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From 1914 to 1919, Allied warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean controlled maritime trade to and from the Central Powers - stopping shipments of weapons and raw materials, but also food, from reaching their enemies. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilians died of hunger-related causes. Often, these deaths and even the outcome of the war are attributed to the naval blockade - but did the British really starve Germany into surrender in WW1?
When the First World War began, both the Allies and the Central Powers had plans to wage economic warfare against each other, to damage the enemy's economy and morale. One component of this was a naval blockade, a strategy in use since ancient times. In 1914, Britain's Royal Navy played the main role on the Allied side, and British planners chose a distant blockade - new technologies like sea mines and torpedoes made it too dangerous to operate near German ports, so instead, Allied warships restricted trade in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. But there
were other blockades as well - the Germans shut off Russia's access to the Baltic and planned to blockade the British Isles, the Ottomans closed the Turkish Straits, and the Russian Black Sea fleet sealed off Turkish ports. It's the Allied blockade of Germany though, that has caused the most debate about its impact on the civilian population and the outcome of the war. The UK refused to sign the 1909 Declaration of London protecting the rights of neutral states to trade in time of war, but British naval thinkers were still divided about how
effective such a measure might be - some worried Germany would just get stuff through neutrals anyway. But others, like naval intelligence officer Charles Ottley, were confident: "The mills of our sea power […] would grind [the Germans] 'exceedingly small' - grass would sooner or later grow in the streets of Hamburg and wide-spread dearth and ruin would be inflicted. " Kramer 464 Converting German cities into pasture turned out to be much harder than Ottley hoped. At first, the British declared a list of contraband goods they wouldn't allow through, like weapons, fuel, war-related raw materials,
and food meant for the German army. The British did not target the civilian population under this policy, which the French argued was too lenient. When Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare for the first time in early 1915, to tighten its blockade of Britain, the British responded: from March 1915, they announced they could stop any goods from entering Germany, including food meant for the civilian population. Germany was vulnerable to economic warfare: estimates vary, but before 1914 it imported about 20-25% of its food and fodder, including 42% of fats, and much of its fertilizer. To get around the blockade,
Germany traded with neutral countries to reduce the shortages of raw and finished materials, and food, during the war. Its most active partners were the USA until 1917, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The European neutrals could and did import goods, and then re-export them to Germany, or export their own production to Germany and replace it from abroad. American exports to Sweden, for example, increased from $700,000 in February 1914 to $13.7 million one year later - all the while, US exports to Germany didn't quite stop but they did drop by about 80%.
Some British banks even managed to extend credit to German companies early in the war. The UK flouted international law to enforce the blockade, and pressured neutrals to agree to longer lists of contraband and reduce their trade with Germany - but it didn't push too hard at first as it caused tensions with the US. The British even temporarily allowed food imports in 1914 under US pressure, even if it might be used for military purposes. Once Germany re-started unrestricted submarine war and the US joined the war in 1917, the blockade became much tighter. German replacement products, known as Ersatz, also
made up for some of the shortfalls, although their quality and quantity decreased as the war went on. Food shortages and the suffering of the civilian population, though, really began to bite in 1915. Women spent hours each day queuing at shops, though the food often sold out quickly. Berlin introduced food rationing on some items, but inflation put even more food out of reach for most Germans - the cost of feeding a family increased 50% in the first year of the war. By 1916, nearly all main foodstuffs were rationed, and the winter of 1916/17 saw such a shortage of potatoes that it became known as the Steckrübenwinter, or turnip winter,
since Germans substituted potatoes with the less nutritious and less appealing Rutabaga. That winter, the rationed daily average calorie intake fell to just 1050 per person. Austria-Hungary suffered as well, with a daily rationed calorie intake of just 700 calories per person in 1918 - well below starvation level, though millions in both countries bought extra food on the black market to survive. (Kramer 480) Even aristocrats felt the pinch, though not nearly as much as working-class Germans: "We are all growing thinner every day,
and the rounded contours of the German nation have become a legend of the past. We are all gaunt and bony now, and have dark shadows round our eyes, and our thoughts are chiefly taken up with wondering what our next meal will be, and dreaming of the good things that once existed." (Blücher) With the population weakened by malnutrition, diseases caused more deaths than they otherwise would have - researchers estimate 160,000 more Germans died of tuberculosis during the war than would have in peacetime conditions. Child mortality shot up 50%. while the overall death
rate increased about 30%. (Vincent 81, 146). One case of child tuberculosis was typical: "12 year-old Ida F. bears a distinct appearance of malnutrition. [Her] grandmother became a wardrobe-mistress in a munitions factory so that she could better feed the alarmingly emaciated Ida. At first she was able to acquire butter through the black market, and this improved the girl's health. But then the price climbed too high […]. Repeatedly, Ida collapsed from weakness at school. […] She has been taken to the country, but one does entertain much hope for her recovery." (Vincent, 139) Overall, estimates of excess wartime civilian
deaths in Germany range from 425,000 to 760,000, with the lower range considered more accurate since the higher figures were German estimates from soon after the armistice, before the war formally ended (Kramer, Vincent 145). Austria-Hungary suffered around 400,000 civilian deaths. Ottoman excess civilian losses are much harder to estimate, but might be as high as 1.5 million excluding the Armenian genocide. This figure includes hundreds of thousands who died of hardship and disease as refugees, not just disease and starvation. (Bas) In addition to death and physical suffering, lack of food also drained
the morale of the living and caused war-weariness: "Soon the women who stood in pallid queues before shops spoke more about their children's hunger than about the death of their husbands. The war had shifted its focus. A new front was created, it was held by the women, against an entente of field gendarmes and controllers. Every smuggled pound of butter, every sack of potatoes successfully spirited in by night, was celebrated in their homes with the same enthusiasm as the victories of the armies two years before. Soon a looted ham thrilled us more than the fall of Bucharest. And a
bushel of potatoes seemed much more important than the capture of a whole English army in Mesopotamia" (Vincent 21/22) [Ernst Gläser] Despite German protests after the armistice, the Allies also partly maintained the blockade until the peace treaty was signed in mid-1919, though they did allow hundreds of thousands of tons of food shipments to prevent more starvation. So the Allied blockade was in place, and hundreds of thousands of Germans and Austro-Hungarians died from malnutrition and related diseases. the blockade caused these deaths has raged since the end of the war is the subject of a fierce debate.
During the war, many contemporaries judged that the food shortages were caused by the blockade and were decisive in ending the war. German leadership and press decried what they saw as unfair tactics, and blamed the cruelty of their enemies for their suffering. British Prime Ministers Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George were - unsurprisingly given it was their policy - also convinced. Asquith said "[The blockade] by successive stages drained the, life-blood of the enemy, and won the War." while Lloyd George wrote that "Germany has been broken almost as much by
the blockade as by military methods." (Vincent 50) Many later researchers also held this view - for example, historian Eric Osborne was definitive: "In the age of total warfare, the blockade destroyed the German domestic front and rendered the country incapable of continuing the conflict. The lack of sufficient food was one of the greatest factors in the collapse of the German home front." (Kramer 472) This line of thinking has led to accusations of war crimes against the Allies, for deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. So the traditional arguments holds the deadly blockade brought Germany to its knees. But more recent research has cast doubt on these claims.
Many of the strongest claims and evidence about the impact of the blockade stem from Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, a time when post-war bitterness was running high. More recent studies of the blockade have argued that previous research took these claims, including the highest death estimates, at face value rather than examining them critically, and looking at other factors in Germany's domestic economy. The counter-argument is that the food shortages were due mostly to these other factors, not the Allied blockade. For example, Germany went to war
with its most important suppliers of food: before the war, it imported 39% of its wheat from the US, 20% from Russia and 12% from Canada. Pre-war German food policies made it dependent on imported food oils, especially rapeseed grown in British and French colonies. Germany was also at war with its biggest export markets (other than Austria-Hungary): Russia, France, and the UK - which meant it didn't generate the revenue to import more food via neutrals. Historian Alan Kramer goes so far as to question the term blockade - which the British themselves hardly used: "What contemporary German experts and
generations of historians have repeatedly called 'blockade' was not a blockade at all: it was the Allies' refusal to sell their own resources to the enemy.[…]The conclusion is inescapable: not the blockade but going to war against its main suppliers drastically reduced food imports." (Kramer 475) German economic policy and complex bureaucracy also caused food shortages. The government didn't have an effective plan for facing a long war, and capped prices to fight inflation, but this just made farmers store their food longer instead of selling it, or, sell it on the black market for more money. The authorities also ordered the
slaughter of 9 million pigs in 1915 to free up food for people, but farmers kept pigs anyway and sold them on the black market. Germany's agriculture sector was already inefficient before the war, and mobilizing so many men for the army meant that there weren't enough people to farm the available land. The area planted in wheat fell 32%, rye 23%, and potatoes 31%, which reduced the harvests. To make things worse, the terrible winter of 1916-17 came right after a failed potato harvest due to wet weather. Government decisions also made civilian
hunger much worse, since they prioritized the army. The German army certainly did not enjoy the wealth of food the British, French, and Americans did in the last years of the war, but it did not starve - for example, a study showed no evidence of malnutrition amongst soldiers, as opposed to the more severe impact on civilian diets. Many soldiers actually sent some of their own food home to their hungry relatives. The army didn't eat well, but it ate, as did farmers and wealthy Germans who could afford the black market. And despite all the hardships, some studies found - though this is disputed - German calorie consumption
actually went up in 1918 compared to 1917. Austria-Hungary's army, on the other hand, did starve, as did some of its population. But the hunger was largely in the Austrian part of the empire, and not in the Kingdom of Hungary. Hungary produced most of the empire's food, but internal political disputes caused authorities to reduce exports to the Austria side, while holding on to their own reserves - as a whole, Austria-Hungary had been self-sufficient in food production before the war, and could have mitigated hunger with more effective governance
in spite of the blockade. The Ottoman army and population were starving as well by the end of the war, but here again issues of infrastructure and governance played an important role as well as natural disasters like the 1915 locust plague. When the blockade did reduce German food-related imports, it didn't always have significant impact: in 1917-1918, Germany fat imports dropped from 5200 tons to just 1900, but its people needed 2.6 million tons - the blockade's reduction was a drop in the bucket compared to the fall in domestic German production, which was only 1
million tons (Kramer, Vincent). Shortages of fertilizer, like saltpetre from Chile, were mostly made good by the famous Haber-Bosch chemical process to create nitrates, which already covered 70% of agricultural needs by 1915. And what if we compare with Allied countries? Grain-rich Russia suffered from food shortages as well, due to the breakdown of their transportation network. Italy and France, for example, had higher civilian death rates during the war than Germany and Austria-Hungary even though they had access to food imports. So the impact of the Allied blockade during the First World War is steeped
in debate - but there is strong evidence supporting the argument that it was not the only or primary reason for food shortages, and the resulting hundreds of thousands of deaths, in Germany. One study suggests the blockade accounted for 50% of the food supply decline. The blockade certainly had a significant impact and caused suffering and death, but was probably not the war-winning measure some have claimed. When the German High Command told the government to end the war in fall 1918, they did so because of the hopeless military situation
after their defeats at the front, not because the homeland was starving, though many Germans were (Osborne). The blockade's contributions to the military situation, like reducing the rubber, fuel, and oil available for the army, might have been more important to the outcome of the war than the reduction in food imports. After the war, it was easier for some German generals and leaders to blame the blockade than to accept their own role in their defeat, and it was appealing for Allied naval historians to play up the role of the Royal Navy in the Allied victory
-- a legacy that still influences our perception of the blockade more than a century later. Finding a scapegoat in the Allied blockade helped with the perception of an unjust peace after the First World War in Germany which gave rise to forces that wanted to reverse the Treaty of Versailles, like the fledgling Nazi Party in the 1920s. On the Allied side it also meant that German surrender in the Second World War would need to be unconditional. And this time the Allied armies wouldn't stop at the German border. In early 1945 the Red Army was standing
on the banks of the Oder river, ready to launch their Berlin Operation and the Americans and British were about to cross the Rhine river in the west. If you want to learn more about the end of the Second World War, check out our two massive documentaries. The first one is 16 Days in Berlin; the most detailed documentary about the Battle of Berlin ever produced. A 4 ½ hour day-by-day breakdown of one of the biggest battles of the entire war when the Red Army advanced from the Oder River into the heart of Nazi Germany's capital. Filmed on original location, featuring detailed maps and animation, expert interviews and much more. The
second documentary is Rhineland 45 about the last set-piece battle on the Western Front in which the Allies under Bernhard Montgomery attacked from the Dutch Border and ultimately crossed the mighty Rhine river. This 3 ½ hour documentary was also filmed on original location, features detailed maps and animation, expert and veteran interviews and more. But you can't watch 16 Days in Berlin and Rhineland 45 on YouTube because of our uncompromising portrayal of the war using authentic combat footage. So, where can you watch these two massive
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