Niklas Zetterling

A gripping tale of heroism - and doom - on the high seas....

The successes of the German Blitzkrieg in 1939-41 were as surprising as they were swift. Allied decision-makers wanted to discover the secret to German success quickly, even though only partial, incomplete information was available to them....

During the second half of 1943, after the failure at Kursk, Germany’s Army Group South fell back from Russia under repeated hammer blows from the Red Army....

While the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet, restricted for much of the period after 1919, was relatively small in comparison to the Royal Navy, it did possess a number of potent battleships....

At the end of September 1941, more than a million German soldiers lined up along the frontline just 180 miles west of Moscow....