دانلود کتاب پروژه های مخفی KRIEGSMARINE – طرح های نادیده نیروی دریایی آلمان نازی

It is undeniable that in the history of nations there are very specific turning points that shape their future actions and therefore their destiny. In the case of Germany, the series of events that led to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe could arguably have been stimulated by two fundamental aspects: the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles which, following defeat during the First World War, had placed severe limits on military activities and, secondly, the natural German inclination for technological sophistication that was generally superior to the average ‘state of the art’ within other industrialised countries. Thus, to take perhaps the most obvious example, the prohibition of building conventional military aircraft led to greater interest in training with gliders that resulted in superior knowledge in the field of aerodynamics and an accompanying search for non-traditional means of propulsion. These could be seen to culminate in the cutting-edge results in the fields of rockets and jet aircraft. However, clarity of vision did not always accompany such achievements in a nation where ‘personality politics’ frequently overruled military sense. For example, despite the enormous industrial potential that allowed high levels of production of fighter planes and armoured vehicles, the untimely pre-war death of a single Luftwaffe tactician (Generalleutnant Walther Wever) resulted in the German war machine paying scant attention to the potential role of strategic heavy bombers; aircraft such as the American B- 17, B-24 and B-29 or the British Avro Lancaster, all of which played a fundamental part in the victory of the Allies. Germany never possessed a navy comparable in size to those of Japan, Great Britain, Italy and the United States. An aim for parity with the French Navy could never be achieved and, despite early mistaken beliefs that ‘cruiser warfare’ by means of capital ships against British supply and trade lines would be possible for the Kriegsmarine, the disappointing use of what battleships and heavy cruisers the Germans did possess led, eventually, to the Kriegsmarine staking any chance of victory on U-boats. These underwater units, the famous U-boats, achieved a certain level of success, particularly against Allied merchant traffic but also periodically against British warships, perhaps most notably in the Mediterranean Sea. Though the U-boat service had been starved of resources so long that it never truly stood a chance of reaching the heights achieved by its forebears of the previous war, the U-boat success that had been achieved led to studies of other types of underwater vehicles, trailing in the wake of what had already been done by Germany’s Axis partners Japan and Italy.