Rating: 
Summary: FINELY- WRITTEN AND WELL-RESEARCHED WW I NAVAL HISTORY
Review: Robert Massie won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography (PETER THE GREAT: HIS LIFE AND WORLD) so there are some credentials here. He also wrote DREADNOUGHT and the curious reader may wonder what is in this book and not in DREADNOUGHT and vice-versa because much of this book is about dreadnoughts, the "castles of steel" of the title. In CASTLES OF STEEL, Mr. Massie takes us through the naval history of WW I from the hunt for the German warship Goeben in the Mediterranean to the climatic (and anticlimatic) battle of Jutland to the defeat of the U-boats. It is quite a story and covers the political events in as much detail as the naval actions. It is fascinating to learn how the Allies did finally defeat the U-boats and exactly what caused America to enter the war. The battle of Dogger Bank is described as is the Gallipoli Campaign and Room 40. The personalities and lives of the major players are related including love affairs and rivalries. President Woodrow Wilson's role in trying to broker a peace before finally throwing in the towel is recounted. With 880 some pages there is plenty of detail and you can image the research that went into writing CASTLES OF STEEL. Mr. Massie certainly knows his ships and his writing is entertaining. The only complaint I have is Mr. Massie's irritating habit of revealing the outcome of a battle before the battle is over. Spoils the suspense a bit. Still, this is a finely-written and well-researched general history about a nearly forgotten but massive conflict.
Rating: 
Summary: The Grand Fleet Triumphant
Review: The first book in this saga, "Dreadnought," was the spellbinding tale of how Tirpitz and Fisher, repectively the two great architechts of the German and British navies, spent the two centuries preceding World War One amassing huge capital fleets made up of the new "dreadnought" battleship class. "Castles of Steel" tells the story of how those fleets came to clash.
For almost two years, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet rode at anchor virtually nonstop; two enemies staring each other off at opposite ends of the North Sea, awaiting the "Great Day" of long-awaited fleet action. Meanwhile, lesser craft battled in the periphery: thus the battles of Coronel and the Falklands, expertly related by Massie, involved large numbers of obsolete craft, while the British Navy's doomed attempt to force the Dardanelles was repulsed by Turkish howitzers fired from the clifftops and carefully-laid mines that floating down the straits.
The two great crises in the first part of this book are, first, the German naval raids on English seaside villages (which greatly hardened British popular opinion against Germany), and, second, the Dardanelles-Gallipoli campaign, in which the British and French failed to score a hoped-for knockout blow against Turkey - costing Winston Churchill his job as First Lord of the Admiralty. But the book's obvious climax arrives in 1916, when the inevitable fleet action occurs at the Battle of Jutland. The British dreadnoughts under Jellicoe stood their ground but sustained somewhat greater losses; the German High Seas fleet under Scheer made two passes at the Grand Fleet but then turned tail and headed back to base, where it stayed for the war's duration. Strategically, the British had held their own; the Kaiser was beaten at sea.
I could not conceive of a better or more thrilling narrative of Jutland. Massie is, however, equally at ease describing the monotony of life at the British Scapa Flow base, or the later 1917 anti-submarine campaigns. Just as the first book, "Dreadnought," unabashedly built up Jacky Fisher as its hero, "Castles of Steel" really credits the Royal Navy's victories - including the Allied triumph over unrestricted submarine warfare - to Lord Jellicoe. This is a view that accords with latter-day conventional historical widsom, but has not always prevailed in the battle accounts, because many historians, particularly in the first twenty years after Jutland, had credited favored Admiral Beatty, the cruiser commander, diminishing Jellicoe as over-cautious.
This is a first class narrative of one of history's greatest naval rivalries; whether or not the fate of World War One turned on armed or naval action will always be debated, but if you read this book, even a die-hard militarist will be tempted to join the navalist camp.
Rating:
Summary: Britannia Rules the Waves - Maybe
Review: The text opens with a review of the July 1914 diplomatic crisis and concludes with the scuttling of the German High Seas fleet at Scapa Flow. The author, Robert Massie, gives a concise narrative of the Great War at sea between Germany and Britain focusing on weapons and tactics together with covering the colorful/controversial military and political leaders. The well-written battle narratives (Jutland being the most famous) are most interesting as are the lesser battles in the Pacific and the Falkland Islands.
The German High Seas fleet was second only to the British Royal Navy with German dreadnoughts superior in armor and water-tight integrity while British dreadnoughts were faster and had larger guns. These differences were due to the Royal Navy tactic, advanced by First Sea Lord Fisher father of the dreadnought warship, which was to get there first, hit hard, and leave quickly; while Admiral von Tirpitz's, founder of the Imperial German navy, maxim was "....that a ship's primary mission (is) to remain afloat." Consequently, German warships, which were only slightly slower that the British dreadnoughts, could sustain multiple hits, remain afloat and continue to fight.
The concise narrative of the Gallipoli campaign espoused by Admiralty First Lord Churchill and grudgingly supported by The First Sea Lord Fisher is both interesting and well written. As originally conceived it was an all Royal Navy effort (infantry could not be spared from France) to force the Dardanelles, occupy Constantinople, enter the Black Sea, take Turkey out of the war, and reopen a supply route to Russia. The naval effort was halted after March 18, 1915 when ships were damaged by mines. Later information from American diplomats established that had the Royal Navy pressed on the fleet could have forced the straits leading to a "victory decisive upon the whole course of the war." After the naval efforts, attempted infantry operations were a dismal failure resulting in Churchill losing his cabinet post and ultimately the First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher leaving as well.
The Royal Navy fostered protests from neutral countries when they blockaded Germany. In response Germany initiated a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare resulting in the torpedoing of the passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915 with the loss of several lives including 128 Americans. Kaiser William wishing to keep America neutral suspended unrestricted submarine warfare. Now, Germany's only recourse was to weaken the Royal Navy. The Battle of Jutland, May 31,1916, resulted when the German High Seas Fleet tried to lure the British Grand Fleet into a surface battle trap. The author devotes five interesting chapters to Jutland. While the German battle fleet sank a greater number of ships than the British, they failed to seriously injure the Royal Navy, and at the end of the battle, the British battle fleet was positioned between the Germans and their safe home ports. The German fleet escaped during the night of May 31/June1.
Mistakes were made by commanders in each fleet. The author notes "Hipper (a German Admiral) made no mistakes at Jutland and was the only one of the fours senior admirals present to come away with his reputation enhanced." The book gives a succinct account of the political maneuvering and fall-out after Jutland. British Admiral Jellicoe ultimately lost his command of the British Grand Fleet becoming First Sea Lord in the Admiralty. The Germans faced a serious problem: unable to weaken the British Grand Fleet and reduce the blockade which was strangling Germany yet forbidden by the Kaiser to use their most effective weapon, unrestricted submarine warfare, political maneuvering and debate commenced. The major political issue for Germany was that returning to unrestricted submarine warfare would bring America into the war. Ultimately the German army high command, convinced the Kaiser that before America could become a factor Germany would win the war. Germany then resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. The text gives an excellent account of how Germany addressed this problem.
With the return of unrestricted submarine by the Germans, America entered the war. The author notes that the German gamble to win the war with an unrestricted U-boats offensive failed. By July 31,1918 more than a million American soldiers were in Europe with many thousands more arriving each month. The hand-writing was on the wall, "Germany could not win" so they responded to American President Wilson's peace offers and signed an armistice on November 11,1918. A critical requirement of the 11 November armistice was that German warships and submarines would be surrendered to the Allies and would be brought to designated British ports awaiting disposition. German Admiral Reuters, German commander of the surrendered fleet at Scapa Flow, and his officers "all felt themselves still bound by a standing order of the Imperial Navy that no German warship was to be allowed to fall into enemy hands." On 21 June 1919 Reuters gave the order, and the German navy scuttled their warships in Scapa Flow. On June 28, 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the German fleet was at the bottom of the sea, and the Great War was over.
This book by Robert Massie reads like a novel: smooth, interesting and always moving forward. He brings the political maneuverings and personalities of the major players in both Britain and Germany into focus while narrating the critical naval events of WWI. It's a lengthy work, 786 pages of text alone, but both the amateur and advanced student will find reading this work was worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent follow-up to Dreadnought
Review: This book proves to be a highly readable and entertaining account of the naval warfare during the First World War, mostly from the British perception. All the major battles fought between the British and Germans are clearly written and describes here as well as some of the more interesting characters of the naval scenes. The author appears to be firmly in John Jellicoe's camp. Although at first look, it might be a general history of war at sea, its not. This is more or less, a strict view from the British point of view with a few German bones tossed in. French naval activities are almost non-existence in this book.I think I read in one of the previous reviews about lack of maps. This I think is one of the major weaknesses of this book. Author is now writing military history book instead of policy oriented book of Dreadnought. In military books, you need to have maps of battles you are writing about. Somehow, I think Mr. Massie missed the ship on this one. It would have been nice if he included more photos as well, photos of men and ships that he was writing about. But overall, I found this book to be a great read and lucky of me, I do have other sources in my library that got the maps and photos. While I don't think reading Dreadnought is a mandatory thing before reading Castles of Steel, it would probably helped greatly if people did read Dreadnought first. The author provides interesting insights and the book proves to be well written and researched.
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