Was the "starve them out" strategy ever really feasible?

So whenever the Atlantic in either World War is brought up the German attempt to remove the British from the conflict by cutting off its shipping is mentioned. I'm wondering that even if the Kriegsmarine was more successful and effectively removed much of the exported materials and food to the Isles, would that have hurt the United Kingdom enough to drop out before Germany itself began losing? I'd imagine the situation is probably different between the 1910's vs. the 1940's. What are you're thoughts?
 
Germany had few other ways of bringing the war to the British, or cutting off the America supply line of goods. It was better then not doing anything.
 
I don't think it's a viable strategy in the long-run as unrestricted submarine warfare inevitably would drag the US into the war. Once the US Navy and Merchant Marine is involved there's simply no way the Germans can sink enough ships to make a difference.

At best the U-boats can cause a major headache for the Allied navies who have to spend more effort guarding convoys and going sub hunting, which means fewer resources are available for other theaters.
 
Huges & Costello's 'Battle of The Atlantic' takes fairly detailed look at that. The short answer is no. Doneitzs navy could not sustain the effort needed. To reach that requires several very unlikely things to occur.

1. Plan for a sort of naval war no one thought practical back between 1933-36. For technology that was either unproven or did not exist.

2. Superb cooperation between the German Navy and Air Force. For a campaign neither thought possible or likely.

3. The Brits & US make more mistakes than they did, & operate less flexiblly and with less imagination.
 
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World War 1: I'd argue it's possible, but it would have to be via conventional blockade (heavy raiding of coastal shipping capacity among the major elements) after driving the Royal Navy back and wittling away at it. This would require a few overconfident or daft moves on the part of the Admirality (Not exactly ASB, considering our First Sea Lord), most likely in the case of an early attempt to attack the High Seas Fleet close to the German coast that gives the RN some major lost hulls. If Germany gets naval predominance along the eastern seaboard of GB, than via a combination of cruiser raids and coastal bombardments on small towns they can disrupt internal logistics enough, create panic/tie down troops and guns that would otherwise go to France, and likely cause the Pound Sterling to lose enough value on forgein markets to at least produce localized spikes in food prices (and long term rises) in the southeast that will trigger hoarding behavior. Would that alone starve the Brits? No; but it could disrupt the general supply chain of the Entente enough to tilt the balance.
 
Yes. I think we could have been starved out. We weren't because the Nazi were unprepared for such a campaign, lacked the forces to impose a blockade and the allies developed technology and tactics faster than the Nazi did.

As an aside I suspect there is a different view between Americans and British contributors. They Americans don't seem to grasp the physiological impact of the battle of the Atlantic or how utterly reliant the UK is on SLOC. The key point is those SLOC don't have to be closed to force us out of a the war, just damaged to the extent that life becomes unacceptably hard for the civilian population ( aka rations cut and cut and cut) and leaves the military short of the resources ( basically fuel and ammo) needed to prosecute the war.

Most of the stuff we needed to carry on came to us by ship over the ocean. Target those key supply areas ( especially fuel) early enough and attack port facilities and ship repair facilities constantly and things are looking very different. if you can also knock out fuel concentration points and handling equipment you make things much harder and lead to more and more imports by ships

Thankfully the Nazis couldn't!


EDIT - WW1, I think, was a closer run thing particularity in early 1917. Had the Germans gone harder earlier they might have succeeded.
 
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World War 1: I'd argue it's possible, but it would have to be via conventional blockade (heavy raiding of coastal shipping capacity among the major elements) after driving the Royal Navy back and wittling away at it. This would require a few overconfident or daft moves on the part of the Admirality (Not exactly ASB, considering our First Sea Lord), most likely in the case of an early attempt to attack the High Seas Fleet close to the German coast that gives the RN some major lost hulls. If Germany gets naval predominance along the eastern seaboard of GB, than via a combination of cruiser raids and coastal bombardments on small towns they can disrupt internal logistics enough, create panic/tie down troops and guns that would otherwise go to France, and likely cause the Pound Sterling to lose enough value on forgein markets to at least produce localized spikes in food prices (and long term rises) in the southeast that will trigger hoarding behavior. Would that alone starve the Brits? No; but it could disrupt the general supply chain of the Entente enough to tilt the balance.

Problem is that while the naval imbalance in WW1 between GB and Germany isn't as great as it is in WW2, it's still basically 2:1 in total tonnage, 2.6:1 in personal and 1.7:1 in dreadnoughts*. So going on the offensive against that kind of imbalance is going to be really tough unless you have a way of removing it first.

Now you suggest an wild attack against the German High Seas fleet in the Baltic (i.e home protected waters), the reality is the RN doesn't need to do that to keep the Germans bottled up, so it really would be ASB to go and do it. I.e the German's not only have the disadvantage in numbers but in geography, and while the RN might be over confident it's unlikely go and fight battle in a disadvantageous situation that it doesn't need to. The battle of the Jut might not have been the RN's greatest moment but it still won simply because the KM couldn't get past them and stayed at home.

Also the other problem raids on the east coast in not going to cause major disruption to logistics of inflow of goods. because there are big ports all around the country. So say you take out Hartlepool, Liverpool is on the east coast etc
 
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So whenever the Atlantic in either World War is brought up the German attempt to remove the British from the conflict by cutting off its shipping is mentioned. I'm wondering that even if the Kriegsmarine was more successful and effectively removed much of the exported materials and food to the Isles, would that have hurt the United Kingdom enough to drop out before Germany itself began losing? I'd imagine the situation is probably different between the 1910's vs. the 1940's. What are you're thoughts?

By April of 1917, the UK had six weeks of food left and eight weeks of oil. U.S. entry immediately added 28 destroyers to the combined Entente total, making an effective convoy system possible as well as added an insane amount of merchant tonnage to transport war materials. Had the U.S. not entered, Britain would've been forced into starvation by June of 1917.
 
By April of 1917, the UK had six weeks of food left and eight weeks of oil. U.S. entry immediately added 28 destroyers to the combined Entente total, making an effective convoy system possible as well as added an insane amount of merchant tonnage to transport war materials. Had the U.S. not entered, Britain would've been forced into starvation by June of 1917.

Interesting fact.

Surely though, Britain is not a small place and prior to the 20th century, had fed itself for centuries. The Saxons and Normans for example probably weren't importing food, they were growing it locally.

I think it would be possible to grow enough food for everyone, using the land available?
 

longsword14

Banned
Had the U.S. not entered, Britain would've been forced into starvation by June of 1917.
It has to be noted, though, that dwindling food supplies do not completely shut down daily life. A table to compare average British diet projected into 1917 with other nations in WWI that had even worse food availability would be nice to have.
 
Huges & Costello's 'Battle of The Attic's takes fairly detailed look at that. The short answer is no. Doneitzs navy could not sustain the effort needed. To reach that requires several very unlikely things to occur.

1. Plan for a sort of naval war no one thought practical back between 1933-36. For technology that was either unproven or did not exist.

2. Superb cooperation between the German Navy and Air Force. For a campaign neither thought possible or likely.

3. The Brits & US make more mistakes than they did, & operate less flexiblly and with less imagination.

I think the best bet for German Navy in 1930's would have been to focus on a few long range submarines, AMC's, littoral warfare and coastal defense. AMC's would force distribution of British forces and convoys, littoral forces could support any possible ground offensives in Baltic and towards English Channel, they could also distrupt seaborne traffic on British East Coast. That's most one could realistically hope to achieve.

Much has been made on about how immense the cost of Battle of Atlantic was for the Allies, but how about Germans? U-boats sucked best manpower available, much raw materials and skilled industrial manpower. After enough investment to ensure convoying, was it really worth it? Of course Germany cannot win against UK & US anyway, so in analysis we should concentrate on SEP-39 - DEC-41.
 
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It has to be noted, though, that dwindling food supplies do not completely shut down daily life. A table to compare average British diet projected into 1917 with other nations in WWI that had even worse food availability would be nice to have.

IIRC, around WWII Britain managed to grow around 60% of its food, so we could probably assume a drop of around forty percent of the food supply. Maybe a little less, depending on if Britain had more farmers in 1917 than 1940.
 
Interesting fact.

Surely though, Britain is not a small place and prior to the 20th century, had fed itself for centuries. The Saxons and Normans for example probably weren't importing food, they were growing it locally.

I think it would be possible to grow enough food for everyone, using the land available?

The Saxons and Normans also lived in a time when the English population was under 2 Million.
 
There is a difference between what people believed and pure number crunching. The situation was over dramatized for political purposes ie to force use of Convoys through.
In WW2 food import was for morale purposes, on a pure calorie count, a very bland , very high fiber diet was possible given maximum use of land and all measures to curb waste.
WW1 was similar, if push came to shove, a basic diet could be sourced using UK + imports via the channel ( as France was still available ). The figures given of six weeks was six weeks usage at the time not six weeks if we go into maximum efficiency mode. For example convoying American grain at a higher priority to build stocks up at the expense of munitions would have caused a pause in offenses but solved the issue. The number of American escorts was only a small fraction of the number the RN had in home waters, it was just a question of forcing the Admiralty to use more of them for protecting merchantmen and insisting ships operated in convoy.
 
Thank you all for the replies. This is my first time posting a thread here so it was really interesting seeing everyone's different viewpoints. The general consensus I'm getting is that Germany had a much greater opportunity in WW1 then WW2 to force Britain into terms. Now in a First World War scenario would this have still required unrestricted submarine warfare, or could it have been done in more of a longer approach with less diplomatic outrage?
 
The problem for Germany is she never had both elements of seapower at the same time; in WW1 she had the fleet but was locked in the North Sea by geography, in WW2 she had free access to the open ocean but no fleet to utilise it.

I'd also point out that the problem is very different in WW1 and WW2: in WW1 Britain had a huge coastal shipping sector taking things from one British port to another, something like 1/3 of London's needs came directly into her docks from other parts of Britain, often trans-shipped from oceananic shipping. In the 20-30s this sector dried up as railways gained more capacity, so by 1940 this coastal shipping wasn't a major factor. This created opportunities in WW1 that didn't exist in WW2, closing the channel to through traffic wouldn't have starved the nation, but it would have caused some 1/4-1/3 of London's population to be evacuated to where they could be fed.

So in WW1 if Germany had managed to change their naval geography by taking a large part of the French channel coast and ports she would have had a good change to both partially starve London and Britain. Not a war winner, but a major contributor.
 
And then there is the idea in WWII the English never committed more to the Battle of the Atlantic than they had to.
Classic Exhibit #1 is usually to point out the desperate need for long range patrol aircraft, then point to the oversized Bomber Command full of conveniently long ranged aircraft. It is kind of revealing that things never got bad enough that Bomber Command never had its toys taken away.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
So whenever the Atlantic in either World War is brought up the German attempt to remove the British from the conflict by cutting off its shipping is mentioned. I'm wondering that even if the Kriegsmarine was more successful and effectively removed much of the exported materials and food to the Isles, would that have hurt the United Kingdom enough to drop out before Germany itself began losing? I'd imagine the situation is probably different between the 1910's vs. the 1940's. What are you're thoughts?

Easily in WW1 if done right. WW2 is harder.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
World War 1: I'd argue it's possible, but it would have to be via conventional blockade (heavy raiding of coastal shipping capacity among the major elements) after driving the Royal Navy back and wittling away at it. This would require a few overconfident or daft moves on the part of the Admirality (Not exactly ASB, considering our First Sea Lord), most likely in the case of an early attempt to attack the High Seas Fleet close to the German coast that gives the RN some major lost hulls. If Germany gets naval predominance along the eastern seaboard of GB, than via a combination of cruiser raids and coastal bombardments on small towns they can disrupt internal logistics enough, create panic/tie down troops and guns that would otherwise go to France, and likely cause the Pound Sterling to lose enough value on forgein markets to at least produce localized spikes in food prices (and long term rises) in the southeast that will trigger hoarding behavior. Would that alone starve the Brits? No; but it could disrupt the general supply chain of the Entente enough to tilt the balance.

You can do it with submarines and follow something close enough to cruiser rules to work. Some of the highest scoring U-boats captain followed these rules. The average RN response time to a distress call was 12-14 hours, plenty of time to let people get to lifeboats. And if a freighter does not stop on the warning shot, it can be sunk by the rules, as applied.

Or you can probably get there by not publicizing the USW and avoiding shooting at passenger liners.

You also need imperial Germany to consistently build subs, not do their start/stop program of OTL. The admiralty rightly fear all these subs would be obsolete after the war.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Problem is that while the naval imbalance in WW1 between GB and Germany isn't as great as it is in WW2, it's still basically 2:1 in total total tonnage, 2.6:1 in personal and 1.7:1 in dreadnoughts*. So going on the offensive against that kind of imbalance is going to be really tough unless you have a way of removing first.

Now you suggest an wild attack against the German High Seas fleet in the Baltic (i.e home protected waters), the reality is the RN doesn't need to do that to keep the Germans bottled up, so it really would be ASB to go and do it. I.e the German's not only have the disadvantage in numbers but in geography, and while the RN might be over confident it's unlikely go and fight battle in a disadvantageous situation that it doesn't need to. The battle of the Jut might not have been the RN's greatest moment but it still won simply because the KM couldn't get past them and stayed at home.

Also the other problem raids on the east coast in not going to cause major disruption to logistics of inflow of goods. because there are big ports all around the country. So say you take out Hartlepool, Liverpool is on the east coast etc

It is not ASB. Generally speaking it is the official war plan of the RN from the 1906-1914 time frame. Sometimes the plan was to invade Jutland or the German coastline. IOTL, the BEF moved to Belgium before the RN could get approval to execute its plans, and without an army, you can't invade. For whatever reasons, the Sea Lords did not feel the need to get its war plans approved by the cabinet prewar. My guess is the Sea Lords just assumed the PM would do what the Sea Lords recommended come war.
 
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