Silent Victory book review

Prof · 03-30-07, 07:16 AM

It's undoubtedly a great book and I enjoyed reading it. However, I did find myself skimming over some of the details (like names of officers, dates and times, etc...) as there was a little too much detail for a 'reading book'. As a reference book it's superb.

My major complaint with Clay Blair is that he's a bit too 'revisionist'. I thought that he was too harsh in some of his criticisms of the higher command in the US Navy and he generally overstated the influence the US submarines could have had on the war.

I'm nearing the end of Volume 1 of Blair's equivalent work for the Atlantic, 'Hitler's U-Boat War, 1939-1942'. I find a similar tone here, though this time the other way around. I often found his comments verging on derisive when talking about the impact the U-boats had on the British war effort. He frequently has harsh things to say about the British which, although possibly justified, often portray them as being somehow inferior to the US.

Maybe it's just that I have a distorted view of WWII but I find in both books a sense of "the US is great, everybody else needn't bother trying" which, as a Brit, offends me slightly

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03-30-07, 07:16 AM	#3
Prof Medic Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cambridge, UK Posts: 167 Downloads: 2 Uploads: 0	It's undoubtedly a great book and I enjoyed reading it. However, I did find myself skimming over some of the details (like names of officers, dates and times, etc...) as there was a little too much detail for a 'reading book'. As a reference book it's superb. My major complaint with Clay Blair is that he's a bit too 'revisionist'. I thought that he was too harsh in some of his criticisms of the higher command in the US Navy and he generally overstated the influence the US submarines could have had on the war. I'm nearing the end of Volume 1 of Blair's equivalent work for the Atlantic, 'Hitler's U-Boat War, 1939-1942'. I find a similar tone here, though this time the other way around. I often found his comments verging on derisive when talking about the impact the U-boats had on the British war effort. He frequently has harsh things to say about the British which, although possibly justified, often portray them as being somehow inferior to the US. Maybe it's just that I have a distorted view of WWII but I find in both books a sense of "the US is great, everybody else needn't bother trying" which, as a Brit, offends me slightly