintings, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War--the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan--Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. From the elimination of the Italian, German, and Japanese fleets and almost all of the French fleet, to the end of the era of the big-gunned surface vessel, the advent of the atomic bomb, and the rise of an American economic and military... power larger than anything the world had ever seen, Kennedy shows how the strategic landscape for naval affairs was completely altered between 1936 and 1946"--

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Subjects
United States. > Navy > History.
World War, 1939-1945 > Naval operations.
World War, 1939-1945 > Naval operations, American.
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Paul M. Kennedy, 1945- (author)
Other Authors
Bill (Cartographer) Nelson (cartographer), Ian (Ian H.) Marshall (illustrator)
Item Description
"Maps by Bill Nelson"--Copyright page.
Physical Description
xxii, 521 pages : color illustrations, maps ; 27 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 453-496) and index.
ISBN
9780300219173
9780300265316
  • List of Paintings
  • List of Maps
  • List of Charts and Tables
  • Preface
  • Part I. Setting the Stage
  • Chapter 1. Prologue: Sea Power and the Sweep of History
  • Chapter 2. Warships and Navies before 1939
  • Chapter 3. Geography, Economics, and Geopolitical Writings
  • Part II. Narrative of the Great Naval War, 1939-42
  • Chapter 4. The Early War at Sea, September 1939-July 1940
  • Chapter 5. The European War at Sea, July 1940-December 1941
  • Chapter 6. A War in Every Sea, 1942
  • Part III. The Critical Year of 1943
  • Chapter 7. Allied Control of the Seas, 1943
  • Chapter 8. The Shift in Global Power Balances, 1943-44
  • Part IV. Narrative of the Great Naval War, 1944-45
  • Chapter 9. Triumph of Allied Sea Power, 1944
  • Chapter 10. The Allied Victory at Sea, 1945
  • Part V. Aftermath and Reflections
  • Chapter 11. Navies and Naval Powers in World War II: An Audit
  • Epilogue. The Sweep of History
  • Appendices. 1943: The Pivotal Year of the War by Three Measures
  • Appendix A. Sinking U-boats in the Dark, May 6, 1943
  • Appendix B. A Hypothetical Causation-Chain, from a Bauxite Mountain in Suriname to Air-Sea Victory in the Western Pacific, 1943-44
  • Appendix C. America as Number One: Overall Warship Tonnages of the Powers, 1930-60
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

This book by Kennedy (Yale Univ.), a prolific scholar of modern international relations and military history, examines the period of WW II, specifically focusing on the role of naval power during that transformative chapter. He draws on mostly secondary sources, which are supplemented by beautiful watercolor paintings and clear graphs, tables, and maps. The text is a balanced mix of narrative history and deep-structure analysis, covering geopolitics, economics, and geography. General readers and undergraduate students (including those in community colleges) will benefit from reading this book; scholars not so much. This is because specialists will likely be familiar with many of the author's conclusions, which are not presented as original: e.g., the emergence of a postwar world dominated by the US, the decline of the battleship and the rise of the carrier (and aviation), and the critical importance of frustrating the German guerre de course in the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. What is refreshing is the acknowledgement of the role of economic production in the Allies winning of the war (especially after 1943) without recourse to deterministic explanations that enervate human decisions and agency. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and undergraduates. --Robert T. Ingoglia, St.Thomas Aquinas College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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