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Título: VICTORY AT SEA. NAVAL POWER AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GLOBAL ORDER IN WORLD WAR II
Autor: KENNEDY, PAUL MICHAEL
Año: 2022
Género: HISTORIA Y MITOLOGÍA
Formato: EPUB

The present work is, first and foremost, a book about naval history; it tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, hard-fought convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea during World War II, and of the state of navies for a brief while before and after that. But as well as being a study of a mere ten years (1936–46) of maritime affairs, it is also a work that grapples with the larger story of the rise and fall of Great Powers in recent times. This is a naval tale, to be sure, yet in addition it is an analysis of power shifts in the international system at the time of the greatest hegemonic war in history. It is a study in the causes of historical change using the compressed time frame of a single decade, but this brief period was a very special one; at no other time in history did the naval balances of power change as much.

To be more specific as to the author's deeper intent: this work offers a novel attempt to trace and measure the dynamic growth of the United States of America, through the prism of its swift attainment of naval mastery at the close of the war years, to be the number one world power by 1945. The convoy struggles and the battleship shootouts described in detail here, then, are presented as the surface events of a larger struggle for world power; beneath and behind those naval campaigns, huge alterations were taking place in the international ordering of the leading countries of the globe. Perhaps only a few perceptive observers of the time saw it, but what was occurring was a seismic shift in the world order.

«Victory at Sea» is about warships and navies, from beginning to end, but it is also about that extraordinary shift in Great Power history.

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