Before you is the only foreign study on the Great Patriotic War in the sea and river theaters that has appeared in the 60 post-war years. In it, the author, based on combat documents of the former enemies of the USSR and Soviet military-historical literature available to him, described and analyzed the actions of the opposing fleets, showed the successes and miscalculations of the parties, and also revealed their causes. For a long time, the book by J. Meister, in which the actions of the Soviet Navy are the object of sharp criticism, was a ‘red rag’ for Soviet official historical science, and the author himself was considered one of the prominent falsifiers of the history of the Great Patriotic War.