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Atlantic Nightmare

The Longest Continuous Military Campaign in World War Ii

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About this listen

The battle that Germany should have won?

No other battle of the Second World War lasted longer than the 2,075 days of the Battle of the Atlantic. It raged from the opening day of the war in September 1939 until it ended almost six years later with Germany’s surrender in May 1945.

Vital supplies of food, fuel, and the raw materials needed by the Allies to wage war had to be transported in merchant ships in escorted convoys across the Atlantic Ocean, where they were at the mercy of German U-boats and warships. At first, many were lost. The fall of France in June 1940 gave the U-boats bases on the Atlantic coast, and U-boat production increased, allowing the Germans to now hunt in "wolf packs".

How seriously did each side take the battle? How far were they able to innovate their way out of problems they encountered? Who made the crucial decisions on how the battle should be fought? How was the crucial battle for intelligence won?

Atlantic Nightmare identifies seven pivotal areas of the conflict to answer these questions.

©2019 Lume Books (P)2021 Lume Books Armed Forces Military Naval Forces War Submarine U-Boat
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The flow of the story is paced well and presents the main antagonists in a good fashion. However, the narrator and editor need to address the very poor pronunciation of many names and locations, ends up being quite off putting.

Reasonable introduction to the Battle of the Atlantic

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It’s a great book, It actually feels like it adds something to an already well known subject.

However it is let down by the butchering of any name or place of non-english origin. Any audiobook on history will have some instances of this, and that’s okay as this is not easy for native english speakers. In this case however; nobody even tried, and that’s a shame.

I am impressed the way that the narrator manages to make it sound like he wrote the book himself; and he does that very well. The only thing frustrating an otherwise perfect listening experience is the continuous reading of the same names over and over again in a way that is only possible if you’re not familiar with the subject. This is not an just accent; saint nazéér is just not a place in france. I’m fine with an accent, but I would hope that publishers start paying for the very limited research needed to get this (at least mostly) right.

That said; it’s a good book and I would still recommend it. And with a bit of research the narration would’ve been great as well.

Good read

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It seemed to cover all aspects of the battle.
my Grandad having survived the whole war on convoys but only just having been torpedo and sunk by U 1232 on the 14th Jan 1945 show's that the U-boats hadn't given up even at that late stage.

Excellent all round account.

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This story is one of deadly enemies pitting wits , resources and guile against each other. I enjoyed this production in as much as I had some grounding in the subject. However, the pronunciation of certain names by the narrator left a lot to be desired

the deadliest battle

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The narrator has done ZERO homework on the correct pronunciation of very common names and places. For example, "Dönitz" [ˈdøːnɪts] which he continually mispronounces as "DONits." As a main protagonist, his name has to be read/said SO OFTEN and it really irritated this listener.

This spoils an otherwise good audiobook.

AWFUL narrator -mispronounces so many names.

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