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of their operations). The dependence of the British economy on 
imported raw materials and also on the fact that without a supply 
of food products the British population would have been 
threatened with starvation made her especially sensitive to a naval 
blockade. And the German submarine forces delivered an attack 
of staggering force in this direction. In the war they sunk more 
than 11 million G.R.T. making up 65 percent of the British 
merchant marine, which was the largest in the prewar years. 
Great Britain managed to avoid catastrophe only owing to errors 
by the German command .. .”’* 
What is noticeable is Admiral Gorshkov’s obvious belief that, but 
for some errors, the Germans could have won unrestricted submarine 
warfare and his almost poignant regret that they made those errors 
(in a psychologically revealing slip, he refers to Entente merchant 
shipping as “the enemy’’). There is little doubt on whose side he 
is verbally refighting the Battle of the Atlantic of World War I and, 
as will be seen, of World War II. His sympathies are entirely on 
the side of the submarines. He goes out of his way to stress: 
“it became clear . . . that submarines, and not gunnery 
‘ships . . . represented the main threat both for the navies and 
the economies of the belligerents.”’ ° 
In his analysis of World War II, Admiral Gorshkov continues with 
his emphasis upon the central role played by submarine attempts 
to cut resource supply lines. Indeed, he places this task first in his 
order of priorities: 
“In our view, . . . the navies were charged with the following 
missions: To disrupt the sea and ocean communications of the 
enemy in order to undermine his military-economic potential 
[then follow five other main missions]. . . . Different types of 
naval forces played far from the same role in the battle of sea 
communications. Thus, of the total number of destroyed trans- 
ports, submarines sank more than 65 percent, aviation about 
20 percent, surface ships 6 percent and 8 percent perished on 
mines. . . . Germany sank 5,150 ships, whereby 68 percent of the 
destroyed tonnage was chalked up by submarines . . . the Amer- 
icans sank 2,143 Japanese ships, and 62.1 percent of the tonnage 
was accounted for by submarines. . . . From the cited figures 
it follows that in World War II submarines were actually the 
main forces in the battle with enemy shipping . . . [however, 
because of the battles on the Russian front] the appropriations 
allocated to the German Navy were reduced from 12.1 percent 
in 1942 to 5.6 percent in 1944, [whereas] more than 2,000 
British and American ASW combatants and specially configured 
merchantmen and several thousand aircraft were in operation 
against the German U-boats in the Atlantic . . . . For each Ger- 
man U-boat there were 25 British and U.S. warships and 100 - 
aircraft, and for every German submariner at sea there were 
100 British and American antisubmariners. A total of 6 million 
men (sic) were thrown into the antisubmarine war... . Yet, 
nevertheless, this significant numerical superiority of defenses was 
insufficient to force the attackers to fully curtail their active 
Adm. S. G. Gorshkov, ‘“‘Navies in War and in peace,” Morskoy Sbornik, No. 5, 1972. 
15 Tbid. : 
