In this episode Dr Sam Willis speaks with Professor Paul Kennedy about the fundamental change in the balance of naval power and the strategic landscape that occurred in the Second World War. By the end of the war, the Italian, German, Japanese and French navies had been all but eliminated; the era of the big-gunned surface vessel ended; and America had risen as an economic and military power larger than anything that world had ever seen before. Paul Kennedy is the J. Richardson Dilworth professor of British History at Yale most well known for his 1976 book The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. In this episode Paul brings his sweeping insights to the question of seapower in World War Two.

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