Jutland - The Blockade

Today marks the 104th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland, the climactic naval clash of the First World War. This is a topic I've discussed at some length already, so it's worth turning our attention to the background the battle was fought against, the British blockade of Germany.

The headquarters of the Northern Patrol, who enforced the blockade

While most think of globalization as an inherently modern phenomenon, it was almost as prevalent in the first decade of the 20th century as it was in the first decade of the 21st. Britain and Germany were two of the leading players in the new global economy, deeply tied into international trade. Britain got over half of its food from overseas, while Germany imported a quarter, to say nothing of the essentials necessary to sustain an industrial economy. Each rightly deduced that the other was vulnerable to attacks on its commerce, although they set about it in very different ways. Germany, knowing that it was outmatched at sea, planned a classic guerre de course based on commerce raiding by converted merchant ships and cruisers. This ultimately failed in the face of British innovations in Command and Control, forcing them to switch to submarines for their attacks on British commerce.

The British efforts were more successful, using their command of the sea to cut off German shipping much more thoroughly. The concept of blockade in international law had a long history, and had been used by the British numerous times over the centuries, most often against the French. The traditional and legal blockade was the so-called "close blockade", conducted within sight of the enemy's ports. The British had planned to conduct this kind of blockade as late as 1911, but the development of the torpedo, and the resultant threat from destroyers and submarines pushed them to a new concept, the distant blockade. Instead of stationing their fleet just off the German coast, as the Germans themselves expected and wanted, they would instead attempt to control all shipping moving into or out of the North Sea. While this would leave German trade with Scandinavia more or less unimpeded, it would still allow them to cut German ties to the rest of the world, hopefully shortening the war.

The patrol area (in red) with Germany in blue and neutral transshipment countries in green

There were a couple of major problems, though. First, under existing international law, this plan was on shaky ground. The distant blockade wasn't really legal under existing treaties, although the British hadn't actually signed all of them. On the high seas, the British could only prevent the passage of "contraband", which had a complicated definition, but wasn't supposed to cover everything all of the time. Food, for instance, was supposed to be contraband only when it was consigned to the military. Second, neutral countries often objected. The Netherlands and Denmark both provided potential points for transshipment of goods to Germany, and it ultimately took the British several years to find a good way to make sure their populations didn't starve while limiting how much could get to Germany. On the other hand, the US was a major German trading partner, as well as home to a large block of German-Americans who were still sympathetic to their homeland. To avoid unduly antagonizing the US, the British had to significantly weaken the blockade they had planned, and it wasn't fully effective until the US joined the war, cutting the major source of overseas trade off at the source.

Elderly cruiser Aboukir, sunk by a U-boat while attempting to enforce the blockade

Initially, the blockade was enforced by the 10th Cruiser Squadron, made up of older protected cruisers, but these proved to be unequal to the task of staying at sea in all weathers, and were soon replaced with a variety of converted liners and fast cargo ships, mostly armed with 6" guns. These were responsible for finding and hailing any potential blockade runners. If boarding was needed, a smaller vessel, usually a converted ferry or the like, would be called in to actually put the party aboard. This was the result of painful experience, which had taught them that large vessels could not heave to and send over boarding parties in submarine-infested waters.

Initially, the blockade was fairly porous. It was impossible to cut off all supplies to Germany via neutral countries, if nothing else because the British didn't have a good grasp on the internal requirements of the neutrals, and commercial interests on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to continue prewar trade, particularly in the early days of the war. Eventually, the British overcame most of these problems, as the reality of total war sank in at home, and they came to agreements with the Danish and Dutch governments over how much they would be allowed to import.

Armed Boarding Vessel Snaefell

Despite these limitations, the blockade was effective in cutting Germany off from the world's resources. Many important alloying elements were now unavailable, although German metallurgists found workarounds at a cost in durability. If war had come even five years sooner, the lack of nitrates, vital for both explosives and fertilizer, might well have crippled Germany within a year. The development of the Haber process, which could fix atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, had removed this restriction, but it was expensive, and the Germans faced chronic fertilizer shortages, exacerbating the food restrictions imposed by the blockade directly. Things came to a head in late 1916, when a poor potato harvest and distribution problems, partially caused by a lack of lubricants due to the blockade, left Germany seriously short on food, forcing the population to subsist largely on rutabagas, usually raised as animal feed, over the exceptionally harsh winter of 1916-1917. This time, known as the Turnip Winter, saw mass malnutrition, as the daily rations fell to half the calories required by the population, and bread was made with sawdust to stretch it further. The death rate among civilians soared, and unrest spread among both civilians and soldiers. The desire for revenge against the British was an important factor in the resumption of the unrestricted submarine warfare campaign that ultimately brought the US into the war.

Armed Merchant Cruiser Mantua

Things improved somewhat in 1917, as German agriculture recovered and Russia's collapse raised civilian morale, but it was only a temporary matter. The submarine campaign failed in its promised aim of knocking Britain out of the war, and unrest about the privations of the blockade began to spill over into political demonstrations, both in German cities and the High Seas Fleet. These died off as the harvests came in that fall, but resumed in January, when broad strikes swept across first Austria-Hungary and then Germany before fading as hunger drove the strikers back to work.

Things came to a head in the summer, as the German offensive broke on the Allied armies and the Allied armies struck back, pushing the Germans back from lines they had held for four years. This was the last straw for the German populace, who had been called on to endure horrible conditions in the hope of victory. As that hope was destroyed by Allied arms, revolution swept the nation, and the Kaiser's government came crashing down. The blockade wasn't solely the responsible for all of this, but its direct effects on the German war machine, and its indirect effects on the German population should not be underestimated. The Allies certainly didn't, maintaining it in a slightly reduced form until the Treaty of Versailles was signed, to prevent Germany from reopening hostilities.

Germans strike in 1918

In many ways, Jutland was the linchpin of all of this, as the Grand Fleet made any attempt to snap up the AMCs that actually enforced the blockade incredibly risky. The British realized the importance of the blockade, and as Churchill famously observed, Jellicoe was the only man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. If the Grand Fleet had lost the battle, then the integrity of the blockade would have been compromised, reducing the constriction on Germany's arteries, and greatly increasing the chances of a German raider slipping through to menace Britain's commerce. But all of this, and the vital role that seapower played in the Allied victory over the Central Powers, was lost to public perception, overwhelmed by the images of the trenches. Fortunately, recent years have seen a broader appreciation for the work of those outside the Western Front, most prominently the sailors who starved Germany.