Starvation!

This is coolbert:

In my two previous blog entries, I have described how the German Navy, in World War One [WW1], attempted to use unrestricted submarine warfare in an effort to blockade the British isles and "starve" the British into submission.

[I quote freely here from the web site article by Holger H. Herwig, Department of History University of Calgary.]

This tactic, of course, did not work.

It should also be realized that in the three yearsof the war prior to the attempted German blockade of Britain, the British had successfully conducted a naval surface blockade of GERMANY!!

How successful was THIS blockade?

Consider this, courtesy of Al Nofi and the StrategyPage CIC:

"Only about 80 ships managed to evade the Allied naval blockade of Germany during World War I, while 11,888 vessels were successfully intercepted."

This is just an amazing statistic!! What the Germans were NOT able to do with submarines to the British, the British WERE able to do to the Germans with surface naval forces!!

And this blockade DID have an effect on the German society and populace at large. A society already experiencing austere measures from wartime privation and sacrifice to begin with.

Consider this:

"Imagine this country's sufferings after four years of blockade.
The stock of pigs slashed 77 percent; that of cattle 32 percent.
The weekly per capita consumption of meat reduced from
1,050 grams to 135; the amount of available milk by half.

Women's mortality up 51 percent; that of children under five 50 percent.
Tubercular-related deaths up 72 percent; the birthrate down by half. Rickets, influenza, dysentery, scurvy, ulceration of the eyes, and hunger edema a common occurrence. Malnutrition, smuggling,
black marketing, and hoarding widespread. And 730,000 deaths
attributed by the country's Health Office to the wartime blockade."

This surface blockade, among other wartime "measures", DID have a profound impact on the German populace. Did sap the strength of the German people to resist over a long period of time.

Especially acute is the health decline due to poor diet. A diet normally eaten was not available or scarce as the result of the surface blockade. The lack of a proper diet has the worse effect upon those already sick or weak or susceptible to illness. I would guess that most of those 730,000 estimated deaths were of people already sick in some manner to begin with. The blockade and the poor diet caused by same only exacerbated their condition.

Blockades of this type can and do have a severe deleterious effect. It is suggested that to target a population in such a manner for starvation may constitute a war crime.

One could easily wonder if the German Navy and the concept of starving Britain into submission was not only a rational response, but an emotional one as well. A tit-for-tat type of action??

"War is Hell" - - William Tecumseh Sherman.

coolbert.