"The British blockade won WW1?" Topic

Did Germany primarily lose the war because of the British naval blockade, which took the German population to the point of starvation by late 1918?

If so, to what extent was the offensive Allied war effort on the Western Front effectively unnecessary?

No

If the blockade was winning the war, who knew?
It only became apparent after the fact, if then.
Nobody was going to tell the Army to take it easy. The Navy has it all in hand.

Never mind the starvation and economic loses.
What would the war manufacturing have been if there was no blockade?

I think I'd be hesitant to pick any one thing that "won".

It was a ton of effort all playing together.

I think people knew it at the time. German poo pilots I. 1917 were saying they could not get coffee. Nor caster oil for the engines. People on the home front were telling those storefront how bad it was getting.

Hurt yes, decisive no.

Read Hew Strachan's book, first volume. Handles the subject quite extensively. The Germans were quite adept at coming up with artificial chemicals, and changing the ratio of artillery shell components and manufacturing techniques, etc. Many critical metals were obtained via the occupation of NE France, also. Austro-Hungary is another issue. The citizens did suffer, but not as much as is usually assumed.

The blockade was the decisive factor. That said, the constant pressure on the Western Front added a lot to the stress.

The Germans were good at enduring the hardships but there is only so much an army can take before it breaks. Keep in mind the blockade lasted years.

The blockade was also against the laws of war and something the UK doesn't want to tout.

I think I'd be hesitant to pick any one thing that "won".

It was a ton of effort all playing together.

What Weasel said -- WW1 was really a war of attrition. Trying to pinpoint one particular nation/army/battle/factor as the reason for winning or losing the war seems to be the wrong way to think about that war.

The Blockade undermined the winning coalition in Germany around the war. But without question the stalemate in the Western Front was crucially tied to its success by denying the hawks the victories that would counter-balance the effect of the blockade.

Now the question you should be asking is how tied was the blockade to the the military conditions that led to stalemate in the Western Front and made the German armies unable to win?

In many ways winning in the East at magnitude that the Central Powers did was bad for them. First: The Collapse of the Czarist regime and the subsequent general violence meant that their ability to use their newly conquered territories for the war effort was heavily curtailed. It would had been much better if the Central Powers had won, but the political situation in Russia had been stable.

Second: The fact that the massive victory in the East did not translate to an end of the war, added with the American entry, probably led a lot of people to become very war-weary. A feeling that even the best efforts of the Central Powers did not put a dent to the war-coalitions in the West.

Third: A lot of Left-wing Germans supported the War in 1914 due to the Russian bogeyman. Take that out and is it surprising that many people started wondering why are we enduring privatizations?

They really needed a massive military victory in the West in 1917 to keep the war going once Russia was out. They did not get it.

Hmmmmm… I thought the war was soon over once the Yanks joined in??

Hmmmmm… I thought the war was soon over once the Yanks joined in??

On 19th July, 1918, Honduras declared war on Germany. You may as well say that they were instrumental in bringing the war to an end, as Germany surrendered less than only four months later.

As others have said there was no single reason for the defeat of Germany.

The US entry into the war was a welcome one, certainly; and of course it made a difference. But they didn't exactly walk all over the Germans while suitably impressed, militarily exhausted Allies looked on from the sidelines in awe.

The Americans took heavy casualties due to having to learn from scratch the same lessons that their Allies had absorbed in the four years of war. The very successful battles in August 1918 against an increasingly worn down- yet still competent- enemy demonstrated that the British and French were by no means yet a spent force.

Yes, lots of bully beef sarmies will lead to blockage and when you are feeling blockaded you just want release so more effort with the straining and then release and relief.

All that ersatz butter and coffee would clear up any blockage.

Didn't the blockade give us the word ersatz?

Didn't win the war, but sure made it tougher to continue.

I'm down with the Honduras theory :-)

Germany lost because the pro-war German regime collapsed and was replaced by an anti-war regime which sued for peace.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
Civil unrest spilling over into outright revolution.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
Critical shortages of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
The Royal Navy's blockade.

That's how I get there.
I'd say a none-too-distant second factor would be; the collapse of Germany's allies.

(Edited to add) Also, Honduras.

Germany lost because the pro-war German regime collapsed and was replaced by an anti-war regime which sued for peace.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
Civil unrest spilling over into outright revolution.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
Critical shortages of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Factors behind that? Multiple.
If I had to pick which one I thought most significant?
The Royal Navy's blockade.

That's how I get there.
I'd say a none-too-distant second factor would be; the collapse of Germany's allies.

This feels very logical to me.

The Western Allies' dogged efforts to achieve victory on the Western Front between 1915 and 1918 via expensive frontal assaults on the German army is, paradoxically, starting to feel to me like the forerunner of the Allied air forces' efforts to secure victory by battering Germany's civil population into submission from the air between 1942 and 1945: very expensive and ultimately disappointingly limited in its results.

No comment……

The blockade on its own, no, especially as it was a long term strategy and without the growth of the BEF the war would have been lost before blockade effects were really felt.

You still need to defeat an occupying army on land, but given that shortly after Jutland, Scheer admitted to the Kaiser that the only way to try to force Britain to come to terms was resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, regardless of consequences, I'd say the blockade's double-edged nature is sometimes unappreciated, as is Jutland, as well as the impact of the war of attrition on the German army, even when on the defensive.

Those battles are 'disappointingly limited' redcoat, if your measure of success of a quick breakthrough, rather than a grinding down. Command and control hadn't caught up with technology and new weapons and tactics take time to develop, but the Western Front was brutal for both sides. The German army seemed to have several 'Black days' before August 1918.

"Civil unrest spilling over into outright revolution."

When that happened you also have Bulgaria knocked out of the war, the Ottoman Empire knocked out of the war, rumors that Austria-Hungary was going to seek a separate peace, the possibility of Romania re-entering the war and the possibility that by winter you'd have Entente forces on the German Empire's southern border. Units are being decimated by the Spanish flu. Manpower shortages on the front could only be made up by conscripting large numbers of workers from German defense plants, which in turn would affect war materials production. Also there is the pesky detail of Entente forces making steady gains on the western front. The collapse on the home front simply hastened what was already happening on the battlefield.

I am in the camp that the German defeat was due to a number of factors, including the success of the British blockade. If there wasn't a blockade Germany might have won, or at least ended the war with a peace among equals. The same is true of other factors though.

"Infantry on the lawn" = obvious, undeniable proof of German defeat in the field.

Obvious, undeniable proof of German defeat in the field = No "stab in the back" myth ever takes root.

But we know that it did.