Accounts of history's greatest conflicts, detailing the command strategies, tactics and battle experiences of the opposing forces throughout the crucial stages of each campaign, By late 1943, the German armies on the Eastern Front were on the defensive, and the military situation was deteriorating rapidly. Hitler demanded that the German Kriegsmarine do what it could to help. Its bases in northern Norway lay astride the route of the Arctic convoys -the vital strategic link between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. In late December, the German battleship Scharnhorst put to sea, in an attempt to intercept and destroy the latest of these convoys, JW 55B. Unknown to Rear Admiral Bey, who led the sortie, the British were using the convoy as bait, to draw out Germany's last operational battleship. What followed was a running battle, fought in rough, freezing seas and near-constant Arctic darkness. On 26 December 1943, the Scharnhorst was finally brought to bay by the British Home Fleet, commanded by Admiral Fraser, and the battleship was eventually sunk with the loss of almost all her crew. This superbly illustrated title documents the end of the Kriegsmarine's Arctic battle fleet and the threat it posed to these crucially important convoys. Book jacket.