Pictorial History of the German Navy in World War II

xiv, 367 pp. Includes more than 300 photographs. "This dramatic story of the German Navy, from the calm day in June 1919 when crews of the Kaiser's Imperial High Seas Fleet cheated the Allies of the spoils of war by scuttling their own ships in the British harbor of Scapa Flow to the surrender of the remnants of Hitler's World War II fleet in 1945. It contains vivid accounts--and dramatic photographs--of such actions as the entrapment and scuttling of the Graf Spee off Montevideo, Uruguay; the epic chase of the Bismark through the North Atlantic waters; the five-day rescue of survivors from the sinking of the Laconia, and the dramatic daylight dash through the English Channel of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen in 1942. The book charts the development of the Navy, describing the secret building programs that contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the struggles over policy that determined the size and composition of the fleet when war broke out in 1939."