The British naval blockade "failed"?

[Jenisch]

Yeah Parsifal.



Other interesting excerpt of the same book, page 396:

In July 1940, in a desperate bid to unhitch the Soviet Union from its pact with Germany, Churchill sent Stafford Cripps, his new ambassador in Moscow, to a meeting with the Soviet dictator. To Cripps, Stalin explained with chilling clarity the logic that had motivated his agreement with Hitler eleven months earlier. The Soviet aim had been to upset the balance of power in Europe and in this the Hitler-Stalin pact had succeeded brilliantly. When Cripps replied that the Soviet alliance withHitler had in fact destroyed any kind of balance in Europe and that the entire Continent was now threatened by German hegemony, Stalin snapped back: 'I am not so naive as to believe the German assurances that they have no desire for hegemony, but what I am convinced of is the physical impossibility of such hegemony, since Germany lacks the necessary seapower.'

[psteel]

Tooze prewar material is much better than his wartime material, other than the racial warfare that he examines very well and sheds valuable light on. His interpretation of German war time economics is dependent on a western military perspective of ‘economic based strategic warfare’ which ran counter to basic German strategic thinking based on operational maneuver.

Nothing in the pre ‘Barbarossa’ time period was so ‘desperate’ that it could not have been resolved given a few more months of preparations by Hitler. Most of the effort seems to have been directed to deceiving Stalin about Hitler’s immediate intentions….which appear s to have succeeded. Everything else is pretty much ‘drama queen’ rhetoric since all this is based on Hitler’s cobbled-together ‘Blitzkrieg strategy’ in the first place. RN blockade had little to do with any of that and certainly not much impact on it either.

[parsifal]

Nothing in the pre ‘Barbarossa’ time period was so ‘desperate’ that it could not have been resolved given a few more months of preparations by Hitler. Most of the effort seems to have been directed to deceiving Stalin about Hitler’s immediate intentions….which appear s to have succeeded. Everything else is pretty much ‘drama queen’ rhetoric since all this is based on Hitler’s cobbled-together ‘Blitzkrieg strategy’ in the first place. RN blockade had little to do with any of that and certainly not much impact on it either.

Hi peter

Dont quite follow the preamble to this comment, but I would challenge that the RN blockade was not having an effect even at that early stage. There were certain imports that were simply unavailable in Europe, and for which there was a desperate need within Germany. Germany achieved a partial, if small compensation by the use of blockade runners at the beginning of the war. as the war preogressed the success of these blockade runner became less and less successful, though they were not entirely eliminated until the liberation of Paris.

However blockade runners were really an expedient, and a drop in the ocean that could not offset the loss of income from overseas trade. This did have an effect on the ability and efficiency of the german economy, or more correectly the economies of German and occupied territories. The economy of Germany was indeed different to those of the western democracies, because it was able to preserve itself by artificail;ly altering the terms of trade with the territories it had occupied, so as to heavily favour that of germany. But there was a long term adverse effect arising from that....german survival as achieved at the cost of wrecking all the other economies of Europe under its control At least some of that economic demolition was due to the RN blockade.

The other thing the blockade did was to inhibit coastal traffic. In western Europe this was particulalry true, with over 500000 tons of German shipping lost in 1941 alone. this kept supply and fortification construction in western europe on a constant drip feed, and inhibted the cvonstruction of the Atlantic wall. Not earth shattering, but an effect nevertheless.

[Tante Ju]

From what I recall of my history; the failure of the RN naval blockade in WW-I has more to do with the expectation that with AH/Germany cut off from its critical imports by Triple Entente; its war effort would grind to a halt in a matter of months [not years] bringing an end to hostilities. It was seen as the main reason the British invested so much in the Royal navy to complete the blockade against the central powers. Remember Germany was seen as up and coming power but in no way able to face down the combind powers of the Triple Entente powers. So when their war effort seemed to be uneffected by this blockade , that was termed a failure.

Same thing happened in WW-II up to a point. Western Allied strategy was based on assumptions that the Maginote line would hold back the Germans for years while the allied powers spent two years mobilizing and bringing their armies up to offensive action. It was fully expected that the combined allied bomber offensive would "bomb Germany back to the stonage" allowing the renewed allied powers to mount a grand offensive and put an end to the war. When this had not happened by 1941 it was termed a failure.

Allied naval blockade in WW2 had only marginal . There were a number of changes compared to WW2.

Germans were prepeared for a blockade, they had experience for it from WW1. Advancements in chemical industry allowed for independence from overseas imports of exotic/important raw materials like rubber or oil. Agriculture was prepeared to make the country self sufficient before the war, and in addition plenty of supply could be obtained from occupied, agricultural rich countries (Poland, France). Large investments were made into synthetic chemical products. This was a correct and concious decision made before the war, even if it went against traditional economic considerations for maximum profit/complementing advantages in production. Also, unlike WW1, for a large part of WW2 most of Europe was either friendly to Germany or neutral. Their own economic capacity was unhindered by own war effort needs, and the only real trade partner due to the Axis blockade of England was effectively Germany, which had the purchasing power. Rumanian oil, Turkish chromium, Hungarian bauxite and foodstuff, Finnish nickel, Swedish iron ore was available for the Germans regardless of maritime trade. The USSR was a major supplier of strategic items, and after the conquest of much of the USSR its rich lands remained so regardless. Trading could be also persued through neutral countries as proxies, like ie. Spain, though this was limited during the war.

For the above reason, a naval blockade was doomed to fail - Germany was simply not isolated from the rest of the European economy as it was in WW1. Shortages in critical supplies were only felt after the Germans effectively lost the war on the battlefields in 1944, and it prompted Finland, Turkey, Rumania to cease supplies for one reason or another.