World War Two's Secret Oil War: Germany's U-Boat Campaign in the Caribbean

In February 1942, five German U-boats under Kapitänleutnant Werner Hartenstein struck the refineries of Aruba, Curaçao, and Venezuela within a single hour, opening the World War Two Battle of the Caribbean — Germany's bid to sever the Allied oil and bauxite lifeline running through the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Over the next year, U-boats sank nearly 400 ships, accounting for more than a third of everything the Allies lost worldwide in 1942, and dragged Mexico into the war outright. This episode follows the campaign from Hartenstein's opening strike to the last hunted U-boat sunk off Haiti in 1943 — and the men, on both sides, that history forgot to name.