World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig L. Symonds

World War II at Sea: A Global History Reviews

• 
  Matt

  “As if a giant hammer had smashed down on her amidships, the Hood broke in half, her bow jackknifing upward to a forty-five-degree angle while flames and smoke soared into the sky. Watching from the Bismarck, [Captain] Lindemann’s adjutant, Burkard Mullenheim-Rechberg, recalled seeing ‘a mountain of flame and a yellowish-white fireball bursting up between her masts and soaring into the sky. White stars, probably molten pieces of metal, shot out from the black smoke and followed the flame, and huge fragments, one of which looked like the main turret, whirled through the air like toys.’ Within seconds, she was gone. The biggest ship in the Royal Navy and the pride of the fleet for more than two decades simply disappeared. Of the more than fifteen hundred men in her crew, only three survived…With hardly a pause to contemplate this astonishing spectacle, Lindemann turned the Bismarck’s guns on the Prince of Wales, and almost at once, a 15-inch shell struck the new British battleship on her bridge, killing everyone there except the captain, the chief yeoman, and the leading signalman. There was so much carnage on the bridge that blood ran down through the voice tube and dripped onto the plotting table…”
  - Craig Symonds, World War II at Sea
  
  
  Craig Symonds’s World War II at Sea is a book I almost passed on. This occurred for a couple reasons. First, we have that title. World War II at Sea? It’s hard to think of a more uninspired or pedantic name for a book. It sounds like one of those half-assed collections of WWII photos that you find on the bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble. I know you’re not supposed to judge books by their covers (or titles). But I do. All the time.
  
  Second, I hesitated because of the subtitle: A Global History. I’m always a bit skeptical of one-volume histories of huge subjects, and this is a huge subject. Most of the earth is water; during World War II, most of the world was at war. Add the two together, and you got a lot of ground (I mean liquid) to cover, even in 647 pages of text, even with an author with Symonds’s sterling reputation (he is a prolific writer/historian and professor emeritus at Annapolis). When I see a phrase like “global history,” I associate it with adjectives like “impersonal” and “generalized” and “superficial.”
  
  By now, you’ve probably realized that I did not pass on World War II at Sea, despite that bland title (Symonds also wrote The Civil War at Sea, so coming up with catchy monikers is clearly not his thing).
  
  You’ve also probably realized, based on those little stars up above, that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. The main reason: while this might be touted as a global history, it is first and foremost an intimate history. It puts the human participants front and center. No matter how big the story gets (spoiler alert: it gets big), it is always centered on a person with a name, dealing with the most intense, momentous, and often deadly experience in his life. On a huge canvas, Symonds paints with a fine brush, looking for the telling details, the meaningful anecdote, the well-constructed set-piece.
  
  World War II at Sea takes us from 1939 to 1945, from the earliest Nazi sub attacks in the Atlantic to the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Symonds structures the narrative chronologically, rather than thematically, meaning that there is some bouncing between operational theaters. Symonds chose this framework in order to prove a point: that all these different theaters were connected, like the threads of a giant spider’s web. To pull on one thread sent shivers along all the others. An amphibious landing over here meant an inability to protect a convoy over there. One of the leitmotifs of World War II at Sea is the inestimable value of resources in war, and how the allocation of those scare resources oftentimes proves the difference.
  
  (It is also worth noting that taking a chronological approach does not cause any confusion, for the reason that a lot of the main action in the Atlantic took place before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and opened a massive second global front. Thus, Symonds doesn’t have to do a ton of toggling back and forth).
  
  Symonds starts things out with a wonderful little introduction set at the London Conference of 1930, where the sea-powers of the world were gathering to draft the rules of naval warfare. This neatly lays out the geo-military context of the war to come, as well as providing a whiff of tragic irony, the knowledge that there would be no rules, and that no one on the sea, or beneath it, or above it, would be safe.
  
  As soon as this intro concludes, Symonds thrusts us onto Günther Prien’s Nazi submarine, U-47, as it sneaks into the main British anchorage as Scapa Flow. He builds the scene gradually, with memorable details such as the aurora borealis flickering overhead; a car passing by on a coastal road, “so close that its headlights washed the sub’s conning tower”; the hiss of air escaping ballast tanks, replaced by the burble of salt water, and followed by “an unnatural quiet as the submarine descended through the frigid North Sea waters and settled gently on the bottom.”
  
  The sub attacks, firing a spread of torpedoes at the Royal Oak:
  
  

  [T]he results were spectacular. A massive plume of water, as high as the ship’s superstructure, erupted amidships, followed in quick succession by two more. Pieces of the ship flew skyward, and flames in a variety of colors – blue, red, and yellow – shot up into the night. Black smoke roiled up from the spaces below, and the big ship began listing heavily to starboard. Within minutes, she was sinking. Several of the watertight doors had been dogged shut for safety, and now they blocked the way as hundreds of men tried to scramble out from the lower decks. As the big battleship slowly rolled over, the giant 15-inch gun turrets broke off and toppled into the sea. As they did, more flames shot up from inside the ship. Those of the crew who had managed to make their way topside jumped into the frigid water…

  
  
  Though he does not have the space for full biographies of the captains and admirals, Symonds never neglects to give us at least a sentence or two that tells us who they were, providing a bit of insight into their decisions.
  
  Finding the mini-arcs within the grand tale allows Symonds to create memorable scenes while still covering all the things he wants to cover. And he wants to cover a lot. Along with the battles, Symonds does a fine job of detailing the changes in tactics and technology that occurred throughout the war. War is an exercise in adaptation, and that is certainly true with World War II. (Early in the war, the British used biplanes to attack the Italians at Taranto. Biplanes! By the war’s end, jet planes had been put to use. That’s a lot of change to deal with).
  
  He also goes to some length to demonstrate the importance of logistics and cooperation to the Allied cause. In Symonds’s view, three things allowed the Allies to prevail over the Axis powers: (1) England holding out alone against Nazi Germany; (2) the Russians bleeding the Nazis in the U.S.S.R.; and (3) Allied (see: American) industrial superiority. This last element, America’s manufacturing prowess, was not a piece of luck, though it is often deprecated by historians who extol the fighting prowess of the Germans and the sacrifices of the Russians as superior to the contributions of the U.K. and the U.S. However, as Symonds shows, being able to harness the vast industrial might of a fractious democracy was a skill, and one that was necessary for ultimate victory. And all that factory work would have been wasted without command of the seas.
  
  (The fact that America was able to devote such overwhelming resources to both the European and Pacific theaters of operations cannot be overstated. I mean, the U.S. was basically waging the two largest wars in history simultaneously).
  
  As for cooperation, despite the constant friction between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, they at least phoned ahead before launching a new invasion. The same could not be said for the Germans, the Japanese, and the Italians, who all sort of did what felt right in the moment. Symonds shows how well-planned combined operations can win a history-changing battle (such as D-Day) or mitigate a baleful defeat (as at Dunkirk).
  
  Part of the reason World War II at Sea is so successful (and feels so comprehensive) is that it sticks to its theme. I’d go so far as to say that Symonds is a bit masterful in his ability to stay focused. I’ve read several books purporting to be about naval warfare in the Pacific, that nevertheless couldn’t help but follow the drama onto various islands such as Saipan and Iwo Jima. Symonds does not do this. He will give you enough information about what’s happening onshore to make strategic sense, but he does not go further. His chapter on the Normandy landings, for example, is dedicated solely to Operation Neptune, the seaborne aspect of the D-Day invasion. You will not learn about the Rangers of Point du Hoc in this book; rather, you will discover how difficult it is to transport and supply tens of thousands of men invading a continent.
  
  Symonds’s self-imposed discipline is all the more remarkable considering that he has written on several of these topics before. For instance, despite having authored an entire book on the battle of Midway, Symonds deals with it here in only a relatively few pages. That allows him to spend time on other corners of the sea war that he might otherwise have skipped. This is a book that manages to be both concise and detailed; both expansive and efficient. The balance Symonds achieves is effortlessly exquisite.
  
  You and I probably differ on what we’d consider summer beach reads. To me, this is a marvelous beach book. In fact, I read it on a lakeshore while pretending to watch my kids fish. It is paced like a novel; it is written with narrative grace and verve; and it is researched with a scholar’s care. This is top-shelf history of a kind that I am always searching for and only infrequently find.
• 
  happy

  With this volume, Dr. Symonds once again proves he is one of the best naval historians currently writing. In this narrative, he takes the reader through WWII at sea from the sinking of the British battleship HMS Royal Oak by a U-Boat at Scapa Flow in the beginning days of the war through to last American Naval Air raids on Japan in August of 1945.
  
  He has arranged the narrative chronologically and by theater. While discussing events in one theater of operations, Dr. Symonds looks how those actions affected actions in another. For example, he looks at the how need of escort vessels in the Mediterranean shorted the availability of those escorts in the North Atlantic. In many case early in the war, convoys had only one or two escort vessels leading to excessive merchant ship losses. While discussing naval operations in the Med, he looks at operational problems Italy, Britain’s major opponent in that theater of war, had. Their problems can be summed up in one work – OIL. As the author explains, ship for ship, the Italian Navy matched up well with what Britain had available for Mediterranean operations. Italy’s big problem was fuel or lack thereof. This lack severely constricted Italian Naval operations, but at the same time its mere presence tied up major British Naval units.
  
  Another topic that Dr Symonds illustrates well is the split in philosophy in the German Naval High Command. Adm Raeder, who was the overall commander, wanted a surface fleet, not so much as to go toe-to-toe with Britain ala Jutland, but as a raiding force to menace and sink Britain’s merchant Navy. Adm Donitz, the U-Boat Commander, also wanted to sink as many merchant ships as possible, but he thought the way to do it was through U-Boats. In describing this polarization in thinking, the author does a good job of telling how this made neither branch of the Kriegsmarine ready for war in September 1939.
  
  Later in the narrative, Dr. Symonds looks at and contrasts the German submarine effort in the Atlantic with the American effort in the Pacific. He states that the German’s lost the Battle of the Atlantic because even at the height of their success in 1942/3 they were barely sinking more shipping than the Allies (mainly the US) could produce. The Americans on the other hand, by late 1944 had virtually destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet and were running out of targets
  
  Dr. Symonds makes the point that the main difference in between the two sides was the US capability to produce prodigious amounts of material and because of that, they were able to replace losses both quickly and in many cases with better equipment. He also makes the point that even the US’ logistic ability had its limits. He uses the availability of LST to illustrate this point. The shortage of LSTs was a main factor in the timing of amphibious operations in both the Mediterranean theater and for Overlord. Yet at the same time there were enough of them for the US to mount Overlord and the invasion of Saipan almost simultaneously.
  
  To sum up my thoughts, the author has produced a smooth flowing and very readable history. About the only problems I had with the narrative are some minor factual errors that should have been caught. For example when the author is telling the story of the Guadalcanal campaign, he twice in three pages refers to the 7th Marine Division. To my knowledge, there was not a 7th Marine Division (certainly not in 1942), but there was a 7th Marine Regiment (that was part of the 1st Marine Division) that deployed to Guadalcanal after the first Marines waded ashore. In another section, when discussing the USS West Virginia in the later stages of the war, Dr. Symonds says she had 9 16 inch/45 caliber main guns. I know she was rebuilt after Pearl Harbor, but they didn’t change her main armament – she had 8 16 inch/45 caliber rifles as her main armament.
  
  Other than things like that, which only someone who had read WAY, WAY too much WW II history would know, this is a 4.5 star read - would have rounded up for GR. I would take 1/2 star off for the errors so it is 4 stars for Goodreads. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in naval warfare or WW II.
• 
  David Eppenstein

  WWII is not an a subject for which I have much enthusiasm. Blame it on all those WWII movies I watched as a kid and then add the History Channel, at least while it still carried history programming, and I guess I have just OD'd on the subject. Nevertheless, there are good histories available on that war but I tend to need a credible recommendation before I spend money on a book dealing with that period. The review of a GR friend (thanks Matt) caught my eye a couple of months ago and I ordered it. I still think Bezos should pay commissions to GR members that recommend books that result in sales for Amazon. My friend's review was spot-on. This is a great book.
  
  What earns this book 5 stars from me is that it is a history as history should be written and taught. Most histories confine themselves to a geographic area and a time and then ignore everything else that might be happening beyond that area or time. As an example of why this is so wrong how does one learn about our War of 1812 without understanding what was going on in Europe with Napoleon or what was happening in India or the Caribbean? When it comes to WWII virtually all historians confine themselves to either the European or the Pacific theaters as though these conflicts were occurring in different wars. They were not and this author makes that incredibly clear. The overriding concern of this history is the demonstration of how what happened in one area of this war affected matters in other areas thousands of miles apart in some instances. It is also made clear how the morale or enthusiasm of troops, while important, was not the critical element to success in modern warfare. What was critical was the means of supporting your troops. Napoleon was correct when he said that an army traveled on its stomach and with the advances in technology and the geographic scope of wars resources and logistics became the key to success.
  
  Symonds illustrates that having a large military force was nice but if you couldn't feed and supply them then it was a meaningless possession. Russia had an army in the millions but without support from Allied convoys these soldiers would have starved and run out of ammunition and melted away from German advances. Instead it was the Germans that were unable to meet the logistical challenges WWII presented them with. The same thing occurred to the Japanese in the Pacific once the U.S. recovered from Pearl Harbor and energized their industrial behemoth. Of course the industrial strength of the U.S. was also useless unless the materiel they produced was able to be delivered to where it was needed. This is where the Navy became the critical component of the war. Symonds demonstrates the evolution of naval values and priorities in WWII and how naval resources were so important in both theaters of operation and how each theatre affected operations in the other. Symonds also illustrates how the complexity of modern warfare is magnified by the difficulties of national alliances and the cooperation of separate military branches reluctant to cooperation both within their own national military as well as with those of other allied nations. Eisenhower was not chosen for his job because of his military expertise but for his diplomatic and personnel talents and it was a heaven sent selection.
  
  At just short of 650 pages of text this book is extremely well formatted and a relatively easy read inspite of its length. It is a vast and complex subject and while it allegedly is focused on the naval contributions in that war many troop and air components are included when necessary. Of course this book is an overview and a good one at that so there is not a lot of detail regarding specific engagements. However, enough detail is provided so that the reader is definitely given a proper of understanding of the subject under discussion. Without question this is one of the best histories I have ever read and grants the reader a thorough understanding of the interplay of the elements involved in WWII. I can't recommend this book strongly enough for WWII enthusiasts.
• 
  Nooilforpacifists

  Smooth, well-written chronological summary of the naval aspects of War II. Not surprisingly, Symonds contends it wasn’t the bomb, nor code-breaking, nor radar that won the war: each of those explanations has been advanced in diverse books. Rather, it was U.S. technological prowess in shipbuilding. For example, he shows, in the Battle of the Atlantic, that while closing the air gap, adding Jeep carriers to each convoy, and battling million of fanatical Russians helped, by 1943, America simply was producing more tonnage than U-boats could sink.
  
  It’s a good, if not edge-of-your-seat, one-volume work.
• 
  Sean Chick

  A massive synthesis of the emerging interpretations of naval warfare in World War II, more a narrative than an analysis, but not without insights. In particular, Symonds spends a decent amount of the book on logistics, ship construction, and amphibious warfare tactics. Not enough to bore but certainly enough to give a fuller of appreciation of these aspects next to the classic narrative of admirals and fighting ships. There are minor errors that will make a World War II naval nerd shriek, such as Royal Oak going twenty-eight knots. The wars in the Baltic and Mediterranean Sea are a bit sparse and the Black Sea is mentioned not at all. I came away even less impressed with Churchill's military acumen, although I am not sure that was Symonds' intention. That said, this is a good book that makes it clear that command of the seas was one of the leading reasons the Allies won and the Axis lost.
• 
  Doug Cornelius

  I try to keep looking for ways to interact with my kids in new ways. My son loves reading about military history, so I though I would add a book on that topic to my reading list. Reading it together would give us more things to talk about.
  
  Oxford University Press was kind enough to send me a review copy of its upcoming release: World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig L. Symonds. My son and I jumped in and enjoyed this narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world’s oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945.
  
  If that sounds like a lot. It is. At almost 800 pages, it’s a tremendous collection of the events of World War II through the lens of big steel ships.
  
  I have to admit, I knew bits and pieces of World War II history, but I never put it all together to figure out the chronology of events and how they related to each other.
  
  The book opens with 1930 London Conference, an early attempt at an arms treaty. The goal was to limit the tonnage of naval ships to prevent a build up in naval power among Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Japan. The arguments over the numbers of battleships at the beginning of the war become out of touch. Mr. Symonds shows how these limitations on naval warfare become misplaced as the strategies and purpose of the navies changed rapidly during the war. WWII brought major technological advances in warfare that radically changed naval strategy. That conference failed to address aircraft carriers. By the end of the war, aircraft carriers were the key naval strength.
  
  World War II at Sea covers all of these major engagements and their interconnection with other aspects of the conflicts:
  
  the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow
  the Battle of the Atlantic
  the “miracle” evacuation from Dunkirk
  the battles for control of Norway fjords
  Mussolini’s Regia Marina, the fourth-largest navy in the world, but ineffective for a lack a fuel
  Japanese naval power of the Kidö Butai
  Pearl Harbor
  Midway
  the forced neutrality of the French navy and eventual scuttling
  the landings in North Africa and into Italy
  the Normandy invasion
  I found the story-telling to be top notch. It’s not easy to keep no many battles, ship and personalities in context. I found Mr. Symonds to have done a masterful job of illuminating the mechanics of large-scale warfare in water and the key role it played.
  
  As for my son, he knew most of this information separately. He appreciated so much being put together in place to add more context to the underlying events. He felt it was too brief at times for the areas he wanted to dive more deeply into.
• 
  Jorge Morcillo

  No se hace pesado y estructura muy bien todas las batallas marítimas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, desde los primeros ataques de submarinos y la flota de superficie alemana hasta los desesperados y suicidas intentos de Japón, cuando ya su Armada Imperial estaba destrozada o hundida.
  
  Quizá se le pueda reprochar cierta ingenuidad al examinar algunas acciones y sus derivaciones geopolíticas, como el lanzamiento de las bombas atómicas; pero, por lo demás, en lo que es el corazón del libro, no cuestiona ni entra en polémicas. Se ciñe a los hechos históricos y hace bien.
  
  Una historia de épica, sangre y salitre.
• 
  Jeff Dow

  A good survey of the war at sea...a surprisingly fast read for such a heavy topic
• 
  Ryan

  This was a book that I had in my cart for over a year to pick up and read. I knew this was going to be epic, so I wanted to wait for the paperback before finally pulling the trigger. I tend to do better with bigger books in paperback form then big hardbacks. Just me. Well it took well over a year before the paperback showed up on the scene but by then I had moved on to other books and was between books on my Audible so I ended up getting that route instead. By then the hype was real in my head. I was a HUGE fan of Symond's book on the Battle of Midway. So I knew this would be like if Spielberg did a TV episode on one key battle in WW2, and then decided to do a whole trilogy on one theater (Oh wait he has). Yeah Symonds is that good. So how did it turn out. This is exactly what I thought it would be. But in a way that worked against it the end. Let me explain. The book was everything I wanted it to be except, I didn't really learn much new. The details are there, the personal accounts are there, and the authors frankness of the facts is there (which come across as opinion but let's face facts folks). What kept this from being a truly great book is I think it just didn't do anything that blew my mind. It is a GREAT book. But I think my expectations were too high. Too many fawning reviews, and his last book being so amazing the bar was set high. I recommend this book whole-heartedly especially if you want one big macro view of this portion of the war. But if you've already read a bunch of books on the war in the Pacific or Atlantic I just don't see what point there is here unless you are a total WW2 completionist that will read a 500 page book to learn one new nugget of information like MacArthur like grilled cheese sandwiches. Again, this is a great great book. Wonderful. Symonds is a master and I can't wait for his next book. But it's long and thorough while not bringing a whole lotta new to an already crowded subject.
• 
  Thom

  Very complete history of WWII across the oceans and seas, including considerations of two front wars, subsea and air power. Plenty of maps and photos supplement a text that is not at all dry.
  
  This book delivers a ton of evidence but doesn't completely answer the oft-asked questions - is air power sufficient? Were battleships worthless - or all ships, as Hitler came to believe? While not explicitly called out, this book does an excellent job of showing how technology improvements were also a key concern in the naval war.
  
  Added this to my reading list when it was released in 2018, not disappointed. Lives up to the hype received on the back cover. Took me some time to read it, and thanks to a liberal covid renewal policy at the library. Will acquire a copy for my reference shelf - and looking forward to reading more from this excellent author.
• 
  CoachJim

  This is an extraordinary history book about WWII. It focuses on the Naval aspects of the War and deals with the German, British, American, Italian, and French navies. A comprehensive and well-written account of the naval actions during WWII.
  
  I especially liked that he didn't make judgments about the actions of characters (MacArthur, Halsey, etc.) just tried to present the facts.
  
  The author has written previously about the Navy during the D-Day landings and the Battle of Midway so any slight to this 2 events are covered in th0se books
  
  I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of this War.
  
• 
  Stephen Butterworth

  On the surface it seems like a very dense read, but this book is engaging and before you know it, you'll be 50 pages in and eager for more. It truly is a wonderful overview of WW2 sea battles and strategy - yet it mixes perspectives of seamen and admirals to paint a great picture of what was going on.
• 
  José Nebreda

  Para hacerse una idea aproximada, y bastante general, de lo que fue la batalla en el mar durante la II Guerra Mundial.
• 
  Jason

  Excellent. Could not recommend more.
• 
  Billie

  This well written book covers the naval war of World War II between the years 1939 and 1945. It offers a global perspective of the major engagements. The author expertly tells about the mechanics of warfare on the sea and explains about the nature of the war. The entire naval history of World War II is recounted in one volume. This is a great addition on this subject for your library. I received a copy of this book compliments of Goodreads Giveaway for a review.
• 
  Al

  Craig Symonds, a lifelong Navy man, might be considered somewhat partial his own Service, but that partiality doesn't dim the brilliance of his survey of the crucial role played by Allied naval forces in World War II. He argues forcefully and persuasively that Allied naval superiority was one of the three reasons the Allied forces prevailed in the war (the other two being British determination at the beginning of the war and the resilience of the Red Army). Whether he's right about this or not doesn't affect the reader's enjoyment of this powerful and highly readable history of the naval war. His approach is chronological, and swings back and forth between the European and Pacific theaters. He focuses clearly on strategy, politics, and detailed descriptions of battles, blending them together beautifully. He uses contemporaneous quotes and lively prose, bringing historical events to life. Even WW II experts may learn new things from this book, and all can benefit from the author's judgments and insights. Highly recommended.
• 
  Susan Liston

  With war history I tend to gravitate towards personal stories or accounts of individual episodes, because military strategy and maneuvering tends to go over my simple little head. Or I am just too lazy to really concentrate on understanding it. No problems here. This book takes an enormous subject and renders it consumable for even the dimmer-witted. It was frequently, dare I say it, a page-turner. (I did pace myself, though, the incomprehensible destruction and loss of life get a little overwhelming in too large of doses....so much I had never heard of before, and apparently the public never heard about at the time.) Terrific book.
• 
  Matt Caris

  Solid one-volume history that balances strategic analysis and the individual narrative nicely. Only gripe is the editing, which was very poor. Any ambitious history book has mistakes; but consistent errors in naval-specific issues is a bad look for a naval historian. The R-class battleships weren't "limited to 28 knots," USS Wainright in 1942 was a destroyer, not a cruiser, etc. These may seem like nitpicks, but there are tons of examples like this. Again, errors happen, but routine errors of ship related facts, classes, specs, etc. in a book about naval history is a bit more than just routine typos. It feels a bit like it was rushed into print.
• 
  M Carmichael

  A very thorough account of the massive naval battles during WW2. As expected all the major sea conflicts are covered: Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Iwo Jima, invasion of Italy and ofcourse D-Day. A good overall account...almost too much to cover but manages to include fascinating accounts of submarine tactics, personality sketches of the major commanders and very good explanation of naval movements to understand the battles. Yet another book confirming the "greatest generation" indeed.
• 
  Bruce Cook

  I have read a lot about World War II, including not only accounts of the war and its battles, but biographies of those caught up in the conflict, like Churchill, MacArthur, Roosevelt and others. I have read a lot about the battles in the Pacific as well, many of which are sea battles. But I have never read an account of all of the sea battles and how they fit into the big picture of the war in general. This book is superb in giving insight into why sea battles were fought, why they were lost or won, strategically as well as tactically, and how the sea battles fit into the context of what else was happening in the war at the same time these battles were being fought, which also is telling as to why many were fought in the first place. It also addresses the importance of logistics and the fighting of a war on two water fronts - in the Pacific and the Atlantic - at the same time.
  
  The author makes clear what he thinks (and I agree) were the two worst and most consequential decisions made during the Second World War, both of which were made by the Axis powers. These were Hitler's decision to attack Russia in June 1941 and Japan's decision to bomb Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Both were very successful on a tactical basis, at least initially, but horrible decisions on a strategic basis. They set in motion the forces that led inexorably to the defeat of the Axis powers. Code breaking was also very important in leading to some early victories at sea, especially in the Pacific, such as at Midway. War is brutal and many gave their lives at sea during the war. I also recently finished reading the book Indianapolis, a saga of hardship and acts of heroism and cowardice in trying to survive under impossible conditions. In this book there is a mere footnote about the fate of the Indianapolis. So, in trying to cover every battle, the planning going into it, the politics involved and its effect on the overall war, much is necessarily left out, but what is left in packs a big punch and is very enlightening.
  
  My father served in the US Navy during World War II, on a troop transport trip. Thankfully he did not see major action, although troop transport ships were a target on all sides of the fight, principally in the Pacific. The war got so bad for the Japanese in the Pacific that they had a very difficult time moving troops. Reinforcements of ongoing battles were especially targeted. This book shows the courage and fortitude of exceptional leaders. It also shows the mistakes made. Such as Nimitz holding Mitscher back from pursuing the Japanese Navy during the battle raging on Saipan, and Halsey abandoning the Leyte landings to pursue a Japanese decoy, which could have been very disastrous, but was perhaps saved by the heroics of U.S. David ships going up against Japanese Goliath ships, basically sacrificing themselves. It is a wonderful story and beautifully told in this one volume account of the entire World War II at sea. Highly recommended.
• 
  J Earl

  World War II at Sea from Craig Symonds is a comprehensive (not exhaustive) history of the naval war in its entirety told chronologically. In other words, a section about the North Atlantic will be followed by a section on the Pacific if there were events that occurred simultaneously or one right after the other. So told as the war unfolded, which means taking into account what is happening in other parts of the world.
  
  The purpose of this book is to tell the story in a more realistic manner than the books that have focused on specific battles or theaters, not to break new ground with a new piece of information. Having one comprehensive narrative is breaking new ground and the failure to realize that is not the fault of either Symonds or the book. Those volumes are tremendously important because they are so focused but they also often lose sight of the big picture: the war as a whole. This volume places the war as a whole at the center and shows how the war at sea unfolded in all waters and for all navies. To criticize this book for not getting every bit of minutiae right is petty at best and empty chest-pounding at worst (and most likely). There are thousands of books with the minutiae, enjoy them, they are wonderful books. But this wasn't trying to be like them.
  
  I would recommend this to anyone interested in World War II, from introductory to historian. As an introduction it allows a person to have a perspective on the battles and events they have or will learn more about. For a historian, professional or amateur, this serves as a reminder that the war was not a collection of separate battles in isolation but very much a series of events that were influenced by previous and concurrent events and thus affected future events. We often, when looking at specific moments, lose track of the whole. This book puts the whole back in focus. In doing so, it will allow the more focused books to be better understood beyond the simple-minded regurgitation of numbers and gun size.
  
  Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
• 
  Brian Page

  Craig L. Symonds’ World War II At Sea: A Global History, published by Oxford University Press, is grand sweeping narrative history reminiscent of Macaulay. It’s brilliant. Nevertheless, interestingly, there are a couple of tiny, tiny, blips that I noticed in my area of specialized knowledge. The German crypto device was not simply that which “the Allies called the ‘Enigma machine’” but was actually the trade name of the device by Arthur Scherbius and its manufacturer, Chiffriermaschinen Aktiengesellschaft. Enigma was used to encrypt business communications long before the military got a hold of it. More than one early 20th century telegrapher made a fortune in stock speculation using knowledge pickup up at his day job before encryption arrived. Another nit involves the “Tora, tora, tora” transmission from Fuchida’s aircraft indicating they had achieved surprise at Pearl Harbor. Prior to having his radio operator send the radiotelegraph code symbols for tora ( ..-.. … ), Fuchida had already transmitted the code to initiate attack. There was no concern about breaking radio silence.
  
  Any reader of World War II At Sea should already possess a good understanding of WW II, especially the land campaigns. Even at 650 pages, covering the massive scale of naval operations precludes much emphasis on the wider land battles. I appreciated Symonds’ occasional parenthetical comments that, for example, note what’s happening in the ETO simultaneously some event he’s describing in the Pacific. It helps convey the view that people like Roosevelt, King, and Marshall had of the global conflict.
  
  Symonds’ ability to synthesize the hundreds of sources, both secondary and primary, into a coherent smooth narrative is simply breath-taking. That he could do this with such beautiful prose is amazing. World War II At Sea: A Global History is a joy to read.
  
• 
  Paul

  Symonds argues that the allied victories in WWII were due to British resilience early in the war that prevented Germany from declaring a complete victory in western Europe, Russian resistance during Hitler's march eastward during 1941 and 1942, and the ability of the American Navy to project force in two separate theaters in 1942 through the end of the war.
  
  Symonds covers naval operations beginning with German invasion operations in Norway and commerce raiding in the Atlantic (aimed especially at crippling Britain), and ending with the USS Missouri in Tokyo at the Japanese surrender. He outlines all the major operations and interweaves lots of personal histories and observations, the sum total of which make for a very lively narrative.
  
  His scope, while relying heavily on American sources, is fairly global. Summaries are necessarily inaccurate around the edges, but I think Symonds might summarize the national navies in a few sentences:
  
  Italy: hamstrung by severe fuel shortages and only occasionally strategically significant.
  
  Germany: hamstrung by Hitler's general disinterest and, later, by British cracking of Enigma traffic; relatively poor surface fleet; initially effective submarine fleet that was later subject to radar and sonar detection.
  
  England: very capable surface fleet that was somewhat too dependent on battleships and cruisers while light on carriers.
  
  Japan: very capable offensive navy that was somewhat negligent at defensive measures; there wasn't enough industrial capacity to replace ships as the war went along; American code breakers were able to interpret quite a lot of operational messages; later in the war, after it lost air superiority, it was hamstrung by American decimation of its supply convoys.
  
  USA: technologically inferior to the Japanese at war's outset, except in defensive technologies like onboard fire suppression and armored flight decks, it rode American industrial and technological prowess to victory.
  
• 
  Urey Patrick

  A global naval history of World War II, correlating events and developments across the globe over the course of the war while focussing the narrative on the war at sea, in all its many permutations. Most naval histories of World War II isolate themselves to particular battles, campaigns or venues. Symonds has written a naval history that covers, and correlates, all venues, campaigns and battles - at sea. There is little of the air (except naval air) and land war, except to set the stage for the aspect of the naval war at hand. It is an interesting, extensive and very readable work. Symonds does not delve into detailed accounts of specific battles and campaigns, presenting an overview of the progress of the war, strategies and tactics, as affected by, and as they affect, the naval efforts, on all sides. He makes excellent use of selected anecdotes and assessments that illustrate factors and events but without bogging down the progress of the overall War at Sea narrative. He discusses British, German, American, Japanese, French and Italian naval assets, tactics and employments interrelated with their relative strengths and weaknesses. He makes a strong case for the critically necessary elements of sea power, sea lift and sea control to the process of the war. Throughout, there are asides and digressions into torpedoes, convoys, submarines, amphibious concerns, ship construction and many other relevant (and interesting) sub topics that flesh out and substantiate the historical narrative and the underlying thesis that sea power was critical to winning the war for the Allies and a major factor resulting in losing the war for the Axis.
• 
  Will

  I’m not usually one to read military histories, having gotten burned out on the history of warfare after a slough of AP history classes in high school. In fact, this is probably the first serious account of military history that I’ve read since then.
  
  All that notwithstanding, I found this book to be surprisingly good, and genuinely worthwhile. As other reviewers note, the pedantic title and prodigious length is this book make it initially seem like a chore—but far from it! The author’s writing is vividly descriptive, emotionally nuanced, and evenhandedly historical. Unlike the dry, blow-by-blow accounts that one typically gets from military history, this volume focuses on the personalities, foibles, and mental states of the decision-makers who caused decisive moments.
  
  It is not, however, a fawning “great men” view of history—the decision-makers that it profiles are as often the officers of far-flung destroyers and submarines as they are the great strategists and politicians behind the lines. One gets a far more “real” view of the war in this way—as a collection of individual people opposing each other, armed with strikingly different objectives and terribly destructive technologies.
  
  In all, this is a truly refreshing way of reading history. Even more importantly, it is a means of realizing the genuine horror and chaos of war, not merely the rush of great victories. The book’s sympathetic view of combatants on all sides makes this an equal history of victor and vanquished.