Imprisoned in the Caribbean

Winston Churchill recognized in his memoirs: ?The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.?

His fears would be realized in the Caribbean: By the end of the war, the Germans had sunk four hundred merchant ships in the Caribbean while only losing seventeen U-boats in what was called Operation Neuland.

Begun in 1942, the campaign sought to cut the supply lines from the Caribbean to the Allies with the intention of strangling their import-based economies. Colonies of various empires would be left to fend for themselves.

Dr. Ligia T. Domenech explores how the campaign hurt the people of the Caribbean, focusing on her native Puerto Rico. Learn about the principal targets of the German U-boats in the Caribbean, the United States? reaction to Operation Neuland, the shortage of essential goods, new industries that developed during the war period, and the blockade's long-lasting effects.

To this day, the public and even most historians don't know about the blockade's devastating effects and what it meant to be "Imprisoned in the Caribbean."