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World War II SUBSCRIBE TO EXCELLENT WORLD WAR II VIDEOS The crisis of the Battle of the Atlantic came in early 1943. Dönitz, by this time commander of the German Navy, now had 200 operational U-boats. British supplies, especially of oil, were running out, and it became a question of whether Allied shipyards could build merchant ships fast enough to replace the tonnage that was being sunk. Mass production of Liberty Ships in US shipyards, however, helped to ensure that the Allies would win this race. 'By April the U-boats were clearly struggling to make an impact.' At sea, the situation was saved by aggressive anti-submarine tactics, by new technology - better weapons and radio, the long-range aircraft Liberator being equipped with centimetric radar - and, eventually, by a revived Ultra intelligence. By April the U-boats were clearly struggling to make an impact. Even worse, from Hitler's point of view, was the fact that Allied sinkings of German submarines began to escalate, with 45 being destroyed in the months of April and May. Dönitz, recognizing that the U-boat's moment had passed, called off the battle on 23 May 1943. This was not the end of the threat in the Atlantic, but thereafter it was greatly diminished. After his withdrawal, Hitler insisted on keeping troops on the Baltic coastline, even after they had been cut off by advancing Soviet troops, in order to maintain possession of a testing ground for new types of U-boats. By the end of the war, the Germans had indeed produced new types of 'super-submarines', the Types XXI and XXIII, and these would have been very dangerous had they been introduced earlier. The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the longest campaigns of World War Two, and it was proportionally among the most costly. Between 75,000 and 85,000 Allied seamen were killed. About 28,000 - out of 41,000 - U-boat crew were killed during World War Two, and some two-thirds of these died in the course of the Battle of the Atlantic. The stakes could not have been higher. If the U-boats had prevailed, the western Allies could not have been successful in the war against Germany. (Excerpt from BBC History)