World War II at Sea: A Global History

Abstract

It is perhaps a truism, but ours is a “water-world,” with over 70 percent of the globe's surface dominated by ocean. In World War II at Sea, the historian Craig L. Symonds explores the pivotal role played by this “dominant” element in the twentieth century's preeminent “global” event. The volume skillfully identifies moments of connection between events distant in geography, includes revealing assessments of key personalities involved, and offers thought-provoking comparisons of the rival navies at war. Symonds is especially good at showing how, for all their differences, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy were remarkably similar in persistently seeking a “decisive” encounter. Symonds begins with a prologue recounting the discussions and disagreements of the 1930 London Naval Treaty, one of those final prewar occasions at which senior naval figures attempted to calm burgeoning international rivalries. Part 1 examines the outbreak of war in Europe, with extended treatment of the naval encounters off Norway, at Dunkirk, and at Mers-el-Kebir. In part 2 Symonds turns to the other side of the world and to the Japanese-American tensions that prefigured the attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the other Japanese naval victories that followed. In part 3, “Watershed,” Symonds—the author of a prize-wining account of the Battle of Midway—is on especially familiar ground. While he skillfully weaves a global narrative throughout, he is particularly deft in this section of the book, showing how November 1942—which saw Allied amphibious landings in both North Africa and Guadalcanal—was the key “watershed moment in the history of the Second World War” (p. 372). Part 4 focuses on Allied counterattacks in 1943, a year in which two navies central to the conflict—the Italian Regina Marina and the German Kreigsmarine—“ceased to exist” (p. 468). Beginning with the well-known story of D-day, part 5, “Reckoning,” concludes with the war's naval denouement and with the destruction of Japanese sea power in the waters around the Philippines, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima.