The Hunted: Hitlers Uboat War 1943-1945

[CCIP]

Blair's books are excellent, but I think it should also be noted that he is sometimes too narrowly focused on undermining the German campaign and any achievements within it - he really is quite obviously biased in that sense. I wish he hadn't taken on that stance and remained more neutral. On the other hand it's a much more scholarly and well-researched accounts than many popular imagings of the war and memoirs (like Das Boot, Iron Coffins etc.).

[Egan]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Blair's books are excellent, but I think it should also be noted that he is sometimes too narrowly focused on undermining the German campaign and any achievements within it - he really is quite obviously biased in that sense. I wish he hadn't taken on that stance and remained more neutral. On the other hand it's a much more scholarly and well-researched accounts than many popular imagings of the war and memoirs (like Das Boot, Iron Coffins etc.).

I think he was sore that a lot of the focus in the post war period went to U-boats rather than the US operations in the pacific that he was a part of. I can understand that to a certain degree, although he fails to take into account that, by the time details of the sub campaign in the PTO became more widely known, U-boats had cemented their place in the public consciousness, the secrecy of the American campaign not having helped matters in that respect.

He fails repeatedly, if I remember rightly (it's been a few years since I last read any of his books,) to grasp that the threat of the German campaign only appears overblown in Hindsight, and that at the time it was considered by the British government to be one the graver threats to the war effort. He also doesn't seem willing to concede that the great successes the U-boats had against Britain in WW1 may have led to a further inflation of the threat in the public consciousness. In fact - again, if I remember right - he pretty much ignores the psychological effect that the German campaign had on the British public.

Thing is, He is actually right in a number of his conclusions but those conclusions are worth a lot less than they would have been if they had been made nearer the time, and, as others have said, it's difficult to concentrate on what he's saying sometimes with the constant sound of all those axes being ground in the background.

As for any debate on war crimes, I'm sure he mentions the infamous Mush Morton incident in 'Silent Victory', although I don't believe, for obvious reasons, it's covered to the same degree O' Kane gives it in 'Wahoo.'

Good books. Exhausting and painfully dry at times, but good never the less.