Blockade of Germany (1939 - 1945)
Encyclopedia
The Blockade of Germany (1939–1945) also known as the Economic War, was carried out during the Second World War
by Great Britain, France and later the United States in order to restrict the supplies of minerals, metals, food and textiles Germany needed to sustain its war effort. While mainly consisting of a naval blockade, the economic war, which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic also included the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries to prevent them going to the enemy, and the widespread use of strategic bombing.
There were four distinct phases. The first period was from the beginning of European hostilities in September 1939 to the end of the "Phoney War" during which the Allies
and Axis powers both intercepted neutral merchant ships to seize deliveries en route to the enemy. The second period began after the rapid German occupation of the majority of the European landmass which gave them control of major centres of industry and agriculture. The third period was from late 1941 after the beginning of hostilities between America and Japan, and the final period came after the tide of war finally turned against Germany after heavy military defeats up to and after D-Day
, which led to a gradual withdrawal from the occupied territories in the face of the overwhelming Allied military offensive.
in 1914 Great Britain, as the pre-eminent world power was able to use her powerful navy, her geographical location, great wealth and empire to dictate the movements of the world’s commercial shipping and to some extent enforce her will on other nations. Britain dominated the North Sea
, the Atlantic Ocean
, the Mediterranean Sea
and, due to her control (with France) of the Suez Canal
, access into and out of the Indian Ocean
for her own and her allies' ships, while her enemies were forced to go the long way around Africa
.
When hostilities began the Royal Navy
enacted a naval blockade, and quickly swept German raiders from the world’s oceans and seaways while the Ministry of Blockade published a comprehensive list of items that neutral commercial ship operators were not to transport to the Central Powers
(Germany, Austria-Hungary
and Turkey). This included food, weapons, gold and silver, flax
, paper, silk, copra
, minerals such as iron ore and animal hides used in the manufacture of shoes and boots. Because Britain and France together controlled 15 of the 20 refuelling points along the main shipping routes, they were able to threaten any neutral who refused to comply with their demands with the withdrawal of coaling facilities – this was known as Bunker Control.
Enemy supply ships were sunk or captured while neutral ships were subject to being stopped en route to be searched with any 'contraband
' found being confiscated. A large force, known as the Dover Patrol
patrolled at one end of the North Sea while another, the Tenth Cruiser Squadron waited at the other. The Mediterranean Sea was effectively blocked at both ends and the huge dreadnought
battleships of the Grand Fleet waited at Scapa Flow
to sail out and meet any German offensive threat. Later in the war a large minefield, known as the Northern Barrage
, was deployed between the Faroes
and the coast of Norway to further restrict German ship movements.
Britain considered naval blockade to be a completely legitimate method of war, having previously deployed the strategy in the early nineteenth century to prevent Napoleon's fleet from leaving its harbours to attempt an invasion of England—Napoleon had also blockaded Britain. Germany in particular was heavily reliant on a wide range of foreign imports and suffered very badly from the blockade. Her own substantial fleet of modern warships was hemmed into its bases at Kiel
and Wilhelmshaven
by the Royal Navy and mostly forbidden by the emperor from venturing out. Germany carried out her own immensely effective counter-blockade during the First Battle of the Atlantic, her U-boat
s sinking countless Allied merchant ships and by 1917 almost swung the war the way of the Central Powers. But because Britain found an answer to the U-boat by introducing the convoy
system, the sustained Allied blockade led to the collapse and eventual defeat of the German armed forces by late 1918.
became Chancellor of Germany
and, following the Nazi re-occupation of the Rhineland
, the Anschluss
with Austria and the later occupation of Czechoslovakia
, many people began to believe that a new ‘Great War’ was coming, and from late 1937 onwards Sir Frederick Leigh-Ross, the British government's chief economics advisor, began to urge senior government figures to put thought into a plan to revive the blockade so that the Royal Navy – still the world’s most powerful navy – would be ready to begin stopping shipments to Germany immediately war was declared. Leigh-Ross had represented British interests abroad for many years, having embarked on a number of important overseas missions to countries including Italy, Germany, China and Russia, experience which gave him a very useful world wide political perspective. His plan was to revive the original WWI blockade but to make it more streamlined, making better use of technology and Britain’s vast overseas business and commercial network so that contacts in key trading locations such as New York
, Rio de Janeiro
, Tokyo
, Rome
or Buenos Aires
could act as a vast information gathering system. Making use of tip-offs provided by a vast array of individuals such as bankers, merchant buyers, waterfront stevedores and ship operators doing their patriotic duty, the Navy could have priceless advance knowledge of which ships might be carrying contraband long before they reached port.
Initially the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain was not keen on the idea and still hoped to avoid war, but following his appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938, which was widely seen as a stopgap measure to buy time, he too began to realise the need for urgent preparations for war. During the last 12 months of peace, Britain and France carried out a vigorous build up of their armed forces and weapons production. The long-awaited Spitfire fighter began to enter service, the first of the new naval vessels ordered under the 1936 emergency programme began to join the fleet, and the Air Ministry made the final touches to the Chain Home
early warning network of radio direction-finding (later called radar
) stations, to bring it up to full operational readiness.
A joint British–French staff paper on strategic policy issued in April 1939 recognised that, in the first phase of any war with Germany, economic warfare was likely to be the Allies only effective offensive weapon. The Royal Navy war plans, delivered to the fleet in January 1939 set out three critical elements of a future war at sea. The most fundamental consideration was the defence of trade in home waters and the Atlantic in order to maintain imports of the goods Britain needed for her own survival. Of secondary importance was the defence of trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. If Italy, as assumed also declared war and became an aggressive opponent, her dominating geographical position might force shipping to go the long way around the Cape of Good Hope
(South Africa), but it was hoped to contain her with a strong fleet in the Mediterranean. Finally, there was the need for a vigorous blockade against Germany and Italy.
, the original blockade was extended for an additional nine months after the end of the fighting in October 1918. This course of action, which Hitler called "the greatest breach of faith of all time", caused horrendous suffering among the German people and led to over half a million deaths from starvation
. Germany also lost its entire battle fleet of modern warships at the end of the war and although new ships were being built as fast as was practical – the battleships Bismarck
and Tirpitz
had been launched but not yet completed – they were in no position to face the British and French navies on anything like equal terms.
Greatly deficient in natural resources
, Germany's economy traditionally relied on importing raw materials to manufacture goods for re-export, and she developed a reputation for producing high quality merchandise. By 1900 Germany had the biggest economy
in Europe and she entered the war in 1914 with plentiful reserves of gold
and foreign currency and good credit ratings. But by the end of the war, though Great Britain also lost a quarter of its real wealth, Germany was ruined and she had since then experienced a number of severe financial problems; first hyperinflation
caused by the requirement to pay reparations for the war, then – after a brief period of relative prosperity in the mid 1920s under the Weimar Republic
– the Great Depression
, which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which in part led to the rise in political extremism across Europe
and Hitler’s seizure of power.
Although Hitler was credited with lowering unemployment
from 6 million (some sources claim the real figure was as high as 11m) to virtually nil by conscription and by launching enormous public works projects (similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal
), as with the Autobahn construction he had little interest in economics and Germany’s ‘recovery’ was in fact achieved primarily by rearmament and other artificial means conducted by others. Because Germany was nowhere as wealthy in real terms as she had been a generation earlier, with very low reserves of foreign exchange and zero credit, Hjalmar Schacht
, and later Walther Funk
, as Minister of Economy used a number of financial devices – some very clever – to manipulate the currency and gear the German economy towards Wehrwirtschaft (War Economy). One example was the Mefo bill
, a kind of IOU
produced by the Reichsbank
to pay armaments manufacturers but which was also accepted by German banks. Because Mefo bills did not figure in government budgetary statements they helped maintain the secret of rearmament and were, in Hitler's own words, merely a way of printing money. Schacht also proved adept at negotiating extremely profitable barter
deals with many other nations, supplying German military expertise and equipment in return.
The Nazi official who took the leading role in preparing German industry for war was Hermann Goering. In September 1936 he established the Four Year Plan
, the purpose of which was to make Germany self-sufficient and impervious to blockade by 1940. Using his contacts and position, as well as bribes and secret deals he established his own vast industrial empire, the Hermann Goering Works, to make steel from low-grade German iron ore, swallowing up small Ruhr
companies and making himself immensely rich in the process. The works were located in the area bounded by Hanover
, Halle and Magdeburg
, which was considered safe from land offensive operations, and a programme was initiated to relocate existing crucial industries nearest the borders of Silesia
, Ruhr and Saxony
to the more secure central regions. The great Danube
, Elbe
, Rhine, Oder
, Weser, Main
and Neckar rivers were dredged and made fully navigable
, and an intricate network of canal
s was built to interlink them and connect them to major cities.
While the armed forces were being built up, imports were reduced to the barest minimum required, severe price and wage controls were introduced, unions
outlawed and, aware that certain commodities would be difficult to obtain once the blockade began, deals were made with Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Finland and Yugoslavia to facilitate the stockpiling of vital materials such as tungsten
, oil, nickel
, wool and cotton that would be needed to supply the armed forces in wartime. Heavy investment was made in ersatz
(synthetic) industries to produce goods from natural resources Germany did have, such as textiles made from cellulose
, rubber and oil made from coal, sugar and ethyl alcohol from wood, and materials for the print industry produced from potato tops. There were also ersatz foodstuffs such as coffee made from chicory
and beer from sugar beet
. Germany also invested in foreign industries and agricultural schemes aimed at directly meeting their particular needs, such as a plan to grow more soya beans and sunflower instead of maize
in Romania.
The American journalist William L. Shirer
, who had lived in Berlin
since 1934 and who made regular radio broadcasts to the US for CBS
, noted that there were all kinds of shortages even before the war began. In contrast to Britain, where rationing came much later and was never as severe, such was the need for metal that park railings were already being taken away to be melted down for scrap, and Shirer found that there were no oranges in his hotel restaurant. On 10 August 1939 Nazi officials privately admitted to Shirer that, after the conquest of Poland, the other eastern Balkan states of Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia also had to be occupied, after which Germany would be self-sufficient and no longer need fear the Allied blockade.
On 24 August 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland which started the war, Germany announced rationing of food, coal, textiles and soap, and Shirer noted that it was this action above all which made the German people wake up to the reality that war was imminent. They were allowed one bar of soap per month, and men had to make one tube of shaving foam last five months. Housewives soon spent hours standing in line for supplies; shopkeepers sometimes opened otherwise non-perishable goods such as tinned sardines in front of customers when they were bought to prevent hoarding. The clothing allowance was so meagre that for all practical purposes people had to make do with whatever clothing they already possessed until the war was over. Men were allowed one overcoat and two suits, four shirts and six pairs of socks, and had to prove that the old ones were worn out to get new. Some items shown on the coupons, such as bed sheets, blankets and table linen could in reality only be obtained on production of a special licence.
Although the Nazi leadership maintained that the Allied strategy of blockade was illegal, they nevertheless prepared to counter it by all means necessary. In an ominous foreshadowing of the unrestricted submarine warfare
to come, the Kriegsmarine
(navy) sent out battle instructions in May 1939 which included the ominous phrase "fighting methods will never fail to be employed merely because some international regulations are opposed to them".
with the loss of 112 lives, leading the Royal Navy to assume that unrestricted U-boat warfare had begun.
Although France, unlike Britain was largely self-sufficient in food and needed to import few foodstuffs, she still required extensive overseas imports of weapons and raw materials for her war effort and there was close co-operation between the two allies. As in WWI, a combined War Council was formed to agree strategy and policy, and just as the British Expeditionary Force, which was quickly mobilised and sent to France was placed under overall French authority, so various components of the French navy were placed under British Admiralty control.
In Britain it was widely believed that the bombing of big cities and massive civilian casualties would commence immediately after the declaration. In 1932 the MP
Stanley Baldwin
made a famous speech in which he said that "The bomber will always get through
". This message sank deeply into the nation's subconsciousness, but when attacks did not come immediately, hundreds of thousands of evacuees gradually began to make their way home over the next few months.
Scapa Flow was again selected as the main British naval base because of its great distance from German airfields, however the defences built up during WW1 had fallen into disrepair. During an early visit to the base, Churchill was unimpressed with the levels of protection against air and submarine attack, and was astounded to see the flagship HMS Nelson putting to sea with no destroyer escort because there were none to spare. Efforts began to repair the peacetime neglect, but it was too late to prevent a U Boat creeping into the Flow during the night of 14 October and sinking the veteran battleship HMS Royal Oak with over 800 fatalities.
Although U boats were the main threat, there was also the threat posed by surface raiders to consider; the three ‘pocket battleships’ which Germany was allowed to build under the Versailles Treaty had been designed and built specifically with attacks on ocean commerce in mind. Their strong armour, 11 inch guns and 26 knots (51 km/h) speed enabled them to out-match any British cruiser, and two of them, the Graf Spee and the Deutschland had sailed between August 21 and 24th and were now loose on the high seas having evaded the Northern Patrol, the navy squadron that patrolled between Scotland and Iceland. The Deutschland remained off Greenland waiting for merchant vessels to attack, while the Graf Spee rapidly travelled south across the equator and soon began sinking British merchant ships in the southern Atlantic. Because the German fleet had insufficient capital ships to mount a traditional line of battle, the British and French were able to disperse their own fleets to form hunting groups to track down and sink German commerce raiders, but the hunt for the two raiders was to tie down no less than 23 important ships along with auxiliary craft and additional heavy ships to protect convoys.
At the start of the war a large proportion of the German merchant fleet was at sea, and around 30% sought shelter in neutral harbours where they could not be attacked, such as in Spain, Mexico, South America, America, Portuguese East Africa
and Japan. 28 German bauxite
ships were holed up in Trieste
and, while a few passenger liners, such as the New York, St Louis and Bremen managed to creep home, many ended up stranded with goods deteriorating or rotting in their holds and with Allied ships waiting to capture or sink them immediately they tried to leave port. The Germans tried various ways of avoiding the loss of the ships, such as disguising themselves as neutral vessels or selling their ships to foreign flags, but international law
did not allow such transactions in wartime. Up to Christmas 1939 at least 19 German merchant ships scuttled themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken by the Allies.
listed the types of contraband of war that was liable for confiscation if carried. It included all kinds of foodstuffs, animal feed, forage, and clothing, and articles and materials used in their production. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. In addition, there was Absolute Contraband, which constituted:
The Royal Navy selected three locations on home soil for Contraband Control: Weymouth and The Downs
in the South to cover the English Channel approaches, and Kirkwall
in Orkney to cover the North Sea. If ships were on government charter or sailing directly to Allied ports to unload cargo or passengers, they would not be detained any longer than was necessary to determine their identity, but if on other routes they were to stop at the designated contraband control ports for detailed examination. Ships proceeding eastward through the English Channel
with the intention of passing the Downs, if not calling at any other Channel port, should call at Weymouth for contraband control examination. Ships bound for European ports or en route to the North of Scotland should call at Kirkwall.
Three further British contraband inspection facilities were established at Gibraltar to control access into and out of the western Mediterranean, Haifa
at the other end of the Mediterranean in Northern Palestine, and Aden
on the Indian Ocean coast of Yemen
at the southern entrance to the Red Sea
to control access into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. To patrol the Mediterranean and the Red Sea access to the Indian Ocean, Britain would work together with the French, whose own navy was the world’s fourth largest, and comprised a good number of modern, powerful vessels with others nearing completion. It was agreed that the French would hold the Western Mediterranean Basin via Marseilles and its base at Mers El Kébir (Oran) on the coast of Algeria, while the British would hold the Eastern Basin via its base at Alexandria
. The Allies had practical control over the Suez Canal which provided passage between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean via Port Said
at the northern entry to the canal. The canal, built largely by French capital, at that time came under British jurisdiction as a result of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936
.
The work of the actual inspection of cargoes was carried out by customs officers and Royal Naval officers and men who, together with their ships, were assigned to Contraband Control for various periods of duty. The job of Control Officer required great tact in the face of irate and defiant neutral skippers, particularly Dutch and Scandinavians who had a long tradition of trade with Germany. Contraband Control patrols dotted all practical sea routes
, stopping all neutral ships, and making life very difficult for any who tried to slip by, forcing them into ports and laying them up for days before inspection, in some cases ruining perishable goods. Control ports were often very overcrowded, teleprinter
s constantly sending out cargo listings and manifests to be checked against import quota lists. Even for innocent ships, a delay of a day or two was inevitable; Contraband Control officers were under instructions to be extremely polite and apologetic to all concerned. Neutral captains often expressed utter astonishment and bemusement at the level of British advance knowledge of their activities, and soon realised it was hard to hide anything. Although numerous attempts were made to bypass the blockade, the net was extremely hard to avoid, and most neutral captains voluntarily stopped at one of the eight Allied Contraband Control ports.
's initially lukewarm reception to his plan to revive the blockade, but had in fact spent the time after Munich to continue his preparations regardless. Leigh-Ross recruited shrewd bankers, statisticians, economists and experts in international law and an army of over 400 administrative workers and civil servants for his new ministry. It was their job to compile and sift through the raw intelligence being received from the various overseas and other contacts, to cross-reference it with the known data on ship movements and cargoes and to pass on any relevant information to Contraband Control. They also put together the Statutory List – sometimes known as the 'blacklist' – of companies known to regularly trade with, or who were directly financed by, Germany. In mid-September the Ministry published a list of 278 pro-German persons and companies throughout the world with whom British merchants and shipowners were forbidden to do business, subject to heavy penalties. When shipments from these companies were detected they were usually made a priority for interception.
One lesson that was learnt from WW1 was that although the navy could stop ships on the open seas, little could be done about traders who acted as the middleman, importing materials the Nazis needed into their own neutral country then transporting it overland to Germany for a profit. Leigh–Ross spent the months before the war compiling a massive dossier on the annual quantities of materials the countries bordering Germany normally imported so that if they exceeded these levels in wartime, pressure could be brought on the authorities in those countries to take action. Diplomats from the Scandinavian nations, as well as Italy and the Balkan countries, who were also major suppliers to Germany, were given quota lists of various commodities and told they could import these amounts and no more, or action would be taken against them.
A ship stopping at a Control port raised a red and white flag with a blue border to signify that it was awaiting examination. At night the port authorities used signal lights to warn a skipper he must halt, and the flag had to stay raised until the ship was passed. Arrangements for boarding and examining ships were made in the port ‘Boarding Room’, and eventually a team of 2 officers and 6 men set out in a fishing drifter or motor launch to the ship. After apologising to the captain for the trouble, they inspected the ship’s papers, manifest and bills of lading. At the same time the wireless cabin was sealed so no signals could be sent out while the ship was in the controlled zone. After satisfying themselves that the cargo corresponded with the written records, the party returned ashore and a summary of the manifest, passengers, ports of origin and destination was sent by teleprinter to the Ministry. When the ministry’s consent was received, the ship's papers were returned to the captain along with a certificate of naval clearance and a number of special flags – one for each day – signifying that they had already been checked and could pass other patrols and ports without being stopped. If the Ministry found something suspicious, the team returned to examine the load. If part or all the cargo was found suspect the ship was directed to a more convenient port where the cargo was made a ward of the Prize Court
by the Admiralty Marshall who held it until the Court sat to decide the outcome, which could include returning it to the captain or confirming its confiscation to be sold at a later time and the proceeds placed into a prize fund for distribution among the fleet after the war. A disgruntled captain could dispute the seizure as illegal, but the list of banned goods was intentionally made broad to include "any goods capable of being used for or converted to the manufacture of war materials".
In the first four weeks of the war, official figures stated that the Royal Navy confiscated 289,000 tons of contraband and the French Marine Nationale
100,000 tons. The Germans responded with their own counter-blockade of supplies destined for Allied ports and published a contraband list virtually identical to the British list. All neutral traffic from the Baltic Sea
was to pass through the Kiel Canal for inspection, but with a fraction of the naval forces of their enemies, the action was more in defiance, but it was destined to have a big impact on neutral Scandinavian shipping, who among other materials supplied Britain with large quantities of wood pulp
for explosive cellulose and newsprint. Germany began by targeting the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish pulp boats, sinking several before Sweden shut down its pulp industry and threatened to stop sending Germany iron ore unless the attacks ceased. Germany then began seizing Danish ships carrying butter, eggs and bacon to Britain, in breach of a promise to allow Denmark to trade freely with her enemies.
Up to 21 September 1939 over 300 British and 1,225 neutral ships had been detained, with 66 of them having cargo confiscated. In many cases these cargoes proved useful for the Allies' own war effort – Contraband Control also intercepted a consignment of 2 tons of coffee destined for Germany, where the population had long been reduced to drinking ersatz substitutes. When the manifest of the Danish ship Danmark, operated by the Halal Shipping Company Ltd, was inspected, the recipient was listed as none other than Herr Hitler, President Republique Grand Allemagne! In the first 6 weeks of the war the average number ships stopping at Weymouth was 20, and while many were allowed to continue after a brief examination of the ships papers, out of 74 carrying 513,000 tons, 99,300 tons of contraband iron ore, wheat, fuel oil, petrol and manganese
were seized.
Orders were immediately placed for 58 of a new type of small escort vessel called the Corvette
which could be built in12 months or less. Motor launches of new Admiralty design were brought into service for coastal work, and later, a larger improved version of the Corvette, the Frigate
was laid down. To free up destroyers for ocean going and actual combat operations, merchant ships were converted and armed for escort work, while French ships were also fitted with ASDIC sets which enabled them to detect the presence of a submerged U Boat.
The massive expansion of ship building stretched British shipbuilding capacity - including its Canadian yards - to the limit. The building or completion of ships that would not be finished until after 1940 was scaled back or suspended in favour or ships that could be completed quickly, while the commissioning into the fleet of a series of four new aircraft carriers of the Illustrious class
, ordered under an emergency review in 1936 and which were all finished or near completion, was delayed until later in the war in favour of more immediately useful vessels. Great efforts went into finishing the new battleships King George V
and Prince of Wales before the Bismarck could be completed and begin attacking Allied convoys, while the French also strained to complete similarly advanced battleships, the Richelieu
and the Jean Bart by the autumn of 1940 to meet the Mediterranean threat of two Italian battleships nearing completion
.
To bridge the gap during the first crucial weeks while the auxiliary anti-submarine craft were prepared, aircraft carriers were used to escort the numerous unprotected craft approaching British shores. However this strategy proved costly; the new carrier HMS Ark Royal
was attacked by a U-Boat on 14 September, and while it escaped, the old carrier HMS Courageous
was not so lucky, being sunk a few days later with heavy loss of life. Ships leaving port could be provided with a limited protective screen from aircraft flying from land bases, but at this stage of the conflict, a ‘Mid Atlantic Gap’, where convoys could not be provided with air cover existed. Churchill lamented the loss of Berehaven and the other Southern Irish ports, greatly reducing the operational radius of the escorts, due to the determination of the Irish leader Éamon de Valera
to remain resolutely neutral in the conflict.
In the first week of the war, Britain lost 65,000 tons of shipping; in the second week, 46,000 tons were lost, and in the third week 21,000 tons.
By the end of September 1939, regular ocean convoys were in operation, outward from the Thames and Liverpool, and inwards from Gibraltar, Freetown and Halifax. To make up the losses of merchant vessels and to allow for increased imports of war goods, negotiations began with neutral countries such as Norway and Holland towards taking over their freighters on central government charter.
Two months into the war, the Ministry reintroduced the 'Navicert' (Navigational Certificate), first used to great effect during WW1. This system was in essence a commercial passport applied to goods before they were shipped, and was used on a wide scale. Possession of a Navicert proved that a consignment had already been passed as non-contraband by His Majesty's Ambassador in the country of origin and allowed the captain to pass Contraband Control patrols and ports without being stopped, sparing the navy and the Ministry the trouble of tracking the shipment. Violators, however, could expect harsh treatment. They could be threatened with Bunker Control measures, refused further certification or have their cargo or their vessel impounded. Conversely, neutrals who went out of their way to co-operate with the measures could expect 'favoured nation' status, and have their ships given priority for approval. Italy, though an ally of Hitler, had not yet joined the war, and its captains enjoyed much faster turnarounds by following the Navicert system than the Americans, who largely refused to accept its legitimacy.
In the U.S., with its tradition that "the mail must always get through", and where armed robbery of the mail carried a mandatory 25 year jail term, there were calls for mail to be carried on warships, but nevertheless the exercise – as with all such journeys – was repeated on the homeward leg as Contraband Control searched the ship again for anything of value that might have been taken out of Germany. On 22 January the UK ambassador was handed a note from the State Department calling the practice 'wholly unwarrantable' and demanding immediate correction. But despite the British Foreign Office urging the Ministry of Economic Warfare to be cautious for fear of damaging relations with the US, the British claimed to have uncovered a nationwide US conspiracy to send clothing, jewels, securities, cash, foodstuffs, chocolate, coffee and soap to Germany through the post, and there was no climbdown.
, the American government banned outright the sending of parcels through the US airmail. During this period, the Italian Lati Airline, flying between South America and Europe was also used to smuggle small articles such as diamonds and platinum, in some cases, concealed within the airframe, until the practice was ended by the Brazilian and US governments. The US travel agencies were eventually closed down along with the German consulates and information centres on 16 June 1941.
German preparations to counter the effects of the military and economic war were much more severe than in Britain. On 4 September a tax of 50% was placed on beer and tobacco, and income tax went up to 50%. For months previously, all able-bodied people in cities had by law to carry out war work such as filling sandbags for defenses and air-raid shelters, and it was now made an offense to ask for a raise in salary or to demand extra pay for overtime. On 7 September wide-ranging new powers were granted to Heinrich Himmler
to punish the populace for 'Endangering the defensive power of the German people'; the next day a worker was shot for refusing to take part in defensive work. The new legislation, frequently enforced by the Peoples Court, was made deliberately vague to cover a variety of situations, and could be very severe. In time it would lead to the death penalty for such crimes as forging food coupons and protesting against the administration. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. It had cut Germany off from 50% of her normal imports of nickel, cotton, tin, oil and rubber, and since the war's beginning she had also lost access to French iron ore, making her extremely reliant on Sweden for this vital material.
Germany now looked to Romania for a large part of the oil she needed and to Russia for a wide range of commodities. In fact, apart from allowing Hitler to secure his eastern borders and annihilate Poland, the Nazi-Soviet Pact brought Germany considerable economic benefits. As well as providing refueling and repair facilities for German U-boats and other vessels at its remote Arctic port of Teriberka
, east of Murmansk
, the Russians – 'Belligerent Neutrals' in Churchill's words – also accepted large quantities of wheat, tin, petrol and rubber from America into its ports in the Arctic and Black Sea and, rather than transport them over the entire continent, released identical volumes of the same material to Germany in the west. Before the war total US exports to Russia were estimated as less than £1m per month; by this stage, they were known to exceed £2m per month. From the outset, although they had formerly been hated enemies, large-scale direct trade took place between the two countries because both were able to offer something the other wanted. Germany lacked the natural resources Russia had in abundance, whereas Russia was at that time still a relatively backward country in want of the latest technology. By the end of October 1939 the Russians were sending large quantities of oil and grain in return for war materials such as fighter aircraft and machine tools for manufacturing in a deal valued at 150 million Reichmarks a year.
The Germans maintained an aggressive strategy at sea in order to press home their own blockade of the Allies. Lloyd's List
showed that by the end of 1939 they had sunk 249 ships by U-boat, air attack, or by mines. These losses included 112 British and 12 French vessels, but also demonstrated the disproportionate rate of loss by neutral nations. Norway, a great seafaring nation since the days of the Vikings had lost almost half its fleet in WWI, yet now possessed a merchant navy of some 2,000 ships, with tonnage
exceeded only by Britain, the USA, and Japan. They had already lost 23 ships, with many more attacked and dozens of sailors killed, while Sweden, Germany’s main provider of iron ore, had lost 19 ships, the Denmark 9, and Belgium 3. Holland, with 75% of her commercial shipping outgoing from Rotterdam
to Germany, had also lost 7 ships, yet all these countries continued to trade with Germany. Churchill was endlessly frustrated and bemused by the refusal of the neutrals to openly differentiate between the British and German methods of waging the sea war, and by their determination to maintain pre-war patterns of trade, but stopped short of condemning them, believing that events would eventually prove the Allies to be in the right. He commented;
The neutral commerce which Churchill found most perplexing was the Swedish iron ore trade
. Sweden provided Germany with 9m tons of high grade ore per year via its Baltic ports, without which German armaments manufacture would be paralyzed. These ports froze in the winter, but an alternative route was available from the Norwegian port of Narvik from which the ore was transported down a partially-hidden sea lane (which Churchill called the Norwegian Corridor) between the shoreline and the Skjaergaard (Skjærgård), a continuous chain of some 50,000 glacially formed skerries (small uninhabited islands), sea stacks and rocks running the entire 1,600 km length of the west coast. As in WW1, the Germans used the Norwegian Corridor to travel inside the 3 nautical miles (5.6 km)-wide neutral waters where the Royal Navy and RAF were unable to attack them. Churchill considered this to be the 'greatest impediment to the blockade', and continually pressed for the mining of the Skjaergaard to force the German ships to come out into the open seas where Contraband Control could deal with them, but the Norwegians, not wishing to antagonise the Germans, steadfastly refused to allow it.
Even so, by early October the Allies were growing increasingly confident at the effectiveness of their blockade and the apparent success of the recently-introduced convoy system. A convoy of 15 freighters arrived in British ports unscathed from Canada bringing half a million bushels of wheat, while in France more important ships arrived from Halifax in another convoyed group. The French claimed that of 30 U-boats sent out in Germany’s first major offensive against Allied shipping, a third had been destroyed, and Churchill declared that Britain had seized 150,000 more tons of contraband than was lost by torpedoing. In mid-October Adolf Hitler
called for fiercer action by his U-boat crews and the Luftwaffe
to enforce his counter-blockade, and warned the Allies of his new 'secret weapon'. Neutral ships were warned against joining Allied convoys, Scandinavian merchants were ordered to use the Kiel Canal to facilitate the German's own Contraband Control and the US City of Flint, which had rescued survivors of the Athenia became the first American ship captured as prize of war by the Germans, although the episode proved farcical and the ship was eventually returned to its owners.
s to drop them in British harbours, channels and estuaries too narrow or shallow for submarines to navigate. They ranged from small 200 lb (90.7 kg) mines dropped dozens at a time to large one-ton versions dropped by parachute on shoal
bottoms which were almost impossible to sweep, equipped with magnetic triggers activated by a steel hull passing above. Over the next few days many ships of all sizes blew up in waters close to shore, mostly by explosions under or near the keel
s although the waters had been swept. Six went down in the mouth of the Thames, and the new cruiser
HMS Belfast
was badly damaged at the mouth of the Firth of Forth
.
The British urgently set to work to find a defence against the magnetic mine and began preparations to recreate the Northern Barrage
, established between Scotland and Norway in 1917 as a safeguard against increasing U-boat attacks. In his war speech to the Empire, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
declared: "Already we know the secret of the magnetic mine and we shall soon master it as we have already mastered the U-boat", but shortly afterwards two more ships were sunk, bringing the week's total to 24. Evidence that at least part of Germany's attack was with illegal floating mines came when a British freighter was sunk at anchor off an east coast port, when two mines came together and exploded off Zeebrugge
, and when a large whale was found near four German mines on the Belgian coast with a huge hole in its belly. Over the weekend of 18–21 November six other neutral ships were sunk off the English coast, including a 12,000 ton Japanese liner.
Eventually, a method of de-magnetising ships, known as ‘degaussing’was developed, which involved girding them in electric cable, and was quickly applied to all ships. Other means of minesweeping were also developed, whereby the mines were exploded by patrolling ships and aircraft fitted with a special fuse provocation apparatus.
Angry at the British export ban, the German Government accused the British of having deliberately sunk the Simon Bolivar, lost on 18 November with the loss of 120 people, including women and children. They advised neutrals to shun British waters and trade with Germany, declaring that because of the defensive minefields and contraband control, British waters were not mercantile fairways subject to the Hague Convention regulating sea warfare, but military areas where enemy ships of war must be attacked. Prompted by Germany, all the neutrals protested, but the overall effect was to slow the flow of neutral shipping to a standstill. The Nazi leadership later grew bullish at the apparent success of the mine strategy and admitted they were of German origin, stating that "our objectives are being achieved."
In Berlin, William Shirer recorded in his diary that there were signs of a rush to convert currency into goods to guard against inflation, but that although the blockade now meant that the German diet was very limited, there was generally enough to eat and people were at that point rarely going hungry. However, it was no longer possible to entertain at home unless the guests brought their own food and though restaurants and cafes still traded they were now very expensive and crowded. Pork, veal and beef were rare, but in the early months there was still adequate venison, wild pig and wildfowl shot on estates and in forests. Coal was now very difficult to obtain however, and although sufficient crayfish were imported from the Danubian nations to allow an enjoyable festive meal, people went cold that Christmas. In fact, Germany produced large volumes of very high quality coal in the Saar region, but much of it was now being used to produce synthetic rubber, oil and gas. There were reports that Germany, which badly needed to raise foreign currency had been trying to export bicycles and cars to adjacent countries without tyres. The average German worker worked for 10 hours a day 6 days a week; but although he may have had enough money to buy them, most items were not available, and shops displayed goods in their windows accompanied by a sign saying 'Not For Sale'
Such was the belief in the supreme strength of the Royal Navy that some thought that the blockade might now be so effective in restricting Germany’s ability to fight that Hitler would be forced to come to the negotiation table. The British Contraband Control did allow one delivery to Germany, however – a large quantity of rat poison and half a ton of overripe Gruyere Cheese!
Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1940 there were still 60 German merchant ships alone in South American harbours, costing £300,000 per month in port and harbour dues, and Hitler eventually ordered them all to try to make a break for home. Up to the end of February 1940 about 70 had tried to get away, but very few reached Germany. Most were sunk or scuttled, and at least eight foundered on rocks trying to negotiate the way down the unfamiliar and hazardous Norwegian coast. The Germans tended to prefer to sink the ships themselves rather than allow the Allies to capture them, even at risk to those aboard. Such was the case of the Columbus, Germany's third-largest liner at 32,581 tons, and the Glucksburg, which ran herself ashore on the coast of Spain when sighted. Another, the 'Watussi', was sighted off the Cape by the South African air force and the crew immediately set her on fire, trusting the aircrew to bring aid to the passengers and crew.
That winter was harsh, causing the Danube
to freeze and heavy snow slowed rail transport, stalling Germany's grain and oil imports from Romania. Great Britain, having deprived Spain of her exports of iron ore to Germany entered into a deal to buy the ore instead via the Bay of Biscay
, along with copper, mercury and lead to enable the Spanish, who were on the verge of famine, to raise the foreign exchange she needed to buy grain from South America to feed her people.
, Ronald Cross said in a speech in the House of Commons:
Despite newsreel
s showing the awesome might of the Nazi Blitzkrieg
, which even her enemies believed, Germany was unable to afford a prolonged war. In order to buy from abroad without credit or foreign exchange (cash), a nation needed goods or gold to offer, but the British export ban prevented her from raising revenue. In WW1, even after two years of war Germany still had gold reserves worth 2.5m marks and over 30 billion marks invested abroad, giving her easy access to exports. By this early stage of WW2, her gold reserves were down to around half a billion marks and her credit was almost nil, so any imports had to be paid for by barter, as with the high-technology equipment sent to Russia or coal to Italy.
In February 1940 Karl Ritter
, who had brokered huge pre-war barter agreements with Brazil, visited Moscow and, despite finding Stalin an incredibly fierce negotiator, an increased trade deal was eventually signed between Germany and Russia. It was valued at 640 million Reichmarks in addition to that previously agreed, for which Germany would supply heavy naval guns, thirty of her latest aircraft including the Messerschmitt 109, Messerschmitt 110 and Junkers 88, locomotives, turbines, generators, the unfinished cruiser Lutzow and the plans to the pocket battleship Bismarck. In return Russia supplied in the first year one million tons of cereal, ½ million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, ½ million tons of phosphate
s, one million tons of soya beans and other goods. Although the Germans had been able to find numerous ways of beating the blockade, shortages were now so severe that on March 30, 1940, when he was gearing up for his renewed Blitzkrieg
in the west, Hitler ordered that delivery of goods in payment to Russia should take priority even over those to his own armed forces. After the fall of France Hitler, intending to invade Russia the following year, declared that the trade need continue only until the spring of 1941, after which the Nazis intended to take all they needed.
As more U-boats were commissioned into the German navy, the terrible toll on neutral merchant shipping intensified. After the first 6 months of the war, Norway had lost 49 ships with 327 men dead; Denmark 19 ships for 225 sailors killed and Sweden 32 ships for 243 men lost. In early March Admiral Raeder was interviewed by an American correspondent from NBC
regarding the alleged use of unrestrained submarine warfare. Raeder maintained that because the British blockade was illegal, the Germans were entitled to respond with ‘similar methods’, and that because the British government had armed many of its merchant ships and used civilians to man coastal patrol vessels and minesweepers, any British ship sighted was considered a legitimate target. Raeder said that neutrals would only be liable to attack if they behaved as belligerents i.e. by zig-zagging or navigating without lights. The paradox with this argument – as the neutral countries were quick to point out – was that Germany was benefiting from the very same maritime activity they were trying so hard to destroy.
On 6 April, after the sinking of the Norwegian mail steamer 'Mira', the Norwegian Foreign Minister Professor Koht, referring to 21 protests made to belligerents about breaches to her neutrality, made a statement about the German sinking of Norwegian ships by U-boats and aircraft. "We cannot understand how men of the German forces can find such a practice in accordance with their honour or humanitarian feelings". A few hours later another ship, the Navarra was torpedoed without warning, with the loss of 12 Norwegian seamen, by a U-boat which did not stop to pick up survivors.
A third of Dutchmen derived their livelihood from German trade, and Dutch traders were long suspected of acting as middle men in the supply of copper, tin, oil and industrial diamonds from America. Official figures showed that in the first 5 months of war, Holland’s imports of key materials from the US increased by £4.25m, but also Norway's purchases in the same area increased threefold to £3m a year, Sweden’s by £5m and Switzerland’s by £2m. Prominent in these purchases were cotton, petrol, iron, steel and copper – materials essential for waging war. While some increases may have been inflationary, some from a desire to build up their own armed forces or to stockpile reserves, it was exactly the type of activity the Ministry was trying to prevent.
American companies were prevented from openly supplying arms to belligerents by the Neutrality Acts, (an amendment was made on 21 September in the form of Cash and Carry
) but no restrictions applied to raw materials. During the last 4 months of 1939, exports from the USA to the 13 states capable of acting as middlemen to Germany amounted to £52m compared to £35m for the same period in 1938. By contrast, Britain and France spent £67m and £60m in the same periods respectively, and according to a writer in the New York World Telegram, exports to the 8 countries bordering Germany exceeded the loss of US exports previously sent directly to Germany.
But by far the biggest hole in the blockade was in the Balkans. Together Yugoslavia
, Romania and Bulgaria annually exported to Germany a large part of their surplus oil, chromium, bauxite, pyrite
s, oil-bearing nuts, maize, wheat, meat and tobacco. Germany also made big purchases in Greece and Turkey and viewed the region as part of its supply hinterland. Before the war, Britain recognised Germany’s special interest in the region and took a very small percentage of this market, but now, via the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation they used their financial power to compete in the Balkans, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, underselling and overbidding in markets to deprive Germany of goods, although Germany was so desperate to maintain supplies that they paid considerably over the normal market rate. As elsewhere, Germany paid in kind with military equipment, for which they were greatly aided with their acquisition of the Czech Skoda
armaments interests.
Germany was almost entirely dependent on Hungary and Yugoslavia for bauxite, used in the production of Duralumin
, a copper alloy of aluminium critical to aircraft production. The British attempted to stop the bauxite trade by sending undercover agents to blast the Iron Gate
, the narrow gorge where the Danube
cuts through the Carpathian Mountains
by sailing a fleet of dynamite barges down the river, but the plan was prevented by Romanian police acting on a tip-off from the pro-German Iron Guard
. Despite their declared neutrality, the politically unstable Balkan nations found themselves in an uncomfortable position, surrounded by Germany to the North, Italy to the West and Russia to the East, with little room to refuse German veiled threats that, unless they continued to supply what was requested, they would suffer the same fate as Poland. Romania, which had made considerable territorial gains after World War I, exported a large proportion of the oil from its Ploieşti site to Britain, its main guarantor of national sovereignty. Romania's production was about equal to that of Ohio
, ranked 16th producer in the US, then a major oil-producing nation. The largest refinery, Astra Română, processed two million tons of petroleum a year but, as Britain's fortunes waned from the beginning of 1940, Romania turned to Germany using its oil as a bargaining tool, hoping for protection from Russia. On 29 May 1940 it stopped sending its oil to Britain, and signed an arms and oil pact with Germany; Romania was soon providing half her oil needs. Britain was able to arrange alternative supplies with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Agreement, signed on 28 August 1940.
The British Supreme War Council met in London on 28 March to discuss ways to intensify the blockade. According to the influential magazine The Economist
in April 1940 the war was costing the UK £5m per day out of total government expenditure of £6.5 – 7m per day. This was during the phoney war, before the fighting on land and air had begun. The Prime Minister said that, while it was out of the question to purchase all exportable surpluses, concentration on certain selected commodities such as minerals, fats and oil could have a useful effect, and announced a deal for Britain to acquire the entire export surplus of whale oil from Norway. Later Britain signed the Anglo-Swiss Trade Deal, and negotiations for war trade agreements were also concluded with Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. Commercial agreements were negotiated with Spain, Turkey, and Greece, aimed at limiting material to Germany.
Chamberlain also indicated that steps were being taken to stop the Swedish iron ore trade, and a few days later the Norwegian coast was mined in Operation Wilfred
. But perhaps the most important measure taken at this time was the setting up of the Special Operations Executive
(SOE) by Winston Churchill and the new Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton
on 22 July 1940. Though very few people knew of it at the time, the new organisation, an early version of which carried out the attempt to dynamite the Iron Gate on the Danube, marked a new direction in the Economic War that would pay dividends later on, providing vital intelligence on potential strategic targets for the offensive bomber campaigns that came later in the war.
district.
The vast manufacturing powerhouse of the Ruhr, often likened to the 'Black Country
' in the Midlands of England, grew up either side of a medium sized river rising out of the hills of Westphalia
in Western Germany that flowed into the Lower Rhine near the Dutch border. More a loosely defined conurbation of heavily populated industrial towns and cities than an official administrative district, ready access to abundant iron ore, high quality coal and coke
together with Germany’s most extensive system of railways, canals and rivers enabled the Ruhr’s development into one of the worlds greatest concentrations of metal foundries, coke ovens, rolling mills, machine shops, railway engineering works, chemical and textile factories and crude steel production plants. To the west of the region lay the commercial and manufacturing centre of Dusseldorf
, with Europe’s largest and most important inland harbour nearby at Duisburg
. To the East sat the railway marshalling yards of Hamm
and the enormous Union Steel Works at Dortmund
which sat on top of the enormous reserves of the Westphalian coalfield. To the South was Cologne
, the largest city in the region and to the north was Essen
, the base of the world-famous Krupp
armament firm, which employed 100,000 workers. The Ruhr was also home to no less than ten synthetic oil
production plants, and dotted between the major centres, only fifty miles across were numerous associated satellite businesses engaged in complimentary operations, the whole mass producing a continuous hazy covering of industrial smog
which made precision bombing almost impossible. The Ruhr was by far Germany's most important region and was ringed with searchlights, flak cannons, strong night fighter forces and early warning systems. The head of German industry, Herman Goering had already declared "The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Herman Goering!"
Because of the smog and the lack of aircraft fitted for aerial photography
, the British were unable to determine how effective the raid had been; in fact the damage was negligible.
on 24 June 1940 greatly changed the conditions of the Economic War. Hitler assumed control over the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia (with the exception of Sweden and Switzerland) from the north tip of Norway high above the Arctic Circle to the equator on the border with Spain, and from the River Bug in Poland to the English Channel
. Germany established new airfields and U-boat bases all the way down the West Norwegian and European coasts.
From early July the German air force began attacking convoys in the English channel from its new bases and cross-channel guns shelled the Kentish coast in the opening stages of the Battle of Britain
. On 17 August, following his inability to convince the British to make peace, Hitler announced a general blockade of the entire British Isles and gave the order to prepare for a full invasion of England. On 1 August Italy, having now joined the war established a submarine base in Bordeaux
and its submarines, though more suited to the Mediterranean successfully ran the British gauntlet through the Straights of Gibraltar and joined the Atlantic blockade. On 20 August Benito Mussolini
announced a blockade of all British ports in the Mediterranean, and over the next few months the region would experience a sharp increase in fighting.
Meanwhile, in neutral Spain, who had still not recovered from her own civil war
in which over one million died and which was in the grip of famine, General Franco continued to resist German attempts to persuade him to enter the war on the Axis side. Spain supplied Britain with iron ore from the Bay of Biscay but, as a potential foe, she was a huge threat to British interests as she could easily restrict British naval access into the Mediterranean, either by shelling the Rock of Gibraltar
or by allowing the Germans to lay siege to it from the mainland. Although Spain could gain the restoration of the rock itself and French Catalonia by joining a winning side, Franco continued to play for time, expecting Britain to be beaten but not wishing to commit before the outcome was sure, making excessive demands of Hitler which he knew could not be satisfied as his (Franco's) price for participation, such as the ceding of most of Morocco
and much of Algeria
to Spain by France.
American opinion was shocked at the fall of France and the previous isolationist sentiment, which saw the introduction of the Neutrality Acts from 1935 onwards was slowly giving rise to a new realism. Roosevelt had already managed to negotiate an amendment to the acts on 21 September 1939 known as Cash and Carry
, which though in theory maintained America’s impartiality, blatantly favoured Britain and her Commonwealth
. Under the new plan, weapons could now be bought by any belligerent providing they paid up front and took responsibility for delivery, but whereas Germany had virtually no foreign exchange and was unable to transport much material across the Atlantic, Britain had large reserves of gold and foreign currency, and while U-boats would be a threat, the likelihood was that her vast navy would see the good majority of equipment safely delivered to port.
The US now accepted it needed to increase spending for its own defense, especially with the growing threat of Japan, but there was real concern that Britain would fall before the weapons were delivered. Despite the success in evacuating a third of a million men at Dunkirk and the later evacuations from St Malo and St Nazaire, the British army left behind 2,500 heavy guns, 64,000 vehicles, 20,000 motor cycles and well over half a million tons of stores and ammunition. To help in the interim, Congress agreed to let Britain have a million mothballed First World War rifles, stored in grease with around fifty rounds of ammunition for each. But, following the British attack on the French fleet at Oran on 4 July to prevent it from falling into German hands, the British were proving they would do whatever was necessary to continue the fight, and Roosevelt was now winning his campaign to convince Congress to be even more supportive of Britain, with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement
and with the approval of a British order for 4,000 tanks.
The Navicert system was greatly extended, introducing compulsory Navicerts and ships' warrants in an attempt to prevent contraband being loaded in the first place. Any consignment going to or from ports without a certificate of non-enemy origin and any ship without a ships Navicert became liable to seizure
The lost Dutch and Danish supplies of meat and dairy products were replaced by sources in Ireland and New Zealand. Canada held a whole year’s surplus of wheat, while the U.S. reserve was estimated to be the greatest in history, but Britain was suffering very heavy shipping losses as a result of expanding U-boat numbers. Virtually all Dutch and Belgian ships not captured by the Germans joined the British merchant fleet, which together with the tonnage contributed by Norway and Denmark added about one-third to Britain’s merchant marine, giving them a large surplus of vessels. To prevent the enemy gaining a route to acquire supplies, the occupied countries and the unoccupied (Vichy) French zone immediately became subject to the blockade, with severe shortages and extreme hardship quickly following. Although the Ministry resisted calls that the embargo be extended to some neutral countries, it was later extended to cover the whole of metropolitan France
, including Algeria, Tunisia and French Morocco.
and British Matildas, 5,000 artillery pieces, 300,000 rifles and at least 4 million rounds of ammunition. These were all available to be reconditioned, cannibalised or stripped down for scrap by the men of Organisation Todt
. Despite attempts to transport it away before capture, occupied nations' gold reserves were also looted, along with huge numbers of artworks, many of which have never been recovered.
Occupied countries were subjected to relentless, systematic requisitioning of anything Germany required or desired. This began with a vast physical looting, in which trains were requisitioned to carry to Germany all movable property such as captured weaponry, machinery, books, scientific instruments, art objects and furniture. As time went on other miscellaneous items such as clothing, soap, park benches, garden tools, bed linen and doorknobs were also taken. The looted goods were taken to Germany mainly by trains, which themselves were mostly kept by Germany.
Immediate steps were also taken towards the appropriation of the best of the conquered nation's food. Decrees were proclaimed to force farmers to sell their animals and existing food stores, and while in the beginning a percentage of each year’s crop was negotiated as part of the armistice terms
, later the seizures became much more random and all-encompassing. Next, a blatantly unfair artificial exchange rate
was announced (1 reichmark to 20 francs in France) and practically valueless 'Invasion Marks' brought into circulation, quickly inflating and devaluing the local currency. Later, German agents bought non-portable assets such as farms, real estate
, mines, factories and corporations. The individual central banks were forced to underwrite and finance German industrial schemes, insurance transactions, gold and foreign exchange transfers etc.
The Germans also gained the occupied country's natural resources and industrial capacity. In some cases these new resources were considerable, and were quickly reorganized for the Nazi war machine. The earlier acquisitions of Austria and Czechoslovakia yielded few natural resources apart from 4m annual tons of iron ore, a good proportion of Germany’s need. Austria's iron and steel industry at Graz
, and Czechoslovakia's heavy industry near Prague
, which included the mighty Skoda munitions works at Pilsen were, though highly developed, as heavily reliant on imports of raw materials as Germany’s. The conquest of Poland brought Germany half a million tons of oil per year and more zinc
than it would ever need, and Luxembourg, though tiny, brought a well organized iron and steel industry 1/7th as great as Germany's.
Norway provided good stocks of chromium
, aluminum, copper, nickel and 1m annual pounds of molybdenum
, the chemical element used in the production of high speed steels and as a substitute for tungsten. It also allowed them to continue to ship high quality Swedish iron ore from the port of Narvik, the trade which Britain tried to prevent with Operation Wilfred
. In Holland, they also acquired a large, high tech tin smelter
in Arnhem
, though the British, foreseeing the seizure, restricted the supply of raw tin leading up to the invasion, so the amount gained was only around a sixth of a year's supply (2,500 tons) for Germany.
But by far the biggest prize was France. German memories of the Versailles Treaty and of the turbulent years of reparations, food shortages and high inflation during the years immediately after World War I caused wealthy France to be treated as a vast material resource to be bled dry, and her entire economy was geared towards meeting Germany’s needs. Under the armistice conditions she had to pay the billeting costs of the occupying garrison and a daily occupation indemnity of 300 to 400 million francs. The occupied zone contained France's best industries, with a fifth of the world's iron ore in Lorraine, and 6% of its steel production capacity. Germany's heavily overburdened railway network was reinforced with 4,000 French locomotives, and 300,000 (over half) of her freight cars.
Unoccupied France was left with only the rubber industries and textile factories around Lyon
and its considerable reserves of bauxite, which because of the British blockade ended up in German hands anyway, giving her abundant supplies of aluminum for aircraft production. Along with the copper and tin she received from Russia, Yugoslav copper, Greek antimony
and chromium and its Balkan sources, Germany now had sufficient supplies of most metals and coal. She also had around 2/3 of Europe’s industrial capacity but lacked the necessary raw materials to feed the plants, many of them working at low capacity or closed because of RAF bombing, the general chaos and the flight of the populations.
From the beginning of the war, Germany experienced massive labour shortages and as time went by the occupied nations labour forces were virtually enslaved, either to work in factories to supply the Reich or sent to Germany to work in the factories or farms there. In Germany herself, there was a chronic shortage of men to work the fields and 30,000 agricultural labourers were brought in from Italy along with thousands of Polish slaves. The pre-war stockpiles of goods were running down and more ersatz substitutes were being used. In addition Germany remained cut off by the blockade from oversea supplies, such as copper from Chile, nickel from Canada, tin and rubber from the East Indies
, manganese from India, tungsten from China, industrial diamonds from South Africa and cotton from Brazil. Germany’s Axis partner Italy was now also subject to blockade and, heavily reliant on her for coal, became a net drain, but Hitler’s main problem was oil, around 12.5m tons of which were needed per year for total war
. Besides the Rumanian supply, his own synthetic industry produced 600,000 tons per year, and another 530,000 came from Poland. Russia was known to have enormous reserves of oil and gas but had chronically underdeveloped extraction systems, and though there was talk of German engineers going to reorganize them, it would take around two years before large quantities would begin flowing.
Prior to the start of the Blitz
(bombing of population centres), which eventually killed over 40,000 civilians but which gave British industry the breathing space it needed to provide the fighter aircraft and ammunition to hold off invasion, docks on the south coast such as Southampton
, Portsmouth
and Plymouth
were heavily damaged by German bombing raids; in response as much maritime traffic as possible was directed to the west and north. On 16 August the Luftwaffe
claimed to have destroyed Tilbury Docks and the Port of London
, which normally handled a million tons of cargo per week. To the Nazis' glee, the skipper of one Brazilian freighter stated that southern Britain was finished and nothing could save her, but although the damage was severe, ships from all parts of the Empire, South America and the Far East
continued to unload food and war goods for Britain and to load cargoes for export. With no passenger trade, and with all Scandinavian and continental sea traffic suspended, the port was far less busy than normal, but as many as 35,000 men still filled the warehouses with grain, tobacco, flour, tea, rubber, sugar, meat, wool, timber and leather every day throughout August 1940. British aircraft factories, led by the Minister of Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook worked around the clock to greatly increase production and prevent a collapse of the RAF. On 16 September Time Magazine wrote "Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook's fault. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line".
In an effort to force Britain into submission, the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts on factories, ports, oil refineries and airfields. By mid-August the attacks were becoming increasingly co-ordinated and successful, and the RAF was losing more fighters and pilots than could be replaced. On 24 August, at the height of the battle, bombers sent to attack Fighter Command installations and oil refineries on the outskirts of London killed civilians in houses in central London through a navigational error, although many believed the bombing was deliberate. In spite of opposition from the air ministry, Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin
in retaliation, and that night the German capital was bombed for the first time, although there were no fatalities. Britons were pleased as it showed Britain was able to hit back, and the next day Berliners were reported to be stunned and disillusioned; Goering, who had said it would never happen, was ridiculed by both sides. When the bombing continued, the Nazi leadership ordered the Luftwaffe to begin bombing British cities in the belief that this would damage civilian morale so much that Britain would sue for peace, a major error.
The Battle of Britain
raged throughout August and September 1940, but the Luftwaffe was unable to destroy the RAF to gain the air supremacy which was a prerequisite for the invasion. At night, aircraft of Bomber Command
and Coastal Command flew the short distance across the channel and attacked the shipping and barges which were being assembled in the ports at Antwerp, Ostend
, Calais
and Boulogne to carry the invasion force across, eventually destroying over 20% of the fleet. Finally, on 12 October, the invasion was called off until spring 1941, although British cities, notably London, Birmingham
and Liverpool
continued to be heavily bombed for another 6 months.
While Denmark, the 'Larder of Europe', produced massive quantities of bacon, eggs and dairy products, this was heavily dependent on imports of fertilizer from Britain. Before very long, livestock was being slaughtered because of a lack of fodder
– the pigs so undernourished that they broke their legs walking to slaughter. Danish farmers paid large taxes, and merchant sailors were driven to work as labourers in Germany because of the blockade. Likewise Holland, with its 2.7m cattle, 650,000 sheep, half a million pigs, and huge surplus of butter, cheese, meat, milk, margarine and vegetable oils, depended on Britain for its animal fodder. Much of the arable land had been ruined by the opening the dikes during the Nazi invasion and many farmers refused to sell the Germans cattle, but soon there was such a meat shortage that the authorities had to confiscate bootlegged dog-meat sausages. Because the Germans forced Dutch fishermen to return to port before dark there was also a shortage of fish, and although Dutch overseas possessions were among the world's main providers of tobacco, it could not breach the blockade. Steel, iron and wood were so hard to obtain that the work of rebuilding Rotterdam
came to a standstill.
Life was particularly harsh in Poland. Cholera
broke out in concentration camps, and mass public executions added to the estimated 3 million Poles already killed during the invasion. Thousands had already died of cold and from starvation during the first winter of the war and with its sugar beet, rye
and wheat systematically stripped away, and with few farmers left on the land, conditions quickly grew worse. Norway, with extensive mountainous areas relied on imports for half its food and all its coal; shortages and hunger quickly effected Belgium which, despite being densely populated and producing only half its needs, was still subjected to the widespread confiscation of food.
France, normally able to feed itself, now had an extra 5 million refugees from other countries to care for. When the Germans stripped the farms of half a million horses and mules for their army, causing a large drop in agricultural productivity, they also took 11% of remaining food stocks, a million tons. The Germans held 1,500,000 French prisoners of war as hostages, feeding them on bread and soup so thin that grass was added to bulk it up, and most items were now heavily rationed, with a worker entitled to a daily diet of only 1,200 calories; many people rode bicycles into the countryside during the weekend to scavenge for food. German soldiers got double rations, but this was still only a modest daily diet, similar to that served to inmates in American prisons.
The British blockade of the Mediterranean immediately cut Italy off from 80% of its imports. Essential items such as pasta
, flour and rice were severely rationed, leading to riots, and any farmer withholding his crops from compulsory storage could be imprisoned for a year. Following their disastrous invasion of Greece from occupied Albania on 28 October, Italian reserves of rubber, cotton, wool and other commodities began to dwindle, and the high prices charged by Germany to haul coal across the Alps
from Trieste
made heat a luxury. On 11 November Britain scored a major victory against the Italian navy at Taranto
, which secured British supply lines in the Mediterranean.
Even in the normally plentiful Balkan region there were now food shortages caused by an extremely hard winter in the east and flooding of the lower Danube which devastated the agricultural plains and prevented the planting of crops. In Romania, farm hands were still mobilized into the Army and, along with Hungary and Yugoslavia, she needed all the wheat that could be produced, but the Germans made heavy demands on them, backed up by threats.
Until late 1940 Hitler hoped to establish peaceful German hegemony
over the Balkans as part of his supply hinterland, but after the Russian annexation of the Romania territories of Bessarabia
and North Bukovina
in June, his hand was forced. On 7 October Germany invaded Romania to block the Soviet Army and to get access to the Ploesti oilfields. After Italy's disastrous invasion of Greece on 28 October the British intervened in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Mutual Aid Agreement, occupying Crete and establishing airfields within bombing distance of the Romanian oilfields. In late November Hungary and Romania signed the Tripartite Act, joining the Axis and, although Yugoslavia initially refused to sign, Hitler now had control of the majority of the vast agricultural resources of the Great Hungarian Plain
and Romanian oilfields.
Britain's Bomber Command continued to attack German strategic targets, but the task of bombing Germany was made much harder by the loss of the French airfields as it meant long flights over enemy-held territory before reaching the target. But the British at this point had no effective means of taking offensive action against the enemy, and began to look towards a renewed bomber strategy. After the German devastation of Coventry
, the RAF raided oil refineries in Mannheim
city centre on the night of 16–17 December. This was the first 'area raid', but photography after the raid showed that most of the 300 bombers had missed the target, and that Bomber Command lacked the means of carrying out precision raids. Even so, a bombing campaign offered the only hope of damaging the German economy, and directives at the end of 1940 stated two objectives: precision attack on German production of synthetic oil production, and an attack on German morale by targeting industrial sites in large cities. In December 1940 Roosevelt, having won an historic third term as president declared that the U.S. would become the "Arsenal of Democracy
," providing the weapons Britain and her Commonwealth needed without entering the war herself.
As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe's 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation and diseases such as influenza, pneumonia
, tuberculosis
, typhus
and cholera
were a threat. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee
began gathering funds to send aid. Former president Herbert Hoover
, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during WW1, wrote
, and Germany was also forced to send the Afrika Korps
, led by General Erwin Rommel
to Libya
in early February to help its Axis partner in its North African campaigns against the British and Commonwealth forces. The Italians were also buckling under a strong British and Indian counter-offensive in Eritrea
in East Africa. Because of its strategic position in the Mediterranean close to Sicily
and the Axis shipping lanes, the British island of Malta
now also came under daily enemy bombardment in the Siege of Malta, and by the end of the year the island had suffered over 1,000 bombing attacks to force a surrender. As more U-boats entered service, the weekly toll on Allied merchant ships continued to mount, and by June eggs, cheese, jam, clothing and coal were added to the rationed list.
In early January 1941 German officials announced the signing of "the greatest grain deal in history" between the Soviet Union and Russia. The Soviets, who also concluded a £100 million arms deal with China shortly afterwards, expected criticism from Britain and America, Izvestia
newspaper declaring;
s (1 US bushel = 8 US gallons, about 27 kg for wheat) of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children's food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. Their view, which many in America and the occupied countries supported, was that it was Germany's responsibility to feed and provide for the people she conquered, and that the plan could not avoid indirectly helping Germany; if aid were given, this would free German goods for use elsewhere.
Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories – less than half the amount necessary to sustain life – and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school, but the British disputed this. Even so, many Americans were appalled by the continuing hardship. There were 16m French Americans alone, and by early March at least 15 different organizations – collectively known as the Coordinating Council for French Relief – were distributing aid in France through The American Friends Service Committee, while the Quaker Committee also distributed around $50,000 worth of food, clothing and medical supplies a month throughout France. The American Red Cross
chartered a 'mercy ship', SS Cold Harbor to take 12000000 lb (5,443,108.4 kg). of evaporated and powdered milk and 150,000 articles of children’s clothing, 500,000 units of insulin
and 20,000 bottles of vitamin
s to Marseilles and shortly afterwards sent a second, the S.S. Exmouth, to carry $1.25m worth of relief supplies into unoccupied France.
A number of prominent liberals denounced the release of food to France in a letter to United States Secretary of State
Cordell Hull
. Describing how French industry was working for the Germans and how Hitler had seized 1m tons of French wheat to hold in occupied France, the group believed the move would undermine the blockade and lead to Nazi demands for America to continue feeding other conquered lands. Vichy France's ambassador to the United States, Gaston Henry-Haye
, continued to press for a relaxation of the blockade on humanitarian grounds, and the US government found itself in a difficult moral dilemma. The US Foreign Affairs Economist Karl Brandt described how Hitler (and Stalin) used food as a political weapon to destroy internal opposition, reward accomplishment, punish failure and smash their enemies in neutral countries. He described how the 'warrior caste' were given the most, followed by essential workmen (in Berlin, William Shirer and the other foreign journalists were classed as 'heavy labourers' and received double rations) while at the bottom prisoners, Jews
and the insane got the least. By this time the Nazis had begun executing otherwise healthy mental patients in German institutions, in part to save on food, and there was a clamour from family members to have their loved ones removed. Brandt said:
By this time there were increasing reports of Vichy French vessels in the Mediterranean running the British blockade from North African ports and ignoring the orders of the British Contraband Control to stop and submit to search. Vichy Vice-Premier Admiral Darlan declared that the Vichy merchant marine had so far brought through the blockade 7m bushels of grain, 363,000 tons of wine, 180,000 tons of peanut oil together with large amounts of fruit, sugar, cocoa, meat, fish and rum. Darlan, who during the battle of France
had given Churchill the solemn pledge that the French navy would never surrender to Germany, claimed that the British were reluctant to risk a third bloody clash like those at Dakar
and Oran, and that, while they had sunk seven unescorted French food ships, they had never sunk, or even stopped, a French ship escorted by warships.
, which allowed for the sending of vast amounts of war material to Allied countries, and Churchill thanked the American nation for a 'new Magna Carta
'. Although America did not enter the war for another nine months, she could no longer claim to be completely neutral and Hitler immediately ordered U-boats to attack US vessels. On 10 April the destroyer USS Niblack, which was picking up survivors from a Dutch freighter that had been sunk detected that a U-boat was preparing to attack, and launched depth charges to drive it away. This was the first direct action between Germany and America of WW2. The next day the US began regular patrols at sea.
to discuss ways of improving trade between themselves and the rest of the continent. Apart from some Parana pine, tea and cereals, there was very little inter-Plata trade, and delegates eventually agreed a number of measures, such as easier currency exchange rules, finance for poorer nations, improved transport links between countries – particularly those landlocked – and lower customs barriers in order to demonstrate that they were not entirely reliant on overseas trade and American dollars to survive.
In America herself, while a large number of small businesses which relied on overseas trade were badly affected; because cheaper foreign imports were unavailable, home producers, such as the North Carolina
peppermint
trade and the handmade glassware industry in Maryland
and Pennsylvania
now had the entire domestic market to themselves. U.S. cheese-makers began producing substitutes for Norway's Gjetost, Holland's Gouda
and Edam, Italy's Asiago
and Provolone and the blue cheese
s of France and with Belgium and Holland's tulip
bulbs cut off, U.S. growers in Michigan
, North Carolina and the Pacific Northwest
were able to achieve twice the pre-war prices. Experiments also began in Alabama's state prison farm to grow Ramie
, a tough, stiff fibre used in gas mantles which was no longer available from Asia
.
they demanded, but also provided the answer to all their raw material problems. On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union
in a three-pronged operation, catching the Soviets completely by surprise. They penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and within a week completed an encirclement of 300,000 Red Army
troops near Minsk
and Bialystok
. The first territories to be conquered included the most productive. Between Baku
on the Caspian Sea
and Batum on the Black Sea
lay the rich oilfields of Transcaucasia, while bordering Poland and Romania was the abundant 'Granary of Russia', Ukraine
, about the size of France, 40 million acres (161,874.4 km²) of the most fertile agricultural land on earth. Occupying a 'black earth' zone of seemingly inexhaustible thick humus, it produced 25% of Russia's wheat, and immense crops of rye, barley, oats, sugar beet, potatoes, sunflowers, flax, maize, tobacco and cotton. The Ukraine was also the main industrial region. Its Donetz Basin provided 80% of Russia's steel, 70% iron, 50% steel, 72% aluminium and 35% of the manganese, as well as being one of Europe's largest coalfields, yielding 67 million tons per year.
Russia had had a reputation as a backward, agrarian country, but the communist government was well aware of the dangers of overly relying on the Ukraine and of the need to modernise its industry. The whole face of the Soviet economy was transformed from 1928 onwards by Joseph Stalin
's Five Year Plans, and whereas three-forths of total industry was formerly concentrated around Moscow
, St Petersburg, and Ukraine, great new industrial towns had now sprung up all over the union, some, such as Stalingorsk in west Siberia
and Karaganda
in Kazakhstan
in places where man had previously barely set foot. A prosperous new cotton industry was created in Turkistan
, new wheat regions in the centre, east and north, coal came from Siberia, rich mineral deposits from the Urals, Siberia and Asiatic Russia, and immense new oil wells began to flow, not just in the Caucus, but in the Urals and the Volga valley
.
During the first six months the Soviets were in complete disarray, and lost whole armies of men, over 70% of their tanks, a third of their combat aircraft and two-thirds of their artillery. Despite the initial defeats, the Soviets were able to relocate large sections of their industry from the main cities and Dnepr River and Donbas regions further east to the Urals and the Siberian wastes beyond, but it would take a great deal of time before they could be reassembled and production returned to normal levels. On 3 July Stalin announced a "scorched earth
policy". As they retreated, everything that could not be moved east would be destroyed. Factories and oil wells were to be blown up, crops burnt and animals slaughtered so that nothing would be left for the Germans to use.
with the U.S. and extended the blockade to cover Finland, which was now fighting on the side of Germany. Churchill now embraced Russia as an ally and agreed to send arms to make up the shortfall while Russian industry reorganised itself for the fight. By mid 1942 Britain was providing Russia, via the Arctic convoys with an array of vehicles, artillery and ammunition as part of the Lend Lease programme. In total Britain sent more than 4500 Valentine
, Churchill
and Matilda
tanks, and 4200 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft.
American also provided significant support, but while Alaska
, only 50 miles (80.5 km) from Asia across the Bering Strait
was the obvious route for transporting Lend-Lease equipment, it was remote from continental America. A land route across the road – less 800 miles (1,287.5 km) expanse of Canada, long discussed, now became vital, and so on 8 March 1942 the American army began construction of the Alcan Highway, a 1671 miles (2,689.2 km) long stretch from Dawson Creek in British Columbia
, north-west through Yukon Territory to an existing road on the Canadian/Alaskan border. The highway also allowed the linking up of the Northwest Staging Route
, a series of rough Canadian airstrips and radio ranging stations built to convey aircraft from Alberta
and the Yukon to Russia and China. In total the US provided Russia with $11 billion worth of goods, including 4800 Grant and Sherman tanks, 350,000 trucks, 50,000 jeep
s, 7300 Airacobra fighter aircraft, and 3700 light and medium bombers. The Russians also received 2.3 million tons of steel, 230,000 tons of aluminium, 2.6 million tons of petrol, 3.8 million tons of food and huge quantities of ammunition and explosives.
The German attack on Russia prompted the British to attempt an increase in bombing in the belief that the fighter defences would have been thinned out. Attacks on oil targets remained a priority, and successful raids were mounted against Hamburg
, Bremen
and Kiel
in May, with Kiel suffering almost complete production losses. Later attacks on rail transport targets in the Ruhr proved costly because a new radar chain, known as the Kammhuber Line
now stretched across the approaches to the Ruhr valley to alert the night fighter defences, which remained considerable. Between May and December the RAF made 105 separate raids over Germany but were unable to make any inroads into industrial capacity and suffered heavy losses in the process.
On 22 June 1941 Churchill proclaimed that Britain would bomb Germany night and day, in ever increasing numbers, but because of the size of Germany and because the fleet continued to be eroded by planes going overseas, Bomber Command remained too weak for effective attacks on the German war machine. The new directives called for attacks on rail transport in the Ruhr to disrupt German economy, but this was a stop gap policy; The planes were too small, carried too light a bomb load and navigation was also shown to be faulty. Following losses of 10% during a raid on 7 November the RAF was ordered to conserve and build up its forces for a spring offensive, by which time a new navigation aid known as GEE
would be available and the Avro Lancaster
heavy bomber would be entering service.
launched a massive pre-emptive strike against ships of the US Pacific Fleet
at its base at Pearl Harbor
, Hawaii
. The next day the war became a truly global conflict as America joined the British Empire
in the war against Japan, Germany and the other Axis powers. Like Germany, Japan was heavily deficient in natural resources, and since 1931 had become increasingly nationalistic, building up her military forces and embarking upon a series of ruthless conquests in Manchuria
, China and French Indochina
to create an empire. Amid increasing reports of atrocities committed by her forces in these lands, such as the Nanking Massacre
and the use of poison gas, world opinion turned against Japan, and from 1938 America, Britain and other countries launched trade embargoes against her to restrict supplies of the raw materials she needed to wage war, such as oil, metals and rubber.
But the sanctions did not curb Japan's imperialistic mood. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact
with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and, after the US ordered a total oil embargo on all 'aggressor nations' on 1 August 1941, cutting Japan off from 90% of her oil supply, she looked to the huge reserves in the south Pacific and south east Asia, territories already largely under US, British and Dutch jurisdiction
. Japan knew that she could not win a prolonged war against the 'Occidental Powers
', but hoped that by striking first at Pearl Harbor to knock out the American Pacific fleet then using her huge reserves of men and machines to occupy the territories she coveted while America was still unready for war, Britain was engaged in all-out struggle with Germany and the Netherlands was herself occupied, she could establish her empire and consolidate herself so firmly that although her enemies would attempt to batter at her defensive line they would eventually be forced to accept the new position and make peace on the basis of the new status quo. In the early months of the war Japan launched a series of stunning conquests in the region, among them Honk Kong, the Philippines
, Malaysia, Burma and the East Indies
, and soon threatened Australia far to the south.
Because she was an island, the blockade of Japan was a fairly straightforward matter of sinking the transport ships used to ferry materials from the occupied lands to the home islands, and remained a largely American affair. The Japanese began with a barely-adequate 6.1m merchant tons which American submarines and aircraft gradually whittled away until only 1.5m tons remained. The steady toll of attrition against her merchant marine was a major factor in Japan's eventual defeat, but the Allies agreed that the situation was far more complex with Germany, where a range of measures including strategic bombing would be required to achieve final victory.
, (BEW) which evolved from the earlier Economic Defense Board, was created by President Roosevelt on 17 December 1941. Under the chairmanship of Vice President
Henry Wallace
, the new department was made responsible for the procurement and production of all imported materials necessary both to the war effort and the civilian economy. The Proclaimed List – a US equivalent to the British Statutory List – was compiled and, under British direction, the United States Commercial Corporation was formed to begin making preclusive purchases of strategic materials such as chromium, nickel and manganese to supply future Allied needs and to prevent them from reaching the Germans.
From the start there was close co-operation between the parallel American and British agencies, over economic warfare measures, intelligence gathering and the later Safehaven Program. The American Embassy in London acted as the base for the American BEW activities in Europe and was organized in March 1942, "to establish a more intimate liaison between the manifold economic warfare activities centered in the Ministry of Economic Warfare and comparable activities in the United States Government." BEW personnel sat on the Blockade Committee on equal terms with their British counterparts, undertaking the routine work of handling Navicerts, ships permits and defining contraband. The embassy division worked with MEW in the development of new war trade agreements and the re- negotiation of existing overseas purchase - supply contracts. Together they attempted to persuade the remaining neutrals – Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland (and Argentina) – that by supplying Germany with the materials it needed they were prolonging the war, and over time a number of measures were tried to pressure these countries into reducing or ending trade with the Axis, with varying degrees of success:
was perceived as pro-Axis but walked a fine line between the two sides, who competed fiercely for Portuguese raw materials, generating huge profits for her economy. Portugal provided Germany with direct overland exports of a wide range of commodities including rice, sugar, tobacco, wheat, potassium chlorate
, inflammable liquids and yellow pitch
, and Portuguese merchants were also known to be sending industrial diamonds and platinum
via Africa and South America. But by far the most important material Portugal had to offer was tungsten. Tungsten carbide
was a critical war commodity with numerous applications such as the production of heat-resistant steel, armour plate, armour-piercing shells and high-speed cutting tools. Portugal was Europe's leading supplier of tungsten (and scheelite
, another member of the wolframite series of tungsten ore minerals), annually providing Germany with at least 2,000 metric tons between 1941 and mid-1944, about 60 percent of her total requirement.
Britain was Portugal's largest trading partner and had the right to force her to fight on her side under a 500 year old alliance, but allowed her to remain neutral; in return Portugal allowed credit when Britain was short of gold and escudos, so that by 1945 Britain owed Portugal £322 million. Germany was Portugal's second-largest trading partner, initially paying for exports with consumer goods, but after 1942 increasingly with looted gold, which the Allies warned was liable to confiscation after the war. Portugal also allowed Germany generous credit terms, partly because after the fall of France the presence of a direct land route enabled Germany to threaten Portugal with invasion if she curtailed critical exports. The Allies, who also bought Portuguese tungsten, believed that if they could persuade the Portuguese to stop selling the ore the German machine-tool industry would very quickly be crippled and she would be unable to continue to fight. Because Portugal depended on the U.S. for petroleum, coal and chemical supplies, the Allies' economic warfare agencies considered achieving their aim by embargoes, but hesitated because they also wanted access to Portuguese military bases on the Azores
.
was now near starvation point, and that a US offer to provide a month by month supply of food might be decisive in keeping Spain out of the war.
Spanish companies did important aircraft work for the Germans, Spanish merchants furnished Germany with industrial diamonds and platinum, and General Franco, still loyal to Hitler because of his support during the civil war
, continued to supply Germany with war materials, among them mercury and tungsten. Spain, the world's second-largest producer of tungsten after Portugal, provided Germany with 1,100 metric tons of the ore per year between 1941 and 1943 (between them Spain and Portugal provided 90% of Germany’s annual 3500 tons requirement) As a result of Allied economic measures and Germany defeats, by 1943 Spain adopted a more genuinely neutral policy. The Allied strategy with Spain was identical to that of Portugal: buy enough tungsten to satisfy the export need and prevent the rest reaching the enemy by whatever means. Britain and the US again had the option of launching an oil embargo on Spain but hesitated for fear of forcing Franco to side with Germany militarily.
was one of the factors which led to the German occupation of Norway. Allied economic warfare experts believed that without the Swedish exports the war would grind to a halt, but Sweden was surrounded by Axis countries and by those occupied by them, and could have herself been occupied at any time if they failed to give Germany what she wanted.
The U.S. and Britain were sympathetic to Sweden’s difficult position and of her attempts to maintain her neutrality and sovereignty by making important concessions to the Nazis, such as continuing to export timber and iron ore and by allowing the Germans use of their railway system, a privilege which was heavily abused. There was a general belief however, that Sweden went too far in accommodating the Nazi regime. In particular, the U.S. abhorred the use of Swedish ships to transport the ore to Germany and of her allowing Germany to transport soldiers and war materials across Sweden and through the Baltic under Swedish naval protection. Sweden received very little by way of imports due to the various blockades, and the Allies tried to use offers of a relaxation to persuade her to reduce her assistance of Germany, which they believed was actively prolonging the war. Churchill himself believed that Sweden could be instrumental in defeating Germany and after the heavy German defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk
in 1943 the Russians became vocal in calling on Sweden to do more to aid the Allies.
for the production of chromium. The Turkish chromite ore, which like tungsten was an irreplaceable and essential war material, was the only supply available to Germany, who paid using iron and steel products and manufactured goods in order to draw Turkey into her sphere of influence. Turkey still maintained its good relations with the US and Britain despite the trade, which the economic warfare agencies sought to minimize.
Via its Commercial Corporation, the US engaged in a preclusive buying programme under British direction of its materials, particularly the chromite ore. It also bought commodities, e.g., tobacco, it did not really need, and sent Turkey's armed forces modern equipment under Lend Lease to replace obsolete equipment, to help maintain her neutrality. In so doing the Allies sought to maintain British influence in Turkey, and when the Allies decided, at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 to attempt to persuade Turkey to enter the war against Germany, Britain was assigned the role of negotiator. Turkey eventually ended trade with Germany and declared war on her in February 1945.
, Staudt
and Co. and Siemens
also operated in Argentinian territory, maintaining their links with Germany and supporting Nazi espionage operations in the region. Although the naval blockade, now heavily reinforced by US warships, restricted their efforts, merchants in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires smuggled important quantities of platinum, palladium
, drugs, and other chemicals to Germany, and a major aim of the US contraband control was to use US exports to Argentina to put pressure on her government to turn away from Nazi influence and break financial ties.
. Following the Nazi conquests of mid 1940, the tiny landlocked nation of 7m people, which had remained resolutely neutral since 1815 found itself in a very difficult position, with German customs
officials controlling all gateways to the outside world. But despite veiled threats and the constantly strained relations between the two nations, Switzerland was of no strategic importance to Germany, and of far more use to her as a workshop. Although Swiss citizens largely rejected the Nazis and subscribed to the Internationalist view expressed by the League of Nations
, in order to survive and continue to receive imports, Switzerland had little choice but to trade with Germany, for which she was paid largely in coal. Well-known companies such as Oerlikon-Bührle provided guns, Autophon A.G. provided transmitting apparatus, and other companies exported coal-gas generators, ball bearings, bomb sights, ammunition, carbon black, timepieces and rayon
for parachutes.
Because of her geographic position and trade with Germany, Switzerland was subject to Allied blockade measures throughout, although she remained able to move imports and other exports such as sugar and benzene
overland, mainly to Germany and other countries in the neutral zone. In December 1941 an attempt by the Swiss military to purchase American machine-gun cameras was blocked by Britain's refusal to grant a Navicert, and in April 1942 the US Board of Economic Warfare considered quotas for Swiss imports from overseas sources, identifying Swiss commodities which might be bargained for. Firms such as the Fischer Steel and Iron Works at Schaffhausen
were added to the blacklists because of their exports, causing them to eventually curtail supply and remodel their plant.
Despite the Allied sympathy with Switzerland's position, some individuals and companies actively supported the Nazi cause for financial or ideological reasons. In particular the Swiss were, and continue to be, criticised for the way they aided the shipment of Nazi funds abroad and provided banking facilities for the concealment of looted art treasures and gold, much of it stolen from Jews. In late 1943 safes at a Swiss bank at Interlaken
were rented by high-ranking Germans to store funds. Later, high ranking Nazi officials withdrew their deposits from German banks and transferred large sums to Swiss banks and to the Swedish Consulate at Karlsruhe
. Italian and Swiss press reports also stated that many leading Italians banked large sums in Swiss francs in banks in Switzerland. Swiss individuals and financial institutions also acted as third-party go-betweens for transactions by others, such as for contraband shipments of cotton to Italy from the United States via a Portuguese factory, and transactions took place in Zurich which facilitated the trade of mercury
between Japan and Spain. During WW2 Zurich
industrialist and armaments exporter Emil Georg Bührle
began amassing one of the twentieth century's most important private collections
of European art. However the collection of around 200 works, which includes medieval sculptures and masterpieces by Cézanne, Renoir
and van Gogh has been mired in controversy since the war because of the unclear provenance of some pieces, leading to the return of 13 paintings to the former French-Jewish owners or their families. (On 10 February 2008 the collection was subjected to what Zurich police declared to be "the biggest ever robbery committed in Switzerland and perhaps even Europe")
US files show that there was a belief that neutrals that traded with the Axis should be threatened with post-war reprisals, but although the Americans believed that the Swiss trade with Germany justified bombing her, it was also thought that her exports should be cut down without endangering the work of the Red Cross and intelligence work underway in Switzerland. The International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), which was founded in 1863 in Geneva
, did a great deal of invaluable humanitarian work, particularly in the worst-affected occupied territories, for example Greece. The children's section of the ICRC sent vitamins, medicine and milk products for children, and in 1944 it was awarded its second Nobel Peace Prize
for its work. Switzerland also provided asylum for refugees and persecuted individuals such as Jews and foreign workers forced to work in Germany. Following the collapse of the Mussolini regime, thousands of escaped Allied POWs
were given sanctuary and the crews of damaged Allied bombers (both sides regularly invaded Swiss airspace) returning from raids over Germany often put down in Swiss territory and were allowed refuge.
Despite the German trade and various measures for food self-sufficiency, Switzerland eventually used up her food stockpiles and suffered severe shortages of fuel through lapses in the German coal supply, increasingly relying on her forests and hydroelectric power. To help keep her people supplied with imports, and despite having no shoreline, the Swiss government developed its own merchant marine
, acquiring several vessels that had been impounded for smuggling or withdrawal foreign flags. The ships were based in the Rhine port of Basel, which gave access to the seaport of Rotterdam, until Allied bombing of a German dam interrupted it.
became the new head of the German Armaments Ministry. Speer was an inspired choice by Hitler, performing better than could possibly have been expected of him, expertly organising the resources at his disposal, ensuring the speedy repair of bomb-damaged factories and pushing productivity up month after month. On 14 February the British War Cabinet took the decision to adopt area bombing as a means of undermining civilian morale and on 22 February Air Marshal Arthur Harris was appointed head of Bomber Command. The long-awaited Lancaster bomber was at last being delivered to squadrons, along with the new navigational aid GEE.
The renewed campaign got under way in early March with a 'saturation raid' by 200 RAF aircraft on the Renault
truck and tank works at Billancourt
, near Paris. 623 French people were killed, mostly workers who had gathered outside to cheer the accurate hits. This was followed by the first of a series of eight raids on Essen
which proved a great disappointment. Despite an initial pathfinding
force being sent to light up the target area with flares, only one bomb in 20 fell within five miles (8 km) of the town. On the night of 28–29 March the RAF used incendiaries for the first time to hit factories in Lubeck, an old town with many combustible buildings, but although the British considered it a resounding success production was back to normal a week later. More disaster followed on 17 April during a daylight 'precision' raid on the diesel engine factory in Augsburg. There was little effect on production and, with no fighter cover, 7 of the 12 Lancaster bombers were lost, leading to a return to night bombing.
success was vital to demonstrate his belief that bombers could be decisive in defeating the enemy.< Harris began pushing for a mass raid using the magic number of 1000 bombers, although in fact the RAF barely had that many. At last, using every plane available including trainee crews, the RAF raided Cologne
on May 30 /31 1942 with over 1000 bombers; although over half the city was destroyed and it was seen as a success, the city made a surprising recovery. RAF assaults on medium-sized industrial towns to the east of the Rhine, the Ruhr and Berlin from mid-1942 also did little to weaken Germany economically. From July the B-24 Liberator
and Flying Fortress fleets of the United States Air Force
(USAAF) took on the role of daytime precision bombing of German arms and communication targets. They began by raiding airfields and railway stations in France and Holland and badly damaged the Heroya aluminium centre near Trondheim
in Norway which produced synthetic cryolite
, used in the manufacture of aluminium. From mid-November the RAF began a series of 16 massed night raids on Berlin, but thought the damage was considerable, the raids were less effective than those on the Ruhr and Hamburg. Essen and Bremen also suffered 1,000 plane raids and upwards of 1,000 tons of bombs. In 1942 the RAF dropped 37,000 tons of bombs on German targets, probably three times the weight dropped on Britain in 1940 and early 1941.
On 21 December 1942 the USAAF attacked the Krupp plant in Essen and, although they were unsuccessful at first, demonstrated their intention to paralyse German industry by concentrating on key sectors and persevering until lasting damage was inflicted. Another important target was ball-bearing manufacture, most of which was concentrated at Schweinfurt
, which in the months to come, despite the German deployment of smoke screens, mock factories, jamming devices, searchlights and flak in the area received special attention from the USAAF; Albert Speer and Erhard Milch
, the Inspector-General of the Luftwaffe, realised that from this point onwards the writing was on the wall. On 25 Feb 1943 the Allies began a round-the-clock strategic bombing campaign in Europe, and a few days later Bomber Command began the 5-month long Battle of the Ruhr
, a massive plan to wear down Germany's industrial capacity.
products early in the European war. Despite the 5600 miles (9,012.3 km) and the land barrier of Russia separating Berlin from Tokyo, by mid-1942 a system of fast blockade runners was set up, the freighters traveling non-stop without showing lights or using their radio to avoid detection. The MEW believed that the first Japanese shipment of rubber reached Germany during the summer of 1942, having initially sailed from Indo-China to West Africa. From there it was transferred to small coastal vessels and ran the blockade to French Mediterranean ports by night. The MEW became concerned at the 'steady trickle' of Japanese blockade runners reaching Europe, which one estimate put at 15 ships by the end of 1942, and on the anniversary of the German and Italian declarations of war on the US, General Tojo expressed his pleasure that Japan was able to contribute the resources captured in the South Pacific to the Axis cause.
Other blockade runners were known to be arriving at the French port of Bordeaux, 70 miles inside the Gironde Estuary
on the Atlantic coast. The port, also a base for German and Italian submarines, was one of the most heavily defended waterways in Europe, protected by numerous patrol boats, searchlights, shore batteries and thousands of troops. Because of its distance from the sea, a naval excursion was impossible, while the RAF believed that a bombing raid would be far too inaccurate and costly in civilian life and aircraft. The difficulty of stopping the blockade runners became known as the ‘Bordeaux Problem’, and eventually the British decided that a different, more espionage based approach was needed.
On 7th December 1942, Combined Operations launched one of the most famous raids of the war; Operation Frankton
, better known as the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ mission, in an attempt to sink the ships by sending a 12 man team of Royal Marine Commandos to paddle up the Gironde in canoes to place delayed action bombs on their exposed hulls. Although the commandos displayed exceptional courage and the expedition was essentially successful in that a number of ships were damaged, only 2 men survived, including the leader, Major Herbert Hasler
, who had to make their way across 80 miles of France, Spain and Gibraltar back to safety. The remaining 10 men drowned, died of exposure or were captured and interrogated by the Germans before being executed.
In addition, excessive secrecy and a lack of communication between Whitehall
departments meant that at exactly the same time that Operation Frankton was under way, and without their knowledge, the SOE were in the final stages of their own attempt to destroy the blockade runners by deploying a team of French agents led by Claude de Baissac
, posing as painting contractors who planned to carry explosives onto the ships in their baggage. The explosions caused by the commando mission ruined the preparations of the SOE team, who might well have achieved a far more effective destruction of the blockade running vessels but for the Combined Operations raid.
Even so, the combined Allied air forces and navies eventually began to track down the blockade runners. In late 1942, an 8,000-ton cargo ship was caught in the Indian Ocean, where it hoisted a neutral flag and initally gave the name of a neutral vessel but misspelled the name. When the Allied warships opened fire the crew scuttled the ship, and 78 Germans were captured.
By late 1943 the Germans became so desperate for supplies of key commodities that in one incident they sent a large destroyer force out into the Bay of Biscay to protect ships bringing a cargo into Bordeaux, and lost three vessels to Allied action. By May 1944, 15 blockade runners had been sunk and the traffic had virtually ceased apart from submarines carrying very small cargoes. The MEW stated that 45,000 tons of rubber, 1,500 tons of tungsten, 17,000 tons of tin and 25,000 tons of vegetable oils had been destroyed as well as important far-Eastern drugs such as quinine
. The Ministry was also of the view that the strong blockade had probably prevented further large amounts from being transported.
ruined by the war with Italy, Greece was compelled to pay occupation costs, to grant Germany a 'war loan', and was subjected to the same confiscation of food and raw materials practiced elsewhere. Using its virtually worthless 'invasion marks', more than half of Greece's already inadequate wheat production was "sold" to Germany along with livestock, clothes, dried vegetables and fruit. Potatoes were fried using Greek olive oil and shipped back to Germany, and the tomato crop was hurried to scurvy
-ridden German troops in Africa. One US correspondent commented; "Germany worked like a pack of driver ants, picking Greece clean", but the corrupt, collaborationist government also controlled the black market in whatever food was still available, causing rampant inflation of the drachma, which saw the price of a loaf of bread, where available, reach $15. There were reports of grave-robbing by people desperate to find the money to feed their families, but in the towns there were none of the staple potatoes, figs, raisins or tomatoes available and it was not long before the population began to die in droves from hunger, Cholera, Typhoid and Dysentery. In September 1941 the Greeks appealed for overseas aid, particularly from Turkey. An official declared "We are not asking for food that Turks would eat, but for food they refuse to eat."
Despite past enmity between the two nations Turkey quickly responded, chartering the SS Kurtulus
and, after receiving permission from the British, the ship sailed from Istanbul
to Piraeus
on 6 October with wheat, maize, vegetables, dried fruits and medicines. Over the next few months, the ship delivered around 6,700 tons of supplies to Greece, but foundered on rocks and sank during her fifth voyage. Despite the humanitarian efforts, by late January 1942 between 1,700 and 2,000 men, women and children were dying in Athens
and Piraeus each day, and Italy, which now occupied Greece, was forced to ship 10,000 tons of grain from her meagre domestic supplies, secretly to avoid unrest from her own people. This was still not enough, and eventually international pressure forced Britain to lift its blockade for the first time. In early February, Hugh Dalton of MEW told the House of Commons that Britain and America would send 8,000 tons of wheat to Greece, although there was no guarantee that the relief supplies would find their way to the starving. Dalton said; "There is no guarantee, nor would we pay any attention to one given by the Germans. We are in this case running a risk in view of the appalling conditions caused by the Germans in Greece." From that point on, the Greek Orthodox Church
, through its charity efforts in the United States and the International Red Cross were allowed to distribute sufficient supplies to the Greek people, though the total death toll from the famine was at least 70,000, probably much higher.
By late 1942 there were claims that Germany was paying for deliveries using forged US dollars and had began to default on its Romania trade, receiving deliveries while not supplying the much-needed machinery and war materials in return. Spanish suppliers of oranges and mandarins also refused to ship deliveries until they were paid. With the gradual turn of the war, a number of neutral countries began to take a stiffer line with Germany, in some cases refusing further credit.
, the Beauce
, and the Brie
suffered seriously from drought. The wheatheads were light, straw was short and hay shrivelled in the meadows, causing a lack of animal fodder. In occupied areas, the Germans confiscated 40% of the crop as soon as it became available; the authorities took 40% for the wider population, leaving the farmer with only 20%. In Normandy
, Brittany
and along the Channel coast, rain spoilt the potato crop and tomatoes and beans did not mature. In other provinces, e.g., Touraine
and Burgundy region, the very dry weather left vegetables and even weeds cooked in the ground so people who bred rabbits for meat had to feed them with tree leaves.
South of the Loire
the weather was more favourable but, with the coming threat of invasion, the Germans were intent on stripping the land so the Allies would be left with nothing and be compelled to bring everything across from England. Hermann Goering proclaimed in a speech that under the Nazi New Order, the Herrenvolk were entitled to deprive the occupied peoples of their food, and that whoever starved it would not be the Germans. Rationing remained fierce. Even with coupons, it was impossible to acquire many items. Maximum prices were fixed for everything, but the black market pushed prices 5–15 times beyond the official tariff. Cheap restaurants in big towns served dishes comprising turnip or carrot tops made without any kind of fat, and although householders still received a fair ration of rough wine, all spirits were confiscated for industrial use.
The MEW continued to receive requests for a partial relaxation of the blockade, often in the belief it would make no appreciable difference to the effect on the enemy, but the pleas were steadfastly refused. The MEW believed that any substantial or widespread relaxation of the blockade would inevitably be exploited by the enemy to his own advantage, and declared that they would "not give him that comfort".
With increasing numbers of heavy Lancaster, Stirling and Halifax bombers, which could travel long distances and carry a heavy bomb load, reaching squadrons, Allied leaders increasingly put their faith in the cumulative effect of strategic bombing, but decided at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that, as with the British Blitz, the early attempts to disrupt the morale of the German people by saturation bombing of cities had achieved the opposite effect. RAF raids on vehicle factories in Milan
, Genoa
, and Turin
on 2 December 1942 only served to unite the Italian population behind the Mussolini dictatorship, and the plan was dropped in favour of the 'disorganisation of German industry'. Half of German synthetic oil production came from plants in the Ruhr, areas that were highly vulnerable to area attacks, and they became the primary target of Bomber Command from 1943.
and El Alamein, the war began to swing decisively the Allies' way. With the appearance of more durable destroyers and new light escort carriers which could provide convoys with constant air cover, the 'Mid Atlantic Gap', where ships could not be provided with air cover, was closed, and from mid-1943 the U-boats were all but defeated in the Battle of the Atlantic, although Contraband Control at sea still continued. German labour shortages grew so acute that Germany relied increasingly on slaves and demanded prior claim on all available Swiss labour. The French collaborator Pierre Laval
promised to send 300,000 more workmen to Germany immediately.
Sir Arthur Harris and his USAAF counterpart, Major General Ira Eaker assured Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt that Germany could be bombed out of the war by the end of 1943 on the condition that nothing was allowed to reduce the forces already allocated to the bombardment of Germany. Harris was known for his sharp tongue and lack of remorse for the German civilians being killed by the raids; one of his subordinates said of him. "Oh, we love him, he's so bloody inhuman." Harris believed that the only role for land forces in Europe would be to occupy the Continent after the bombing had defeated Germany. Churchill thought that the experiment of all-out bomber attack was worth trying as long as other measures were not excluded, and while the commanders of the Allied land forces and navies doubted that bombing would defeat Germany, they agreed that the raids would be useful in weakening Germany prior to the invasion of Europe. But only 10% of bombs fell close enough to their targets to be called hits, and heavily-bombed installations often had to be bombed again to knock them out. However, attacks on the already strained German railway system did seriously affect military operations – in early 1943 around 150 locomotives and many freight cars were being destroyed each month.
On the night of 16–17 May 1943 the RAF carried out the famous Dambusters raid (Operation Chastise
) to breach the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams which supplied the Ruhr industries with hydroelectric power and fresh water needed for the production of steel. The raid, known as 'Operation Chastise' drowned 1,500 people and countless farm animals, but was not as successful as claimed; and half of the 18 bombers were shot down. On 24 July 1943 Hamburg, a major manufacturing centre for Tiger tanks and 88mm guns was virtually destroyed in Operation Gomorrah. Mass attacks a few days later left a large part of the city in ruins, reportedly killing 42,000 people.
In comparison with the RAF, the US 8th Air Force was at that point still small, having dropped less than a tenth the bomb tonnage on Germany as the RAF. But it was growing fast, and had begun to achieve good results. 'Bomber' Harris had great faith in American manufacturing ability and believed that it would be the USAAF, not the RAF, who would eventually deliver the final decisive blows to the enemy. On 1 August the USAAF attacked the Romanian Ploesti oilfields in Operation Tidal Wave as part of the Oil Plan to wear down Axis oil supplies. No loss of production was caused, and losses were heavy: 54 out of 177 bombers were shot down. On 14 October 1943 the 8th USAF carried out the most successful of 16 attacks on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing works but caused only a temporary setback to production and, because the bombers had fighter escort only part of the way, losses were again heavy. This forced a rethink on the self-defending bomber formation and the curtailment of daytime attacks. In November heavy damage was caused by the USAAF to the most important industrial site in Norway, the molybdenum
mine at Knaben
, 50 miles (80.5 km) from Stavanger
. A Norwegian smelting works was also destroyed by British and Norwegian commandos on 21 November 1943.
, Kingsley Wood
, had to ask the House of Commons to find another £1 billion to continue. USAAF airpower increased, concentrating its efforts on aircraft production and repair plants in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. By late October 1943, the MEW believed that German productivity was down 30%, and that half the drop had occurred in the previous six months, but the figures showed the limitations of all bombing, saturation or precision. Many of the installations that had previously been reported as wiped out continued to operate.
In early November the MEW published a summary of the position in the occupied lands, giving an assessment of what the Germans were believed to have appropriated from the territories they conquered in 1940 and 1941. The report estimated that more than $12,800,000,000 had been collected from the occupied territories in occupation costs and other direct charges and continued to be collected at a yearly rate of $4,800,000,000. Poland, the country most harshly treated, had suffered the confiscation of all state properties, all central stocks of textiles, food and livestock. 9,000 factories and 60,000 commercial enterprises were taken over for exploitation, and 80% of the 1942 harvest was sent to Germany. Czechoslovakia had lost its grain, its gold reserves, mines, heavy industries and important textile industry. Her total tribute was given as $1,200,000,000. Dutch industry was by now also under complete German control. State expenditures had almost trebled to pay Germany's occupation and other costs and levies. Belgium, whose government was in exile in Britain, had its entire $260,000,000 gold reserves surrendered by the Vichy regime and by the beginning of 1943 the country's entire stock of 1,500 locomotives and 75,000 trucks had been requisitioned. In Yugoslavia, all cars were seized in 1941, and any bicycles that could be found had been taken by 1942. The country had been partitioned and had suffered, like so many others from inflation caused by the occupation mark system. In Norway the Germans requisitioned personal property right down to woollen blankets, ski trousers and windproof jackets, and in Denmark all trade and industry of consequence was now controlled by Germans.
Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. Under Albert Speer, industrial factories were being relocated to Czechoslovakia on a considerable scale, and by the end of 1943, despite a lot of damage to towns – German figures showed that 6.9m people had been bombed out or evacuated – output of war material was greater that ever. In October 1943 the USAAF attacked Ploesti again, but according to German records total loss of petroleum to the end of 1943 had not exceeded 150,000 tons.
believed that he could have achieved the objective if he had had wholehearted British support.
, Brunswick, Gotha, Regensburg
, Schweinfurt, Augsburg
, Stuttgart
and Steyr
. The RAF returned to bomb the same targets by night, and the damage was such that Milch informed Speer that the March 1944 output would be only 30% – 40% of February's total. Albert Speer took over aircraft production and managed to perform miracles: the installations were soon back to something like normal capacity, and overall production - including synthetic oil production - was at an all-time high and still rising. The Luftwaffe had around 40% more aircraft than it possessed a year earlier, the construction of new tanks was sufficient to equip new divisions raised for the defence of western Europe and to make good some of the losses in the east.
Although the Allies kept up the round-the-clock pressure, raiding countless lines-of-communications targets in the build-up to the invasion, they were slow to grasp what German commanders were all too aware of – that Germany had plenty of tanks and aircraft and their real achilles heel was the oil supply. In early March the USAF raided the Erkner
ball-bearing works, scoring 75 direct hits, stopping production for some time, and commenced the "Plan for Completion of Combined Bomber Offensive". The objective now became to halve Axis oil production by attacking the Ploesti oilfields and fourteen synthetic-oil plants in order to deprive Germany of the means to keep its military machines operational.
On 12 May the USAAF hit East German synthetic oil plants at Leuna
, Bohlen
, Zeitz
and Lutzendorf; they were so badly damaged they could supply no oil for several weeks, being hit again later that month before they returned to production. Albert Speer said later that this was a decisive turning point in the war.
Meanwhile, as a result of the sustained Allied diplomatic pressure, together with the deteriorating German military position, Sweden began to reduce its trade with Germany. But a September 1943 agreement under which she agreed to end ball-bearing exports failed to include a restriction on sales of the high-quality steel used in their manufacture; this allowed the restrictions to be largely by-passed, and the agreement ultimately had little effect on the German war industry. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. In November 1943 Albert Speer declared that without its Turkish chromium imports, Germany's armaments manufacture would come to a halt within 10 months, and Allied threats to subject Turkey to the same economic warfare measures used against other neutrals eventually persuaded her to cease the exports to Germany by April 1944.
Though Germany, with the resources of the conquered territories was still able to produce three times as much steel as Britain, as a result of military action she was beginning to lose other sources of special metals which could not be replaced. On the eastern front, the Red Army had taken back its manganese mines at Balki
, from which the Germans had been getting 200,000 of the 375,000 tons their war industry required each year. In Scandinavia, an important supply of nickel was now prevented from being delivered from Petsamo in Finland, and the mines at Knaben in Norway were no longer providing molybdenum.
Lord Selbourne told the house that the effect of the blockade, which may have been slight at first, had been cumulative, and Germany's greatest lack was now in manpower. While Britain was herself importing tens of millions of tons of supplies per year, the enemy was increasingly forced to use ersatz
industries. German civilian motor traffic had practically entirely gone over to producer-gas, which like all ersatz materials was grossly wasteful in manpower, and this, combined with her colossal losses in the field and the need to keep a disproportionately high percentage of its available labour on the land, had produced an acute manpower crisis requiring the use of some seven million foreign slaves in Germany alone. In June 1944 the British finally secured access to the naval bases on the Azores, and the Allies thereafter threatened Portugal with economic sanctions. In turn, Portugal imposed a complete embargo on all tungsten exports to both sides, leaving Germany with only its small supply from Spain, while the Allies had alternative sources in the Far East and South America.
approached, the Allies prioritised attacks on Ploesti and the artificial fuel sites. German air defences could no longer protect the installations, and on 12 and 20 June the RAF attacked the Ruhr hydrogenation plants and put the eastern plants completely out of action, causing a rapid drop in production; Speer predicted disaster by September if the situation did not improve. From the beginning of Overlord on 6 June, the Allies enjoyed complete control of the skies over the beachhead, and were able to transport adequate oil across the sea via tanker and use of the PLUTO
pipeline, while the artificial Mulberry jetties
and the capture of small harbours initially enabled them to bring enough ammunition and food supplies ashore.
The German armies defending Normandy were badly restricted by their inability to bring up adequate fuel for their tanks and could only make troop and supply movements at night. They were also forbidden by Hitler from withdrawing to better positions a few miles inland, and as a result suffered a relentless barrage of heavy calibre gunfire from British and American battleships moored offshore. German commanders increasingly put their faith in the new Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter and the V-weapons to turn the tide. The first V1 flying bomb was launched against England on 13 June 1944, and soon 120 V1s per day were being fired at London, killing large numbers of civilians. By the end of June over 2,000 V1s had been launched; 40% of bomber resources were being redirected towards 'Crossbow
' targets in the hope of destroying the 70–80 launch sites north and east of the Seine
.
, for 5 days at the end of August virtually the entire American and British advance came to a complete halt due to a lack of fuel.
The supply problem was worsened by the Allies' failure to capture a deep-water port able to unload large ships. The Germans, employing their scorched-earth policy, destroyed all dock facilities as they withdrew from the occupied territories in order to deprive the Allies of any logistical advantages. By early September the only remaining undamaged deep-water port was Antwerp in Belgium, and the SOE, under the direction of the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) was given the task of ensuring it was captured intact. The operation, known as Counterscorch, involved sending radio operators into Belgium to liaise with the resistance, keeping them informed of Allied movements and supplying them with weapons and ammunition. At the allotted moment the resistance seized the port, keeping the Germans out until the Allies arrived, and Belgium was liberated in less than a week, although the port of Antwerp itself was not fully operational and capable of landing large cargoes until after the Battle of the Scheldt in late November.
The supply problems also led to disagreements, as each commander pressed for his unit to be given priority. The supreme commander of Allied forces, General Eisenhower wanted to advance on a broad front to overcome the West Wall (Siegfried Line
), but instead accepted General Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden
, the plan to try to outflank the West Wall and drive into northern Germany to encircle the industrial Ruhr via Holland. Market Garden was a disaster and did not achieve its main objective, while its few territorial gains actually stretched the supply lines even further.
manufacturing had been lost, together with 40% of steel furnace capacity. Supplies of copper from Turkey and Spain had been cut off, and the Germans had lost contact with sources of copper ores at Bor in Yugoslavia and Outokumpu
in Finland. Loss of the Yugoslavian and other Balkan mines took away the last supplies of chromium and reduced the supply of lead by approximately 40 per cent – the position being worsened by the loss of substantial amounts of scrap which were collected in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. With the loss of high-grade French deposits and the seizure by Marshal Josip Broz Tito
's forces of the island fringe of Yugoslavia, Germany’s total loss of bauxite was put at around 50 per cent, while the loss of shipments of cobalt from Finland was around 80 per cent of the total quantity with which Germany sustained that part of her synthetic oil production obtained by the Fischer-Tropsch process
.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to assist the Allies in their liberation of Holland, the exiled Dutch government called for a national rail strike to further disrupt German operations. The German authorities retaliated by placing an embargo on supplies of food into western Holland. This caused severe hardship. By the time the embargo ended in November 1940 an unusually early and harsh winter had set in, leading to the Dutch famine of 1944
. In the Balkans, the Ploesti oilfields were lost to Germany as an oil source from August 1944, and various opposing paramilitary groups and partisans united behind Marshal Tito. With Soviet help they began pushing Axis forces beyond Yugoslav borders, leading to further German losses of food and metals.
By this time, attacks on German fuel installations had been so successful that September's output was 8% that of April, and supplies were soon exhausted, just when fighter production reached its highest level. Allied air commanders next began targeting German transport networks. On 24 September the RAF breached the Dortmund-Ems Canal
– an inland waterway linking the Ruhr with other areas – with Tallboy bombs, draining a six-mile (10 km) section. The enormous rail marshalling yard at Hamm was badly hit, leaving some 9,000 workers permanently engaged carrying out running repairs. On 12 November the battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Tallboy bombs near Tromsø
, Norway. The ship, known as the 'Lonely Queen of the North' had seen little action through lack of fuel, and spent much of the war moored in a remote fjord. Around this time the RAF began reducing its attacks on synthetic oil production sites because none of the plants were now operating. Only the sites at Leuna and Polotz were still producing any oil, and though in December limited production restarted, further raids quickly put them out of action for good. Once the oil sites were bombed out in late 1944, transport became the primary target. Allied air power was now unstoppable.
In late 1944 the German army launched the Ardennes Offensive, an attempt to split the Allied army, recapture Antwerp and force a negotiated peace. Despite early success, caused in part by severe Allied supply shortages, particularly of fuel, the operation eventually petered out,. This was the last serious attempt by the German army to regain the initiative on land, although the Luftwaffe launched one final offensive with 800 aircraft against Allied airfields in Belgium, Holland and France early in 1945.
Ultimately it was the sustained Allied bombing of the transport network which broke Nazi resistance. Despite his incredible efforts at continually reorganising production after each setback, from early 1945 Speer admitted defeat in the armaments battle. German industry was now unable to keep up with the high number of 'Top Priority' weapons programmes, such as the production of the V weapons and calls for 3,000 Me 262 jet fighters and bombers per month. However, many factories maintained production right up to the moment Allied forces arrived at the gates.
By now the V 1 and V2 launch sites were being increasingly overrun, and with the Allies moving towards the Rhine and the Soviet armies rapidly closing in from the east, large numbers of refugees began to congregate in the cities, creating utter chaos. When severe frost and snow came in January, food was declared the main priority, although Germany still maintained the ability to defend its vital installations with formidable numbers of anti-aircraft cannons. From early February 1945 railheads, marshalling yards and transport systems of over 200 small towns, such as Hildesheim
and Meiningen
in West Germany and Jenbach
in Austria were attacked in Operation Clarion
,
and hearsay – that Nazi leaders were preparing to escape justice and were already preparing the way for the next war by secreting funds in neutral nations and moving resources abroad. From late 1944 onwards there were reports that rich German and Austrian Jews were being allowed to leave the Reich after paying special taxes and surrendering all their belongings to the Nazis. In December 1944 Allied intelligence sources indicated that German firms such as Schering
, IG Farben
, Bosch and Mannesmann Rohrenwerke
were attempting to sell patent
s to Swedish firms, and large chemical and electrical trusts, particularly IG Farben, were procuring foreign currency to finance Nazi activities abroad. In February 1945 food supplies were reported as being collected in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps for Nazi fortresses and underground factories, and plans were apparently under way for the structural reorganization of the Nazi Party abroad by transferring money into agents' accounts in neutral countries. The Americans had information on a Fritz Mandl, a German national resident in Argentina who in January 1945 was sent several million pesos
through the State Bank of Spain to invest for Goering, Goebbels
, and Himmler. By June 1945 German inventions were said to be in the safekeeping of the Swedish Aniline Company, with patents having been thrown onto the market through Swedish "dummy" intermediaries, and detailed information had been gathered on the financial backgrounds of a number of chemical, carbide and dye companies thought to be active as safe havens for Nazi property.
The US-led Safehaven Program was launched during the United Nations Conference at Bretton Woods in July 1944, the same venue that prepared the ground for the modern World Bank
and International Monetary Fund
(IMF). The program provided for immediate measures to prevent any disposition, transfer, or concealment of looted gold or other assets, to deny any safe haven for Nazi looted assets in neutral countries, and for the eventual return of looted artefacts to their original owners. Most neutrals were eventually persuaded to reduce and end trade with Germany.
The Swedish Government adopted tightened exchange control regulations in November 1944 and made great progress in identifying German properties and eliminating German influences from its economy. However, negotiations for the return of looted gold allegedly sent to Sweden by Germany as payment for goods dragged on for many years. Allied estimates of the value of looted gold ranged between $18.5 million and $22.7 million, but although the British, US and French agreed that Sweden’s gold reserves had increased during the war, they were unable to agree how much – if any – of these rises were due to looted gold. Sweden eventually agreed to distribute more than $66 million in liquidated German assets as reparations, including a special $36 million fund at the Riksbank to forestall disease and unrest in Germany and to finance purchases essential for the German economy. It also agreed to provide more than $8 million in gold to make up for that amount of Belgian monetary gold sold to Sweden during the War, but negotiations regarding 8.6 kilograms of Dutch gold ($9.7 million) stalled when Sweden argued that the gold had been acquired before the January 1943 London Declaration on looted gold. In April 1955 the Dutch claim was finally proved conclusive, and Sweden returned about $6.8 million in gold.
Spain acquired a large quantity of gold from Germany, in some cases via Swiss intermediary companies, and negotiations coincided with Allied efforts to ostracize the Franco regime. A number of other countries also downgraded their diplomatic relations with Spain for having openly supported Hitler, and Spain agreed to return an estimated $25 million in official and semi-official German assets in October 1946. Spain agreed to liquidate some $20–23 million of private German assets on the understanding she would keep around a quarter of the proceeds, and signed an agreement in May 1946 to return $114,329 (101.6 kilograms) out of about $30 million in looted Dutch gold that the Allies had identified at the Spanish Foreign Exchange Institute. The Allies publicly acknowledged that Spain had not been aware it was looted, and later Spain returned $1.3 million in gold bars and gold coins it had seized from German State properties at the end of the War. Negotiations continued, but with the coming of the Cold War
the US softened its approach and released over $64 million in assets frozen since the war, and allowed Spain to use its remaining gold as collateral for private loans.
Because of its close financial ties with Germany, Allied representatives were especially keen to achieve Swiss co-operation. Although Swiss-German trade was generally considered to have ceased after November 1944, some companies, such as the Tavaro Munitions factory at Geneva, Switzerland, clandestinely shipped explosives to Germany, and German assets amounting to one billion francs still remained in Switzerland after November 1945. According to Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson
, Switzerland was the last country to fully commit to the aims of Safehaven. In February 1945, an American delegation sent to Switzerland initially thought it had achieved a substantial reduction in Swiss exports to Germany and an acknowledgment of Safehaven objectives for the blocking of German assets in Switzerland. But following subsequent discussions with Reichsbank Vice President Emil Puhl
, the Swiss later reneged on this agreement, and through the remainder of 1945 showed an unwillingness to embrace the Allied proposals to turn German assets in Switzerland towards the benefit of ravaged Europe and stateless victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. However, because of its excellent humanitarian record and protection of Allied POWs and other interests, the Allies ultimately decided against taking extreme measures against Switzerland.
In the two emerging superpowers, Russia and America, post-war productivity rose remarkably by 1948, although the reasons were very different. In Russia, great stimulus was given to emerging industries as a result of frenzied war production, helped in part by advanced industrial plant it took from east Germany after the occupation. America meanwhile, had been under severe depression in 1938, with vast industrial resources lying idle and 20% of the population unemployed. Rearmament, and later war brought these resources to life, which combined with rising investment and no requirement to rebuild their devastated infrastructure kept American industry buoyant, although considerable residual unemployment remained. Much the same situation existed in Canada, whose economy was closely tied to America, and who also suffered no fighteing within its territory. The war changed the pattern of the international economy, leaving the US in a very strong bargaining position, having managed to free up international trade to its benefit as a consequence of Lend–Lease, and forcing the British to agree to currency convertibility.
Britain's economy was badly hit by the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease a few days after the final defeat of Japan in August 1945. During the war Britain lost many of its lucrative export markets and now confronted an annual balance of payments
deficit of £1.2billion. As in World War I, Britain emerged from the war militarily triumphant but economically poorer (rationing did not end until 1953), and economist John Maynard Keynes
was sent to America to negotiate a low-interest emergency loan of £3.75 billion to tide Britain over; the final repayment of £45.5 (then about $83m) was made on 31 December 2006.
In the former occupied countries, severe inflation – caused in part by the large amount of money hoarded during the war, particularly by collaborators – caused further spiralling food prices and a persisting black market. A factor aggravating inflation was low productivity, caused in part by a lack of coal. France assumed it would become entitled to large volumes of German coal from the Ruhr as war reparations, but the Americans, who kept France and other countries going with a number of short-term loans and Marshall Aid, began to realise – correctly – that Europe needed the powerhouse German economy to restart growth and prevent the spread of communism, and refused to agree to reparations, the very thing which led to German resentment after WW1 and the rise of Hitler.
In Germany herself, the people were left to start again from almost nothing, partitioned into zones which became east and west Germany for many years by the Allied powers, a time sometimes referred to as Year Zero. Although they faced a massive task, with whole cities to be rebuilt and industries reorganised to peaceful production, within a few years the West German economy achieved a miraculous turn-around, and by 1950 a Wirtschaftswunder
(economic miracle) was being proclaimed. From 1951 onwards, France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux
nations began moves towards the unification of Western Europe with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC), the forerunner to the Modern European Union
. The ECSC created a common market to co-ordinate the supply of critical commodities to get the wheels of European commerce moving again.
The German synthetic-oil programme was so successful and advanced that during the world fuel crisis of the 1970s, caused by conflict and uncertainty in the Middle East
, large American industrial concerns such as Dow Chemical, Union Carbide
and Diamond Shamrock
began to reconsider the Nazi technology to see if it might provide a partial solution to their problems. Some 300,000 documents relating to the history of the programme, including plant diagrams, patent descriptions, detailed reports on which catalysts and additives worked best, and monthly reports from the 25 oil from coal plants had fallen into American hands at the end of the war. At the time, crude oil was readily available at $2 per barrel, a fifth of the cost of man-made oil, and there was very little interest in the German documents. They remained in boxed storage at the National Archives in Washington for the next 30 years until chemical engineers began the arduous task of collating all the information and feeding it into a computer at the federally-run Oak Ridge Energy Center
. Although the US managed to secure alternative non-Arabian oil supplies – mainly from Venezuela
– synthetic oils are widely used today, mainly in specialised areas such as the airline industry and as lubricants.
and the American magazine Life
served up a weekly diet of photographs and patriotic accounts of the latest British or French war successes, often with captions such as
Mr Briton'll see it through
We were victims of Nazi frightfulness or
Repulse sunk? - it was only another Nazi lie
The blockade became part of peoples every day lives and it was inevitable that this would eventually be reflected in film.
Directed by Michael Powell, written by Emeric Pressburger
and starring Conrad Veidt
and Valerie Hobson
, Contraband (renamed Blackout in the US) was released on May 1940, just before the start of the German attack on France. In much the same style as 39 Steps, the film centres on the fictitious port of Eastgate (filmed in Ramsgate) where Captain Anderson, a Danish merchant skipper is delayed by the men of the Contraband Control and encounters various enemy spies. It features the classic line "Stop that man and woman! His mission is deadlier than that of the enemy in the sky. Her beauty is a dangerous weapon of war!" Contraband was also Deborah Kerr
's first film, though her scene as a nightclub cigarette girl did not make the final cut. An earlier silent film of the same name had been made in 1925, centred around similar events from World War I.
The Big Blockade
was written and directed by Charles Frend
and made by Ealing Studios
in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Welfare. It was made in 1942 in a similar episodic manner to David Lean
and Noël Coward
's In Which We Serve
, but featuring gentle light-hearted propaganda, with a series of sketches designed to illustrate how the British blockade was gradually squeezing the life out of the Nazi war effort. The Big Blockade starred John Mills
as ‘Tom, a member of a bomber crew over Hanover, Leslie Banks
as an efficient Ministry of Economic Warfare civil servant, Robert Morley
as the Nazi U-boat Captain Von Geiselbrecht, Michael Redgrave
as a Russian based in Germany, and various others, such as Will Hay
, Ronald Shiner
, and Bernard Miles
in bit parts.
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
by Great Britain, France and later the United States in order to restrict the supplies of minerals, metals, food and textiles Germany needed to sustain its war effort. While mainly consisting of a naval blockade, the economic war, which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic also included the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries to prevent them going to the enemy, and the widespread use of strategic bombing.
There were four distinct phases. The first period was from the beginning of European hostilities in September 1939 to the end of the "Phoney War" during which the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
and Axis powers both intercepted neutral merchant ships to seize deliveries en route to the enemy. The second period began after the rapid German occupation of the majority of the European landmass which gave them control of major centres of industry and agriculture. The third period was from late 1941 after the beginning of hostilities between America and Japan, and the final period came after the tide of war finally turned against Germany after heavy military defeats up to and after D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
, which led to a gradual withdrawal from the occupied territories in the face of the overwhelming Allied military offensive.
First World War
At the beginning of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914 Great Britain, as the pre-eminent world power was able to use her powerful navy, her geographical location, great wealth and empire to dictate the movements of the world’s commercial shipping and to some extent enforce her will on other nations. Britain dominated the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
, the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
, the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
and, due to her control (with France) of the Suez Canal
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
, access into and out of the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
for her own and her allies' ships, while her enemies were forced to go the long way around Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
.
When hostilities began the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
enacted a naval blockade, and quickly swept German raiders from the world’s oceans and seaways while the Ministry of Blockade published a comprehensive list of items that neutral commercial ship operators were not to transport to the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
(Germany, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
and Turkey). This included food, weapons, gold and silver, flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
, paper, silk, copra
Copra
Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. Coconut oil extracted from it has made copra an important agricultural commodity for many coconut-producing countries. It also yields coconut cake which is mainly used as feed for livestock.-Production:...
, minerals such as iron ore and animal hides used in the manufacture of shoes and boots. Because Britain and France together controlled 15 of the 20 refuelling points along the main shipping routes, they were able to threaten any neutral who refused to comply with their demands with the withdrawal of coaling facilities – this was known as Bunker Control.
Enemy supply ships were sunk or captured while neutral ships were subject to being stopped en route to be searched with any 'contraband
Contraband
The word contraband, reported in English since 1529, from Medieval French contrebande "a smuggling," denotes any item which, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold....
' found being confiscated. A large force, known as the Dover Patrol
Dover Patrol
The Dover Patrol was a Royal Navy command of the First World War, notable for its involvement in the Zeebrugge Raid on 22 April 1918. The Dover Patrol formed a discrete unit of the Royal Navy based at Dover and Dunkirk for the duration of the First World War...
patrolled at one end of the North Sea while another, the Tenth Cruiser Squadron waited at the other. The Mediterranean Sea was effectively blocked at both ends and the huge dreadnought
Dreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
battleships of the Grand Fleet waited at Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow
right|thumb|Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern endScapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, United Kingdom, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. It is about...
to sail out and meet any German offensive threat. Later in the war a large minefield, known as the Northern Barrage
Northern Barrage
The Northern Barrage was the name given to an extensive series of defensive minefields laid by the British during World War II in order to restrict German access to the Atlantic Ocean. The barrage stretched from the Orkney to the Faroe Islands and on toward Iceland...
, was deployed between the Faroes
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
and the coast of Norway to further restrict German ship movements.
Britain considered naval blockade to be a completely legitimate method of war, having previously deployed the strategy in the early nineteenth century to prevent Napoleon's fleet from leaving its harbours to attempt an invasion of England—Napoleon had also blockaded Britain. Germany in particular was heavily reliant on a wide range of foreign imports and suffered very badly from the blockade. Her own substantial fleet of modern warships was hemmed into its bases at Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
and Wilhelmshaven
Wilhelmshaven
Wilhelmshaven is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea.-History:...
by the Royal Navy and mostly forbidden by the emperor from venturing out. Germany carried out her own immensely effective counter-blockade during the First Battle of the Atlantic, her U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s sinking countless Allied merchant ships and by 1917 almost swung the war the way of the Central Powers. But because Britain found an answer to the U-boat by introducing the convoy
Convoy
A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...
system, the sustained Allied blockade led to the collapse and eventual defeat of the German armed forces by late 1918.
Build-up to World War II
In 1933 Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
became Chancellor of Germany
Chancellor of Germany
The Chancellor of Germany is, under the German 1949 constitution, the head of government of Germany...
and, following the Nazi re-occupation of the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
, the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
with Austria and the later occupation of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, many people began to believe that a new ‘Great War’ was coming, and from late 1937 onwards Sir Frederick Leigh-Ross, the British government's chief economics advisor, began to urge senior government figures to put thought into a plan to revive the blockade so that the Royal Navy – still the world’s most powerful navy – would be ready to begin stopping shipments to Germany immediately war was declared. Leigh-Ross had represented British interests abroad for many years, having embarked on a number of important overseas missions to countries including Italy, Germany, China and Russia, experience which gave him a very useful world wide political perspective. His plan was to revive the original WWI blockade but to make it more streamlined, making better use of technology and Britain’s vast overseas business and commercial network so that contacts in key trading locations such as New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
or Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
could act as a vast information gathering system. Making use of tip-offs provided by a vast array of individuals such as bankers, merchant buyers, waterfront stevedores and ship operators doing their patriotic duty, the Navy could have priceless advance knowledge of which ships might be carrying contraband long before they reached port.
Initially the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain was not keen on the idea and still hoped to avoid war, but following his appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938, which was widely seen as a stopgap measure to buy time, he too began to realise the need for urgent preparations for war. During the last 12 months of peace, Britain and France carried out a vigorous build up of their armed forces and weapons production. The long-awaited Spitfire fighter began to enter service, the first of the new naval vessels ordered under the 1936 emergency programme began to join the fleet, and the Air Ministry made the final touches to the Chain Home
Chain Home
Chain Home was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the British before and during the Second World War. The system otherwise known as AMES Type 1 consisted of radar fixed on top of a radio tower mast, called a 'station' to provide long-range detection of...
early warning network of radio direction-finding (later called radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
) stations, to bring it up to full operational readiness.
A joint British–French staff paper on strategic policy issued in April 1939 recognised that, in the first phase of any war with Germany, economic warfare was likely to be the Allies only effective offensive weapon. The Royal Navy war plans, delivered to the fleet in January 1939 set out three critical elements of a future war at sea. The most fundamental consideration was the defence of trade in home waters and the Atlantic in order to maintain imports of the goods Britain needed for her own survival. Of secondary importance was the defence of trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. If Italy, as assumed also declared war and became an aggressive opponent, her dominating geographical position might force shipping to go the long way around the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
(South Africa), but it was hoped to contain her with a strong fleet in the Mediterranean. Finally, there was the need for a vigorous blockade against Germany and Italy.
Pre-war situation in Germany
In Germany, where Hitler had warned his generals and party leaders that there would eventually be another war as early as 1934, there was great concern about the potential effects of a new blockade. In order to force Germany to sign the Treaty of VersaillesTreaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
, the original blockade was extended for an additional nine months after the end of the fighting in October 1918. This course of action, which Hitler called "the greatest breach of faith of all time", caused horrendous suffering among the German people and led to over half a million deaths from starvation
Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
. Germany also lost its entire battle fleet of modern warships at the end of the war and although new ships were being built as fast as was practical – the battleships Bismarck
German battleship Bismarck
Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...
and Tirpitz
German battleship Tirpitz
Tirpitz was the second of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the Imperial Navy, the ship was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft in Wilhelmshaven in November 1936 and launched two and a half years later in April...
had been launched but not yet completed – they were in no position to face the British and French navies on anything like equal terms.
Greatly deficient in natural resources
Natural Resources
Natural Resources is a soul album released by Motown girl group Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in 1970 on the Gordy label. The album is significant for the Vietnam War ballad "I Should Be Proud" and the slow jam, "Love Guess Who"...
, Germany's economy traditionally relied on importing raw materials to manufacture goods for re-export, and she developed a reputation for producing high quality merchandise. By 1900 Germany had the biggest economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
in Europe and she entered the war in 1914 with plentiful reserves of gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
and foreign currency and good credit ratings. But by the end of the war, though Great Britain also lost a quarter of its real wealth, Germany was ruined and she had since then experienced a number of severe financial problems; first hyperinflation
Hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...
caused by the requirement to pay reparations for the war, then – after a brief period of relative prosperity in the mid 1920s under the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
– the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which in part led to the rise in political extremism across Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Hitler’s seizure of power.
Although Hitler was credited with lowering unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
from 6 million (some sources claim the real figure was as high as 11m) to virtually nil by conscription and by launching enormous public works projects (similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
), as with the Autobahn construction he had little interest in economics and Germany’s ‘recovery’ was in fact achieved primarily by rearmament and other artificial means conducted by others. Because Germany was nowhere as wealthy in real terms as she had been a generation earlier, with very low reserves of foreign exchange and zero credit, Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht
Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht was a German economist, banker, liberal politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic...
, and later Walther Funk
Walther Funk
Walther Funk was a prominent Nazi official. He served as Reich Minister for Economic Affairs in Nazi Germany from 1937 to 1945, tried as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.-Early life:...
, as Minister of Economy used a number of financial devices – some very clever – to manipulate the currency and gear the German economy towards Wehrwirtschaft (War Economy). One example was the Mefo bill
Mefo bills
A Mefo bill , named after the company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, was a promissory note used for a system of deferred payment to finance the German rearmament, devised by the German Minister of Finance, Hjalmar Schacht, in 1934...
, a kind of IOU
IOU (debt)
An IOU is usually an informal document acknowledging debt. An IOU differs from a promissory note in that an IOU is not a negotiable instrument and does not specify repayment terms such as the time of repayment. IOUs usually specify the debtor, the amount owed, and sometimes the creditor...
produced by the Reichsbank
Reichsbank
The Reichsbank was the central bank of Germany from 1876 until 1945. It was founded on 1 January 1876 . The Reichsbank was a privately owned central bank of Prussia, under close control by the Reich government. Its first president was Hermann von Dechend...
to pay armaments manufacturers but which was also accepted by German banks. Because Mefo bills did not figure in government budgetary statements they helped maintain the secret of rearmament and were, in Hitler's own words, merely a way of printing money. Schacht also proved adept at negotiating extremely profitable barter
Barter
Barter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a...
deals with many other nations, supplying German military expertise and equipment in return.
The Nazi official who took the leading role in preparing German industry for war was Hermann Goering. In September 1936 he established the Four Year Plan
Four year plan
The Four Year Plan was a series of economic reforms created by the Nazi Party. The main aim of the four year plan was to prepare Germany for war in four years...
, the purpose of which was to make Germany self-sufficient and impervious to blockade by 1940. Using his contacts and position, as well as bribes and secret deals he established his own vast industrial empire, the Hermann Goering Works, to make steel from low-grade German iron ore, swallowing up small Ruhr
Ruhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...
companies and making himself immensely rich in the process. The works were located in the area bounded by Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
, Halle and Magdeburg
Magdeburg
Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....
, which was considered safe from land offensive operations, and a programme was initiated to relocate existing crucial industries nearest the borders of Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, Ruhr and Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
to the more secure central regions. The great Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
, Elbe
Elbe
The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...
, Rhine, Oder
Oder
The Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, later forming of the border between Poland and Germany, part of the Oder-Neisse line...
, Weser, Main
Main river
Main rivers are a statutory type of watercourse in England and Wales, usually larger streams and rivers, but also include some smaller watercourses. A main river is defined as a watercourse marked as such on a main river map, and can include any structure or appliance for controlling or regulating...
and Neckar rivers were dredged and made fully navigable
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
, and an intricate network of canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...
s was built to interlink them and connect them to major cities.
While the armed forces were being built up, imports were reduced to the barest minimum required, severe price and wage controls were introduced, unions
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
outlawed and, aware that certain commodities would be difficult to obtain once the blockade began, deals were made with Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Finland and Yugoslavia to facilitate the stockpiling of vital materials such as tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
, oil, nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
, wool and cotton that would be needed to supply the armed forces in wartime. Heavy investment was made in ersatz
Ersatz
Ersatz means 'substituting for, and typically inferior in quality to', e.g. 'chicory is ersatz coffee'. It is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement...
(synthetic) industries to produce goods from natural resources Germany did have, such as textiles made from cellulose
Cellulose
Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand β linked D-glucose units....
, rubber and oil made from coal, sugar and ethyl alcohol from wood, and materials for the print industry produced from potato tops. There were also ersatz foodstuffs such as coffee made from chicory
Chicory
Common chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons , or for roots , which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also...
and beer from sugar beet
Sugar beet
Sugar beet, a cultivated plant of Beta vulgaris, is a plant whose tuber contains a high concentration of sucrose. It is grown commercially for sugar production. Sugar beets and other B...
. Germany also invested in foreign industries and agricultural schemes aimed at directly meeting their particular needs, such as a plan to grow more soya beans and sunflower instead of maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
in Romania.
The American journalist William L. Shirer
William L. Shirer
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany read and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years...
, who had lived in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
since 1934 and who made regular radio broadcasts to the US for CBS
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
, noted that there were all kinds of shortages even before the war began. In contrast to Britain, where rationing came much later and was never as severe, such was the need for metal that park railings were already being taken away to be melted down for scrap, and Shirer found that there were no oranges in his hotel restaurant. On 10 August 1939 Nazi officials privately admitted to Shirer that, after the conquest of Poland, the other eastern Balkan states of Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia also had to be occupied, after which Germany would be self-sufficient and no longer need fear the Allied blockade.
On 24 August 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland which started the war, Germany announced rationing of food, coal, textiles and soap, and Shirer noted that it was this action above all which made the German people wake up to the reality that war was imminent. They were allowed one bar of soap per month, and men had to make one tube of shaving foam last five months. Housewives soon spent hours standing in line for supplies; shopkeepers sometimes opened otherwise non-perishable goods such as tinned sardines in front of customers when they were bought to prevent hoarding. The clothing allowance was so meagre that for all practical purposes people had to make do with whatever clothing they already possessed until the war was over. Men were allowed one overcoat and two suits, four shirts and six pairs of socks, and had to prove that the old ones were worn out to get new. Some items shown on the coupons, such as bed sheets, blankets and table linen could in reality only be obtained on production of a special licence.
Although the Nazi leadership maintained that the Allied strategy of blockade was illegal, they nevertheless prepared to counter it by all means necessary. In an ominous foreshadowing of the unrestricted submarine warfare
Unrestricted submarine warfare
Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchantmen without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules...
to come, the Kriegsmarine
Kriegsmarine
The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...
(navy) sent out battle instructions in May 1939 which included the ominous phrase "fighting methods will never fail to be employed merely because some international regulations are opposed to them".
First phase of the economic war
Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war two days later. Within hours the British liner Athenian was torpedoed by U-30 off the HebridesHebrides
The Hebrides comprise a widespread and diverse archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. There are two main groups: the Inner and Outer Hebrides. These islands have a long history of occupation dating back to the Mesolithic and the culture of the residents has been affected by the successive...
with the loss of 112 lives, leading the Royal Navy to assume that unrestricted U-boat warfare had begun.
Although France, unlike Britain was largely self-sufficient in food and needed to import few foodstuffs, she still required extensive overseas imports of weapons and raw materials for her war effort and there was close co-operation between the two allies. As in WWI, a combined War Council was formed to agree strategy and policy, and just as the British Expeditionary Force, which was quickly mobilised and sent to France was placed under overall French authority, so various components of the French navy were placed under British Admiralty control.
In Britain it was widely believed that the bombing of big cities and massive civilian casualties would commence immediately after the declaration. In 1932 the MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...
made a famous speech in which he said that "The bomber will always get through
The bomber will always get through
The bomber will always get through was a phrase used by Stanley Baldwin in 1932, in the speech "A Fear for the Future" to the British Parliament...
". This message sank deeply into the nation's subconsciousness, but when attacks did not come immediately, hundreds of thousands of evacuees gradually began to make their way home over the next few months.
Scapa Flow was again selected as the main British naval base because of its great distance from German airfields, however the defences built up during WW1 had fallen into disrepair. During an early visit to the base, Churchill was unimpressed with the levels of protection against air and submarine attack, and was astounded to see the flagship HMS Nelson putting to sea with no destroyer escort because there were none to spare. Efforts began to repair the peacetime neglect, but it was too late to prevent a U Boat creeping into the Flow during the night of 14 October and sinking the veteran battleship HMS Royal Oak with over 800 fatalities.
Although U boats were the main threat, there was also the threat posed by surface raiders to consider; the three ‘pocket battleships’ which Germany was allowed to build under the Versailles Treaty had been designed and built specifically with attacks on ocean commerce in mind. Their strong armour, 11 inch guns and 26 knots (51 km/h) speed enabled them to out-match any British cruiser, and two of them, the Graf Spee and the Deutschland had sailed between August 21 and 24th and were now loose on the high seas having evaded the Northern Patrol, the navy squadron that patrolled between Scotland and Iceland. The Deutschland remained off Greenland waiting for merchant vessels to attack, while the Graf Spee rapidly travelled south across the equator and soon began sinking British merchant ships in the southern Atlantic. Because the German fleet had insufficient capital ships to mount a traditional line of battle, the British and French were able to disperse their own fleets to form hunting groups to track down and sink German commerce raiders, but the hunt for the two raiders was to tie down no less than 23 important ships along with auxiliary craft and additional heavy ships to protect convoys.
At the start of the war a large proportion of the German merchant fleet was at sea, and around 30% sought shelter in neutral harbours where they could not be attacked, such as in Spain, Mexico, South America, America, Portuguese East Africa
Portuguese East Africa
Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa was the common name by which the Portuguese Empire's territorial expansion in East Africa was known across different periods of time...
and Japan. 28 German bauxite
Bauxite
Bauxite is an aluminium ore and is the main source of aluminium. This form of rock consists mostly of the minerals gibbsite Al3, boehmite γ-AlO, and diaspore α-AlO, in a mixture with the two iron oxides goethite and hematite, the clay mineral kaolinite, and small amounts of anatase TiO2...
ships were holed up in Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
and, while a few passenger liners, such as the New York, St Louis and Bremen managed to creep home, many ended up stranded with goods deteriorating or rotting in their holds and with Allied ships waiting to capture or sink them immediately they tried to leave port. The Germans tried various ways of avoiding the loss of the ships, such as disguising themselves as neutral vessels or selling their ships to foreign flags, but international law
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
did not allow such transactions in wartime. Up to Christmas 1939 at least 19 German merchant ships scuttled themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken by the Allies.
Contraband control
The day after the declaration, the British Admiralty announced that all merchant vessels were now liable to examination by the naval Contraband Control Service and by the French Blockade Ministry, which put its ships under British command. Because of the terrible suffering and starvation caused by the original use of the strategy, a formal declaration of blockade was deliberately not made, but the communiquéCommunique
A communiqué is a brief report or statement released by a public agency.Communiqué may also refer to:* Communiqué , a rock band* Communiqué , 1979* Communiqué , 1987...
listed the types of contraband of war that was liable for confiscation if carried. It included all kinds of foodstuffs, animal feed, forage, and clothing, and articles and materials used in their production. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. In addition, there was Absolute Contraband, which constituted:
- All ammunition, explosives, chemicals or appliances suitable for use in chemical warfareChemical warfareChemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
- Fuel of all kinds and all contrivances for means of transportation on land, in water or the air
- All means of communication, tools, implements and instruments necessary for carrying on hostile operations
- Coin, bullion, currency and evidences of debt.
The Royal Navy selected three locations on home soil for Contraband Control: Weymouth and The Downs
The Downs
The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge...
in the South to cover the English Channel approaches, and Kirkwall
Kirkwall
Kirkwall is the biggest town and capital of Orkney, off the coast of northern mainland Scotland. The town is first mentioned in Orkneyinga saga in the year 1046 when it is recorded as the residence of Rögnvald Brusason the Earl of Orkney, who was killed by his uncle Thorfinn the Mighty...
in Orkney to cover the North Sea. If ships were on government charter or sailing directly to Allied ports to unload cargo or passengers, they would not be detained any longer than was necessary to determine their identity, but if on other routes they were to stop at the designated contraband control ports for detailed examination. Ships proceeding eastward through the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
with the intention of passing the Downs, if not calling at any other Channel port, should call at Weymouth for contraband control examination. Ships bound for European ports or en route to the North of Scotland should call at Kirkwall.
Three further British contraband inspection facilities were established at Gibraltar to control access into and out of the western Mediterranean, Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
at the other end of the Mediterranean in Northern Palestine, and Aden
Aden
Aden is a seaport city in Yemen, located by the eastern approach to the Red Sea , some 170 kilometres east of Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000. Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a peninsula, joined to the mainland by a...
on the Indian Ocean coast of Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
at the southern entrance to the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
to control access into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. To patrol the Mediterranean and the Red Sea access to the Indian Ocean, Britain would work together with the French, whose own navy was the world’s fourth largest, and comprised a good number of modern, powerful vessels with others nearing completion. It was agreed that the French would hold the Western Mediterranean Basin via Marseilles and its base at Mers El Kébir (Oran) on the coast of Algeria, while the British would hold the Eastern Basin via its base at Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
. The Allies had practical control over the Suez Canal which provided passage between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean via Port Said
Port Said
Port Said is a city that lies in north east Egypt extending about 30 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal, with an approximate population of 603,787...
at the northern entry to the canal. The canal, built largely by French capital, at that time came under British jurisdiction as a result of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936
Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936
The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 was a treaty signed between the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Egypt; it is officially known as The Treaty of Alliance Between His Majesty, in Respect of the United Kingdom, and His Majesty, the King of Egypt...
.
The work of the actual inspection of cargoes was carried out by customs officers and Royal Naval officers and men who, together with their ships, were assigned to Contraband Control for various periods of duty. The job of Control Officer required great tact in the face of irate and defiant neutral skippers, particularly Dutch and Scandinavians who had a long tradition of trade with Germany. Contraband Control patrols dotted all practical sea routes
Sea lane
A sea lane or shipping lane is a regularly used route for ocean-going and Great Lakes vessels. In the time of sailing ships they were not only determined by the distribution of land masses but also the prevailing winds, whose discovery was crucial for the success of long voyages...
, stopping all neutral ships, and making life very difficult for any who tried to slip by, forcing them into ports and laying them up for days before inspection, in some cases ruining perishable goods. Control ports were often very overcrowded, teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
s constantly sending out cargo listings and manifests to be checked against import quota lists. Even for innocent ships, a delay of a day or two was inevitable; Contraband Control officers were under instructions to be extremely polite and apologetic to all concerned. Neutral captains often expressed utter astonishment and bemusement at the level of British advance knowledge of their activities, and soon realised it was hard to hide anything. Although numerous attempts were made to bypass the blockade, the net was extremely hard to avoid, and most neutral captains voluntarily stopped at one of the eight Allied Contraband Control ports.
The Ministry of Economic Warfare
The job of co-ordinating the various agencies involved in the blockade was carried out by the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), which in the last few weeks before the outbreak of war had been set up by Frederick Leigh-Ross. Leigh-Ross had not been put off by ChamberlainNeville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
's initially lukewarm reception to his plan to revive the blockade, but had in fact spent the time after Munich to continue his preparations regardless. Leigh-Ross recruited shrewd bankers, statisticians, economists and experts in international law and an army of over 400 administrative workers and civil servants for his new ministry. It was their job to compile and sift through the raw intelligence being received from the various overseas and other contacts, to cross-reference it with the known data on ship movements and cargoes and to pass on any relevant information to Contraband Control. They also put together the Statutory List – sometimes known as the 'blacklist' – of companies known to regularly trade with, or who were directly financed by, Germany. In mid-September the Ministry published a list of 278 pro-German persons and companies throughout the world with whom British merchants and shipowners were forbidden to do business, subject to heavy penalties. When shipments from these companies were detected they were usually made a priority for interception.
One lesson that was learnt from WW1 was that although the navy could stop ships on the open seas, little could be done about traders who acted as the middleman, importing materials the Nazis needed into their own neutral country then transporting it overland to Germany for a profit. Leigh–Ross spent the months before the war compiling a massive dossier on the annual quantities of materials the countries bordering Germany normally imported so that if they exceeded these levels in wartime, pressure could be brought on the authorities in those countries to take action. Diplomats from the Scandinavian nations, as well as Italy and the Balkan countries, who were also major suppliers to Germany, were given quota lists of various commodities and told they could import these amounts and no more, or action would be taken against them.
A ship stopping at a Control port raised a red and white flag with a blue border to signify that it was awaiting examination. At night the port authorities used signal lights to warn a skipper he must halt, and the flag had to stay raised until the ship was passed. Arrangements for boarding and examining ships were made in the port ‘Boarding Room’, and eventually a team of 2 officers and 6 men set out in a fishing drifter or motor launch to the ship. After apologising to the captain for the trouble, they inspected the ship’s papers, manifest and bills of lading. At the same time the wireless cabin was sealed so no signals could be sent out while the ship was in the controlled zone. After satisfying themselves that the cargo corresponded with the written records, the party returned ashore and a summary of the manifest, passengers, ports of origin and destination was sent by teleprinter to the Ministry. When the ministry’s consent was received, the ship's papers were returned to the captain along with a certificate of naval clearance and a number of special flags – one for each day – signifying that they had already been checked and could pass other patrols and ports without being stopped. If the Ministry found something suspicious, the team returned to examine the load. If part or all the cargo was found suspect the ship was directed to a more convenient port where the cargo was made a ward of the Prize Court
Prize court
A prize court is a court authorized to consider whether or not a ship has been lawfully captured or seized in time of war or under the terms of the seizing ship's letters of marque and reprisal...
by the Admiralty Marshall who held it until the Court sat to decide the outcome, which could include returning it to the captain or confirming its confiscation to be sold at a later time and the proceeds placed into a prize fund for distribution among the fleet after the war. A disgruntled captain could dispute the seizure as illegal, but the list of banned goods was intentionally made broad to include "any goods capable of being used for or converted to the manufacture of war materials".
In the first four weeks of the war, official figures stated that the Royal Navy confiscated 289,000 tons of contraband and the French Marine Nationale
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...
100,000 tons. The Germans responded with their own counter-blockade of supplies destined for Allied ports and published a contraband list virtually identical to the British list. All neutral traffic from the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
was to pass through the Kiel Canal for inspection, but with a fraction of the naval forces of their enemies, the action was more in defiance, but it was destined to have a big impact on neutral Scandinavian shipping, who among other materials supplied Britain with large quantities of wood pulp
Wood pulp
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fibre crops or waste paper. Wood pulp is the most common raw material in papermaking.-History:...
for explosive cellulose and newsprint. Germany began by targeting the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish pulp boats, sinking several before Sweden shut down its pulp industry and threatened to stop sending Germany iron ore unless the attacks ceased. Germany then began seizing Danish ships carrying butter, eggs and bacon to Britain, in breach of a promise to allow Denmark to trade freely with her enemies.
Up to 21 September 1939 over 300 British and 1,225 neutral ships had been detained, with 66 of them having cargo confiscated. In many cases these cargoes proved useful for the Allies' own war effort – Contraband Control also intercepted a consignment of 2 tons of coffee destined for Germany, where the population had long been reduced to drinking ersatz substitutes. When the manifest of the Danish ship Danmark, operated by the Halal Shipping Company Ltd, was inspected, the recipient was listed as none other than Herr Hitler, President Republique Grand Allemagne! In the first 6 weeks of the war the average number ships stopping at Weymouth was 20, and while many were allowed to continue after a brief examination of the ships papers, out of 74 carrying 513,000 tons, 99,300 tons of contraband iron ore, wheat, fuel oil, petrol and manganese
Manganese
Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a free element in nature , and in many minerals...
were seized.
The shipping shortage
At the beginning of the war, Germany possessed 60 U-boats, but was building new vessels quickly and would have over 140 by the summer of 1940. While Britain could call on impressive flotillas of battleships and cruisers for direct ship to ship confrontations, these heavy vessels were of limited use against U Boats. Britain now retained less than half the total of 339 destroyers she had at the height of the battle in 1917 when the U Boats almost forced Britain to consider surrender.Orders were immediately placed for 58 of a new type of small escort vessel called the Corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
which could be built in12 months or less. Motor launches of new Admiralty design were brought into service for coastal work, and later, a larger improved version of the Corvette, the Frigate
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
was laid down. To free up destroyers for ocean going and actual combat operations, merchant ships were converted and armed for escort work, while French ships were also fitted with ASDIC sets which enabled them to detect the presence of a submerged U Boat.
The massive expansion of ship building stretched British shipbuilding capacity - including its Canadian yards - to the limit. The building or completion of ships that would not be finished until after 1940 was scaled back or suspended in favour or ships that could be completed quickly, while the commissioning into the fleet of a series of four new aircraft carriers of the Illustrious class
Illustrious class aircraft carrier
The Illustrious class was a class of aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that were some of the most important British warships in World War II...
, ordered under an emergency review in 1936 and which were all finished or near completion, was delayed until later in the war in favour of more immediately useful vessels. Great efforts went into finishing the new battleships King George V
King George V class battleship (1939)
The King George V-class battleships were the most modern British battleships used during World War II. Five ships of this class were built and commissioned: King George V , Prince of Wales , Duke of York , Howe , and Anson .The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 limiting all of the number,...
and Prince of Wales before the Bismarck could be completed and begin attacking Allied convoys, while the French also strained to complete similarly advanced battleships, the Richelieu
Richelieu class battleship
The Richelieu class battleships were the last and largest battleships of the French Navy, staying in service into the 1960s. They still remain to this day the largest warships ever built by France...
and the Jean Bart by the autumn of 1940 to meet the Mediterranean threat of two Italian battleships nearing completion
Littorio class battleship
The Littorio class, also known as the Vittorio Veneto class,Vittorio Veneto and Littorio were laid down on the same date, so ambiguity exists in the naming of the class. was a class of battleship of the Regia Marina, the Italian navy. The class was composed of four ships: Littorio, Vittorio Veneto,...
.
To bridge the gap during the first crucial weeks while the auxiliary anti-submarine craft were prepared, aircraft carriers were used to escort the numerous unprotected craft approaching British shores. However this strategy proved costly; the new carrier HMS Ark Royal
HMS Ark Royal (R09)
HMS Ark Royal was an Audacious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy and, when she was decommissioned in 1978, was the Royal Navy's last remaining conventional catapult and arrested-landing aircraft carrier...
was attacked by a U-Boat on 14 September, and while it escaped, the old carrier HMS Courageous
HMS Courageous
HMS Courageous or Courageux may refer to one of several ships of the Royal Navy:, a 74-gun ship of the line captured from the French on 13 Aug 1761, and wrecked on the coast of Morocco 19 Dec 1796., or Courageuse, was a 32-gun sailing frigate captured from the French in June 1799...
was not so lucky, being sunk a few days later with heavy loss of life. Ships leaving port could be provided with a limited protective screen from aircraft flying from land bases, but at this stage of the conflict, a ‘Mid Atlantic Gap’, where convoys could not be provided with air cover existed. Churchill lamented the loss of Berehaven and the other Southern Irish ports, greatly reducing the operational radius of the escorts, due to the determination of the Irish leader Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera
Éamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in twentieth century Ireland, serving as head of government of the Irish Free State and head of government and head of state of Ireland...
to remain resolutely neutral in the conflict.
In the first week of the war, Britain lost 65,000 tons of shipping; in the second week, 46,000 tons were lost, and in the third week 21,000 tons.
By the end of September 1939, regular ocean convoys were in operation, outward from the Thames and Liverpool, and inwards from Gibraltar, Freetown and Halifax. To make up the losses of merchant vessels and to allow for increased imports of war goods, negotiations began with neutral countries such as Norway and Holland towards taking over their freighters on central government charter.
The Navicert
Elsewhere, the blockade began to do its work. From Norway, across and down the North Sea, in the Channel and throughout the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Allied sea and air power began slowly to bleed away Germany’s supplies. In the first 7 days of October alone, the British Contraband Control detained, either by confiscating neutral cargoes or capturing German ships, 13,800 tons of petrol, 2,500 tons of sulphur, 1,500 tons of jute (the raw material from which hessian and burlap cloth is made), 400 tons of textiles, 1,500 tons animal feed, 1,300 tons oils and fats, 1,200 tons of foodstuffs, 600 tons oilseeds, 570 tons copper, 430 tons of other ores and metals, 500 tons of phosphates, 320 tons of timber and various other quantities of chemicals, cotton, wool, hides and skins, rubber, silk, gums and resins, tanning material and ore crushing machinery.Two months into the war, the Ministry reintroduced the 'Navicert' (Navigational Certificate), first used to great effect during WW1. This system was in essence a commercial passport applied to goods before they were shipped, and was used on a wide scale. Possession of a Navicert proved that a consignment had already been passed as non-contraband by His Majesty's Ambassador in the country of origin and allowed the captain to pass Contraband Control patrols and ports without being stopped, sparing the navy and the Ministry the trouble of tracking the shipment. Violators, however, could expect harsh treatment. They could be threatened with Bunker Control measures, refused further certification or have their cargo or their vessel impounded. Conversely, neutrals who went out of their way to co-operate with the measures could expect 'favoured nation' status, and have their ships given priority for approval. Italy, though an ally of Hitler, had not yet joined the war, and its captains enjoyed much faster turnarounds by following the Navicert system than the Americans, who largely refused to accept its legitimacy.
U.S. reaction to the British blockade
Passenger ships were also subject to Contraband Control because they carried luggage and small cargo items such as postal mail and parcels, and the Americans were particularly furious at the British insistence on opening all mail destined for Germany. By 25 November 1939, 62 U.S. ships of various types had been stopped, some for as long as three weeks, and a lot of behind-the-scenes diplomacy took place to smooth over the political fallout. On 22 December the US State Department made a formal protest, to no avail. On 30 December the Manhattan, carrying 400 tons of small cargo, sailed from New York to deliver mail to Italy, but was stopped six days later by a British destroyer at Gibraltar. Although the captain went ashore to make a furious protest to the authorities and the US consul, the ship was delayed for 40 hours as British Contraband Control checked the records and ship's manifest, eventually removing 235 bags of mail addressed to Germany.In the U.S., with its tradition that "the mail must always get through", and where armed robbery of the mail carried a mandatory 25 year jail term, there were calls for mail to be carried on warships, but nevertheless the exercise – as with all such journeys – was repeated on the homeward leg as Contraband Control searched the ship again for anything of value that might have been taken out of Germany. On 22 January the UK ambassador was handed a note from the State Department calling the practice 'wholly unwarrantable' and demanding immediate correction. But despite the British Foreign Office urging the Ministry of Economic Warfare to be cautious for fear of damaging relations with the US, the British claimed to have uncovered a nationwide US conspiracy to send clothing, jewels, securities, cash, foodstuffs, chocolate, coffee and soap to Germany through the post, and there was no climbdown.
'Gruss und Kuss'
From the war's beginning, a steady stream of packages, many marked Gruss und Kuss (Greetings and Kisses) had been sent from the United States through neutral countries to Germany by a number of US-based organisations, euphemistically termed 'travel agencies', advertising special combinations of gift packages in German-language newspapers. Despite high prices, one mail company, the Fortra Corporation of Manhattan admitted it had sent 30,000 food packages to Germany in less than three months, a business which exceeded US$1 million per year. The British said that, of 25,000 packages examined in three months, 17,000 contained contraband of food items as well as cash in all manner of foreign currency, diamonds, pearls, and maps of "potential military value." When a ton of air mail from the American Clipper was confiscated in BermudaBermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, the American government banned outright the sending of parcels through the US airmail. During this period, the Italian Lati Airline, flying between South America and Europe was also used to smuggle small articles such as diamonds and platinum, in some cases, concealed within the airframe, until the practice was ended by the Brazilian and US governments. The US travel agencies were eventually closed down along with the German consulates and information centres on 16 June 1941.
The phoney war
During the early months of the war—the phoney war—the only place where there was any real fighting was at sea. News of the successes achieved by the men of Contraband Control were rarely out of the newspapers, and provided useful propaganda to shore up civilian morale. In the first 15 weeks of the war the Allies claimed to have taken 870,000 tons of goods, equal to 10% of Germany's normal imports for an entire year. This included 28 million USgals (105,991.5 m³) of petrol and enough animal hides for 5 million pairs of boots, and did not take account of the loss to Germany from goods that had not been shipped at all for fear of seizure.German preparations to counter the effects of the military and economic war were much more severe than in Britain. On 4 September a tax of 50% was placed on beer and tobacco, and income tax went up to 50%. For months previously, all able-bodied people in cities had by law to carry out war work such as filling sandbags for defenses and air-raid shelters, and it was now made an offense to ask for a raise in salary or to demand extra pay for overtime. On 7 September wide-ranging new powers were granted to Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
to punish the populace for 'Endangering the defensive power of the German people'; the next day a worker was shot for refusing to take part in defensive work. The new legislation, frequently enforced by the Peoples Court, was made deliberately vague to cover a variety of situations, and could be very severe. In time it would lead to the death penalty for such crimes as forging food coupons and protesting against the administration. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. It had cut Germany off from 50% of her normal imports of nickel, cotton, tin, oil and rubber, and since the war's beginning she had also lost access to French iron ore, making her extremely reliant on Sweden for this vital material.
Germany now looked to Romania for a large part of the oil she needed and to Russia for a wide range of commodities. In fact, apart from allowing Hitler to secure his eastern borders and annihilate Poland, the Nazi-Soviet Pact brought Germany considerable economic benefits. As well as providing refueling and repair facilities for German U-boats and other vessels at its remote Arctic port of Teriberka
Teriberka
Teriberka is a rural locality in Kolsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located on the Barents Sea coast, at the mouth of the Teriberka River.-History:...
, east of Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
, the Russians – 'Belligerent Neutrals' in Churchill's words – also accepted large quantities of wheat, tin, petrol and rubber from America into its ports in the Arctic and Black Sea and, rather than transport them over the entire continent, released identical volumes of the same material to Germany in the west. Before the war total US exports to Russia were estimated as less than £1m per month; by this stage, they were known to exceed £2m per month. From the outset, although they had formerly been hated enemies, large-scale direct trade took place between the two countries because both were able to offer something the other wanted. Germany lacked the natural resources Russia had in abundance, whereas Russia was at that time still a relatively backward country in want of the latest technology. By the end of October 1939 the Russians were sending large quantities of oil and grain in return for war materials such as fighter aircraft and machine tools for manufacturing in a deal valued at 150 million Reichmarks a year.
The Germans maintained an aggressive strategy at sea in order to press home their own blockade of the Allies. Lloyd's List
Lloyd's List
Lloyd's List is one of the world's oldest continuously-running journals, having provided weekly shipping news in London as early as 1734. Now published daily, a recent issue was numbered 59,200...
showed that by the end of 1939 they had sunk 249 ships by U-boat, air attack, or by mines. These losses included 112 British and 12 French vessels, but also demonstrated the disproportionate rate of loss by neutral nations. Norway, a great seafaring nation since the days of the Vikings had lost almost half its fleet in WWI, yet now possessed a merchant navy of some 2,000 ships, with tonnage
Tonnage
Tonnage is a measure of the size or cargo carrying capacity of a ship. The term derives from the taxation paid on tuns or casks of wine, and was later used in reference to the weight of a ship's cargo; however, in modern maritime usage, "tonnage" specifically refers to a calculation of the volume...
exceeded only by Britain, the USA, and Japan. They had already lost 23 ships, with many more attacked and dozens of sailors killed, while Sweden, Germany’s main provider of iron ore, had lost 19 ships, the Denmark 9, and Belgium 3. Holland, with 75% of her commercial shipping outgoing from Rotterdam
Port of Rotterdam
The Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, located in the city of Rotterdam, Netherlands. From 1962 until 2004 it was the world's busiest port, now overtaken by first Shanghai and then Singapore...
to Germany, had also lost 7 ships, yet all these countries continued to trade with Germany. Churchill was endlessly frustrated and bemused by the refusal of the neutrals to openly differentiate between the British and German methods of waging the sea war, and by their determination to maintain pre-war patterns of trade, but stopped short of condemning them, believing that events would eventually prove the Allies to be in the right. He commented;
At present their plight is lamentable and will become much worse. They bow humbly in fear of German threats of violence, each one hoping that if he feeds the crocodile enough the crocodile will eat him last and that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. What would happen if these neutrals, with one spontaneous impulse were to do their duty in accordance with the Covenant of the League [of Nations] and stand together with the British and French Empires against aggression and wrong?.
The neutral commerce which Churchill found most perplexing was the Swedish iron ore trade
Swedish iron ore during World War II
Swedish iron ore was an important economic factor in the European Theatre of World War II. Both the Allies and the Third Reich were keen on the control of the mining district in northernmost Sweden, surrounding the mining towns of Gällivare and Kiruna...
. Sweden provided Germany with 9m tons of high grade ore per year via its Baltic ports, without which German armaments manufacture would be paralyzed. These ports froze in the winter, but an alternative route was available from the Norwegian port of Narvik from which the ore was transported down a partially-hidden sea lane (which Churchill called the Norwegian Corridor) between the shoreline and the Skjaergaard (Skjærgård), a continuous chain of some 50,000 glacially formed skerries (small uninhabited islands), sea stacks and rocks running the entire 1,600 km length of the west coast. As in WW1, the Germans used the Norwegian Corridor to travel inside the 3 nautical miles (5.6 km)-wide neutral waters where the Royal Navy and RAF were unable to attack them. Churchill considered this to be the 'greatest impediment to the blockade', and continually pressed for the mining of the Skjaergaard to force the German ships to come out into the open seas where Contraband Control could deal with them, but the Norwegians, not wishing to antagonise the Germans, steadfastly refused to allow it.
Even so, by early October the Allies were growing increasingly confident at the effectiveness of their blockade and the apparent success of the recently-introduced convoy system. A convoy of 15 freighters arrived in British ports unscathed from Canada bringing half a million bushels of wheat, while in France more important ships arrived from Halifax in another convoyed group. The French claimed that of 30 U-boats sent out in Germany’s first major offensive against Allied shipping, a third had been destroyed, and Churchill declared that Britain had seized 150,000 more tons of contraband than was lost by torpedoing. In mid-October Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
called for fiercer action by his U-boat crews and the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
to enforce his counter-blockade, and warned the Allies of his new 'secret weapon'. Neutral ships were warned against joining Allied convoys, Scandinavian merchants were ordered to use the Kiel Canal to facilitate the German's own Contraband Control and the US City of Flint, which had rescued survivors of the Athenia became the first American ship captured as prize of war by the Germans, although the episode proved farcical and the ship was eventually returned to its owners.
Minenkrieg
Hitler's 'secret weapon' of the time was the magnetic mine. The Germans had used mines against freighters from the beginning, but now began laying a new type, which did not need to make contact with a ship to destroy it, off the English coast, using seaplaneSeaplane
A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...
s to drop them in British harbours, channels and estuaries too narrow or shallow for submarines to navigate. They ranged from small 200 lb (90.7 kg) mines dropped dozens at a time to large one-ton versions dropped by parachute on shoal
Shoal
Shoal, shoals or shoaling may mean:* Shoal, a sandbank or reef creating shallow water, especially where it forms a hazard to shipping* Shoal draught , of a boat with shallow draught which can pass over some shoals: see Draft...
bottoms which were almost impossible to sweep, equipped with magnetic triggers activated by a steel hull passing above. Over the next few days many ships of all sizes blew up in waters close to shore, mostly by explosions under or near the keel
Keel
In boats and ships, keel can refer to either of two parts: a structural element, or a hydrodynamic element. These parts overlap. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in construction of a ship, in British and American shipbuilding traditions the construction is dated from this event...
s although the waters had been swept. Six went down in the mouth of the Thames, and the new cruiser
Cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...
HMS Belfast
HMS Belfast (C35)
HMS Belfast is a museum ship, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, permanently moored in London on the River Thames and operated by the Imperial War Museum....
was badly damaged at the mouth of the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
.
The British urgently set to work to find a defence against the magnetic mine and began preparations to recreate the Northern Barrage
Northern Barrage
The Northern Barrage was the name given to an extensive series of defensive minefields laid by the British during World War II in order to restrict German access to the Atlantic Ocean. The barrage stretched from the Orkney to the Faroe Islands and on toward Iceland...
, established between Scotland and Norway in 1917 as a safeguard against increasing U-boat attacks. In his war speech to the Empire, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
declared: "Already we know the secret of the magnetic mine and we shall soon master it as we have already mastered the U-boat", but shortly afterwards two more ships were sunk, bringing the week's total to 24. Evidence that at least part of Germany's attack was with illegal floating mines came when a British freighter was sunk at anchor off an east coast port, when two mines came together and exploded off Zeebrugge
Zeebrugge
Zeebrugge is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zeebrugge and a seafront resort with hotels, cafés, a marina and a beach.-Location:...
, and when a large whale was found near four German mines on the Belgian coast with a huge hole in its belly. Over the weekend of 18–21 November six other neutral ships were sunk off the English coast, including a 12,000 ton Japanese liner.
Eventually, a method of de-magnetising ships, known as ‘degaussing’was developed, which involved girding them in electric cable, and was quickly applied to all ships. Other means of minesweeping were also developed, whereby the mines were exploded by patrolling ships and aircraft fitted with a special fuse provocation apparatus.
The export ban
From early December 1939 the British began preventing German exports as a reprisal for the damage and loss of life caused by the German magnetic mines. Chamberlain said that although he realised this would be detrimental to the neutrals, (Norway got nearly all its coal from Germany) the policy was in strict adherence to the rules of law and that whereas Germany's use of mines and submarine warfare had already caused many innocent deaths regardless of nationality, no loss of life had been caused by the exercise of British sea power. Before the war, 70% of Germany's export trade was with European countries, mostly Holland, France and England, but the Ministry estimated that Germany's remaining annual exports were worth £44m to South America, £19m to the Far East, £15m to the US, and that although nothing could be done to prevent the overland exports to Scandinavia, Italy, Russia and the Balkans, it was believed that German sea trade could be reduced by 45% by the measure.Angry at the British export ban, the German Government accused the British of having deliberately sunk the Simon Bolivar, lost on 18 November with the loss of 120 people, including women and children. They advised neutrals to shun British waters and trade with Germany, declaring that because of the defensive minefields and contraband control, British waters were not mercantile fairways subject to the Hague Convention regulating sea warfare, but military areas where enemy ships of war must be attacked. Prompted by Germany, all the neutrals protested, but the overall effect was to slow the flow of neutral shipping to a standstill. The Nazi leadership later grew bullish at the apparent success of the mine strategy and admitted they were of German origin, stating that "our objectives are being achieved."
In Berlin, William Shirer recorded in his diary that there were signs of a rush to convert currency into goods to guard against inflation, but that although the blockade now meant that the German diet was very limited, there was generally enough to eat and people were at that point rarely going hungry. However, it was no longer possible to entertain at home unless the guests brought their own food and though restaurants and cafes still traded they were now very expensive and crowded. Pork, veal and beef were rare, but in the early months there was still adequate venison, wild pig and wildfowl shot on estates and in forests. Coal was now very difficult to obtain however, and although sufficient crayfish were imported from the Danubian nations to allow an enjoyable festive meal, people went cold that Christmas. In fact, Germany produced large volumes of very high quality coal in the Saar region, but much of it was now being used to produce synthetic rubber, oil and gas. There were reports that Germany, which badly needed to raise foreign currency had been trying to export bicycles and cars to adjacent countries without tyres. The average German worker worked for 10 hours a day 6 days a week; but although he may have had enough money to buy them, most items were not available, and shops displayed goods in their windows accompanied by a sign saying 'Not For Sale'
Such was the belief in the supreme strength of the Royal Navy that some thought that the blockade might now be so effective in restricting Germany’s ability to fight that Hitler would be forced to come to the negotiation table. The British Contraband Control did allow one delivery to Germany, however – a large quantity of rat poison and half a ton of overripe Gruyere Cheese!
Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1940 there were still 60 German merchant ships alone in South American harbours, costing £300,000 per month in port and harbour dues, and Hitler eventually ordered them all to try to make a break for home. Up to the end of February 1940 about 70 had tried to get away, but very few reached Germany. Most were sunk or scuttled, and at least eight foundered on rocks trying to negotiate the way down the unfamiliar and hazardous Norwegian coast. The Germans tended to prefer to sink the ships themselves rather than allow the Allies to capture them, even at risk to those aboard. Such was the case of the Columbus, Germany's third-largest liner at 32,581 tons, and the Glucksburg, which ran herself ashore on the coast of Spain when sighted. Another, the 'Watussi', was sighted off the Cape by the South African air force and the crew immediately set her on fire, trusting the aircrew to bring aid to the passengers and crew.
That winter was harsh, causing the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
to freeze and heavy snow slowed rail transport, stalling Germany's grain and oil imports from Romania. Great Britain, having deprived Spain of her exports of iron ore to Germany entered into a deal to buy the ore instead via the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
, along with copper, mercury and lead to enable the Spanish, who were on the verge of famine, to raise the foreign exchange she needed to buy grain from South America to feed her people.
1940
On 17 January 1940 the Minister of Economic WarfareMinister of Economic Warfare
The Minister of Economic Warfare was a British government position which existed during the Second World War. The minister was in charge of the Special Operations Executive.-Ministers of Economic Warfare 1939-1945:...
, Ronald Cross said in a speech in the House of Commons:
We have made a good start, we must bear in mind that Germany does not have the same resources she had some 25 years ago. Her resources in gold and foreign currency are smaller; her stocks of industrial raw materials are far smaller. At the end of four and a half months, Germany is in something like the same economic stress she was in after two years of the last war.
Despite newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
s showing the awesome might of the Nazi Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
, which even her enemies believed, Germany was unable to afford a prolonged war. In order to buy from abroad without credit or foreign exchange (cash), a nation needed goods or gold to offer, but the British export ban prevented her from raising revenue. In WW1, even after two years of war Germany still had gold reserves worth 2.5m marks and over 30 billion marks invested abroad, giving her easy access to exports. By this early stage of WW2, her gold reserves were down to around half a billion marks and her credit was almost nil, so any imports had to be paid for by barter, as with the high-technology equipment sent to Russia or coal to Italy.
In February 1940 Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter
Karl Ritter was a German diplomat, ambassador to Brazil, a member of the Nazi Party, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II, and convicted war criminal in the Ministries Trial.-Life:Karl Ritter was a graduate in law, and was appointed to...
, who had brokered huge pre-war barter agreements with Brazil, visited Moscow and, despite finding Stalin an incredibly fierce negotiator, an increased trade deal was eventually signed between Germany and Russia. It was valued at 640 million Reichmarks in addition to that previously agreed, for which Germany would supply heavy naval guns, thirty of her latest aircraft including the Messerschmitt 109, Messerschmitt 110 and Junkers 88, locomotives, turbines, generators, the unfinished cruiser Lutzow and the plans to the pocket battleship Bismarck. In return Russia supplied in the first year one million tons of cereal, ½ million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, ½ million tons of phosphate
Phosphate
A phosphate, an inorganic chemical, is a salt of phosphoric acid. In organic chemistry, a phosphate, or organophosphate, is an ester of phosphoric acid. Organic phosphates are important in biochemistry and biogeochemistry or ecology. Inorganic phosphates are mined to obtain phosphorus for use in...
s, one million tons of soya beans and other goods. Although the Germans had been able to find numerous ways of beating the blockade, shortages were now so severe that on March 30, 1940, when he was gearing up for his renewed Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
in the west, Hitler ordered that delivery of goods in payment to Russia should take priority even over those to his own armed forces. After the fall of France Hitler, intending to invade Russia the following year, declared that the trade need continue only until the spring of 1941, after which the Nazis intended to take all they needed.
As more U-boats were commissioned into the German navy, the terrible toll on neutral merchant shipping intensified. After the first 6 months of the war, Norway had lost 49 ships with 327 men dead; Denmark 19 ships for 225 sailors killed and Sweden 32 ships for 243 men lost. In early March Admiral Raeder was interviewed by an American correspondent from NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
regarding the alleged use of unrestrained submarine warfare. Raeder maintained that because the British blockade was illegal, the Germans were entitled to respond with ‘similar methods’, and that because the British government had armed many of its merchant ships and used civilians to man coastal patrol vessels and minesweepers, any British ship sighted was considered a legitimate target. Raeder said that neutrals would only be liable to attack if they behaved as belligerents i.e. by zig-zagging or navigating without lights. The paradox with this argument – as the neutral countries were quick to point out – was that Germany was benefiting from the very same maritime activity they were trying so hard to destroy.
On 6 April, after the sinking of the Norwegian mail steamer 'Mira', the Norwegian Foreign Minister Professor Koht, referring to 21 protests made to belligerents about breaches to her neutrality, made a statement about the German sinking of Norwegian ships by U-boats and aircraft. "We cannot understand how men of the German forces can find such a practice in accordance with their honour or humanitarian feelings". A few hours later another ship, the Navarra was torpedoed without warning, with the loss of 12 Norwegian seamen, by a U-boat which did not stop to pick up survivors.
Intensification of the blockade
Despite impressive statistics of the quantities of contraband captured, by the spring of 1940 the optimism of the British government over the success of the blockade appeared premature and a feeling developed that Germany was managing to maintain and even increase imports. Although the MEW tried to prevent it, neighbouring neutral countries continued to trade with Germany. In some cases, as with the crucial Swedish iron ore trade, it was done openly, but elsewhere, neutrals secretly acted as a conduit for supplies of materials that would otherwise be confiscated if sent directly to Germany.A third of Dutchmen derived their livelihood from German trade, and Dutch traders were long suspected of acting as middle men in the supply of copper, tin, oil and industrial diamonds from America. Official figures showed that in the first 5 months of war, Holland’s imports of key materials from the US increased by £4.25m, but also Norway's purchases in the same area increased threefold to £3m a year, Sweden’s by £5m and Switzerland’s by £2m. Prominent in these purchases were cotton, petrol, iron, steel and copper – materials essential for waging war. While some increases may have been inflationary, some from a desire to build up their own armed forces or to stockpile reserves, it was exactly the type of activity the Ministry was trying to prevent.
American companies were prevented from openly supplying arms to belligerents by the Neutrality Acts, (an amendment was made on 21 September in the form of Cash and Carry
Cash and carry (World War II)
Cash and carry was a policy requested by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a special session of the United States Congress on September 21, 1939, as World War II was spreading throughout Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Acts of 1936...
) but no restrictions applied to raw materials. During the last 4 months of 1939, exports from the USA to the 13 states capable of acting as middlemen to Germany amounted to £52m compared to £35m for the same period in 1938. By contrast, Britain and France spent £67m and £60m in the same periods respectively, and according to a writer in the New York World Telegram, exports to the 8 countries bordering Germany exceeded the loss of US exports previously sent directly to Germany.
But by far the biggest hole in the blockade was in the Balkans. Together Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, Romania and Bulgaria annually exported to Germany a large part of their surplus oil, chromium, bauxite, pyrite
Pyrite
The mineral pyrite, or iron pyrite, is an iron sulfide with the formula FeS2. This mineral's metallic luster and pale-to-normal, brass-yellow hue have earned it the nickname fool's gold because of its resemblance to gold...
s, oil-bearing nuts, maize, wheat, meat and tobacco. Germany also made big purchases in Greece and Turkey and viewed the region as part of its supply hinterland. Before the war, Britain recognised Germany’s special interest in the region and took a very small percentage of this market, but now, via the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation they used their financial power to compete in the Balkans, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, underselling and overbidding in markets to deprive Germany of goods, although Germany was so desperate to maintain supplies that they paid considerably over the normal market rate. As elsewhere, Germany paid in kind with military equipment, for which they were greatly aided with their acquisition of the Czech Skoda
Škoda Works
Škoda Works was the largest industrial enterprise in Austro-Hungary and later in Czechoslovakia, one of its successor states. It was also one of the largest industrial conglomerates in Europe in the 20th century...
armaments interests.
Germany was almost entirely dependent on Hungary and Yugoslavia for bauxite, used in the production of Duralumin
Duralumin
Duralumin is the trade name of one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The main alloying constituents are copper, manganese, and magnesium. A commonly used modern equivalent of this alloy type is AA2024, which contains 4.4% copper, 1.5% magnesium, 0.6% manganese and 93.5%...
, a copper alloy of aluminium critical to aircraft production. The British attempted to stop the bauxite trade by sending undercover agents to blast the Iron Gate
Iron Gate (Danube)
The Iron Gates The gorge lies between Romania in the north and Serbia in the south. At this point, the river separates the southern Carpathian Mountains from the northwestern foothills of the Balkan Mountains. The Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Turkish, German and Bulgarian names literally mean...
, the narrow gorge where the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
cuts through the Carpathian Mountains
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
by sailing a fleet of dynamite barges down the river, but the plan was prevented by Romanian police acting on a tip-off from the pro-German Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
. Despite their declared neutrality, the politically unstable Balkan nations found themselves in an uncomfortable position, surrounded by Germany to the North, Italy to the West and Russia to the East, with little room to refuse German veiled threats that, unless they continued to supply what was requested, they would suffer the same fate as Poland. Romania, which had made considerable territorial gains after World War I, exported a large proportion of the oil from its Ploieşti site to Britain, its main guarantor of national sovereignty. Romania's production was about equal to that of Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, ranked 16th producer in the US, then a major oil-producing nation. The largest refinery, Astra Română, processed two million tons of petroleum a year but, as Britain's fortunes waned from the beginning of 1940, Romania turned to Germany using its oil as a bargaining tool, hoping for protection from Russia. On 29 May 1940 it stopped sending its oil to Britain, and signed an arms and oil pact with Germany; Romania was soon providing half her oil needs. Britain was able to arrange alternative supplies with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Agreement, signed on 28 August 1940.
The British Supreme War Council met in London on 28 March to discuss ways to intensify the blockade. According to the influential magazine The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
in April 1940 the war was costing the UK £5m per day out of total government expenditure of £6.5 – 7m per day. This was during the phoney war, before the fighting on land and air had begun. The Prime Minister said that, while it was out of the question to purchase all exportable surpluses, concentration on certain selected commodities such as minerals, fats and oil could have a useful effect, and announced a deal for Britain to acquire the entire export surplus of whale oil from Norway. Later Britain signed the Anglo-Swiss Trade Deal, and negotiations for war trade agreements were also concluded with Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. Commercial agreements were negotiated with Spain, Turkey, and Greece, aimed at limiting material to Germany.
Chamberlain also indicated that steps were being taken to stop the Swedish iron ore trade, and a few days later the Norwegian coast was mined in Operation Wilfred
Operation Wilfred
Operation Wilfred was a British naval operation during World War II that involved the mining of the channel between Norway and her offshore islands in order to prevent the transport of swedish iron ore through neutral Norwegian waters to be used to sustain the German war effort...
. But perhaps the most important measure taken at this time was the setting up of the Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
(SOE) by Winston Churchill and the new Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton
Hugh Dalton
Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton PC was a British Labour Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947, when he was implicated in a political scandal involving budget leaks....
on 22 July 1940. Though very few people knew of it at the time, the new organisation, an early version of which carried out the attempt to dynamite the Iron Gate on the Danube, marked a new direction in the Economic War that would pay dividends later on, providing vital intelligence on potential strategic targets for the offensive bomber campaigns that came later in the war.
The first bombing of the Ruhr
Shortly after the German invasion of the Low Countries and France, the British took the first tentative steps towards the opening of a strategic air offensive aimed at carrying the fight to Germany. On the night of May 15/16 1940, RAF Bomber Command, which until that point had been used for little more than attacking coastal targets and dropping propaganda leaflets, set off on a night time raid on oil production and railway marshalling yards in the RuhrRuhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...
district.
The vast manufacturing powerhouse of the Ruhr, often likened to the 'Black Country
Black Country
The Black Country is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton. During the industrial revolution in the 19th century this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation...
' in the Midlands of England, grew up either side of a medium sized river rising out of the hills of Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
in Western Germany that flowed into the Lower Rhine near the Dutch border. More a loosely defined conurbation of heavily populated industrial towns and cities than an official administrative district, ready access to abundant iron ore, high quality coal and coke
Coke (fuel)
Coke is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made.- History :...
together with Germany’s most extensive system of railways, canals and rivers enabled the Ruhr’s development into one of the worlds greatest concentrations of metal foundries, coke ovens, rolling mills, machine shops, railway engineering works, chemical and textile factories and crude steel production plants. To the west of the region lay the commercial and manufacturing centre of Dusseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, with Europe’s largest and most important inland harbour nearby at Duisburg
Duisburg
- History :A legend recorded by Johannes Aventinus holds that Duisburg, was built by the eponymous Tuisto, mythical progenitor of Germans, ca. 2395 BC...
. To the East sat the railway marshalling yards of Hamm
Hamm
Hamm is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany. It is located in the northeastern part of the Ruhr area. As of December 2003 its population was 180,849. The city is situated between the A1 motorway and A2 motorway...
and the enormous Union Steel Works at Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
which sat on top of the enormous reserves of the Westphalian coalfield. To the South was Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, the largest city in the region and to the north was Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...
, the base of the world-famous Krupp
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
armament firm, which employed 100,000 workers. The Ruhr was also home to no less than ten synthetic oil
Synthetic fuel
Synthetic fuel or synfuel is a liquid fuel obtained from coal, natural gas, oil shale, or biomass. It may also refer to fuels derived from other solids such as plastics or rubber waste. It may also refer to gaseous fuels produced in a similar way...
production plants, and dotted between the major centres, only fifty miles across were numerous associated satellite businesses engaged in complimentary operations, the whole mass producing a continuous hazy covering of industrial smog
Smog
Smog is a type of air pollution; the word "smog" is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Modern smog is a type of air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine...
which made precision bombing almost impossible. The Ruhr was by far Germany's most important region and was ringed with searchlights, flak cannons, strong night fighter forces and early warning systems. The head of German industry, Herman Goering had already declared "The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Herman Goering!"
Because of the smog and the lack of aircraft fitted for aerial photography
Aerial photography
Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated position. The term usually refers to images in which the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure. Cameras may be hand held or mounted, and photographs may be taken by a photographer, triggered remotely or...
, the British were unable to determine how effective the raid had been; in fact the damage was negligible.
The Fall of France
The signing of the armistice with France in the Compiègne ForestCompiègne Forest
The Forest of Compiègne is a large forest in the region of Picardie, France, near the city of Compiègne and approximately north of Paris.-Geography:...
on 24 June 1940 greatly changed the conditions of the Economic War. Hitler assumed control over the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia (with the exception of Sweden and Switzerland) from the north tip of Norway high above the Arctic Circle to the equator on the border with Spain, and from the River Bug in Poland to the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
. Germany established new airfields and U-boat bases all the way down the West Norwegian and European coasts.
From early July the German air force began attacking convoys in the English channel from its new bases and cross-channel guns shelled the Kentish coast in the opening stages of the Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
. On 17 August, following his inability to convince the British to make peace, Hitler announced a general blockade of the entire British Isles and gave the order to prepare for a full invasion of England. On 1 August Italy, having now joined the war established a submarine base in Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
and its submarines, though more suited to the Mediterranean successfully ran the British gauntlet through the Straights of Gibraltar and joined the Atlantic blockade. On 20 August Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
announced a blockade of all British ports in the Mediterranean, and over the next few months the region would experience a sharp increase in fighting.
Meanwhile, in neutral Spain, who had still not recovered from her own civil war
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
in which over one million died and which was in the grip of famine, General Franco continued to resist German attempts to persuade him to enter the war on the Axis side. Spain supplied Britain with iron ore from the Bay of Biscay but, as a potential foe, she was a huge threat to British interests as she could easily restrict British naval access into the Mediterranean, either by shelling the Rock of Gibraltar
Rock of Gibraltar
The Rock of Gibraltar is a monolithic limestone promontory located in Gibraltar, off the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. It is high...
or by allowing the Germans to lay siege to it from the mainland. Although Spain could gain the restoration of the rock itself and French Catalonia by joining a winning side, Franco continued to play for time, expecting Britain to be beaten but not wishing to commit before the outcome was sure, making excessive demands of Hitler which he knew could not be satisfied as his (Franco's) price for participation, such as the ceding of most of Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and much of Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
to Spain by France.
American opinion was shocked at the fall of France and the previous isolationist sentiment, which saw the introduction of the Neutrality Acts from 1935 onwards was slowly giving rise to a new realism. Roosevelt had already managed to negotiate an amendment to the acts on 21 September 1939 known as Cash and Carry
Cash and carry (World War II)
Cash and carry was a policy requested by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a special session of the United States Congress on September 21, 1939, as World War II was spreading throughout Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Acts of 1936...
, which though in theory maintained America’s impartiality, blatantly favoured Britain and her Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. Under the new plan, weapons could now be bought by any belligerent providing they paid up front and took responsibility for delivery, but whereas Germany had virtually no foreign exchange and was unable to transport much material across the Atlantic, Britain had large reserves of gold and foreign currency, and while U-boats would be a threat, the likelihood was that her vast navy would see the good majority of equipment safely delivered to port.
The US now accepted it needed to increase spending for its own defense, especially with the growing threat of Japan, but there was real concern that Britain would fall before the weapons were delivered. Despite the success in evacuating a third of a million men at Dunkirk and the later evacuations from St Malo and St Nazaire, the British army left behind 2,500 heavy guns, 64,000 vehicles, 20,000 motor cycles and well over half a million tons of stores and ammunition. To help in the interim, Congress agreed to let Britain have a million mothballed First World War rifles, stored in grease with around fifty rounds of ammunition for each. But, following the British attack on the French fleet at Oran on 4 July to prevent it from falling into German hands, the British were proving they would do whatever was necessary to continue the fight, and Roosevelt was now winning his campaign to convince Congress to be even more supportive of Britain, with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement
Destroyers for Bases Agreement
The Destroyers for Bases Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, September 2, 1940, transferred fifty mothballed destroyers from the United States Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions...
and with the approval of a British order for 4,000 tanks.
Compulsory Navicerts
Because of Germany's new proximity on the west European coastline and the decrease in shipping traffic, ships which would normally have been used for patrolling the high seas were diverted to more urgent tasks. Britain discontinued its contraband control bases at Weymouth and The Downs and removed all but a skeleton staff from the control base at Kirkwall to continue searching the few ships bound for Sweden, Finland, Russia and her recently annexed Baltic satellites.The Navicert system was greatly extended, introducing compulsory Navicerts and ships' warrants in an attempt to prevent contraband being loaded in the first place. Any consignment going to or from ports without a certificate of non-enemy origin and any ship without a ships Navicert became liable to seizure
The lost Dutch and Danish supplies of meat and dairy products were replaced by sources in Ireland and New Zealand. Canada held a whole year’s surplus of wheat, while the U.S. reserve was estimated to be the greatest in history, but Britain was suffering very heavy shipping losses as a result of expanding U-boat numbers. Virtually all Dutch and Belgian ships not captured by the Germans joined the British merchant fleet, which together with the tonnage contributed by Norway and Denmark added about one-third to Britain’s merchant marine, giving them a large surplus of vessels. To prevent the enemy gaining a route to acquire supplies, the occupied countries and the unoccupied (Vichy) French zone immediately became subject to the blockade, with severe shortages and extreme hardship quickly following. Although the Ministry resisted calls that the embargo be extended to some neutral countries, it was later extended to cover the whole of metropolitan France
Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...
, including Algeria, Tunisia and French Morocco.
German gains
In total the Germans captured 2,000 tanks of various types, mostly the heavy French Char bChar B1
The Char B1 was a French heavy tank manufactured before World War II.The Char B1 was a specialised heavy break-through vehicle, originally conceived as a self-propelled gun with a 75 mm howitzer in the hull; later a 47 mm gun in a turret was added, to allow it to function also as a Char...
and British Matildas, 5,000 artillery pieces, 300,000 rifles and at least 4 million rounds of ammunition. These were all available to be reconditioned, cannibalised or stripped down for scrap by the men of Organisation Todt
Organisation Todt
The Todt Organisation, was a Third Reich civil and military engineering group in Germany named after its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi figure...
. Despite attempts to transport it away before capture, occupied nations' gold reserves were also looted, along with huge numbers of artworks, many of which have never been recovered.
Occupied countries were subjected to relentless, systematic requisitioning of anything Germany required or desired. This began with a vast physical looting, in which trains were requisitioned to carry to Germany all movable property such as captured weaponry, machinery, books, scientific instruments, art objects and furniture. As time went on other miscellaneous items such as clothing, soap, park benches, garden tools, bed linen and doorknobs were also taken. The looted goods were taken to Germany mainly by trains, which themselves were mostly kept by Germany.
Immediate steps were also taken towards the appropriation of the best of the conquered nation's food. Decrees were proclaimed to force farmers to sell their animals and existing food stores, and while in the beginning a percentage of each year’s crop was negotiated as part of the armistice terms
Armistice
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
, later the seizures became much more random and all-encompassing. Next, a blatantly unfair artificial exchange rate
Exchange rate
In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...
was announced (1 reichmark to 20 francs in France) and practically valueless 'Invasion Marks' brought into circulation, quickly inflating and devaluing the local currency. Later, German agents bought non-portable assets such as farms, real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
, mines, factories and corporations. The individual central banks were forced to underwrite and finance German industrial schemes, insurance transactions, gold and foreign exchange transfers etc.
The Germans also gained the occupied country's natural resources and industrial capacity. In some cases these new resources were considerable, and were quickly reorganized for the Nazi war machine. The earlier acquisitions of Austria and Czechoslovakia yielded few natural resources apart from 4m annual tons of iron ore, a good proportion of Germany’s need. Austria's iron and steel industry at Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, and Czechoslovakia's heavy industry near Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, which included the mighty Skoda munitions works at Pilsen were, though highly developed, as heavily reliant on imports of raw materials as Germany’s. The conquest of Poland brought Germany half a million tons of oil per year and more zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
than it would ever need, and Luxembourg, though tiny, brought a well organized iron and steel industry 1/7th as great as Germany's.
Norway provided good stocks of chromium
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...
, aluminum, copper, nickel and 1m annual pounds of molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
, the chemical element used in the production of high speed steels and as a substitute for tungsten. It also allowed them to continue to ship high quality Swedish iron ore from the port of Narvik, the trade which Britain tried to prevent with Operation Wilfred
Operation Wilfred
Operation Wilfred was a British naval operation during World War II that involved the mining of the channel between Norway and her offshore islands in order to prevent the transport of swedish iron ore through neutral Norwegian waters to be used to sustain the German war effort...
. In Holland, they also acquired a large, high tech tin smelter
Smelting
Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
in Arnhem
Arnhem
Arnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
, though the British, foreseeing the seizure, restricted the supply of raw tin leading up to the invasion, so the amount gained was only around a sixth of a year's supply (2,500 tons) for Germany.
But by far the biggest prize was France. German memories of the Versailles Treaty and of the turbulent years of reparations, food shortages and high inflation during the years immediately after World War I caused wealthy France to be treated as a vast material resource to be bled dry, and her entire economy was geared towards meeting Germany’s needs. Under the armistice conditions she had to pay the billeting costs of the occupying garrison and a daily occupation indemnity of 300 to 400 million francs. The occupied zone contained France's best industries, with a fifth of the world's iron ore in Lorraine, and 6% of its steel production capacity. Germany's heavily overburdened railway network was reinforced with 4,000 French locomotives, and 300,000 (over half) of her freight cars.
Unoccupied France was left with only the rubber industries and textile factories around Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
and its considerable reserves of bauxite, which because of the British blockade ended up in German hands anyway, giving her abundant supplies of aluminum for aircraft production. Along with the copper and tin she received from Russia, Yugoslav copper, Greek antimony
Antimony
Antimony is a toxic chemical element with the symbol Sb and an atomic number of 51. A lustrous grey metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite...
and chromium and its Balkan sources, Germany now had sufficient supplies of most metals and coal. She also had around 2/3 of Europe’s industrial capacity but lacked the necessary raw materials to feed the plants, many of them working at low capacity or closed because of RAF bombing, the general chaos and the flight of the populations.
From the beginning of the war, Germany experienced massive labour shortages and as time went by the occupied nations labour forces were virtually enslaved, either to work in factories to supply the Reich or sent to Germany to work in the factories or farms there. In Germany herself, there was a chronic shortage of men to work the fields and 30,000 agricultural labourers were brought in from Italy along with thousands of Polish slaves. The pre-war stockpiles of goods were running down and more ersatz substitutes were being used. In addition Germany remained cut off by the blockade from oversea supplies, such as copper from Chile, nickel from Canada, tin and rubber from the East Indies
East Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
, manganese from India, tungsten from China, industrial diamonds from South Africa and cotton from Brazil. Germany’s Axis partner Italy was now also subject to blockade and, heavily reliant on her for coal, became a net drain, but Hitler’s main problem was oil, around 12.5m tons of which were needed per year for total war
Total war
Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare...
. Besides the Rumanian supply, his own synthetic industry produced 600,000 tons per year, and another 530,000 came from Poland. Russia was known to have enormous reserves of oil and gas but had chronically underdeveloped extraction systems, and though there was talk of German engineers going to reorganize them, it would take around two years before large quantities would begin flowing.
The Battle of Britain
Hitler’s best chance of beating the blockade was by knocking Britain out of the war. By far Britain’s best weapon was her navy, which not only enforced the blockade, but also, despite the attempts of the U-boats and aircraft, continued to largely control the seas and keep her supplied with most of her needs. Her vast empire gave her formidable resources to draw on, excellent foreign credit facilities and gold reserves, and British rationing was nowhere as severe as in Germany. The only rationing introduced immediately at the war’s beginning was petrol. Bacon, butter and sugar followed on 8 January 1940, meat on 11 March, with tea and margarine in July. It was not until U-boat successes in the 2nd Battle of the Atlantic began severely restricting convoys in late 1940 that rationing became more widespread, and even then many workers and children still had school meals and work canteens to supplement their rations, which made a significant difference to the amount of food they actually received. Photographs of abundant fruit markets, butchers, fishmongers and grocers were placed in foreign publications to prove to American and Commonwealth readers that Britain was not, as the Nazis claimed, starving. Britain did rely on imports for a large proportion of its foodstuffs and, even with the widespread 'Dig for Victory' campaign and the use of women farm workers, could only produce around two-thirds of its needs.Prior to the start of the Blitz
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
(bombing of population centres), which eventually killed over 40,000 civilians but which gave British industry the breathing space it needed to provide the fighter aircraft and ammunition to hold off invasion, docks on the south coast such as Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, Portsmouth
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
and Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
were heavily damaged by German bombing raids; in response as much maritime traffic as possible was directed to the west and north. On 16 August the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
claimed to have destroyed Tilbury Docks and the Port of London
Port of London
The Port of London lies along the banks of the River Thames from London, England to the North Sea. Once the largest port in the world, it is currently the United Kingdom's second largest port, after Grimsby & Immingham...
, which normally handled a million tons of cargo per week. To the Nazis' glee, the skipper of one Brazilian freighter stated that southern Britain was finished and nothing could save her, but although the damage was severe, ships from all parts of the Empire, South America and the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
continued to unload food and war goods for Britain and to load cargoes for export. With no passenger trade, and with all Scandinavian and continental sea traffic suspended, the port was far less busy than normal, but as many as 35,000 men still filled the warehouses with grain, tobacco, flour, tea, rubber, sugar, meat, wool, timber and leather every day throughout August 1940. British aircraft factories, led by the Minister of Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook worked around the clock to greatly increase production and prevent a collapse of the RAF. On 16 September Time Magazine wrote "Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook's fault. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line".
In an effort to force Britain into submission, the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts on factories, ports, oil refineries and airfields. By mid-August the attacks were becoming increasingly co-ordinated and successful, and the RAF was losing more fighters and pilots than could be replaced. On 24 August, at the height of the battle, bombers sent to attack Fighter Command installations and oil refineries on the outskirts of London killed civilians in houses in central London through a navigational error, although many believed the bombing was deliberate. In spite of opposition from the air ministry, Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in retaliation, and that night the German capital was bombed for the first time, although there were no fatalities. Britons were pleased as it showed Britain was able to hit back, and the next day Berliners were reported to be stunned and disillusioned; Goering, who had said it would never happen, was ridiculed by both sides. When the bombing continued, the Nazi leadership ordered the Luftwaffe to begin bombing British cities in the belief that this would damage civilian morale so much that Britain would sue for peace, a major error.
The Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
raged throughout August and September 1940, but the Luftwaffe was unable to destroy the RAF to gain the air supremacy which was a prerequisite for the invasion. At night, aircraft of Bomber Command
Bomber Command
Bomber Command is an organizational military unit, generally subordinate to the air force of a country. Many countries have a "Bomber Command", although the most famous ones were in Britain and the United States. A Bomber Command is generally used for Strategic bombing , and is composed of bombers...
and Coastal Command flew the short distance across the channel and attacked the shipping and barges which were being assembled in the ports at Antwerp, Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
, Calais
Calais
Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
and Boulogne to carry the invasion force across, eventually destroying over 20% of the fleet. Finally, on 12 October, the invasion was called off until spring 1941, although British cities, notably London, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
continued to be heavily bombed for another 6 months.
European food shortages
Despite Germany's industrial gains, food was another matter. Even in peace, Europe was unable to feed itself, and although Germany now held two-fifths of the green fields of Europe, Germans found that despite decrees forcing farmers to sell their produce and livestock and outright requisition, in terms of food the occupied lands represented a net drain on their resources that could not be made good.While Denmark, the 'Larder of Europe', produced massive quantities of bacon, eggs and dairy products, this was heavily dependent on imports of fertilizer from Britain. Before very long, livestock was being slaughtered because of a lack of fodder
Fodder
Fodder or animal feed is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock such as cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. Most animal feed is from plants but some is of animal origin...
– the pigs so undernourished that they broke their legs walking to slaughter. Danish farmers paid large taxes, and merchant sailors were driven to work as labourers in Germany because of the blockade. Likewise Holland, with its 2.7m cattle, 650,000 sheep, half a million pigs, and huge surplus of butter, cheese, meat, milk, margarine and vegetable oils, depended on Britain for its animal fodder. Much of the arable land had been ruined by the opening the dikes during the Nazi invasion and many farmers refused to sell the Germans cattle, but soon there was such a meat shortage that the authorities had to confiscate bootlegged dog-meat sausages. Because the Germans forced Dutch fishermen to return to port before dark there was also a shortage of fish, and although Dutch overseas possessions were among the world's main providers of tobacco, it could not breach the blockade. Steel, iron and wood were so hard to obtain that the work of rebuilding Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
came to a standstill.
Life was particularly harsh in Poland. Cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
broke out in concentration camps, and mass public executions added to the estimated 3 million Poles already killed during the invasion. Thousands had already died of cold and from starvation during the first winter of the war and with its sugar beet, rye
Rye
Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain and as a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder...
and wheat systematically stripped away, and with few farmers left on the land, conditions quickly grew worse. Norway, with extensive mountainous areas relied on imports for half its food and all its coal; shortages and hunger quickly effected Belgium which, despite being densely populated and producing only half its needs, was still subjected to the widespread confiscation of food.
France, normally able to feed itself, now had an extra 5 million refugees from other countries to care for. When the Germans stripped the farms of half a million horses and mules for their army, causing a large drop in agricultural productivity, they also took 11% of remaining food stocks, a million tons. The Germans held 1,500,000 French prisoners of war as hostages, feeding them on bread and soup so thin that grass was added to bulk it up, and most items were now heavily rationed, with a worker entitled to a daily diet of only 1,200 calories; many people rode bicycles into the countryside during the weekend to scavenge for food. German soldiers got double rations, but this was still only a modest daily diet, similar to that served to inmates in American prisons.
The British blockade of the Mediterranean immediately cut Italy off from 80% of its imports. Essential items such as pasta
Pasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
, flour and rice were severely rationed, leading to riots, and any farmer withholding his crops from compulsory storage could be imprisoned for a year. Following their disastrous invasion of Greece from occupied Albania on 28 October, Italian reserves of rubber, cotton, wool and other commodities began to dwindle, and the high prices charged by Germany to haul coal across the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
from Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
made heat a luxury. On 11 November Britain scored a major victory against the Italian navy at Taranto
Battle of Taranto
The naval Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11–12 November 1940 during the Second World War. The Royal Navy launched the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship naval attack in history, flying a small number of obsolescent biplane torpedo bombers from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea...
, which secured British supply lines in the Mediterranean.
Even in the normally plentiful Balkan region there were now food shortages caused by an extremely hard winter in the east and flooding of the lower Danube which devastated the agricultural plains and prevented the planting of crops. In Romania, farm hands were still mobilized into the Army and, along with Hungary and Yugoslavia, she needed all the wheat that could be produced, but the Germans made heavy demands on them, backed up by threats.
Until late 1940 Hitler hoped to establish peaceful German hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
over the Balkans as part of his supply hinterland, but after the Russian annexation of the Romania territories of Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
and North Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
in June, his hand was forced. On 7 October Germany invaded Romania to block the Soviet Army and to get access to the Ploesti oilfields. After Italy's disastrous invasion of Greece on 28 October the British intervened in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Mutual Aid Agreement, occupying Crete and establishing airfields within bombing distance of the Romanian oilfields. In late November Hungary and Romania signed the Tripartite Act, joining the Axis and, although Yugoslavia initially refused to sign, Hitler now had control of the majority of the vast agricultural resources of the Great Hungarian Plain
Great Hungarian Plain
The Great Hungarian Plain is a plain occupying the southern and eastern part of Hungary, some parts of the Eastern Slovak Lowland, southwestern Ukraine, the Transcarpathian Lowland , western Romania , northern Serbia , and eastern Croatia...
and Romanian oilfields.
Britain's Bomber Command continued to attack German strategic targets, but the task of bombing Germany was made much harder by the loss of the French airfields as it meant long flights over enemy-held territory before reaching the target. But the British at this point had no effective means of taking offensive action against the enemy, and began to look towards a renewed bomber strategy. After the German devastation of Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
, the RAF raided oil refineries in Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
city centre on the night of 16–17 December. This was the first 'area raid', but photography after the raid showed that most of the 300 bombers had missed the target, and that Bomber Command lacked the means of carrying out precision raids. Even so, a bombing campaign offered the only hope of damaging the German economy, and directives at the end of 1940 stated two objectives: precision attack on German production of synthetic oil production, and an attack on German morale by targeting industrial sites in large cities. In December 1940 Roosevelt, having won an historic third term as president declared that the U.S. would become the "Arsenal of Democracy
Arsenal of Democracy
"The Arsenal of Democracy" was a propaganda slogan coined by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a radio broadcast delivered on December 29, 1940. Roosevelt promised to help the United Kingdom fight Nazi Germany by giving them military supplies while the United States stayed out of the actual...
," providing the weapons Britain and her Commonwealth needed without entering the war herself.
As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe's 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation and diseases such as influenza, pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
and cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
were a threat. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
began gathering funds to send aid. Former president Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during WW1, wrote
The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the same stage in the [First] World War. ... If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end... the greatest famine in history.
1941
From the beginning of 1941 the war moved increasing eastwards. On 28 December 1940 Mussolini appealed for urgent German help in the Greco-Italian WarGreco-Italian War
The Greco-Italian War was a conflict between Italy and Greece which lasted from 28 October 1940 to 23 April 1941. It marked the beginning of the Balkans Campaign of World War II...
, and Germany was also forced to send the Afrika Korps
Afrika Korps
The German Africa Corps , or the Afrika Korps as it was popularly called, was the German expeditionary force in Libya and Tunisia during the North African Campaign of World War II...
, led by General Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
to Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
in early February to help its Axis partner in its North African campaigns against the British and Commonwealth forces. The Italians were also buckling under a strong British and Indian counter-offensive in Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...
in East Africa. Because of its strategic position in the Mediterranean close to Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
and the Axis shipping lanes, the British island of Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
now also came under daily enemy bombardment in the Siege of Malta, and by the end of the year the island had suffered over 1,000 bombing attacks to force a surrender. As more U-boats entered service, the weekly toll on Allied merchant ships continued to mount, and by June eggs, cheese, jam, clothing and coal were added to the rationed list.
In early January 1941 German officials announced the signing of "the greatest grain deal in history" between the Soviet Union and Russia. The Soviets, who also concluded a £100 million arms deal with China shortly afterwards, expected criticism from Britain and America, Izvestia
Izvestia
Izvestia is a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia. The word "izvestiya" in Russian means "delivered messages", derived from the verb izveshchat . In the context of newspapers it is usually translated as "news" or "reports".-Origin:The newspaper began as the News of the...
newspaper declaring;
- "There are in Britain and the United States some leading statesmen who believe that the United States may sell to Britain everything... whereas the Soviet Union cannot sell to Germany even cereals without violating the policy of peace."
Humanitarian aid in Europe
In January Herbert Hoover's National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people. Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushelBushel
A bushel is an imperial and U.S. customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 4 pecks or 8 gallons. It is used for volumes of dry commodities , most often in agriculture...
s (1 US bushel = 8 US gallons, about 27 kg for wheat) of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children's food. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. Their view, which many in America and the occupied countries supported, was that it was Germany's responsibility to feed and provide for the people she conquered, and that the plan could not avoid indirectly helping Germany; if aid were given, this would free German goods for use elsewhere.
Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories – less than half the amount necessary to sustain life – and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school, but the British disputed this. Even so, many Americans were appalled by the continuing hardship. There were 16m French Americans alone, and by early March at least 15 different organizations – collectively known as the Coordinating Council for French Relief – were distributing aid in France through The American Friends Service Committee, while the Quaker Committee also distributed around $50,000 worth of food, clothing and medical supplies a month throughout France. The American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
chartered a 'mercy ship', SS Cold Harbor to take 12000000 lb (5,443,108.4 kg). of evaporated and powdered milk and 150,000 articles of children’s clothing, 500,000 units of insulin
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle....
and 20,000 bottles of vitamin
Vitamin
A vitamin is an organic compound required as a nutrient in tiny amounts by an organism. In other words, an organic chemical compound is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet. Thus, the term is conditional both on...
s to Marseilles and shortly afterwards sent a second, the S.S. Exmouth, to carry $1.25m worth of relief supplies into unoccupied France.
A number of prominent liberals denounced the release of food to France in a letter to United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Cordell Hull
Cordell Hull
Cordell Hull was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II...
. Describing how French industry was working for the Germans and how Hitler had seized 1m tons of French wheat to hold in occupied France, the group believed the move would undermine the blockade and lead to Nazi demands for America to continue feeding other conquered lands. Vichy France's ambassador to the United States, Gaston Henry-Haye
Gaston Henry-Haye
Gaston Henry-Haye was a merchant, French politician and diplomat. He served in the French Chamber of Deputies from 1928 to 1935, and in the French Senate from 1935-1944. He was also Mayor of Versailles from 1935-1944...
, continued to press for a relaxation of the blockade on humanitarian grounds, and the US government found itself in a difficult moral dilemma. The US Foreign Affairs Economist Karl Brandt described how Hitler (and Stalin) used food as a political weapon to destroy internal opposition, reward accomplishment, punish failure and smash their enemies in neutral countries. He described how the 'warrior caste' were given the most, followed by essential workmen (in Berlin, William Shirer and the other foreign journalists were classed as 'heavy labourers' and received double rations) while at the bottom prisoners, Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and the insane got the least. By this time the Nazis had begun executing otherwise healthy mental patients in German institutions, in part to save on food, and there was a clamour from family members to have their loved ones removed. Brandt said:
Supplies are suddenly cut down regardless of the amount stored to scare the population and extra rations are suddenly granted to boost morale in a bad time. Food statistics are guarded like bomber planes. To the Nazis, food is a beautiful instrument... for manoeuvring and disciplining the masses.
By this time there were increasing reports of Vichy French vessels in the Mediterranean running the British blockade from North African ports and ignoring the orders of the British Contraband Control to stop and submit to search. Vichy Vice-Premier Admiral Darlan declared that the Vichy merchant marine had so far brought through the blockade 7m bushels of grain, 363,000 tons of wine, 180,000 tons of peanut oil together with large amounts of fruit, sugar, cocoa, meat, fish and rum. Darlan, who during the battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
had given Churchill the solemn pledge that the French navy would never surrender to Germany, claimed that the British were reluctant to risk a third bloody clash like those at Dakar
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...
and Oran, and that, while they had sunk seven unescorted French food ships, they had never sunk, or even stopped, a French ship escorted by warships.
Lend-Lease
Despite the effects of her blockade, there was no debate about America’s resolve to feed Britain herself, and she was able to, with record harvests. But Britain, having already sold £1000 million of her foreign investments and taken on another £3000m in loans to pay for war materials was now feeling the financial strain of the war. On 11 March 1941 Roosevelt and Congress passed into law the programme of Lend-LeaseLend-Lease
Lend-Lease was the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of war in Europe in...
, which allowed for the sending of vast amounts of war material to Allied countries, and Churchill thanked the American nation for a 'new Magna Carta
Magna Carta
Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions, which included the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority to date. The charter first passed into law in 1225...
'. Although America did not enter the war for another nine months, she could no longer claim to be completely neutral and Hitler immediately ordered U-boats to attack US vessels. On 10 April the destroyer USS Niblack, which was picking up survivors from a Dutch freighter that had been sunk detected that a U-boat was preparing to attack, and launched depth charges to drive it away. This was the first direct action between Germany and America of WW2. The next day the US began regular patrols at sea.
Effects on South American trade
The world's blockades had a severe impact on patterns of world trade as a whole. On the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War 1. Nearly all of Bolivia's copper, lead, tin and silver was exported to Europe, while Uruguay and southern Brazil supplied wool and canned and frozen beef. Argentina had 84% of the world supply of flaxseed, nearly all of which was exported, along with much of its wheat (23% of world supply), its corn (71%) and beef (50%). But with the stalemate of blockade and counter-blockade, total foreign trade actually plummeted and large surpluses piled up. In early February 1941 the main exporting Plata nations (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) held a conference in MontevideoMontevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
to discuss ways of improving trade between themselves and the rest of the continent. Apart from some Parana pine, tea and cereals, there was very little inter-Plata trade, and delegates eventually agreed a number of measures, such as easier currency exchange rules, finance for poorer nations, improved transport links between countries – particularly those landlocked – and lower customs barriers in order to demonstrate that they were not entirely reliant on overseas trade and American dollars to survive.
In America herself, while a large number of small businesses which relied on overseas trade were badly affected; because cheaper foreign imports were unavailable, home producers, such as the North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
peppermint
Peppermint
Peppermint is a hybrid mint, a cross between the watermint and spearmint . The plant, indigenous to Europe, is now widespread in cultivation throughout all regions of the world...
trade and the handmade glassware industry in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
and Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
now had the entire domestic market to themselves. U.S. cheese-makers began producing substitutes for Norway's Gjetost, Holland's Gouda
Gouda
Gouda is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Gouda, which was granted city rights in 1272, is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes, and 15th-century city hall....
and Edam, Italy's Asiago
Asiago cheese
Asiago is an Italian cow's milk cheese that can assume different textures, according to its aging, from smooth for the fresh Asiago to a crumbly texture for the aged cheese of which the flavor is reminiscent of Parmesan...
and Provolone and the blue cheese
Blue cheese
Blue cheese is a general classification of cow's milk, sheep's milk, or goat's milk cheeses that have had cultures of the mold Penicillium added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, blue-gray or blue-green mold, and carries a distinct smell, either from that or...
s of France and with Belgium and Holland's tulip
Tulip
The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, which comprises 109 species and belongs to the family Liliaceae. The genus's native range extends from as far west as Southern Europe, North Africa, Anatolia, and Iran to the Northwest of China. The tulip's centre of...
bulbs cut off, U.S. growers in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, North Carolina and the Pacific Northwest
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...
were able to achieve twice the pre-war prices. Experiments also began in Alabama's state prison farm to grow Ramie
Ramie
Ramie is a flowering plant in the nettle family Urticaceae, native to eastern Asia. It is a herbaceous perennial growing to 1–2.5 m tall; the leaves are heart-shaped, 7–15 cm long and 6–12 cm broad, and white on the underside with dense small hairs—this gives it a silvery appearance;...
, a tough, stiff fibre used in gas mantles which was no longer available from Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
For the Nazis, the capture of the Russian landmass, one-sixth of the Earth's surface or 8000000 square miles (20,719,904.9 km²), not only provided the LebensraumLebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
they demanded, but also provided the answer to all their raw material problems. On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in a three-pronged operation, catching the Soviets completely by surprise. They penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and within a week completed an encirclement of 300,000 Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
troops near Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
and Bialystok
Bialystok
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Located on the Podlaskie Plain on the banks of the Biała River, Białystok ranks second in terms of population density, eleventh in population, and thirteenth in area, of the cities of Poland...
. The first territories to be conquered included the most productive. Between Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
on the Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
and Batum on the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
lay the rich oilfields of Transcaucasia, while bordering Poland and Romania was the abundant 'Granary of Russia', Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, about the size of France, 40 million acres (161,874.4 km²) of the most fertile agricultural land on earth. Occupying a 'black earth' zone of seemingly inexhaustible thick humus, it produced 25% of Russia's wheat, and immense crops of rye, barley, oats, sugar beet, potatoes, sunflowers, flax, maize, tobacco and cotton. The Ukraine was also the main industrial region. Its Donetz Basin provided 80% of Russia's steel, 70% iron, 50% steel, 72% aluminium and 35% of the manganese, as well as being one of Europe's largest coalfields, yielding 67 million tons per year.
Russia had had a reputation as a backward, agrarian country, but the communist government was well aware of the dangers of overly relying on the Ukraine and of the need to modernise its industry. The whole face of the Soviet economy was transformed from 1928 onwards by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Five Year Plans, and whereas three-forths of total industry was formerly concentrated around Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, St Petersburg, and Ukraine, great new industrial towns had now sprung up all over the union, some, such as Stalingorsk in west Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Karaganda
Karaganda
Karagandy , more commonly known by its Russian name Karaganda, , is the capital of Karagandy Province in Kazakhstan. It is the fourth most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind Almaty , Astana and Shymkent, with a population of 471,800 . In the 1940s up to 70% of the city's inhabitants were ethnic...
in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
in places where man had previously barely set foot. A prosperous new cotton industry was created in Turkistan
Türkistan
*Türkistan is the local name for Turkestan, a region of Central Asia.*Türkistan, Kazakhstan is a historic city and place of pilgrimage in southern Kazakhstan...
, new wheat regions in the centre, east and north, coal came from Siberia, rich mineral deposits from the Urals, Siberia and Asiatic Russia, and immense new oil wells began to flow, not just in the Caucus, but in the Urals and the Volga valley
Volga River
The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...
.
During the first six months the Soviets were in complete disarray, and lost whole armies of men, over 70% of their tanks, a third of their combat aircraft and two-thirds of their artillery. Despite the initial defeats, the Soviets were able to relocate large sections of their industry from the main cities and Dnepr River and Donbas regions further east to the Urals and the Siberian wastes beyond, but it would take a great deal of time before they could be reassembled and production returned to normal levels. On 3 July Stalin announced a "scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy". As they retreated, everything that could not be moved east would be destroyed. Factories and oil wells were to be blown up, crops burnt and animals slaughtered so that nothing would be left for the Germans to use.
Allied aid to Russia
On August 2, 1941 the British signed the Atlantic CharterAtlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement first issued in August 1941 that early in World War II defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by Britain and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies...
with the U.S. and extended the blockade to cover Finland, which was now fighting on the side of Germany. Churchill now embraced Russia as an ally and agreed to send arms to make up the shortfall while Russian industry reorganised itself for the fight. By mid 1942 Britain was providing Russia, via the Arctic convoys with an array of vehicles, artillery and ammunition as part of the Lend Lease programme. In total Britain sent more than 4500 Valentine
Valentine tank
The Tank, Infantry, Mk III, Valentine was an infantry tank produced in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. More than 8,000 of the type were produced in 11 different marks plus various purpose-built variants, accounting for approximately a quarter of wartime British tank production...
, Churchill
Churchill tank
The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV was a heavy British infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war...
and Matilda
Matilda tank
The Infantry Tank Mark II known as the Matilda II was a British infantry tank of the Second World War. It was also identified from its General Staff Specification A12....
tanks, and 4200 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft.
American also provided significant support, but while Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, only 50 miles (80.5 km) from Asia across the Bering Strait
Bering Strait
The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...
was the obvious route for transporting Lend-Lease equipment, it was remote from continental America. A land route across the road – less 800 miles (1,287.5 km) expanse of Canada, long discussed, now became vital, and so on 8 March 1942 the American army began construction of the Alcan Highway, a 1671 miles (2,689.2 km) long stretch from Dawson Creek in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, north-west through Yukon Territory to an existing road on the Canadian/Alaskan border. The highway also allowed the linking up of the Northwest Staging Route
Northwest Staging Route
The Northwest Staging Route was a series of airstrips, airport and radio ranging stations built in Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska during World War II. It was known in the Soviet Union as Alsib ....
, a series of rough Canadian airstrips and radio ranging stations built to convey aircraft from Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
and the Yukon to Russia and China. In total the US provided Russia with $11 billion worth of goods, including 4800 Grant and Sherman tanks, 350,000 trucks, 50,000 jeep
Jeep
Jeep is an automobile marque of Chrysler . The first Willys Jeeps were produced in 1941 with the first civilian models in 1945, making it the oldest off-road vehicle and sport utility vehicle brand. It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover which is the second...
s, 7300 Airacobra fighter aircraft, and 3700 light and medium bombers. The Russians also received 2.3 million tons of steel, 230,000 tons of aluminium, 2.6 million tons of petrol, 3.8 million tons of food and huge quantities of ammunition and explosives.
The German attack on Russia prompted the British to attempt an increase in bombing in the belief that the fighter defences would have been thinned out. Attacks on oil targets remained a priority, and successful raids were mounted against Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Bremen
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...
and Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
in May, with Kiel suffering almost complete production losses. Later attacks on rail transport targets in the Ruhr proved costly because a new radar chain, known as the Kammhuber Line
Kammhuber Line
The Kammhuber Line was the name given to the German night air defense system established in July 1940 by Colonel Josef Kammhuber.- Description :...
now stretched across the approaches to the Ruhr valley to alert the night fighter defences, which remained considerable. Between May and December the RAF made 105 separate raids over Germany but were unable to make any inroads into industrial capacity and suffered heavy losses in the process.
On 22 June 1941 Churchill proclaimed that Britain would bomb Germany night and day, in ever increasing numbers, but because of the size of Germany and because the fleet continued to be eroded by planes going overseas, Bomber Command remained too weak for effective attacks on the German war machine. The new directives called for attacks on rail transport in the Ruhr to disrupt German economy, but this was a stop gap policy; The planes were too small, carried too light a bomb load and navigation was also shown to be faulty. Following losses of 10% during a raid on 7 November the RAF was ordered to conserve and build up its forces for a spring offensive, by which time a new navigation aid known as GEE
Gee
Gee may refer to:In fiction:*Al Giardello , a fictional character on the television drama Homicide: Life on the StreetIn record labels:*Gee Records*Gee Street RecordsIn music:...
would be available and the Avro Lancaster
Avro Lancaster
The Avro Lancaster is a British four-engined Second World War heavy bomber made initially by Avro for the Royal Air Force . It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF, and squadrons from other...
heavy bomber would be entering service.
Third phase of the economic war
On the morning of 7 December 1941 the Imperial Japanese NavyImperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
launched a massive pre-emptive strike against ships of the US Pacific Fleet
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
at its base at Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. The next day the war became a truly global conflict as America joined the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
in the war against Japan, Germany and the other Axis powers. Like Germany, Japan was heavily deficient in natural resources, and since 1931 had become increasingly nationalistic, building up her military forces and embarking upon a series of ruthless conquests in Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
, China and French Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
to create an empire. Amid increasing reports of atrocities committed by her forces in these lands, such as the Nanking Massacre
Nanking Massacre
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder, genocide and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing , the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second...
and the use of poison gas, world opinion turned against Japan, and from 1938 America, Britain and other countries launched trade embargoes against her to restrict supplies of the raw materials she needed to wage war, such as oil, metals and rubber.
But the sanctions did not curb Japan's imperialistic mood. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact
Tripartite Pact
The Tripartite Pact, also the Three-Power Pact, Axis Pact, Three-way Pact or Tripartite Treaty was a pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940, which established the Axis Powers of World War II...
with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and, after the US ordered a total oil embargo on all 'aggressor nations' on 1 August 1941, cutting Japan off from 90% of her oil supply, she looked to the huge reserves in the south Pacific and south east Asia, territories already largely under US, British and Dutch jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...
. Japan knew that she could not win a prolonged war against the 'Occidental Powers
Occidentalism
The term Occidentalism is used in one of two main ways: a) stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing views on the Western world, including Europe and the English-speaking world; and b), ideologies or visions of the West developed in either the West or non-West. The former definition stresses negative...
', but hoped that by striking first at Pearl Harbor to knock out the American Pacific fleet then using her huge reserves of men and machines to occupy the territories she coveted while America was still unready for war, Britain was engaged in all-out struggle with Germany and the Netherlands was herself occupied, she could establish her empire and consolidate herself so firmly that although her enemies would attempt to batter at her defensive line they would eventually be forced to accept the new position and make peace on the basis of the new status quo. In the early months of the war Japan launched a series of stunning conquests in the region, among them Honk Kong, the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Malaysia, Burma and the East Indies
East Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
, and soon threatened Australia far to the south.
Because she was an island, the blockade of Japan was a fairly straightforward matter of sinking the transport ships used to ferry materials from the occupied lands to the home islands, and remained a largely American affair. The Japanese began with a barely-adequate 6.1m merchant tons which American submarines and aircraft gradually whittled away until only 1.5m tons remained. The steady toll of attrition against her merchant marine was a major factor in Japan's eventual defeat, but the Allies agreed that the situation was far more complex with Germany, where a range of measures including strategic bombing would be required to achieve final victory.
America joins the economic war
In December 1941 the United States joined the economic warfare system that the British had created and administered over the previous two years. The Board of Economic WarfareBoard of Economic Warfare
The Office of Administrator of Export Control was established in the United States by Presidential Proclamation 2413, July 2, 1940, to administer export licensing provisions of the act of July 2, 1940 . Brigadier General Russell Lamont Maxwell, United States Army, headed up this military entity...
, (BEW) which evolved from the earlier Economic Defense Board, was created by President Roosevelt on 17 December 1941. Under the chairmanship of Vice President
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
Henry Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
, the new department was made responsible for the procurement and production of all imported materials necessary both to the war effort and the civilian economy. The Proclaimed List – a US equivalent to the British Statutory List – was compiled and, under British direction, the United States Commercial Corporation was formed to begin making preclusive purchases of strategic materials such as chromium, nickel and manganese to supply future Allied needs and to prevent them from reaching the Germans.
From the start there was close co-operation between the parallel American and British agencies, over economic warfare measures, intelligence gathering and the later Safehaven Program. The American Embassy in London acted as the base for the American BEW activities in Europe and was organized in March 1942, "to establish a more intimate liaison between the manifold economic warfare activities centered in the Ministry of Economic Warfare and comparable activities in the United States Government." BEW personnel sat on the Blockade Committee on equal terms with their British counterparts, undertaking the routine work of handling Navicerts, ships permits and defining contraband. The embassy division worked with MEW in the development of new war trade agreements and the re- negotiation of existing overseas purchase - supply contracts. Together they attempted to persuade the remaining neutrals – Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland (and Argentina) – that by supplying Germany with the materials it needed they were prolonging the war, and over time a number of measures were tried to pressure these countries into reducing or ending trade with the Axis, with varying degrees of success:
Portugal
Like General Franco in Spain, Portuguese President Antonio de Oliveira SalazarAntónio de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...
was perceived as pro-Axis but walked a fine line between the two sides, who competed fiercely for Portuguese raw materials, generating huge profits for her economy. Portugal provided Germany with direct overland exports of a wide range of commodities including rice, sugar, tobacco, wheat, potassium chlorate
Potassium chlorate
Potassium chlorate is a compound containing potassium, chlorine and oxygen atoms, with the molecular formula KClO3. In its pure form, it is a white crystalline substance. It is the most common chlorate in industrial use...
, inflammable liquids and yellow pitch
Galipot
Galipot is an impure resin of turpentine. It is obtained from pine trees by evaporation of the essential oil and once purified is called yellow pitch, white pitch or Burgundy pitch....
, and Portuguese merchants were also known to be sending industrial diamonds and platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
via Africa and South America. But by far the most important material Portugal had to offer was tungsten. Tungsten carbide
Tungsten carbide
Tungsten carbide is an inorganic chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. Colloquially, tungsten carbide is often simply called carbide. In its most basic form, it is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes for use in industrial machinery,...
was a critical war commodity with numerous applications such as the production of heat-resistant steel, armour plate, armour-piercing shells and high-speed cutting tools. Portugal was Europe's leading supplier of tungsten (and scheelite
Scheelite
Scheelite is a calcium tungstate mineral with the chemical formula CaWO4. It is an important ore of tungsten. Well-formed crystals are sought by collectors and are occasionally fashioned into gemstones when suitably free of flaws...
, another member of the wolframite series of tungsten ore minerals), annually providing Germany with at least 2,000 metric tons between 1941 and mid-1944, about 60 percent of her total requirement.
Britain was Portugal's largest trading partner and had the right to force her to fight on her side under a 500 year old alliance, but allowed her to remain neutral; in return Portugal allowed credit when Britain was short of gold and escudos, so that by 1945 Britain owed Portugal £322 million. Germany was Portugal's second-largest trading partner, initially paying for exports with consumer goods, but after 1942 increasingly with looted gold, which the Allies warned was liable to confiscation after the war. Portugal also allowed Germany generous credit terms, partly because after the fall of France the presence of a direct land route enabled Germany to threaten Portugal with invasion if she curtailed critical exports. The Allies, who also bought Portuguese tungsten, believed that if they could persuade the Portuguese to stop selling the ore the German machine-tool industry would very quickly be crippled and she would be unable to continue to fight. Because Portugal depended on the U.S. for petroleum, coal and chemical supplies, the Allies' economic warfare agencies considered achieving their aim by embargoes, but hesitated because they also wanted access to Portuguese military bases on the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
.
Spain
Since before the war, pro-Nazi Spain had suffered chronic food shortages which were made worse by the blockade. The Allies used a variety of measures to keep Spain neutral, such as limiting her oil supply and making trade deals at critical times to provide her with much-needed foreign exchange to buy food from South America. On 23 November 1940 Churchill wrote to Roosevelt to inform him that the peninsulaPeninsula
A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....
was now near starvation point, and that a US offer to provide a month by month supply of food might be decisive in keeping Spain out of the war.
Spanish companies did important aircraft work for the Germans, Spanish merchants furnished Germany with industrial diamonds and platinum, and General Franco, still loyal to Hitler because of his support during the civil war
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, continued to supply Germany with war materials, among them mercury and tungsten. Spain, the world's second-largest producer of tungsten after Portugal, provided Germany with 1,100 metric tons of the ore per year between 1941 and 1943 (between them Spain and Portugal provided 90% of Germany’s annual 3500 tons requirement) As a result of Allied economic measures and Germany defeats, by 1943 Spain adopted a more genuinely neutral policy. The Allied strategy with Spain was identical to that of Portugal: buy enough tungsten to satisfy the export need and prevent the rest reaching the enemy by whatever means. Britain and the US again had the option of launching an oil embargo on Spain but hesitated for fear of forcing Franco to side with Germany militarily.
Sweden
Sweden had long been Germany’s main source of high quality iron ore and ball bearings, and continuation of supplies from the port of Narvik, which the British tried to stop with Operation WilfredOperation Wilfred
Operation Wilfred was a British naval operation during World War II that involved the mining of the channel between Norway and her offshore islands in order to prevent the transport of swedish iron ore through neutral Norwegian waters to be used to sustain the German war effort...
was one of the factors which led to the German occupation of Norway. Allied economic warfare experts believed that without the Swedish exports the war would grind to a halt, but Sweden was surrounded by Axis countries and by those occupied by them, and could have herself been occupied at any time if they failed to give Germany what she wanted.
The U.S. and Britain were sympathetic to Sweden’s difficult position and of her attempts to maintain her neutrality and sovereignty by making important concessions to the Nazis, such as continuing to export timber and iron ore and by allowing the Germans use of their railway system, a privilege which was heavily abused. There was a general belief however, that Sweden went too far in accommodating the Nazi regime. In particular, the U.S. abhorred the use of Swedish ships to transport the ore to Germany and of her allowing Germany to transport soldiers and war materials across Sweden and through the Baltic under Swedish naval protection. Sweden received very little by way of imports due to the various blockades, and the Allies tried to use offers of a relaxation to persuade her to reduce her assistance of Germany, which they believed was actively prolonging the war. Churchill himself believed that Sweden could be instrumental in defeating Germany and after the heavy German defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
in 1943 the Russians became vocal in calling on Sweden to do more to aid the Allies.
Turkey
Despite signing a military alliance with Britain and France in October 1939, Turkey, like Sweden, Spain and Portugal spent the war keeping both sides at arms length while continuing to supply them with their war needs. Despite the German occupation of the Balkans in spring 1941, no military action was taken against Turkey, who in October 1941 began selling Germany large quantities of chromite oreChromite
Chromite is an iron chromium oxide: FeCr2O4. It is an oxide mineral belonging to the spinel group. Magnesium can substitute for iron in variable amounts as it forms a solid solution with magnesiochromite ; substitution of aluminium occurs leading to hercynite .-Occurrence:Chromite is found in...
for the production of chromium. The Turkish chromite ore, which like tungsten was an irreplaceable and essential war material, was the only supply available to Germany, who paid using iron and steel products and manufactured goods in order to draw Turkey into her sphere of influence. Turkey still maintained its good relations with the US and Britain despite the trade, which the economic warfare agencies sought to minimize.
Via its Commercial Corporation, the US engaged in a preclusive buying programme under British direction of its materials, particularly the chromite ore. It also bought commodities, e.g., tobacco, it did not really need, and sent Turkey's armed forces modern equipment under Lend Lease to replace obsolete equipment, to help maintain her neutrality. In so doing the Allies sought to maintain British influence in Turkey, and when the Allies decided, at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 to attempt to persuade Turkey to enter the war against Germany, Britain was assigned the role of negotiator. Turkey eventually ended trade with Germany and declared war on her in February 1945.
Argentina
Although most South American republics were sympathetic to the Allied cause, the US State Department was frustrated by the attitude of Argentina from the very beginning. Her government refused to cooperate with US economic warfare measures or to sever financial ties with Germany, her main trading partner. Though during the war she doubled her exports of bully beef to the US and to Britain, with whom she had a history of close ties, the government was openly pro-Nazi, particularly after June 1943, and even conspired to overthrow other Latin American governments and replace them with fascist regimes. German agents were permitted to operate and spread propaganda freely and subsidiaries of IG FarbenIG Farben
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
, Staudt
Staudt
Staudt is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.-Location:The municipal area lies at elevations from 260 to 285 m above sea level...
and Co. and Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
also operated in Argentinian territory, maintaining their links with Germany and supporting Nazi espionage operations in the region. Although the naval blockade, now heavily reinforced by US warships, restricted their efforts, merchants in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires smuggled important quantities of platinum, palladium
Palladium
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...
, drugs, and other chemicals to Germany, and a major aim of the US contraband control was to use US exports to Argentina to put pressure on her government to turn away from Nazi influence and break financial ties.
Switzerland
The German relationship with Switzerland was the most complex of all the neutral countries. Expecting hardship, the Swiss government spent heavily in the years prior to World War II on stockpiling food and buying armaments and, anticipating an invasion, kept its forces constantly mobilisedMobilization
Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...
. Following the Nazi conquests of mid 1940, the tiny landlocked nation of 7m people, which had remained resolutely neutral since 1815 found itself in a very difficult position, with German customs
Customs
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, transports, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country...
officials controlling all gateways to the outside world. But despite veiled threats and the constantly strained relations between the two nations, Switzerland was of no strategic importance to Germany, and of far more use to her as a workshop. Although Swiss citizens largely rejected the Nazis and subscribed to the Internationalist view expressed by the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, in order to survive and continue to receive imports, Switzerland had little choice but to trade with Germany, for which she was paid largely in coal. Well-known companies such as Oerlikon-Bührle provided guns, Autophon A.G. provided transmitting apparatus, and other companies exported coal-gas generators, ball bearings, bomb sights, ammunition, carbon black, timepieces and rayon
Rayon
Rayon is a manufactured regenerated cellulose fiber. Because it is produced from naturally occurring polymers, it is neither a truly synthetic fiber nor a natural fiber; it is a semi-synthetic or artificial fiber. Rayon is known by the names viscose rayon and art silk in the textile industry...
for parachutes.
Because of her geographic position and trade with Germany, Switzerland was subject to Allied blockade measures throughout, although she remained able to move imports and other exports such as sugar and benzene
Benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....
overland, mainly to Germany and other countries in the neutral zone. In December 1941 an attempt by the Swiss military to purchase American machine-gun cameras was blocked by Britain's refusal to grant a Navicert, and in April 1942 the US Board of Economic Warfare considered quotas for Swiss imports from overseas sources, identifying Swiss commodities which might be bargained for. Firms such as the Fischer Steel and Iron Works at Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen is a city in northern Switzerland and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimated population of 34,587 ....
were added to the blacklists because of their exports, causing them to eventually curtail supply and remodel their plant.
Despite the Allied sympathy with Switzerland's position, some individuals and companies actively supported the Nazi cause for financial or ideological reasons. In particular the Swiss were, and continue to be, criticised for the way they aided the shipment of Nazi funds abroad and provided banking facilities for the concealment of looted art treasures and gold, much of it stolen from Jews. In late 1943 safes at a Swiss bank at Interlaken
Interlaken
Interlaken is a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the Canton of Bern in Switzerland, a well-known tourist destination in the Bernese Oberland.-History:...
were rented by high-ranking Germans to store funds. Later, high ranking Nazi officials withdrew their deposits from German banks and transferred large sums to Swiss banks and to the Swedish Consulate at Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
. Italian and Swiss press reports also stated that many leading Italians banked large sums in Swiss francs in banks in Switzerland. Swiss individuals and financial institutions also acted as third-party go-betweens for transactions by others, such as for contraband shipments of cotton to Italy from the United States via a Portuguese factory, and transactions took place in Zurich which facilitated the trade of mercury
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
between Japan and Spain. During WW2 Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
industrialist and armaments exporter Emil Georg Bührle
Emil Georg Bührle
Emil Georg Bührle was an industrialist, art collector and patron. His art collection is now housed in the Foundation E.G. Bührle....
began amassing one of the twentieth century's most important private collections
Foundation E.G. Bührle
The Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection was established by the Bührle family in Zürich, Switzerland to bring to public viewing Emil Georg Bührle's important collection of European sculptures and paintings...
of European art. However the collection of around 200 works, which includes medieval sculptures and masterpieces by Cézanne, Renoir
Renoir
-People with the surname Renoir :* Pierre-Auguste Renoir , French painter* Pierre Renoir , French actor and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir* Jean Renoir , French film director and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir...
and van Gogh has been mired in controversy since the war because of the unclear provenance of some pieces, leading to the return of 13 paintings to the former French-Jewish owners or their families. (On 10 February 2008 the collection was subjected to what Zurich police declared to be "the biggest ever robbery committed in Switzerland and perhaps even Europe")
US files show that there was a belief that neutrals that traded with the Axis should be threatened with post-war reprisals, but although the Americans believed that the Swiss trade with Germany justified bombing her, it was also thought that her exports should be cut down without endangering the work of the Red Cross and intelligence work underway in Switzerland. The International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
(ICRC), which was founded in 1863 in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, did a great deal of invaluable humanitarian work, particularly in the worst-affected occupied territories, for example Greece. The children's section of the ICRC sent vitamins, medicine and milk products for children, and in 1944 it was awarded its second Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
for its work. Switzerland also provided asylum for refugees and persecuted individuals such as Jews and foreign workers forced to work in Germany. Following the collapse of the Mussolini regime, thousands of escaped Allied POWs
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
were given sanctuary and the crews of damaged Allied bombers (both sides regularly invaded Swiss airspace) returning from raids over Germany often put down in Swiss territory and were allowed refuge.
Despite the German trade and various measures for food self-sufficiency, Switzerland eventually used up her food stockpiles and suffered severe shortages of fuel through lapses in the German coal supply, increasingly relying on her forests and hydroelectric power. To help keep her people supplied with imports, and despite having no shoreline, the Swiss government developed its own merchant marine
Merchant Marine of Switzerland
Somewhat unusually for a landlocked country, Switzerland has a long tradition of civilian navigation, both on its lakes and rivers, and on the high seas.-Swiss inland navigation:...
, acquiring several vessels that had been impounded for smuggling or withdrawal foreign flags. The ships were based in the Rhine port of Basel, which gave access to the seaport of Rotterdam, until Allied bombing of a German dam interrupted it.
1942
At the start of 1942 the Allies were yet to achieve a major victory. February was an important month. The Germans sank 117 ships in the Atlantic during the first two months of the year, and in Russia Hitler was about to launch a huge offensive to take the Caucasus oilfields. On 9 February Albert SpeerAlbert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
became the new head of the German Armaments Ministry. Speer was an inspired choice by Hitler, performing better than could possibly have been expected of him, expertly organising the resources at his disposal, ensuring the speedy repair of bomb-damaged factories and pushing productivity up month after month. On 14 February the British War Cabinet took the decision to adopt area bombing as a means of undermining civilian morale and on 22 February Air Marshal Arthur Harris was appointed head of Bomber Command. The long-awaited Lancaster bomber was at last being delivered to squadrons, along with the new navigational aid GEE.
The renewed campaign got under way in early March with a 'saturation raid' by 200 RAF aircraft on the Renault
Renault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...
truck and tank works at Billancourt
Billancourt
Billancourt is a commune in the Somme department in northern France....
, near Paris. 623 French people were killed, mostly workers who had gathered outside to cheer the accurate hits. This was followed by the first of a series of eight raids on Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...
which proved a great disappointment. Despite an initial pathfinding
Pathfinder (RAF)
The Pathfinders were elite squadrons in RAF Bomber Command during World War II. They located and marked targets with flares, which a main bomber force could aim at, increasing the accuracy of their bombing...
force being sent to light up the target area with flares, only one bomb in 20 fell within five miles (8 km) of the town. On the night of 28–29 March the RAF used incendiaries for the first time to hit factories in Lubeck, an old town with many combustible buildings, but although the British considered it a resounding success production was back to normal a week later. More disaster followed on 17 April during a daylight 'precision' raid on the diesel engine factory in Augsburg. There was little effect on production and, with no fighter cover, 7 of the 12 Lancaster bombers were lost, leading to a return to night bombing.
The 1000-bomber raid
Heavy investment had been made in building up the bomber force, but faith in its potential was beginning to wane, and Harris realised a major propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
success was vital to demonstrate his belief that bombers could be decisive in defeating the enemy.< Harris began pushing for a mass raid using the magic number of 1000 bombers, although in fact the RAF barely had that many. At last, using every plane available including trainee crews, the RAF raided Cologne
Bombing of Cologne in World War II
The City of Cologne was bombed in 262 separate air raids by the Allies during World War II, including 31 times by the Royal Air Force . Air raid alarms went off in the winter/spring of 1940 as enemy bombers passed overhead. However, the first actual bombing took place on 12 May 1940...
on May 30 /31 1942 with over 1000 bombers; although over half the city was destroyed and it was seen as a success, the city made a surprising recovery. RAF assaults on medium-sized industrial towns to the east of the Rhine, the Ruhr and Berlin from mid-1942 also did little to weaken Germany economically. From July the B-24 Liberator
B-24 Liberator
The Consolidated B-24 Liberator was an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. It was known within the company as the Model 32, and a small number of early models were sold under the name LB-30, for Land Bomber...
and Flying Fortress fleets of the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
(USAAF) took on the role of daytime precision bombing of German arms and communication targets. They began by raiding airfields and railway stations in France and Holland and badly damaged the Heroya aluminium centre near Trondheim
Trondheim
Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...
in Norway which produced synthetic cryolite
Cryolite
Cryolite is an uncommon mineral identified with the once large deposit at Ivigtût on the west coast of Greenland, depleted by 1987....
, used in the manufacture of aluminium. From mid-November the RAF began a series of 16 massed night raids on Berlin, but thought the damage was considerable, the raids were less effective than those on the Ruhr and Hamburg. Essen and Bremen also suffered 1,000 plane raids and upwards of 1,000 tons of bombs. In 1942 the RAF dropped 37,000 tons of bombs on German targets, probably three times the weight dropped on Britain in 1940 and early 1941.
On 21 December 1942 the USAAF attacked the Krupp plant in Essen and, although they were unsuccessful at first, demonstrated their intention to paralyse German industry by concentrating on key sectors and persevering until lasting damage was inflicted. Another important target was ball-bearing manufacture, most of which was concentrated at Schweinfurt
Schweinfurt
Schweinfurt is a city in the Lower Franconia region of Bavaria in Germany on the right bank of the canalized Main, which is here spanned by several bridges, 27 km northeast of Würzburg.- History :...
, which in the months to come, despite the German deployment of smoke screens, mock factories, jamming devices, searchlights and flak in the area received special attention from the USAAF; Albert Speer and Erhard Milch
Erhard Milch
Erhard Milch was a German Field Marshal who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Germany following World War I, and served as founding Director of Deutsche Luft Hansa...
, the Inspector-General of the Luftwaffe, realised that from this point onwards the writing was on the wall. On 25 Feb 1943 the Allies began a round-the-clock strategic bombing campaign in Europe, and a few days later Bomber Command began the 5-month long Battle of the Ruhr
Battle of the Ruhr
The Battle of the Ruhr was a 5-month long campaign of strategic bombing during the Second World War against the Nazi Germany Ruhr Area, which had coke plants, steelworks, and 10 synthetic oil plants...
, a massive plan to wear down Germany's industrial capacity.
The blockade runners
Once new supplies of oil, rubber, and tungsten began flowing from the newly occupied Far East, mutually beneficial barter agreements were agreed whereby the Germans would acquire these vital commodities in exchange for the precision tools, blue prints and ball bearings which Japan badly needed. There had already been some trading of silkSilk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
products early in the European war. Despite the 5600 miles (9,012.3 km) and the land barrier of Russia separating Berlin from Tokyo, by mid-1942 a system of fast blockade runners was set up, the freighters traveling non-stop without showing lights or using their radio to avoid detection. The MEW believed that the first Japanese shipment of rubber reached Germany during the summer of 1942, having initially sailed from Indo-China to West Africa. From there it was transferred to small coastal vessels and ran the blockade to French Mediterranean ports by night. The MEW became concerned at the 'steady trickle' of Japanese blockade runners reaching Europe, which one estimate put at 15 ships by the end of 1942, and on the anniversary of the German and Italian declarations of war on the US, General Tojo expressed his pleasure that Japan was able to contribute the resources captured in the South Pacific to the Axis cause.
Other blockade runners were known to be arriving at the French port of Bordeaux, 70 miles inside the Gironde Estuary
Gironde estuary
The Gironde is a navigable estuary , in southwest France and is formed from the meeting of the rivers Dordogne and Garonne just below the centre of Bordeaux...
on the Atlantic coast. The port, also a base for German and Italian submarines, was one of the most heavily defended waterways in Europe, protected by numerous patrol boats, searchlights, shore batteries and thousands of troops. Because of its distance from the sea, a naval excursion was impossible, while the RAF believed that a bombing raid would be far too inaccurate and costly in civilian life and aircraft. The difficulty of stopping the blockade runners became known as the ‘Bordeaux Problem’, and eventually the British decided that a different, more espionage based approach was needed.
On 7th December 1942, Combined Operations launched one of the most famous raids of the war; Operation Frankton
Operation Frankton
Operation Frankton was a commando raid on shipping in the German occupied French port of Bordeaux in the Bay of Biscay during the Second World War. The raid was carried out by a small unit of Royal Marines known as the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment , part of Combined Operations.The plan was...
, better known as the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ mission, in an attempt to sink the ships by sending a 12 man team of Royal Marine Commandos to paddle up the Gironde in canoes to place delayed action bombs on their exposed hulls. Although the commandos displayed exceptional courage and the expedition was essentially successful in that a number of ships were damaged, only 2 men survived, including the leader, Major Herbert Hasler
Herbert Hasler
Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert George "Blondie" Hasler, DSO, OBE was a distinguished Royal Marines officer in World War II, responsible for many of the concepts which ultimately led to the post-war formation of the Special Boat Service...
, who had to make their way across 80 miles of France, Spain and Gibraltar back to safety. The remaining 10 men drowned, died of exposure or were captured and interrogated by the Germans before being executed.
In addition, excessive secrecy and a lack of communication between Whitehall
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...
departments meant that at exactly the same time that Operation Frankton was under way, and without their knowledge, the SOE were in the final stages of their own attempt to destroy the blockade runners by deploying a team of French agents led by Claude de Baissac
Claude de Baissac
Claude Denis Boucherville de Baissac, known as Claude de Baissac or by his codename David was a Mauritius-born agent in the Special Operations Executive...
, posing as painting contractors who planned to carry explosives onto the ships in their baggage. The explosions caused by the commando mission ruined the preparations of the SOE team, who might well have achieved a far more effective destruction of the blockade running vessels but for the Combined Operations raid.
Even so, the combined Allied air forces and navies eventually began to track down the blockade runners. In late 1942, an 8,000-ton cargo ship was caught in the Indian Ocean, where it hoisted a neutral flag and initally gave the name of a neutral vessel but misspelled the name. When the Allied warships opened fire the crew scuttled the ship, and 78 Germans were captured.
By late 1943 the Germans became so desperate for supplies of key commodities that in one incident they sent a large destroyer force out into the Bay of Biscay to protect ships bringing a cargo into Bordeaux, and lost three vessels to Allied action. By May 1944, 15 blockade runners had been sunk and the traffic had virtually ceased apart from submarines carrying very small cargoes. The MEW stated that 45,000 tons of rubber, 1,500 tons of tungsten, 17,000 tons of tin and 25,000 tons of vegetable oils had been destroyed as well as important far-Eastern drugs such as quinine
Quinine
Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic , antimalarial, analgesic , anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine which, unlike quinine, is an anti-arrhythmic...
. The Ministry was also of the view that the strong blockade had probably prevented further large amounts from being transported.
The Greek famine
By early 1942 the food shortages in Greece, which had been invaded by the Germans in April 1941 along with Yugoslavia, and which was now subject to the blockade, reached the famine proportions foreseen by Hoover. With its economy and infrastructureInfrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
ruined by the war with Italy, Greece was compelled to pay occupation costs, to grant Germany a 'war loan', and was subjected to the same confiscation of food and raw materials practiced elsewhere. Using its virtually worthless 'invasion marks', more than half of Greece's already inadequate wheat production was "sold" to Germany along with livestock, clothes, dried vegetables and fruit. Potatoes were fried using Greek olive oil and shipped back to Germany, and the tomato crop was hurried to scurvy
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...
-ridden German troops in Africa. One US correspondent commented; "Germany worked like a pack of driver ants, picking Greece clean", but the corrupt, collaborationist government also controlled the black market in whatever food was still available, causing rampant inflation of the drachma, which saw the price of a loaf of bread, where available, reach $15. There were reports of grave-robbing by people desperate to find the money to feed their families, but in the towns there were none of the staple potatoes, figs, raisins or tomatoes available and it was not long before the population began to die in droves from hunger, Cholera, Typhoid and Dysentery. In September 1941 the Greeks appealed for overseas aid, particularly from Turkey. An official declared "We are not asking for food that Turks would eat, but for food they refuse to eat."
Despite past enmity between the two nations Turkey quickly responded, chartering the SS Kurtulus
SS Kurtulus
SS Kurtuluş was a Turkish cargo ship which became famous for her humanitarian role in carrying food aid during the Great Famine Greece suffered under the Occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany in World War II...
and, after receiving permission from the British, the ship sailed from Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
to Piraeus
Piraeus
Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....
on 6 October with wheat, maize, vegetables, dried fruits and medicines. Over the next few months, the ship delivered around 6,700 tons of supplies to Greece, but foundered on rocks and sank during her fifth voyage. Despite the humanitarian efforts, by late January 1942 between 1,700 and 2,000 men, women and children were dying in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
and Piraeus each day, and Italy, which now occupied Greece, was forced to ship 10,000 tons of grain from her meagre domestic supplies, secretly to avoid unrest from her own people. This was still not enough, and eventually international pressure forced Britain to lift its blockade for the first time. In early February, Hugh Dalton of MEW told the House of Commons that Britain and America would send 8,000 tons of wheat to Greece, although there was no guarantee that the relief supplies would find their way to the starving. Dalton said; "There is no guarantee, nor would we pay any attention to one given by the Germans. We are in this case running a risk in view of the appalling conditions caused by the Germans in Greece." From that point on, the Greek Orthodox Church
Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...
, through its charity efforts in the United States and the International Red Cross were allowed to distribute sufficient supplies to the Greek people, though the total death toll from the famine was at least 70,000, probably much higher.
By late 1942 there were claims that Germany was paying for deliveries using forged US dollars and had began to default on its Romania trade, receiving deliveries while not supplying the much-needed machinery and war materials in return. Spanish suppliers of oranges and mandarins also refused to ship deliveries until they were paid. With the gradual turn of the war, a number of neutral countries began to take a stiffer line with Germany, in some cases refusing further credit.
1943
1942–43 was another lean year for agriculture in France. Many fertile regions such as the VexinVexin
The Vexin is a historical county of northwestern France. It covers a verdant plateau on the right bank of the Seine comprising an area east-to-west between Pontoise and Romilly-sur-Andelle , and north-to-south between Auneuil and the Seine near Vernon...
, the Beauce
Beauce
Beauce is a natural region in northern France, located between the Seine and Loire rivers. It now comprises the Eure-et-Loir département and parts of Loiret, Essonne and Loir-et-Cher. The region shared the history of the province of Orléanais and the county of Chartres, which is its only major...
, and the Brie
Brie
Brie is a historic region of France most famous for its dairy products, especially Brie cheese. It was once divided into two sections ruled by different feudal lords: the western Brie française, corresponding roughly to the modern department of Seine-et-Marne in the Île-de-France region; the...
suffered seriously from drought. The wheatheads were light, straw was short and hay shrivelled in the meadows, causing a lack of animal fodder. In occupied areas, the Germans confiscated 40% of the crop as soon as it became available; the authorities took 40% for the wider population, leaving the farmer with only 20%. In Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
, Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
and along the Channel coast, rain spoilt the potato crop and tomatoes and beans did not mature. In other provinces, e.g., Touraine
Touraine
The Touraine is one of the traditional provinces of France. Its capital was Tours. During the political reorganization of French territory in 1790, the Touraine was divided between the departments of Indre-et-Loire, :Loir-et-Cher and Indre.-Geography:...
and Burgundy region, the very dry weather left vegetables and even weeds cooked in the ground so people who bred rabbits for meat had to feed them with tree leaves.
South of the Loire
Loire (river)
The Loire is the longest river in France. With a length of , it drains an area of , which represents more than a fifth of France's land area. It is the 170th longest river in the world...
the weather was more favourable but, with the coming threat of invasion, the Germans were intent on stripping the land so the Allies would be left with nothing and be compelled to bring everything across from England. Hermann Goering proclaimed in a speech that under the Nazi New Order, the Herrenvolk were entitled to deprive the occupied peoples of their food, and that whoever starved it would not be the Germans. Rationing remained fierce. Even with coupons, it was impossible to acquire many items. Maximum prices were fixed for everything, but the black market pushed prices 5–15 times beyond the official tariff. Cheap restaurants in big towns served dishes comprising turnip or carrot tops made without any kind of fat, and although householders still received a fair ration of rough wine, all spirits were confiscated for industrial use.
The MEW continued to receive requests for a partial relaxation of the blockade, often in the belief it would make no appreciable difference to the effect on the enemy, but the pleas were steadfastly refused. The MEW believed that any substantial or widespread relaxation of the blockade would inevitably be exploited by the enemy to his own advantage, and declared that they would "not give him that comfort".
With increasing numbers of heavy Lancaster, Stirling and Halifax bombers, which could travel long distances and carry a heavy bomb load, reaching squadrons, Allied leaders increasingly put their faith in the cumulative effect of strategic bombing, but decided at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that, as with the British Blitz, the early attempts to disrupt the morale of the German people by saturation bombing of cities had achieved the opposite effect. RAF raids on vehicle factories in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, and Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
on 2 December 1942 only served to unite the Italian population behind the Mussolini dictatorship, and the plan was dropped in favour of the 'disorganisation of German industry'. Half of German synthetic oil production came from plants in the Ruhr, areas that were highly vulnerable to area attacks, and they became the primary target of Bomber Command from 1943.
Fourth phase of the economic war
Following the German defeats at StalingradBattle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
and El Alamein, the war began to swing decisively the Allies' way. With the appearance of more durable destroyers and new light escort carriers which could provide convoys with constant air cover, the 'Mid Atlantic Gap', where ships could not be provided with air cover, was closed, and from mid-1943 the U-boats were all but defeated in the Battle of the Atlantic, although Contraband Control at sea still continued. German labour shortages grew so acute that Germany relied increasingly on slaves and demanded prior claim on all available Swiss labour. The French collaborator Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval was a French politician. He was four times President of the council of ministers of the Third Republic, twice consecutively. Following France's Armistice with Germany in 1940, he served twice in the Vichy Regime as head of government, signing orders permitting the deportation of...
promised to send 300,000 more workmen to Germany immediately.
Sir Arthur Harris and his USAAF counterpart, Major General Ira Eaker assured Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt that Germany could be bombed out of the war by the end of 1943 on the condition that nothing was allowed to reduce the forces already allocated to the bombardment of Germany. Harris was known for his sharp tongue and lack of remorse for the German civilians being killed by the raids; one of his subordinates said of him. "Oh, we love him, he's so bloody inhuman." Harris believed that the only role for land forces in Europe would be to occupy the Continent after the bombing had defeated Germany. Churchill thought that the experiment of all-out bomber attack was worth trying as long as other measures were not excluded, and while the commanders of the Allied land forces and navies doubted that bombing would defeat Germany, they agreed that the raids would be useful in weakening Germany prior to the invasion of Europe. But only 10% of bombs fell close enough to their targets to be called hits, and heavily-bombed installations often had to be bombed again to knock them out. However, attacks on the already strained German railway system did seriously affect military operations – in early 1943 around 150 locomotives and many freight cars were being destroyed each month.
On the night of 16–17 May 1943 the RAF carried out the famous Dambusters raid (Operation Chastise
Operation Chastise
Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the "Dambusters", using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Barnes Wallis...
) to breach the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams which supplied the Ruhr industries with hydroelectric power and fresh water needed for the production of steel. The raid, known as 'Operation Chastise' drowned 1,500 people and countless farm animals, but was not as successful as claimed; and half of the 18 bombers were shot down. On 24 July 1943 Hamburg, a major manufacturing centre for Tiger tanks and 88mm guns was virtually destroyed in Operation Gomorrah. Mass attacks a few days later left a large part of the city in ruins, reportedly killing 42,000 people.
In comparison with the RAF, the US 8th Air Force was at that point still small, having dropped less than a tenth the bomb tonnage on Germany as the RAF. But it was growing fast, and had begun to achieve good results. 'Bomber' Harris had great faith in American manufacturing ability and believed that it would be the USAAF, not the RAF, who would eventually deliver the final decisive blows to the enemy. On 1 August the USAAF attacked the Romanian Ploesti oilfields in Operation Tidal Wave as part of the Oil Plan to wear down Axis oil supplies. No loss of production was caused, and losses were heavy: 54 out of 177 bombers were shot down. On 14 October 1943 the 8th USAF carried out the most successful of 16 attacks on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing works but caused only a temporary setback to production and, because the bombers had fighter escort only part of the way, losses were again heavy. This forced a rethink on the self-defending bomber formation and the curtailment of daytime attacks. In November heavy damage was caused by the USAAF to the most important industrial site in Norway, the molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
mine at Knaben
Knaben
Knaben is a former mining community in the northern part of Kvinesdal municipality, Norway, and currently a popular ski resort. The settlement lies about 630 metres above sea level. The molybdenum mines were operated from 1885 to 1973. Buildings and constructions are still partly intact...
, 50 miles (80.5 km) from Stavanger
Stavanger
Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...
. A Norwegian smelting works was also destroyed by British and Norwegian commandos on 21 November 1943.
Continued German requisitions
After three years of war Britain had spent £10 billion, and the Chancellor of the ExchequerChancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
, Kingsley Wood
Kingsley Wood
Sir Howard Kingsley Wood was an English Conservative politician. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance...
, had to ask the House of Commons to find another £1 billion to continue. USAAF airpower increased, concentrating its efforts on aircraft production and repair plants in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. By late October 1943, the MEW believed that German productivity was down 30%, and that half the drop had occurred in the previous six months, but the figures showed the limitations of all bombing, saturation or precision. Many of the installations that had previously been reported as wiped out continued to operate.
In early November the MEW published a summary of the position in the occupied lands, giving an assessment of what the Germans were believed to have appropriated from the territories they conquered in 1940 and 1941. The report estimated that more than $12,800,000,000 had been collected from the occupied territories in occupation costs and other direct charges and continued to be collected at a yearly rate of $4,800,000,000. Poland, the country most harshly treated, had suffered the confiscation of all state properties, all central stocks of textiles, food and livestock. 9,000 factories and 60,000 commercial enterprises were taken over for exploitation, and 80% of the 1942 harvest was sent to Germany. Czechoslovakia had lost its grain, its gold reserves, mines, heavy industries and important textile industry. Her total tribute was given as $1,200,000,000. Dutch industry was by now also under complete German control. State expenditures had almost trebled to pay Germany's occupation and other costs and levies. Belgium, whose government was in exile in Britain, had its entire $260,000,000 gold reserves surrendered by the Vichy regime and by the beginning of 1943 the country's entire stock of 1,500 locomotives and 75,000 trucks had been requisitioned. In Yugoslavia, all cars were seized in 1941, and any bicycles that could be found had been taken by 1942. The country had been partitioned and had suffered, like so many others from inflation caused by the occupation mark system. In Norway the Germans requisitioned personal property right down to woollen blankets, ski trousers and windproof jackets, and in Denmark all trade and industry of consequence was now controlled by Germans.
Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. Under Albert Speer, industrial factories were being relocated to Czechoslovakia on a considerable scale, and by the end of 1943, despite a lot of damage to towns – German figures showed that 6.9m people had been bombed out or evacuated – output of war material was greater that ever. In October 1943 the USAAF attacked Ploesti again, but according to German records total loss of petroleum to the end of 1943 had not exceeded 150,000 tons.
1944
By the beginning of 1944 it was clear that the bomber offensive had not delivered the decisive defeat that was promised, and preparations were well underway for the invasion of Europe. Spain, Portugal and Sweden came under renewed pressure to end sales of vital commodities to Germany. In January 1944 the MEW estimated that Spain was still selling Germany 100 tons of tungsten a month. The Spanish Minister for Industry and Commerce defended Spain's position, saying that Spain felt it impossible to deny Germany a commodity which had a very high value in wartime. Britain, who also made considerable purchases of Spanish tungsten, favoured a compromise that would allow Spain to maintain her German tungsten exports at the 1943 level, but the United States demanded a complete ban and the oil embargo was eventually reimposed. Spain agreed to reduce the German exports in May 1944, although the Allies discovered that she continued making clandestine shipments, transporting more than 800 tons of tungsten through to July 1944 and not finally ending the trade until the closing of the Franco-Spanish border in August 1944. Portugal also defended her right to neutral trade, fearing German reprisals such as invasion or the bombing of her cities and shipping if she ceased tungsten shipments; however the US Secretary of State Cordell HullCordell Hull
Cordell Hull was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II...
believed that he could have achieved the objective if he had had wholehearted British support.
Big Week
On 20 February 1944 the USAF began Operation 'Big Week', a plan to wear down the Luftwaffe arms base to secure Allied air superiority during the invasion. For six days aircraft factories were subjected to constant pounding, with the Americans flying heavily escorted missions against airframe manufacturing and assembly plants and other targets in numerous German cities including LeipzigLeipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, Brunswick, Gotha, Regensburg
Regensburg
Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...
, Schweinfurt, Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
and Steyr
Steyr
Steyr is a town, located in the Austrian federal state of Upper Austria. The town is situated at the confluence of the rivers Steyr and Enns. Steyr is Austria's 12th most populated town and simultaneously the 3rd largest town in Upper Austria....
. The RAF returned to bomb the same targets by night, and the damage was such that Milch informed Speer that the March 1944 output would be only 30% – 40% of February's total. Albert Speer took over aircraft production and managed to perform miracles: the installations were soon back to something like normal capacity, and overall production - including synthetic oil production - was at an all-time high and still rising. The Luftwaffe had around 40% more aircraft than it possessed a year earlier, the construction of new tanks was sufficient to equip new divisions raised for the defence of western Europe and to make good some of the losses in the east.
Although the Allies kept up the round-the-clock pressure, raiding countless lines-of-communications targets in the build-up to the invasion, they were slow to grasp what German commanders were all too aware of – that Germany had plenty of tanks and aircraft and their real achilles heel was the oil supply. In early March the USAF raided the Erkner
Erkner
-Geography:It is situated on the river Spree, 23 km west of Fürstenwalde, and directly on the border to Berlin-Rahnsdorf....
ball-bearing works, scoring 75 direct hits, stopping production for some time, and commenced the "Plan for Completion of Combined Bomber Offensive". The objective now became to halve Axis oil production by attacking the Ploesti oilfields and fourteen synthetic-oil plants in order to deprive Germany of the means to keep its military machines operational.
On 12 May the USAAF hit East German synthetic oil plants at Leuna
Leuna
Leuna is a town in the Saalekreis, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, south of Merseburg and Halle. It is known for the Leunawerke , at 13 km2 one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany, where a very wide range of chemicals and plastics is produced...
, Bohlen
Bohlen
Bohlen is a surname shared by several notable people, among them being:Bohlen* Charles E. Bohlen , American diplomat* Avis Bohlen , American diplomat* Jim Bohlen, American-born Canadian political activist...
, Zeitz
Zeitz
Zeitz is a town in the Burgenlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the river Weiße Elster, in the middle of the triangle of the federal states Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony.-History:...
and Lutzendorf; they were so badly damaged they could supply no oil for several weeks, being hit again later that month before they returned to production. Albert Speer said later that this was a decisive turning point in the war.
Meanwhile, as a result of the sustained Allied diplomatic pressure, together with the deteriorating German military position, Sweden began to reduce its trade with Germany. But a September 1943 agreement under which she agreed to end ball-bearing exports failed to include a restriction on sales of the high-quality steel used in their manufacture; this allowed the restrictions to be largely by-passed, and the agreement ultimately had little effect on the German war industry. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. In November 1943 Albert Speer declared that without its Turkish chromium imports, Germany's armaments manufacture would come to a halt within 10 months, and Allied threats to subject Turkey to the same economic warfare measures used against other neutrals eventually persuaded her to cease the exports to Germany by April 1944.
Though Germany, with the resources of the conquered territories was still able to produce three times as much steel as Britain, as a result of military action she was beginning to lose other sources of special metals which could not be replaced. On the eastern front, the Red Army had taken back its manganese mines at Balki
Balki
Bałki is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Repki, within Sokołów County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland.-References:...
, from which the Germans had been getting 200,000 of the 375,000 tons their war industry required each year. In Scandinavia, an important supply of nickel was now prevented from being delivered from Petsamo in Finland, and the mines at Knaben in Norway were no longer providing molybdenum.
The eve of Overlord
During a debate in the House of Lords about the economic war on 9 May 1944, just before D-Day, Lord Nathan told the House:My Lords, I wish to bring to your minds an almost forgotten Ministry. Back in 1939, in the early days of the war, the Ministry of Economic Warfare was always in the headlines. Then some people thought and some people said that the war could be won by blockade alone without fighting, that Germany would suddenly collapse for lack of fuel, lack of special steels, even lack of food. In a bitter school we soon learnt differently. Even today, though Germany is extremely short of oil, she has enough for actual military operations, and her people are still reasonably well fed. But after those early days we went to the other extreme. Blockade by itself did not do the trick so we put it on one side in our minds. If the early hopes were exaggerated, we must not attenuate the actual achievements. The blockade almost certainly saved us from defeat. It quite certainly made it possible for us to win and has given us the precious time to make ready for the final blow. Some years ago an economic writer put it like this: "The blockade won't make Germany crack, but it will make her brittle." Now she is brittle, our armies can crack her. The blockade is more important now at the climax, on the eve of invasion, when the strain is telling, than ever before. The famished people of Europe must now look to the onward sweep of our advancing Armies coming as liberators and bringing bread in their train.
Lord Selbourne told the house that the effect of the blockade, which may have been slight at first, had been cumulative, and Germany's greatest lack was now in manpower. While Britain was herself importing tens of millions of tons of supplies per year, the enemy was increasingly forced to use ersatz
Ersatz
Ersatz means 'substituting for, and typically inferior in quality to', e.g. 'chicory is ersatz coffee'. It is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement...
industries. German civilian motor traffic had practically entirely gone over to producer-gas, which like all ersatz materials was grossly wasteful in manpower, and this, combined with her colossal losses in the field and the need to keep a disproportionately high percentage of its available labour on the land, had produced an acute manpower crisis requiring the use of some seven million foreign slaves in Germany alone. In June 1944 the British finally secured access to the naval bases on the Azores, and the Allies thereafter threatened Portugal with economic sanctions. In turn, Portugal imposed a complete embargo on all tungsten exports to both sides, leaving Germany with only its small supply from Spain, while the Allies had alternative sources in the Far East and South America.
D-Day
As D-DayD-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
approached, the Allies prioritised attacks on Ploesti and the artificial fuel sites. German air defences could no longer protect the installations, and on 12 and 20 June the RAF attacked the Ruhr hydrogenation plants and put the eastern plants completely out of action, causing a rapid drop in production; Speer predicted disaster by September if the situation did not improve. From the beginning of Overlord on 6 June, the Allies enjoyed complete control of the skies over the beachhead, and were able to transport adequate oil across the sea via tanker and use of the PLUTO
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
pipeline, while the artificial Mulberry jetties
Mulberry harbour
A Mulberry harbour was a British type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy....
and the capture of small harbours initially enabled them to bring enough ammunition and food supplies ashore.
The German armies defending Normandy were badly restricted by their inability to bring up adequate fuel for their tanks and could only make troop and supply movements at night. They were also forbidden by Hitler from withdrawing to better positions a few miles inland, and as a result suffered a relentless barrage of heavy calibre gunfire from British and American battleships moored offshore. German commanders increasingly put their faith in the new Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter and the V-weapons to turn the tide. The first V1 flying bomb was launched against England on 13 June 1944, and soon 120 V1s per day were being fired at London, killing large numbers of civilians. By the end of June over 2,000 V1s had been launched; 40% of bomber resources were being redirected towards 'Crossbow
Operation Crossbow
Crossbow was the code name of the World War II campaign of Anglo-American "operations against all phases of the German long-range weapons programme—operations against research and development of the weapons, their manufacture, transportation and their launching sites, and against missiles in flight"...
' targets in the hope of destroying the 70–80 launch sites north and east of the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
.
Allied supply problems
After the initial success of D-Day and the breakout from the Normandy beachhead which followed, the advance began to slow due to the constant difficulties of keeping the vast armies supplied. The problem was not getting supplies to the continent, but getting them to forward troops, which might be 500 miles (804.7 km) from supply depots. Each division required 600–700 tons of supplies per day while artillery and mortars used 8 million rounds per month. The speed of advance often meant there was no time to build up an orderly logistical structure and, despite the use of a one-way truck system called the Red Ball ExpressRed Ball Express
The Red Ball Express was an enormous truck convoy system created by Allied forces to supply their forward-area combat units moving through Europe following the breakout from the D-Day beaches in Normandy. The term "Red Ball" was a railroad phrase referring to express shipping...
, for 5 days at the end of August virtually the entire American and British advance came to a complete halt due to a lack of fuel.
The supply problem was worsened by the Allies' failure to capture a deep-water port able to unload large ships. The Germans, employing their scorched-earth policy, destroyed all dock facilities as they withdrew from the occupied territories in order to deprive the Allies of any logistical advantages. By early September the only remaining undamaged deep-water port was Antwerp in Belgium, and the SOE, under the direction of the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) was given the task of ensuring it was captured intact. The operation, known as Counterscorch, involved sending radio operators into Belgium to liaise with the resistance, keeping them informed of Allied movements and supplying them with weapons and ammunition. At the allotted moment the resistance seized the port, keeping the Germans out until the Allies arrived, and Belgium was liberated in less than a week, although the port of Antwerp itself was not fully operational and capable of landing large cargoes until after the Battle of the Scheldt in late November.
The supply problems also led to disagreements, as each commander pressed for his unit to be given priority. The supreme commander of Allied forces, General Eisenhower wanted to advance on a broad front to overcome the West Wall (Siegfried Line
Siegfried Line
The original Siegfried line was a line of defensive forts and tank defences built by Germany as a section of the Hindenburg Line 1916–1917 in northern France during World War I...
), but instead accepted General Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time....
, the plan to try to outflank the West Wall and drive into northern Germany to encircle the industrial Ruhr via Holland. Market Garden was a disaster and did not achieve its main objective, while its few territorial gains actually stretched the supply lines even further.
Loss of Balkan ores
By early October the European military and political position had changed enormously and the MEW provided a statement of Germany's deteriorating position. As a result of military operations in Lorraine and Luxembourg, the withdrawal of Swedish ships from trade with German ports, the closing of Swedish Baltic ports to German shipping, and the loss of supplies from Spain, it was estimated that iron ore supplies had been reduced by 65 per cent compared with 1943. In addition, about 45% of pig ironPig iron
Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...
manufacturing had been lost, together with 40% of steel furnace capacity. Supplies of copper from Turkey and Spain had been cut off, and the Germans had lost contact with sources of copper ores at Bor in Yugoslavia and Outokumpu
Outokumpu
Outokumpu is a group of companies headquartered in Espoo, Finland, aimed at stainless steel. The company has approx. 8 000 employees in about 30 different countries worldwide...
in Finland. Loss of the Yugoslavian and other Balkan mines took away the last supplies of chromium and reduced the supply of lead by approximately 40 per cent – the position being worsened by the loss of substantial amounts of scrap which were collected in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. With the loss of high-grade French deposits and the seizure by Marshal Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
's forces of the island fringe of Yugoslavia, Germany’s total loss of bauxite was put at around 50 per cent, while the loss of shipments of cobalt from Finland was around 80 per cent of the total quantity with which Germany sustained that part of her synthetic oil production obtained by the Fischer-Tropsch process
Fischer-Tropsch process
The Fischer–Tropsch process is a set of chemical reactions that convert a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. The process, a key component of gas to liquids technology, produces a petroleum substitute, typically from coal, natural gas, or biomass for use as synthetic...
.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to assist the Allies in their liberation of Holland, the exiled Dutch government called for a national rail strike to further disrupt German operations. The German authorities retaliated by placing an embargo on supplies of food into western Holland. This caused severe hardship. By the time the embargo ended in November 1940 an unusually early and harsh winter had set in, leading to the Dutch famine of 1944
Dutch famine of 1944
The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade...
. In the Balkans, the Ploesti oilfields were lost to Germany as an oil source from August 1944, and various opposing paramilitary groups and partisans united behind Marshal Tito. With Soviet help they began pushing Axis forces beyond Yugoslav borders, leading to further German losses of food and metals.
End of Swedish trade with Germany
In August 1944 Sweden determined that the danger to its merchant and naval vessels engaged in the iron ore trade to Germany had become too great, and ceased exports in exchange for permission to import some of her own stores of cotton and wool shut off by the Allied blockade. In November all Swedish trade with Germany officially ended. After six months of negotiations, Switzerland also agreed to trim by one third her $60m yearly sales of machine goods and precision instruments to Germany and to cut sales of ball bearings to 10% and ammunition to 5% of the 1942 total.By this time, attacks on German fuel installations had been so successful that September's output was 8% that of April, and supplies were soon exhausted, just when fighter production reached its highest level. Allied air commanders next began targeting German transport networks. On 24 September the RAF breached the Dortmund-Ems Canal
Dortmund-Ems Canal
The Dortmund–Ems Canal is a 269 km long canal in Germany between the inland port of the city of Dortmund and the sea port of Emden. The artificial southern part of the canal ends after 215 km at the lock of Herbrum near Meppen. From there, the route goes over a length of 45 km over...
– an inland waterway linking the Ruhr with other areas – with Tallboy bombs, draining a six-mile (10 km) section. The enormous rail marshalling yard at Hamm was badly hit, leaving some 9,000 workers permanently engaged carrying out running repairs. On 12 November the battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Tallboy bombs near Tromsø
Tromsø
Tromsø is a city and municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø.Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population, and the seventh largest city in Norway by population...
, Norway. The ship, known as the 'Lonely Queen of the North' had seen little action through lack of fuel, and spent much of the war moored in a remote fjord. Around this time the RAF began reducing its attacks on synthetic oil production sites because none of the plants were now operating. Only the sites at Leuna and Polotz were still producing any oil, and though in December limited production restarted, further raids quickly put them out of action for good. Once the oil sites were bombed out in late 1944, transport became the primary target. Allied air power was now unstoppable.
In late 1944 the German army launched the Ardennes Offensive, an attempt to split the Allied army, recapture Antwerp and force a negotiated peace. Despite early success, caused in part by severe Allied supply shortages, particularly of fuel, the operation eventually petered out,. This was the last serious attempt by the German army to regain the initiative on land, although the Luftwaffe launched one final offensive with 800 aircraft against Allied airfields in Belgium, Holland and France early in 1945.
1945
At the start of the war Germany's transport system, comprising modern autobahns, excellent railways and a complex network of interlinking canals and rivers was among the best in the world. But after autumn 1943 the connections between industrial centres made attractive bomber targets which when effectively bombed badly affected the distribution of coal, which formed the basis of most military and industrial operations. Soon large parts of Germany’s remaining transport network were paralysed, and the Ruhr became economically isolated from the rest of the Reich.Ultimately it was the sustained Allied bombing of the transport network which broke Nazi resistance. Despite his incredible efforts at continually reorganising production after each setback, from early 1945 Speer admitted defeat in the armaments battle. German industry was now unable to keep up with the high number of 'Top Priority' weapons programmes, such as the production of the V weapons and calls for 3,000 Me 262 jet fighters and bombers per month. However, many factories maintained production right up to the moment Allied forces arrived at the gates.
By now the V 1 and V2 launch sites were being increasingly overrun, and with the Allies moving towards the Rhine and the Soviet armies rapidly closing in from the east, large numbers of refugees began to congregate in the cities, creating utter chaos. When severe frost and snow came in January, food was declared the main priority, although Germany still maintained the ability to defend its vital installations with formidable numbers of anti-aircraft cannons. From early February 1945 railheads, marshalling yards and transport systems of over 200 small towns, such as Hildesheim
Hildesheim
Hildesheim is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the district of Hildesheim, about 30 km southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste river, which is a small tributary of the Leine river...
and Meiningen
Meiningen
Meiningen is a town in Germany - located in the southern part of the state of Thuringia and is the district seat of Schmalkalden-Meiningen. It is situated on the river Werra....
in West Germany and Jenbach
Jenbach
Jenbach is a municipality with 6897 inhabitants in the district of Schwaz in Tyrol, Austria. Many inhabitants of Jenbach believe that the name "Jenbach" is derived from "Jenseits des Baches", which means "Beyond the brook", however earlier versions of the name, for instance "Umbach" give hint that...
in Austria were attacked in Operation Clarion
Operation Clarion
Operation Clarion was an Allied campaign of Strategic bombing during World War II which attacked 200 Nazi Germany communication network targets to open Operation Veritable/Grenade....
,
The Safehaven Program
With the war all but won, there were increasing reports – mostly based on paranoiaParanoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
and hearsay – that Nazi leaders were preparing to escape justice and were already preparing the way for the next war by secreting funds in neutral nations and moving resources abroad. From late 1944 onwards there were reports that rich German and Austrian Jews were being allowed to leave the Reich after paying special taxes and surrendering all their belongings to the Nazis. In December 1944 Allied intelligence sources indicated that German firms such as Schering
Schering
Schering AG was a research-centered German pharmaceutical company. It was founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering and merged with Bayer's pharma sector in December 2006. The company's headquarters was in Berlin-Wedding, Germany...
, IG Farben
IG Farben
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
, Bosch and Mannesmann Rohrenwerke
Mannesmann
Mannesmann AG was a German corporation with headquarters in Düsseldorf. The company was founded in 1890 originally to produce seamless steel tubes. It was traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The company had 130,860 employees worldwide and revenues of €23.27 billion.Over time, Mannesmann...
were attempting to sell patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s to Swedish firms, and large chemical and electrical trusts, particularly IG Farben, were procuring foreign currency to finance Nazi activities abroad. In February 1945 food supplies were reported as being collected in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps for Nazi fortresses and underground factories, and plans were apparently under way for the structural reorganization of the Nazi Party abroad by transferring money into agents' accounts in neutral countries. The Americans had information on a Fritz Mandl, a German national resident in Argentina who in January 1945 was sent several million pesos
Argentine peso moneda nacional
The peso moneda nacional was the currency of Argentina between November 5, 1881 and December 31, 1969. It was subdivided into 100 centavos, with the argentino worth 5 pesos. Its symbol was m$n or $m/n. Its ISO 4217 code was ARM.-History:...
through the State Bank of Spain to invest for Goering, Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
, and Himmler. By June 1945 German inventions were said to be in the safekeeping of the Swedish Aniline Company, with patents having been thrown onto the market through Swedish "dummy" intermediaries, and detailed information had been gathered on the financial backgrounds of a number of chemical, carbide and dye companies thought to be active as safe havens for Nazi property.
The US-led Safehaven Program was launched during the United Nations Conference at Bretton Woods in July 1944, the same venue that prepared the ground for the modern World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
and International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
(IMF). The program provided for immediate measures to prevent any disposition, transfer, or concealment of looted gold or other assets, to deny any safe haven for Nazi looted assets in neutral countries, and for the eventual return of looted artefacts to their original owners. Most neutrals were eventually persuaded to reduce and end trade with Germany.
The Swedish Government adopted tightened exchange control regulations in November 1944 and made great progress in identifying German properties and eliminating German influences from its economy. However, negotiations for the return of looted gold allegedly sent to Sweden by Germany as payment for goods dragged on for many years. Allied estimates of the value of looted gold ranged between $18.5 million and $22.7 million, but although the British, US and French agreed that Sweden’s gold reserves had increased during the war, they were unable to agree how much – if any – of these rises were due to looted gold. Sweden eventually agreed to distribute more than $66 million in liquidated German assets as reparations, including a special $36 million fund at the Riksbank to forestall disease and unrest in Germany and to finance purchases essential for the German economy. It also agreed to provide more than $8 million in gold to make up for that amount of Belgian monetary gold sold to Sweden during the War, but negotiations regarding 8.6 kilograms of Dutch gold ($9.7 million) stalled when Sweden argued that the gold had been acquired before the January 1943 London Declaration on looted gold. In April 1955 the Dutch claim was finally proved conclusive, and Sweden returned about $6.8 million in gold.
Spain acquired a large quantity of gold from Germany, in some cases via Swiss intermediary companies, and negotiations coincided with Allied efforts to ostracize the Franco regime. A number of other countries also downgraded their diplomatic relations with Spain for having openly supported Hitler, and Spain agreed to return an estimated $25 million in official and semi-official German assets in October 1946. Spain agreed to liquidate some $20–23 million of private German assets on the understanding she would keep around a quarter of the proceeds, and signed an agreement in May 1946 to return $114,329 (101.6 kilograms) out of about $30 million in looted Dutch gold that the Allies had identified at the Spanish Foreign Exchange Institute. The Allies publicly acknowledged that Spain had not been aware it was looted, and later Spain returned $1.3 million in gold bars and gold coins it had seized from German State properties at the end of the War. Negotiations continued, but with the coming of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
the US softened its approach and released over $64 million in assets frozen since the war, and allowed Spain to use its remaining gold as collateral for private loans.
Because of its close financial ties with Germany, Allied representatives were especially keen to achieve Swiss co-operation. Although Swiss-German trade was generally considered to have ceased after November 1944, some companies, such as the Tavaro Munitions factory at Geneva, Switzerland, clandestinely shipped explosives to Germany, and German assets amounting to one billion francs still remained in Switzerland after November 1945. According to Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War...
, Switzerland was the last country to fully commit to the aims of Safehaven. In February 1945, an American delegation sent to Switzerland initially thought it had achieved a substantial reduction in Swiss exports to Germany and an acknowledgment of Safehaven objectives for the blocking of German assets in Switzerland. But following subsequent discussions with Reichsbank Vice President Emil Puhl
Emil Puhl
Dr. Emil Puhl was a Nazi economist and banking official during World War II. He was director and vice-president of Germany's Reichsbank during World War II and also served as a director for the Bank for International Settlements at Basel . He was instrumental in moving Nazi gold during the war...
, the Swiss later reneged on this agreement, and through the remainder of 1945 showed an unwillingness to embrace the Allied proposals to turn German assets in Switzerland towards the benefit of ravaged Europe and stateless victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. However, because of its excellent humanitarian record and protection of Allied POWs and other interests, the Allies ultimately decided against taking extreme measures against Switzerland.
The post-war world
Following the end of the war in Europe in late May 1945, large parts of Europe lay completely smashed. Acute food, housing and medical shortages continued for some time and around 10 million refugees housed in temporary encampments or on the roads.In the two emerging superpowers, Russia and America, post-war productivity rose remarkably by 1948, although the reasons were very different. In Russia, great stimulus was given to emerging industries as a result of frenzied war production, helped in part by advanced industrial plant it took from east Germany after the occupation. America meanwhile, had been under severe depression in 1938, with vast industrial resources lying idle and 20% of the population unemployed. Rearmament, and later war brought these resources to life, which combined with rising investment and no requirement to rebuild their devastated infrastructure kept American industry buoyant, although considerable residual unemployment remained. Much the same situation existed in Canada, whose economy was closely tied to America, and who also suffered no fighteing within its territory. The war changed the pattern of the international economy, leaving the US in a very strong bargaining position, having managed to free up international trade to its benefit as a consequence of Lend–Lease, and forcing the British to agree to currency convertibility.
Britain's economy was badly hit by the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease a few days after the final defeat of Japan in August 1945. During the war Britain lost many of its lucrative export markets and now confronted an annual balance of payments
Balance of payments
Balance of payments accounts are an accounting record of all monetary transactions between a country and the rest of the world.These transactions include payments for the country's exports and imports of goods, services, financial capital, and financial transfers...
deficit of £1.2billion. As in World War I, Britain emerged from the war militarily triumphant but economically poorer (rationing did not end until 1953), and economist John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
was sent to America to negotiate a low-interest emergency loan of £3.75 billion to tide Britain over; the final repayment of £45.5 (then about $83m) was made on 31 December 2006.
In the former occupied countries, severe inflation – caused in part by the large amount of money hoarded during the war, particularly by collaborators – caused further spiralling food prices and a persisting black market. A factor aggravating inflation was low productivity, caused in part by a lack of coal. France assumed it would become entitled to large volumes of German coal from the Ruhr as war reparations, but the Americans, who kept France and other countries going with a number of short-term loans and Marshall Aid, began to realise – correctly – that Europe needed the powerhouse German economy to restart growth and prevent the spread of communism, and refused to agree to reparations, the very thing which led to German resentment after WW1 and the rise of Hitler.
In Germany herself, the people were left to start again from almost nothing, partitioned into zones which became east and west Germany for many years by the Allied powers, a time sometimes referred to as Year Zero. Although they faced a massive task, with whole cities to be rebuilt and industries reorganised to peaceful production, within a few years the West German economy achieved a miraculous turn-around, and by 1950 a Wirtschaftswunder
Wirtschaftswunder
The term describes the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II . The expression was used by The Times in 1950...
(economic miracle) was being proclaimed. From 1951 onwards, France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux
Benelux
The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe comprising three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These countries are located in northwestern Europe between France and Germany...
nations began moves towards the unification of Western Europe with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community
European Coal and Steel Community
The European Coal and Steel Community was a six-nation international organisation serving to unify Western Europe during the Cold War and create the foundation for the modern-day developments of the European Union...
(ECSC), the forerunner to the Modern European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. The ECSC created a common market to co-ordinate the supply of critical commodities to get the wheels of European commerce moving again.
The German synthetic-oil programme was so successful and advanced that during the world fuel crisis of the 1970s, caused by conflict and uncertainty in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, large American industrial concerns such as Dow Chemical, Union Carbide
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...
and Diamond Shamrock
Ultramar
Ultramar is a Canadian oil refining and marketing company formerly known as Golden Eagle or Aigle d'or. Its head office is in Montreal...
began to reconsider the Nazi technology to see if it might provide a partial solution to their problems. Some 300,000 documents relating to the history of the programme, including plant diagrams, patent descriptions, detailed reports on which catalysts and additives worked best, and monthly reports from the 25 oil from coal plants had fallen into American hands at the end of the war. At the time, crude oil was readily available at $2 per barrel, a fifth of the cost of man-made oil, and there was very little interest in the German documents. They remained in boxed storage at the National Archives in Washington for the next 30 years until chemical engineers began the arduous task of collating all the information and feeding it into a computer at the federally-run Oak Ridge Energy Center
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...
. Although the US managed to secure alternative non-Arabian oil supplies – mainly from Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
– synthetic oils are widely used today, mainly in specialised areas such as the airline industry and as lubricants.
Media representation
During the early months of the war – the so-called phoney war or Sitzkreig – the activities of the men of Contraband Control were very newsworthy and provided good morale-boosting propaganda. Along with real-life accounts of German attacks on civilian fishing trawlers, news of attempts to defeat the magnetic mine, and official statistics of the monthly totals of seized cargoes, popular titles such as War Illustrated, Picture PostPicture Post
Picture Post was a prominent photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months...
and the American magazine Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
served up a weekly diet of photographs and patriotic accounts of the latest British or French war successes, often with captions such as
Mr Briton'll see it through
We were victims of Nazi frightfulness or
Repulse sunk? - it was only another Nazi lie
The blockade became part of peoples every day lives and it was inevitable that this would eventually be reflected in film.
Directed by Michael Powell, written by Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel , The...
and starring Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
and Valerie Hobson
Valerie Hobson
Valerie Hobson was a British actress who appeared in a number of British films during the 1940s and 1950s...
, Contraband (renamed Blackout in the US) was released on May 1940, just before the start of the German attack on France. In much the same style as 39 Steps, the film centres on the fictitious port of Eastgate (filmed in Ramsgate) where Captain Anderson, a Danish merchant skipper is delayed by the men of the Contraband Control and encounters various enemy spies. It features the classic line "Stop that man and woman! His mission is deadlier than that of the enemy in the sky. Her beauty is a dangerous weapon of war!" Contraband was also Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...
's first film, though her scene as a nightclub cigarette girl did not make the final cut. An earlier silent film of the same name had been made in 1925, centred around similar events from World War I.
The Big Blockade
The Big Blockade
The Big Blockade is a 1942 British, black-and-white, comedy-drama, propaganda film, war film, directed by Charles Frend and starring Will Hay, Ronald Shiner as the Shipping Clerk and John Mills. It was produced by Ealing Studios...
was written and directed by Charles Frend
Charles Frend
Charles Frend was an English film director.Charles Frend started his career at British International Pictures in 1931 and after editing Hitchcock's Waltzes from Vienna moved to Gaumont British Pictures in 1933 where he worked as an editor on Alfred Hitchcock's movies Secret Agent , Sabotage and...
and made by Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...
in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Welfare. It was made in 1942 in a similar episodic manner to David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
and Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's In Which We Serve
In Which We Serve
In Which We Serve is a 1942 British patriotic war film directed by David Lean and Noël Coward. It was made during the Second World War with the assistance of the Ministry of Information ....
, but featuring gentle light-hearted propaganda, with a series of sketches designed to illustrate how the British blockade was gradually squeezing the life out of the Nazi war effort. The Big Blockade starred John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
as ‘Tom, a member of a bomber crew over Hanover, Leslie Banks
Leslie Banks
Leslie Banks, CBE was an English theatre and cinema actor, director and producer, now best remembered playing gruff, menacing characters in black and white movies of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:...
as an efficient Ministry of Economic Warfare civil servant, Robert Morley
Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...
as the Nazi U-boat Captain Von Geiselbrecht, Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
as a Russian based in Germany, and various others, such as Will Hay
Will Hay
William Thomson "Will" Hay was an English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer.-Early life:He was born in Stockton-on-Tees, in north east England, to William R...
, Ronald Shiner
Ronald Shiner
Ronald Alfred Shiner was a British stand-up comedian and comedic actor whose career encompassed film, West End theatre and music hall.-Career:...
, and Bernard Miles
Bernard Miles
Bernard James Miles, Baron Miles, CBE was an English character actor, writer and director. He opened the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1959, the first new theatre opened in the City of London since the 17th century....
in bit parts.