Why Germany Lost the Battle of the Atlantic (WW2 Documentary)

Please visit Micahistory, it would mean a lot!

This often tends to be overlooked for flashier parts of history but is quite important

Interesting video, I never realised how important this theatre was

My late Dad was a wartime merchant seaman 1940 - 1946 and he said that up to mid 1943 he felt they had virtually no protection and only knew there was a submarine attack when ships were hit, but after then it was not unusual to see an escort vessel suddenly veer off and start depth charging thanks to Sonar.

FWIW I had the 'Das Boot' mini-series on VHS in German. Watched it many times and found something new in each viewing. Great war film. (My tapes are gone. Lost in a move. Same for the VCR to play them.)

Black May broke the Kreigsmarine. However, the writing on the wall was evident much earlier. In March of ‘41 U-boat aces Prien, Schepke, and Kretschmer were lost in a space of ten days. At that time the Allie’s lacked the escorts and air coverage as they desperately were trying to build up enough to cover all convoys.

The introduction of forward firing weapons like Hedgehog was very important. It enabled attacks while the u-boat was still being "pinged" by ASDIC. Before them, the u-boat would be lost to ASDIC for a little while and then depth charges were dropped on it's assumed position as the ship passed over it. This enabled canny u-boat captains to make evasive manoeuvres after they had been "lost", which often enabled them to avoid the depth charges and sometimes to escape.

I have a number of Battle of Atlantic novels. I'll have to look at the information again, but if UK shipping imports dropped below 2-3 million tons.

They would not have survived the war

Because they didn't start with 300 submarines, that's why.

In my area in the UK I knew 2 German submariners who were POWs and managed to stay after the war.

Awesome vid and an awesome channel! Keep it up guys :)

German POWs were treated better than African American soldiers 💯

Thank you for clarifying what the causes of the U-Boat decline were. It was always a little vague to me.

In 2020 Tom Hanks starred in a wonderful war movie about the convoy and torpedo Alley. The movie is called Greyhound, and is available on Apple TV.

One reason for the drop in U Boat success in Jan and Feb 1943 was due predominantly to the Atlantic storms in that period, which were some of the most severe, with 100 ft waves recorded. This made U Boat operation almost impossible.

I must admit, I'm slightly disappointed you didn't sneak any Das Boot footage in there just as a joke haha.
Loved the archival footage and photos from this one though. Great work.

I've had many questions over the years about the Germans attack on Allied intelligence which is something we rarely hear about. I had often wondered how the British use their knowledge of enigma in order to make their codes harder to crack because they definitely realize there was no uncrackable code. You mentioned that the Germans cracked the British Navy codes in November, 1941 and I'm wondering whether or not the British figured that out and if so when?

Im sorry but the Marshall's batons carried by the top German military leaders like Doneitz look ridiculous to me. Can you imagine Eisenhower walking around with one of those? Lol

1944 would see the peak size of the U-Boat fleet. With 100 boats at sea in June. A number they would never reach again. 1944 would also be the deadliest year, with 239 boats lost.

When did the Allies get the air bases in the Azores? I imagine that also helped close the "Air Gap" over the Atlantic?

And that's why you should ALWAYS watch to the very end of the video.

I read 'Black May' many years ago and would wholeheartedly recommend it. Its retelling of the Battle for ONS5 is a real page-turner.

It would be cool if you made a video about the German paratroopers(Fallschirmjäger). Thanks

The Allies won because they had superior technology and employed better tactics. Allied radar was more advanced than that which the Germans could ever imagine. Plus, superior overall Allied cryptography and computer science meant that the Germans stood no chance to win. The Allies didn't win simply because of numerical superiority. Whatever innovation the Germans could come up with the Allies would soon thereafter develop an effective countermeasure -- not so much so the other way around. Allied scientists and engineers topped German ones.

Had you huge advantage because the Brit’s broke the enigma machine. Bletchley park. Alan Turing. Legend.

Shame not to mention the involvement of things like WATU which helped drive the tactical innovation of the escorting forces.

Jesse, if you thought I wasn’t going to go straight to that Das boot techno video, you’d have been wrong. I wasn’t disappointed.

Well… I guess because the allies had way more production capability and men power and bombed the axis production capability into oblivion ? Just a guess

Always learn something, thank you!

Ah, I would like to point out a small criticism (great video overall though): An important contributo0r to the lass of overall skill level & experience of the U-Boat crews towards the middle war (late '42-'43) was the difficulties in training said crews due the the yearly restriction of their relatively safe training areas in the Baltic. It is of course, difficult to quantify the effect, but this was pointed out in Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War." I have to re-read much of it to find the exact reference.

It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage episode about German submarines that threatened support lines of allies below Atlantic Ocean water . Episode Introduction clearly explained how German naval hunter forces changed to hunted forces .thank you 🙏 ( RTH) channel for sharing this magnificent episode

Das Boot!

I love this channel. The amount of information and details jammed into 20 minutes, coupled with Jesse's clear narration is an excellent combination.

Can you do the battles of Guam 🇬🇺 tinien and saipan?

How you did the allies 1943 air war video. Perhaps you can do the same for the pacific with the Doolittle raid the b17 and b29 etc.

Hello

39th, 2 February 2024

Excellent video. However, you did not mention the effort made by the allies to kill the uboats in the bay of Biscay. Apparently a major cause of uboat sinkings...

You’ve spoken in previous episodes about how Germany’s chronic fuel shortages hamstrung them in other theaters; was that a major factor in the Atlantic? My understanding is that u-boats themselves were pretty fuel efficient; but could fuel shortage help explain why the Germans didn’t field more of them, why the Luftwaffe didn’t provide air cover, &c?

Hitler declared war on the US in 1941 not knowing The US manufacturing capacity would grow 3X that of Germany . Math decided the war.
The Allies would make more ships than the Germans could sink .

And they never concluded the allies knew when a attack was imminent due to pre battle reports?
The idea some people harbour of German invincibility is funny. And I couldn't care less

Not enough subs. Most resources were allocated to win a land war in the east and of the naval funding too much of it went to useless battleships that were only for show. And the breaking of naval encription (wrongly attributed by Doenitz to spies) didn't help neither.When confronted with a naval battle in the Atlantic to starve out Britain in a repetition of what happened in WW1 Germany was too short in the end.

Professional story-telling, music volume and music choice perfect, perfectly relevant images. A+ level video.

If you guys want to watch a great movie about the battle of the Atlantic, then I recommend Greyhound.

Vielen Dank, weiter so!

This sounds interesting seeing I used to live next door to Bletchley Park

So you’re telling me it wasn’t due to the capture of U-571