México y la respuesta naval a la ofensiva submarina del Eje en la Segunda Guerra Mundial

Description

Mexico's role during World War II has been discussed from various points of view. The author argues that the main national contribution was in the War Effort of the Allies, helping to ensure the flow of raw materials, increasing manufacturing production, replacing the North American labor force with Mexican workers and with hundreds of thousands of Mexican volunteers in the United States armed forces. This article addresses naval topics, very little studied, in its two main aspects. The first was the expropriation by right of Angaria of more than 10 Italian and German oil tankers and cargo ships, which were occupied, protected, commanded and manned by members of the Navy Secretariat. Secondly, the Mexican navy suffered the sinking of five oil tankers and learned together with the United States and allied countries to combat the mainly German submarine threat. Starting in 1943, the practices implemented by the Mexican navy allowed there to be not a single sinking, along with the modernization of the naval forces and the Marine infantry. Thus, the Mexican Navy contributed decisevily, within its limitations, to the fall of Axis totalitarism.