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

BlondieBC

Banned
The British still have assets and faith in the Empire to morgage for credit to hire out forgein shipping to bring in imports that early if, again, they're willing to handle their ledgers creatively. Cripples them in the longer term if the Sterling loses faith as a reserve currency and unit of value by playing fast and loose with the gold standard, but better than losing a major international war that leaves a hegemonic Germany with a chip on their shoulder as far as Whitehall is concerned.

We also need to be fair and realize a major shift in the u-boat effectiveness (the build program shift, if nothing else) will require time for German good descisions and British poor decisions to compound. So you likely don't see a major swing until mid-1915 or so, at which point the British still have a brain and make efforts to stem the loses even if they aren't effective or without drawbacks. With only realistic levels of huberius and bad judgement, I'd say Britain can hold out until very early 1918 before the pressure goes so high she's be truely starved into submission, though things will be bad by 1917 and I imagine Brest-Litovisk negotations of an equivalent will be used by the Western Entente to seek a general peace. That way, they can leverage concessions in the East to try to salvage better terms for themselves.

Yea, that is why I tend to start with POD's 5-15 years before the war. If you start with a September 1, 1914 POD of "lets do merchant warfare right", it is probably mid 1915 to early 1916 before I have all the kinks worked out. The impact will be at Verdun and Somme as the UK forces deal with substantially lower supplies than OTL. Winter 15/16 is not fun, but it is basically the German 15/16 food levels. Then depending on how effective the blockade, the UK might not break until 1918 on food. I have a strong belief that the first big impact show up on the battlefield in things like less artillery ammo, less machine guns, etc.

And we often talk about effectiveness. Big difference in 10% more effective U-boats versus 100%. Very POD specific outcomes
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Bigger question: will the farm worker be on a 1000 calorie deficit? If we use the German rationing system as an example, even if the law is being followed to the letter heavy workers in vital war industries were granted more calories than those outside the war economy. And the farmer may decide not to put all his product into the offical market either: hording for himself and family/friends of selling at above prescribed prices of without ration cards on the black market. This creates an imbalance in food availability the more of takes place: leading to more preventable deaths and increased social strife (especially in the urban centers)

Or will it be like Germany where human food went to the pigs due to some unintended pricing variances. Or "Will the Irish be given less food than the English?" Or will the UK just not send any food to France or Italy until all of the UK is fed. So many variables
 
Or will it be like Germany where human food went to the pigs due to some unintended pricing variances. Or "Will the Irish be given less food than the English?" Or will the UK just not send any food to France or Italy until all of the UK is fed. So many variables

They'll have to come and take it if they plan on doing that. British rule in Ireland was based on a pretty conditional legitimacy by this point. Imposing conscription or requisitioning food will see a mix of civil and military resistance.

If the British are pushed into a corner they'll certainly do it, but it will become a quagmire for them.
 
Yea, that is why I tend to start with POD's 5-15 years before the war. If you start with a September 1, 1914 POD of "lets do merchant warfare right", it is probably mid 1915 to early 1916 before I have all the kinks worked out. The impact will be at Verdun and Somme as the UK forces deal with substantially lower supplies than OTL. Winter 15/16 is not fun, but it is basically the German 15/16 food levels. Then depending on how effective the blockade, the UK might not break until 1918 on food. I have a strong belief that the first big impact show up on the battlefield in things like less artillery ammo, less machine guns, etc.

And we often talk about effectiveness. Big difference in 10% more effective U-boats versus 100%. Very POD specific outcomes

The trick with an earlier POD in which Germany is radically restructuring her navy though is that bleeds into the naval arms face of the first decade of the 1900's, which means the British will be watching and respond accordingly. The degree of butterflies there is something I dare not touch upon, though it probably pans out to the UK's advantage in any realistic scenario. A more wartime shift, when momentum and the demands of the conflict combine with time crunch to limit the ability of the UK to pivot towards developing counter U-boat measures and set up rational systems to limit the drawbacks in implementing them (or at least tweak plans elseqhere to take them into account)
 

BlondieBC

Banned
They'll have to come and take it if they plan on doing that. British rule in Ireland was based on a pretty conditional legitimacy by this point. Imposing conscription or requisitioning food will see a mix of civil and military resistance.

If the British are pushed into a corner they'll certainly do it, but it will become a quagmire for them.

Did Ireland grow enough food to feed itself? UK could just take all the food being shipped by sea.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The trick with an earlier POD in which Germany is radically restructuring her navy though is that bleeds into the naval arms face of the first decade of the 1900's, which means the British will be watching and respond accordingly. The degree of butterflies there is something I dare not touch upon, though it probably pans out to the UK's advantage in any realistic scenario. A more wartime shift, when momentum and the demands of the conflict combine with time crunch to limit the ability of the UK to pivot towards developing counter U-boat measures and set up rational systems to limit the drawbacks in implementing them (or at least tweak plans elseqhere to take them into account)

I used to think that too, before I did all the reading.

  • You can do it with doctrine and training along with some planning.
  • Adding extra budget to build extra SS probably lower tensions since the fleet will look more balance. i.e. less threating.
  • Having more SS will be what the UK expects of a "second class navy" and will lower tensions.
  • Diverting BB budget to CA, CL, DD or SS will greatly lower tensions.
  • Overseas base lower tensions since that is what is doctrinally correct for a SecondClassPower.

You are using a 1930 mindset to describe the 1910 Royal Navy actions. The UK will do exactly diddly squat if Germany greatly expands it submarine force.
 
Did Ireland grow enough food to feed itself? UK could just take all the food being shipped by sea.

I don't know the exact composition of Irish production (I believe Ireland produced a lot of beef) but Ireland was an agrarian economy that was a net exporter of food to Britain.
 
They have no readily available food supply. If you want, you could say it starts off as a famine before transitioning into starvation that winter, but the end result is the same.
Germany was blockaded for years without collapsing into starvation the way you seem to think Britain is going to be.And before you start claiming different farming structures, German agriculture had collapsed during the war. As the war entered later stages German agriculture's output had been halved, and the population was down to just over 1/3 of the calories they ate before the war. And yet, I don't see similar claims that Germany is going to starve at the drop of a hat (and they DID starve eventually, but only after this had been in place for some years.) It wasn't until even later than that that Germany actually collapsed.

Hell, by the time period being talked about, summer 1917, OTL Germany was down to 1000 calories a DAY on average.

What's more, frankly Britain is in a stronger position to weather this than Germany ever was. Not least because in order to starve Britain out Germany is going to have to piss of people it really can't afford to piss off. Exactly the way they did OTL while failing to starve Britain. And once that happens their goose is cooked.
 
Think people are getting a bit excited and magnifying the food shortage and effectiveness of U-boats in WW1. So a few facts;
As I tried to point out earlier but maybe not clearly enough, its grain supply that fell to six weeks not overall food. Potatoes for instance would be virtually all home grown, same with vegetables ( allowing for substituting calorie values ) and of course imports from France ( as in port of import from, not always food origin ) were not really effected much.
Convoys, when they came, reduced losses by around 90%, so from unsustainable to easily bearable, around 10 a month (U boats sank about 100 ships in convoys crossing the Atlantic after May 1917 in total, around 50 others are lost due to disaster or getting detached. Note that's both ways so some of the losses would have been in ballast going west ).
WW1 U boats are killers but not the deadly killers of WW2, they are in comparison , small, coastal , having limited underwater abilities and few torpedoes ( many kills were by deck gun ). With ASDIC and air coverage (a lot of blimps and sea planes ) , convoys were a lot harder to attack in WW1 ( Room 40 reading the U-boats orders most of the time did not help either )
 
Germany was blockaded for years without collapsing into starvation the way you seem to think Britain is going to be.And before you start claiming different farming structures, German agriculture had collapsed during the war. As the war entered later stages German agriculture's output had been halved, and the population was down to just over 1/3 of the calories they ate before the war. And yet, I don't see similar claims that Germany is going to starve at the drop of a hat (and they DID starve eventually, but only after this had been in place for some years.) It wasn't until even later than that that Germany actually collapsed.

Hell, by the time period being talked about, summer 1917, OTL Germany was down to 1000 calories a DAY on average.

Germany survived for years under the blockade largely because it was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, while Britain in both world wars was not. You've cited 1917 but the reason for the calorie drop then was because the 1916 potato harvest had failed due to crop blight; by early 1918 the average ration was back up to around 1,500 calories. Up until the aforementioned crop blight the food situation on the homefront was relatively stable and it was common for soldiers at the front to receive food from home.

What's more, frankly Britain is in a stronger position to weather this than Germany ever was. Not least because in order to starve Britain out Germany is going to have to piss of people it really can't afford to piss off. Exactly the way they did OTL while failing to starve Britain. And once that happens their goose is cooked.

Britain is in a worse position because even with rationing it was only capable of meeting about 60% of its own needs as WWII showed. The example of 1917 also further shows how dangerous the British position was because had the U.S. intervention been delayed, the British would've exhausted their food stocks.
 
Germany survived for years under the blockade largely because it was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, while Britain in both world wars was not.
Germany imported a third of its food before the war. It also had to import most of its fertilizer. By no measure was it self-sufficient. And 1,500 calories a day is still only about sixty percent of calorie intake before the war.

Britain is in a worse position because even with rationing it was only capable of meeting about 60% of its own needs as WWII showed.
Which was the same as Germany more or less, only Britain's agriculture didn't collapse to produce only half of what it had before the war the way Germany's had.
 
I used to think that too, before I did all the reading.

  • You can do it with doctrine and training along with some planning.
  • Adding extra budget to build extra SS probably lower tensions since the fleet will look more balance. i.e. less threating.
  • Having more SS will be what the UK expects of a "second class navy" and will lower tensions.
  • Diverting BB budget to CA, CL, DD or SS will greatly lower tensions.
  • Overseas base lower tensions since that is what is doctrinally correct for a SecondClassPower.

You are using a 1930 mindset to describe the 1910 Royal Navy actions. The UK will do exactly diddly squat if Germany greatly expands it submarine force.

I must admit I haven't done that particular set of reading; my perception on British Naval policy prewar relative to other powers was more colored quite a bit by hindsight.
 
Germany survived for years under the blockade largely because it was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, while Britain in both world wars was not. You've cited 1917 but the reason for the calorie drop then was because the 1916 potato harvest had failed due to crop blight; by early 1918 the average ration was back up to around 1,500 calories. Up until the aforementioned crop blight the food situation on the homefront was relatively stable and it was common for soldiers at the front to receive food from home.

Britain is in a worse position because even with rationing it was only capable of meeting about 60% of its own needs as WWII showed. The example of 1917 also further shows how dangerous the British position was because had the U.S. intervention been delayed, the British would've exhausted their food stocks.
Not quite sure where you are getting the facts for this from. By 1918 German was on the brink of revolution, now you can argue how much was down to poor transport and distribution but in urban areas food was an issue with riots aplenty.
In WW2 as I stated earlier, food imports were for morale, not to stop starvation. The 60% figure you quote would be peacetime need , bringing in all land to cultivation , swapping cash crops for food , converting pastoral land to arable ,reducing waste and implementing rationing, could on calories reach 100% of need.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Germany was blockaded for years without collapsing into starvation the way you seem to think Britain is going to be.And before you start claiming different farming structures, German agriculture had collapsed during the war. As the war entered later stages German agriculture's output had been halved, and the population was down to just over 1/3 of the calories they ate before the war. And yet, I don't see similar claims that Germany is going to starve at the drop of a hat (and they DID starve eventually, but only after this had been in place for some years.) It wasn't until even later than that that Germany actually collapsed.

Hell, by the time period being talked about, summer 1917, OTL Germany was down to 1000 calories a DAY on average.

What's more, frankly Britain is in a stronger position to weather this than Germany ever was. Not least because in order to starve Britain out Germany is going to have to piss of people it really can't afford to piss off. Exactly the way they did OTL while failing to starve Britain. And once that happens their goose is cooked.

Its a lot higher than that, way over a 1000. A 1000 a day is more like the Siege of Leningrad.

Edit: I know how they get that number, at least part of the error. They are taking the % reduction and multiplying by what an officer worker eats today (2000 calories or so). People used to eat roughly twice as much when they did manual labor all day.

I have added up the ration allowance by type of food. You get rations more like 1800 to 2400 for civilians, higher for soldiers. Still enough to cause excess fatalities but not 1000 calories. If you go below 1500 average, then people start dying fairly fast and you will go back above 1500 per person due to deaths in not too many months.
 
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Not quite sure where you are getting the facts for this from. By 1918 German was on the brink of revolution, now you can argue how much was down to poor transport and distribution but in urban areas food was an issue with riots aplenty.
In WW2 as I stated earlier, food imports were for morale, not to stop starvation. The 60% figure you quote would be peacetime need , bringing in all land to cultivation , swapping cash crops for food , converting pastoral land to arable ,reducing waste and implementing rationing, could on calories reach 100% of need.

You can't just snap your fingers and completely restructure the agricultural system of an economy like the UK. Even ignoring the major legal hurdles you'd have to overcome (The courts are going to be flooded and the Lords throw a fit, at minimum) to push such drastic measures on privately held land in a state with a strong represenative and judicial structure, but the practical issues of implimenting that change are going to cause major disruptions in the production cycle and send prices of just about everything swinging dramatically. For example, take converting sheep pasture to wheat land: your now-farmer don't have any of the equipment to grow wheat or any real knowledge or experience, his land is likely already marginal in terms of production, and now you have a bunch of sheep with nothing to eat. The price of wool and mutton will drop through the floor, than skyrocket, and your farmer is going to have to pay through the nose to get machinery that isent being produced due to wartime demands on heavy industry,with money he can't borrow due to government securities sucking up liquid capital, and probably the demand and price for fertilizers go through the roof as well due to a combination of a lack of livestock to provide... inputs and the need to heavily nutriate the land in order to grow less than ideal crops on it.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The minimum ration was 200 grams flour (728 calories per day), 5 pound of potatoes (247 calories per day) and 50 grams butter (50). There was about 4-7 other items on the list that brings up to the 1800 calories or so including things like milk, meat, fish,fish oil vegetables, other local starches. If you were a male worker in an important industry, you got more. Soldiers got even more.

And this has to do with how things were rationed. Some things were rationed nationally such as flour. Others were regional, others still were by cities. Only very calorie dense things are moved long distances compared to so the squash out of your garden. And a lot of stuff that was consider "not edible by humans" was eaten. It is how we learned to do 'partially hydrogenized fats'. Even in the reduced food conditions, people would not eat many of the fish oils, so they were hydrogenized.

While it has been a half decade, I did at one time find the actual ration list and add up the calories to make sure they came to the government numbers, and they did. And generally speaking, the government delivered the rations.
 
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