The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous campaign of World War II, climaxed in 1943, when Germany came closest to interrupting Allied supply lines and perhaps winning the war. In March of that year, German U-boats scored their last great triumph, destroying nearly 150,000 tons of supplies and fuel.

Jürgen Rohwer, a World War II veteran of the German navy, is the leading German naval historian of the past fifty years. The author of hundreds of books and articles and professor emeritus at the University of Stuttgart, he lives in Germany.