Blockade of Germany (1939–1945)

The Blockade of Germany (1939–1945), also known as the Economic War, was
carried out during World War II by the United Kingdom and France in order to
restrict the supplies of minerals, metals, food andtextiles needed by Nazi Germany –
and later Fascist Italy – in order to sustain their war efforts. The economic war
consisted mainly of a naval blockade, which formed part of the wider Battle of the
Atlantic, and included the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries
to prevent their sale to the enemy.[1]

There were four distinct phases of the blockade. 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 blockade was rendered less
effective because the Axis could get crucial materials from the Soviet Union until
June 1941, while harbours in Spain were used to import war materials for Germany.
The second period began after the rapid Axis occupation of the majority of the
Depth charges detonate astern of
European landmass which gave them control of major centres of industry and
HMS Starling during the Battle of the
agriculture. The third period was from the end of 1941 after the beginning of Atlantic.
hostilities between the United States and the Empire of Japan. The final period came
after the tide of war finally turned against the Axis 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.[1]

Contents
Historical background
Build-up to World War II
Pre-war situation in Germany
First phase
Contraband control
Ministry of Economic Warfare
Shipping shortage
Navicert
U.S. reaction to the British blockade
Gruss und Kuss
Phoney war
Minenkrieg
Export ban
1940
Intensification of the blockade
Bombing of Germany
Second phase
Fall of France
Compulsory Navicerts
German gains
Battle of Britain
 European food shortages
1941
Humanitarian aid in Europe
Lend-Lease
Effects on South American trade
German invasion of the Soviet Union
Allied aid to Soviet Union
Third phase
America joins the economic war
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Turkey
Argentina
Switzerland
1942
Thousand bomber raid
Blockade runners
Greek famine
1943
Fourth phase
Continued German requisitions
1944
Big Week
Eve of Overlord
D-Day
Allied supply problems
Loss of Balkan ores
Dutch rail strike
End of Swedish trade with Germany
1945
Safehaven Program
Post-war
Media representation
Notes

Historical background
At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, Great Britain used its powerful navy and its geographical location to dictate the
movement of the world's commercial shipping.[2] Britain dominated the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and,
due to its control of theSuez Canal with France, access into and out of theIndian Ocean for the allied ships, while their enemies were
forced to go around Africa. The Ministry of Blockade published a comprehensive list of items that neutral commercial ships were not
to transport to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire).[1] 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 those who
refused to comply, by the withdrawal of theirbunker fuel control facilities.[3]

In World War I, neutral ships were subject to being stopped to be searched for contraband. 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 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
[4]
the coast of Norway to further restrict German ship movements.

Britain considered naval blockade to be a completely legitimate method of war,[1] 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. Its own substantial fleet of modern warshipswas hemmed into its bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven by the Royal Navy and
mostly forbidden by the leadership from venturing out.[1] Germany carried out its own immensely effective counter-blockade during
its war on Allied commerce (Handelskrieg), its U-boats sinking countless Allied merchant ships and by 1917 almost swung the war
the way of the Central Powers.[1] 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.

Build-up to World War II

In 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germanyand, following the remilitarization 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,[5] and from late 1937
onwards Sir Frederick Leith-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 once war was declared.[3] 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 worldwide political perspective. His plan was to revive the original World War I 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 Hitlerat 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 buildup 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 From left to right: Chamberlain,
operational readiness. Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano
pictured before signing theMunich
A joint British–French staff paper on strategic policy issued in April 1939 Agreement, which gave the
Sudetenland to Germany.
recognised that, in the first phase of any war with Germany, economic warfare was
likely to be the Allies' only effective offensive weapon.[6] The Royal Navy war
plans, delivered to the fleet in January 1939 set out three critical elements of a future war at sea.[7] 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
.

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,[8]
there was great concern about the potential effects of a new blockade. In order to force Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the
original blockade was extended for an additional nine months after the end of the fighting in October 1918. This course of action,
[9] caused horrendous suffering among the Germanpeople and led to over
which Hitler called "the greatest breach of faith of all time",
half a million deaths from starvation.[10][11][12] 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,[13] 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
The Great Depression in an
a brief period of relative prosperity in the mid-1920s under the Weimar Republic –
international perspective.
the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which in part Triangles mark points at which
led to the rise in political extremism acrossEurope and Hitler's seizure of power. nations suspended gold convertibility
and/or devalued their currency
Although Hitler was credited with lowering unemployment from 6 million (some against gold.
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,[14] 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 theMefo 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 Göring. 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 Göring
Works, to make steel from low-grade German iron ore, swallowing up small Ruhr companies and making himself immensely rich in
the process.[15] The works were located in the area bounded byHanover, 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
[16]
made fully navigable, and an intricate network ofcanals 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.[17]
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.[18] 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-suf
ficient 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.[18] 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
[7]
some international regulations are opposed to them".

First phase
Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war two days later. Within hours the British liner
Athenia was torpedoed by U-30 off the Hebrides 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
World War I, 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 Admiralty control.

In Britain it was widely believed that the bombing of big cities and massive civilian casualties would commence immediately after
the declaration.[19] 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 World War I 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
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-knot (48 km/h) speed enabled them to out-match any British cruiser,
and two of them, the Admiral Graf Spee and the Deutschland had sailed between 21 and 24 August 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. Twenty-eight 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 if 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.[20] The pocket battleship Graf Spee herself was scuttled
outside Montevideo, Uruguay, where she sought repairs to damage sustained during The cruises of the Admiral Graf Spee
and Deutschland, 1939.
the Battle of the River Plate, after the British spread false rumours of the arrival of a
vast naval force tasked to sink her, an early success for the Royal Navy.

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.[21] Because of the
terrible suffering and starvation caused by the original use of the strategy, a formal declaration of blockade was deliberately not
made,[22] but the communiqué 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 warfare
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 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.[23] 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 theRed 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 practicalsea 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, teleprinters constantly sending out cargo listings and
manifests to be checked against import quota lists. Even for innocent ships, a delay Contraband control at sea. The
of a day or two was inevitable; Contraband Control officers were under instructions whaler from HMS Sheffield, with a
to be extremely polite and apologetic to all concerned. Neutral captains often boarding party of twelve men armed
with revolvers, is lowered prior to
expressed utter astonishment and bemusement at the level of British advance
inspecting a merchant ship. The
knowledge of their activities, and soon realised it was hard to hide anything. party would check the ship's papers
Although numerous attempts were made to bypass the blockade, the net was and navigation certificate to ensure
extremely hard to avoid, and most neutral captains voluntarily stopped at one of the that it was not engaged in supplying
eight Allied Contraband Control ports.[24] the enemy.

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
Chamberlain'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.[3] 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 World War I 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.[25] 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
[26] All neutral traffic from the Baltic Sea was to pass through the Kiel
published a contraband list virtually identical to the British list.
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.[27] 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 substitutes not made from coffee beans at
all. 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".[23] From the beginning of the war to the beginning of
October the daily average number of neutral ships stopping voluntarily at Weymouth was 20, out of which 74, carrying 513,000 tons,
manganese were seized.[28] Even more was done at the
were examined; 90,300 tons of contraband iron ore, wheat, fuel oil, petrol and
other two contraband stations at Orkney and Kent.

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 which could be built in 12 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 oceangoing 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 Ark Royal
was attacked by a U-boat on 14 September, and while it escaped, the old carrier 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 leaderÉamon 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 the Netherlands towards taking over their freighters on central
government charter.

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 World
War I. 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.[29] 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
with the American Consulate, 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 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 wasno 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.[30] 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 Pan American Airlines (PAA) flying boat American Clipper was confiscated in
Bermuda, 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[31] 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 and the airline's
assets in Brazil confiscated after the British intelligence services in the Americas engineered a breakdown in relations between the
airline and the Brazilian government. The US travel agencies were eventually closed down along with the German consulates and
information centres on 16 June 1941.

Phoney war
During the early months of the war—the Phoney War—the only place where there was any real fighting was at sea.[4] 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 US gallons (110,000 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.[27] 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.[18] 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 Soviet Union 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 Soviets – 'Belligerent Neutrals' in Churchill's words – also accepted lar
ge 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 Soviet Union 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.[8] Germany lacked the natural resources Soviet Union had in abundance, whereas Soviet Union was at that time
still a relatively backward country in want of the latest technology. By the end of October 1939 the Soviets 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 World War I, 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, Denmark 9, and Belgium 3. The Netherlands, 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;

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 theSwedish iron ore trade.[4] 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 World War I, the Germans used the Norwegian Corridor to travel inside the 3-
nautical-mile (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.[27] 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.

Minenkrieg
Hitler's 'secret weapon' of the time was the magnetic mine.[4] 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 seaplanes to
drop them in British harbours, channels and estuaries too narrow or shallow for submarines to navigate. They ranged from small
200 lb (91 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 keels although the waters had been swept. Six went
down in the mouth of theThames, and the new cruiser Belfast was badly damaged at the mouth of theFirth 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.[4] 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.[32] Over the weekend of 18–21 November six other neutral ships were sunk
off the English coast, including a 12,000 ton Japanese liner.[27]

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.

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.[32] 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 the Netherlands, 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.[32] 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,
[18][33]
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
[34]
restricting Germany's ability to fight that Hitler would be forced to come to the negotiation table.

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 Forceand 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.

1940
On 17 January 1940 theMinister of Economic Warfare, Ronald Cross said in a speech in theHouse 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.[14]

Despite newsreels showing the effectiveness and power 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 World War I, 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.[35] By this
early stage of World War II, 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
Lützow and the plans to the 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 phosphates, 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 30 March
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
ded to take all they needed.[8]
year, declared that the trade need continue only until the spring of 1941, after which the Nazis inten

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.[36] "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, the
Netherlands' 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, pyrites, 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 CzechSkoda 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 Soviet Union 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 Ploiești site to Britain, its main guarantor of national sovereignty.
Romania's production was about equal to that ofOhio, 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 Soviet Union. 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 theAnglo-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
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, the Netherlands, 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) As Professor William MacKenzie recounts in
his book The Secret History, the official government history of the organisation
written in 1946 with access to SOE files later destroyed, but classified until 2000, its
origins go back to March 1939 following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. It
was set up by Lord Halifax with funding from the Secret Vote authorised by Prime
Minister Chamberlain. In July 1940 Winston Churchill asked the Lord President
A reconstruction of theOperation
(Neville Chamberlain) to define its structure and the document held at Kew
Gunnerside team planting explosives
CAB66/1 Extract 2 thereafter became known as the Charter of SOE. This Charter to destroy the cascade of electrolysis
also defined the relationship of various organs of state including the security and chambers in the Vemork heavy water
police services with one another and initially the minister was the new Minister of (deuterium) plant.
Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton. Though very few people knew of it at the time, the
new organisation, the earlier 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. There were turf wars from
time to time with SIS who did not want to risk sources being compromised by SOE sabotage of enemy gets.
tar

Bombing of Germany
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 11 May 1940 the RAF bombed the city of Mönchengladbach.[37]
On the night of 15/16 May 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 Ruhr
district.

The mining and manufacturing region of the Ruhr, often likened to the 'Black Country' in the Midlands of England, was one of the
world's greatest concentrations of metal production and processing facilities as well as chemical and textile factories; the Ruhr was
also home to several synthetic oil production plants. So much smog was produced by these industries that precision bombing was
almost impossible. As Germany's most important industrial region, it had been equipped with strong air defenses – Hermann Göring
had already declared, "The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not
Hermann Göring!" 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.

Second phase

Fall of France
The signing of the armistice with France in the Compiègne Forest on 24 June 1940 greatly changed the conditions of the Economic
War. Hitler assumed control over the whole of Western Europe and Scandinavia (except for Sweden and Switzerland) from the north
tip of Norway high above the Arctic Circle to thePyrenees on the border with Spain, and from the River Bug in Poland to theEnglish
est Norwegian and European coasts.[8]
Channel. Germany established new airfields and U-boat bases all the way down the W

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 joined the war, established a submarine base in Bordeaux. Its submarines were more suited to the
Mediterranean, but they successfully ran the British gauntlet through the Straits 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 Spain, which 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 Catalonia under French administration,
Franco could see Britain was far from defeated and that British forces backed by its huge powerful navy would occupy the Canary
Islands. At this point Franco saw that the Royal Navy had reduced the German navy in Norway to an impotent surface threat, the
Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had destroyed much of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, had also destroyed
Italian battleships at Taranto and the British Army was routing the Italian army in North & East Africa.[38] Franco continued to play
for time. Franco made excessive demands of Hitler which he knew could not be satisfied as his personal price for participation, such
as the ceding of most ofMorocco and much of Algeria to Spain by France.[39]

American opinion was shocked at the fall of France and the previous isolationist sentiment, which led to 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 asCash 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 ensure that the majority of equipment safely delivered to port.

The US now accepted that 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.[15] 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, French destroyer Mogador burning
following the British attack on the French fleet at Oran on 4 July to prevent it from after shellfire following theBritish
falling into German hands, the British were proving they would do whatever was attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-
necessary to continue the fight, and Roosevelt was now winning his campaign to Kébir to prevent it from falling into
convince Congress to be even more supportive of Britain, with the Destroyers for German hands

Bases Agreement[39] 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.[40] 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.[40] 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 ofmetropolitan France, including Algeria, Tunisia and French Morocco.[41]

German gains
In course of the Battle of France, the Germans captured 2,000 tanks of various types, including the heavy French Char b 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.[42] 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,
.[43]
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 the Netherlands, 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.[44]

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.[40] 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.[45]

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 theBattle of the Atlantic began severely restricting Officers on the bridge of a destroyer,
escorting a large convoy of ships
convoys in late 1940 that rationing became more widespread, and even then many
keep a sharp look out for attacking
workers and children still had school meals and work canteens to supplement their enemy submarines during theBattle
rations, which made a significant difference to the amount of food they actually of the Atlantic in October 1941.
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.[13]

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,[46] 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
[47]
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. 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
An air raid shelter in a London opposition from the air ministry, Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin in
Underground station in London retaliation,[48] and that night the German capital was bombed for the first time,
during the Blitz. 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;
Göring, 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 on 7 September in the belief that this
[15][48]
would damage civilian morale so much that Britain would sue for peace.

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 RAF Bomber Command and RAF 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.

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 – 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 the Netherlands, 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 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 affected 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.[49] 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
The Greek counter-offensive against in the Mediterranean.
the Italian attack through Albania.
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.[45]

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.[6] On 7 October
Germany invaded Romania to block the Soviet Army and to get access to the Ploiești 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 theGreat Hungarian Plainand 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.[50] 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,[16] 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. iW
th 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 World War I,
wrote:[33]
 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 increasingly eastwards. On 28 December 1940 Mussolini appealed for urgent German
help in the Greco-Italian War.[6] Germany was also forced to send the Afrika Korps to Libya in early February, led by General Erwin
Rommel, 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 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"[51] between the Soviet Union
and Germany. The Soviets, who also concluded a £100 million arms deal with China shortly afterwards, expected criticism from
Britain and America; Izvestia newspaper declared;

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.[52] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels (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,[53] 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 12,000,000 lb (5,400,000 kg) of evaporated and powdered milk and 150,000 articles of children's clothing, 500,000 units of
insulin and 20,000 bottles of vitamins to Marseilles and shortly afterwards sent a second, the SS 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.[54] 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
[18] Brandt said:
family members to have their loved ones removed.

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.[55] 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.

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 £1 billion of her foreign investments and taken on another £3 billion 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-Lease,
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'.[56] 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 President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signing the lend-lease bill to give aid
Dutch freighter that had been sunk detected that a U-boat was preparing to attack,
to Great Britain, China and Greece,
and launched depth charges to drive it away. This was the first direct action between 1941.
Germany and America of World War II. 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 I.[57] 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 Montevideo 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 many small businesses which relied on overseas trade were badly fected;
af 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, the Netherlands' Gouda and Edam, Italy's Asiago and Provolone and the blue cheeses of France and with Belgium and the
Netherlands' 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 fromAsia.[58]

German invasion of the Soviet Union

For the Nazis, the capture of the Russian landmass, one-sixth of the Earth's surface or 8,000,000 square miles (21,000,000 km2), not
only provided the Lebensraum they demanded, but also provided the answer to all their raw material problems.[8] 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 (160,000 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.[59]

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.[59] The whole face of the Soviet economy was transformed from
1928 onwards by Joseph Stalin's Five Year Plans, and whereas three-fourths 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 Caucasus, but in the Urals and the Volga
valley.

During the first six months the Soviets were in complete disarray,[60] 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
[8]
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 Soviet Union

On 2 August 1941 the British signed the Atlantic Charter with the U.S. and extended the blockade to cover Finland, which was now
fighting on the side of Germany. Churchill now embraced Soviet Union as an ally and agreed to send arms to make up the shortfall
while Soviet industry reorganised itself for the fight. By mid 1942 Britain was providing Soviet Union, 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 4,500 Valentine,
Churchill and Matilda tanks, and 4200 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft.[6]

America also provided significant support, but while Alaska, only 50 miles (80 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 roadless 800-
mile (1,300 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 1,671-mile (2,689 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 Soviet Union and
China. In total the US provided Soviet Union with $11 billion worth of goods,
including 4,800 Grant and Sherman tanks, 350,000 trucks, 50,000 jeeps, 7,300
Airacobra fighter aircraft, and 3700 light and medium bombers. The Soviets 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 Soviet Union prompted the British to attempt an increase in
bombing in the belief that the fighter defences would have been thinned out.[16] Ice forming on a 20-inch signal
projector on the cruiser
Attacks on oil targets remained a priority, and successful raids were mounted against
HMS Sheffield whilst escorting an
Hamburg, Bremen and Kiel in May, with Kiel suffering almost complete production Arctic convoy to Russia.
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 suf
fered 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.[50] 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 navigationaid known as GEE would be available and theAvro Lancaster heavy bomber would
be entering service.

Third phase
On the morning of 7 December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a
massive pre-emptive strike against ships of the US Pacific Fleet at its base at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii with simultaneous invasions of the British possessions of Hong
Kong, Singapore, and Malaya. 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 Attack on Pearl Harbor.
her forces in these lands, such as the Nanking Massacre and the use of poison gas, Photograph taken from a Japanese
world opinion turned against Japan,[6] and from 1938 America, Britain and other aircraft during the torpedo attack on
ships moored on both sides of Ford
countries launched trade embargoes against her to restrict supplies of the raw
Island shortly after the beginning of
materials she needed to wage war, such as oil, metals and rubber.
the attack.
A torpedo has just hit USSWest
But the sanctions did not curb Japan's imperialistic mood. Japan signed the Tripartite
Virginia on the far side of Ford Island
Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and, after the US ordered a total oil
(center).
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',[6] 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 Hong 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.[61] 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 Warfare, (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
[62]
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,[63] 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 Salazar was perceived as pro-Axis but walked a fine line
between the two sides, who competed fiercely for Portuguese raw materials,[63] 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 theAzores.

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.[63] On 23 November 1940 Churchill wrote to Roosevelt to inform
him that the peninsula 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,[64] 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 German 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 forcingFranco 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 Wilfred 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,[63] 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

Iron ore was extracted in Kiruna and
Malmberget, and taken by rail to the
harbours of Luleå and Narvik.
(Borders as of 1920–1940.)
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.
German infantry attacking through a
sympathetic to Sweden's difficult
burning Norwegian village, April
position and of her attempts to 1940.
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.[63] 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

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.[63] 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 ore 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,[64] 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.[63] 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 Farben, 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.

Switzerland
Switzerland during World War II had the most complex relationship with Germany 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 mobilised. Following the Nazi conquests of mid 1940, the tiny landlocked nation of seven million
people, which had remained resolutely neutral since 1815 found itself in a difficult position, with German 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 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 andrayon 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,[64] 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 World War II, 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
[65]
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,[64] 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.

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 Speer became the new head of the German Armaments Ministry. Speer was an inspired choice by
Hitler, performing better than could 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.[16] 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 Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. 623 French people were killed, mostly workers who had gathered outside to cheer the accurate
hits.[44] 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 Lübeck, 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 MAN 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 returnto night bombing.

Thousand 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 propaganda success was vital to demonstrate his belief that bombers could be decisive in defeating the enemy.[16]
Harris began pushing for a mass raid using the magic number of 1,000 bombers, although in fact the RAF barely had that many. At
last, using every plane available including trainee crews, the RAF raided Cologne on 30/31 May 1942 with over 1,000 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
the Netherlands and badly damaged theHeroya aluminium centre nearTrondheim in Norway which produced syntheticcryolite, used
in the manufacture of aluminium. From mid-November the RAF began a series of 16 massed night raids on Berlin, but though 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.[16]
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.

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.[40] There had already been some trading of silk products early in the European war.
Despite the 5,600 miles (9,000 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,[40] 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 7 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 ofRoyal Marine Commandosto 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 initially 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 (Z27, T25 and T26) to Allied action
(Operation Stonewall). 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
ge amounts from being transported.[66]
strong blockade had probably prevented further lar

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
infrastructure ruined by the war with Italy, Greece was compelled to pay occupation
costs and 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
The net of births and deaths in the
was "sold" to Germany along with livestock, clothes, dried vegetables and fruit.
Athens area during the period from
Potatoes were fried using Greek olive oil and shipped back to Germany, and the 1936 to 1943 illustrates the severity
tomato crop was hurried to scurvy-ridden German troops in Africa. One US of the famine.
correspondent commented; "Germany worked like a pack of driver ants, picking
Greece clean",[67] 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 then 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

Collecting the dead in the streets of
Athens, first winter of Axis
occupation, 1941–1942
(near Stadiou Av. between the
Propylee and the National Library).
paid.[64] 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.
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.[68]
By late 1942, there were claims that Germany was paying for deliveries using forged
US dollars and had begun 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

1943
1942–43 was another lean year for agriculture in France. Many fertile regions such as the Vexin, 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
[69]
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 Göring
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.[70] 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".[40]

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 ef
fect. RAF raids on vehicle factories inMilan, 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
get of Bomber Command from 1943.[16]
highly vulnerable to area attacks, and they became the primary tar

Fourth phase
Following the German defeats at Stalingrad 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,[7]
although Contraband Control at sea still continued. German labour shortages grew
so acute that Germany relied increasingly on slave labour 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
Casablanca Conference
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."[71] 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 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
[16]
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, Photograph of the breached Möhne
Dam.
not the RAF, who would eventually deliver the final decisive blows to the enemy.
On 1 August the USAAF attacked the Romanian Ploiești 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 USAAF 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 km) from Stavanger.[72] 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 Exchequer, Kingsley Wood, had to ask the House of
Commons to find another £1 billion to continue.[13] USAAF airpower increased, concentrating its efforts on aircraft production and
repair plants in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. By late October 1943, the MEW believed that German productivity
was down 30%,[73] 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.[74]

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 than ever. In October 1943 the USAAF attacked Ploiești again, but according to German records total loss of petroleum to the
end of 1943 had not exceeded 150,000 tons.[16]

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.[63] 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 Hull believed that he could have achieved the objective if he had had
wholehearted British support.[63]

Big Week
On 20 February 1944 the USAAF 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
Leipzig, 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
[6]
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.[16] In early March the USAAF 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 Ploiești 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, Böhlen, 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
.[16]
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,[75] 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.

Eve of Overlord
During a debate in theHouse of Lords about the economic war on 9 May 1944, just beforeD-Day, Lord Nathan told the House:[42]

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 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-Day approached, the Allies prioritised attacks on Ploiești 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.[16] 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 underwater 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.[76] German
commanders increasingly put their faith in the newMesserschmitt 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 Underground factory in Walpersberg
launched; 40% of bomber resources were being redirected towards 'Crossbow' at Kahla in Thuringia for Me 262s.
targets in the hope of destroying the 70–80 launch sites north and east of the
Seine.[77]

Allied supply problems

Red Ball Express - Truck in the mud.
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.[6] The problem was not getting supplies to the
continent, but getting them to forward troops, which might be 500 miles (800 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 truck system called the Red Ball Express, 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 lar
ge 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, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to advance on a broad front to overcome the West Wall (Siegfried
Line), but instead accepted British 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 the Netherlands. 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.[78] 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 iron
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.

Dutch rail strike

Meanwhile, in an attempt to assist the Allies in their liberation of the Netherlands,
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 the western parts of the country. This caused severe hardship.
By the time the embargo ended in November 1944 an unusually early and harsh
winter had set in, leading to the Dutch famine of 1944. In the Balkans, the Ploiești
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
Operation Manna – Many Thanks in
German losses of food and metals.
Tulips.

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,[79] 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.[16] 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, the Netherlands 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.[16] 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.[16] 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 V1 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,[16] 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.

Safehaven Program
With the war all but won, there were increasing reports – mostly based on paranoia and hearsay – that Nazi leaders were preparing to
escape justice[80] 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 patents to Swedish
firms,[64] 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 Göring, 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,[81] 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 8,600 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,[63] 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.[81] 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
[63]
decided against taking extreme measures against Switzerland.

Post-war
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 plants 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 an intact 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 fighting 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,
.[82]
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.[13]
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
[83]
over; the final repayment of £45.5m (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,[82] the very thing which led to German resentment after World War I 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 Hour 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.[84] 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-era technology to see if it might provide a partial solution to their problems.[85] 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.

Media representation
During the early months of the war – the so-called phoney war or Sitzkrieg – 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 Post 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 people's everyday 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 in May 1940, just before the start of the German attack on France. In much the same style as The 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.[86] An earlier silent film of the
same name had been made in 1925, centred around similar events fromWorld 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.[87]

Notes
1. Massie, Robert K. (2004). Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (https://book
s.google.ca/books?id=LUSXbXK-Ue8C). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-40878-0.
2. Holland, Robert F. (1991). The Pursuit of Greatness: Britain and the World Role, 1900–1970
. Hammersmith, London:
Fontana Press. ISBN 978-0-0068-6110-2.
3. Sondern, Frederick (15 January 1940)."Contraband Control: England's Ministry of Economic W arfare Seeks a Death
Grip on Germany's Trade" (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sz8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=P A44&dq=life+magazine&so
urce=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=life%20magazine&f=false) . LIFE. 8 (3): 44–50. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
4. Churchill, Winston (1948).The Twilight War. The Second World War. 2. New York: Time, Inc.
5. Cowles, Virginia (1941). Looking for Trouble. London, UK: Hamilton.
6. Esposito, Vincent J., ed. (1964). A Concise History of World War II. New York: Praeger Publishers.
7. "Menace at Sea". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 1 (11). 1968.
8. Shirer, William L. (1959). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-4492-
1977-5.
9. "Speech by Herr Hitler at Wilhelmshaven on 1 April 1939"(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk20.asp). Avalon
Project. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
10. Asmuss, Burkhard (8 June 2011)."Die Lebensmittelversorgung"(https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/erster-weltkrieg/al
ltag/versorgung/) [The food supply]. Deutsches Historisches Museum. Berlin. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
11. Vincent, C. Paul (1985).The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany
, 1915–1919. Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Press. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-8214-0831-5.
12. "Schaedigung der deutschen Volkskraft durch die feindliche Blockade. Denkschrift des Reichsgesundheitsamtes,
Dezember 1918" [Injuries inflicted to the German national strength through the enemy blockade. Memorandum of
the Federal Health Agency, December 1918]. Reichsgesundheitsblatt. Grand Duchy of Oldenburg: G. Stalling. 1919.
"The report notes on page 17 that the figures for the second half of 1918 were estimated based on the first half of
1918."
13. Richards, Denis; Quick, Anthony (1968).Twentieth Century Britain. London, UK: Longman.
14. Sir Ronald Cross, Minister of Economic Warfare (17 January 1940). "Economic Warfare" (http://hansard.millbanksyst
ems.com/commons/1940/jan/17/economic-warfare#column_153) . Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of
Commons. col. 153.
15. Holland, James (2010). The Battle of Britain: Five months that changed history
, May–October 1940. London, UK:
Bantam Press. ISBN 978-0-5930-5913-5.
16. Janssen, Gregor (1968). "Bombing: Did it W
ork? Was it Justified?". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 5
(79).
17. Gregson, Harry (12 April 1940)."Beating the Nazis in the Balkans"(http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-40-04-12.pdf)
(PDF). The War Illustrated. 2 (32): 361. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
18. Shirer, William L. (1941). Berlin Diary. New York: A. A. Knopf.
19. Gardiner, Juliet (2004). Wartime: Britain 1939–1945. London, UK: Headline. ISBN 978-0-7553-1026-5.
20. "They 'Scuttle' - Because That's The Nazi W ay" (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-40-01-05.pdf) (PDF). The War
Illustrated. 1 (18): 564. 5 January 1940. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
21. "Fleet Begins The Blockade".Daily Express. 4 September 1939. p. 1.
22. TIME, 18 September 1939, Vol. XXXIV, No. 12.
23. "Getting a Stranglehold on German Commerce"(http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-39-10-28.pdf) (PDF). The War
Illustrated. 1 (7): 203. 28 October 1939. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
24. TIME, 8 January 1940, Vol. XXXV, No. 2.
25. The War Illustrated, 5 April 1940.
26. TIME, 25 September 1939, Vol. XXXIV, No. 13.
27. TIME, 9 October 1939, Vol. XXXIV, No. 15.
28. "Royal Navy on Guard: Contraband control - How System Works" (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17634237). The
Sydney Morning Herald(31, 751). New South Wales, Australia. 5 October 1939. p. 10. Retrieved 30 April 2016 – via
National Library of Australia.
29. "Americans Get Hot Under The Collar As British Keep Seizing U.S. Mail"
(https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rD8E
AAAAMBAJ&pg=PA13&dq=life+magazine&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=life%20magazine&f=false) .
LIFE. 8 (6): 13–15. 5 February 1940. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
30. TIME, 5 February 1940, Vol. XXXV, No. 6.
31. "American Oil: Been used by spies"(http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article42338809). Cairns Post (12, 516). Queensland,
Australia. 6 April 1942. p. 5. Retrieved 30 April 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
32. TIME, 4 December 1939, Vol. XXXIV, No. 23.
33. TIME, 16 December 1940, Vol. XXXVI, No. 25.
34. TIME, 22 January 1940, Vol. XXXV, No. 4.
35. TIME, 29 January 1940, Vol. XXXV, No. 5.
36. "Fighting the Economic War in Real Earnest" (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-40-04-19.pdf) (PDF). The War
Illustrated. 2 (33): 397. 19 April 1940. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
37. Selwood, Dominic (13 February 2015)."Dresden was a civilian town with no military significance. Why did we burn
its people?" (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-milita
ry-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html) . The Daily Telegraph. London: TMG. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
38. Wigg, Richard (2005).Churchill and Spain : The Survival of the Franco Regime, 1940–45
. London, UK: Routledge.
ISBN 978-0-4153-6052-4.
39. Churchill, Winston (1948).The Fall of France. The Second World War. 3. New York: Time, Inc.
40. UK National Archives.
41. UK National Archives. Minutes of Ministry of Economic W
arfare Committee report, 1940
42. "Economic Warfare" (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1944/may/09/economic-warfare)
. Parliamentary
Debates (Hansard). House of Lords. 9 May 1944. col. 628–670. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
43. TIME, 28 October 1940, Vol. XXXVI, No. 18.
44. "Life in France". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 3 (42). 1968.
45. TIME, 14 October 1940, Vol. XXXVI, No. 16.
46. TIME, 9 September 1940, Vol. XXXVI, No. 11.
47. TIME, 16 September 1940, Vol. XXXVI, No. 12.
48. Churchill, Winston (1948).The Commonwealth Alone. The Second World War. 4. New York: Time, Inc.
49. TIME, 17 June 1940, Vol. XXXV, No. 25.
50. "1000 Bomber Raid". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 2 (30). 1968.
51. TIME, 20 January 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3.
52. TIME, 10 March 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 10.
53. UK National Archives. Minutes on Commons debate, 1941
54. TIME, 31 March 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 13.
55. TIME, 7 April 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 14.
56. "Chronology 1933–1944".Purnell's History of the Second World War. 8 (127). 1968.
57. TIME, 17 February 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 7.
58. TIME, 9 June 1941, Vol. XXXVII, No. 23.
59. "This is the Ukraine That Hitler Wants" (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-41-08-29.pdf) (PDF). The War Illustrated.
5 (104): 77. 29 August 1941. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
60. "Barbarossa!". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 2 (22). 1968.
61. "Fire Raids On Japan".Purnell's History of the Second World War. 6 (88). 1968.
62. UK National Archives. Ministry of Economic W
arfare minutes from May 1944.
63. "U.S. and Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations With Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and
Turkey on Looted Gold and German ExternalAssets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the W artime Ustasha
Treasury" (http://1997-2001.state.gov/www/regions/eur/rpt_9806_ng_ustasha.pdf) (PDF). U.S. State Department
Archive. June 1998. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
64. U.S. National Archives.
65. "Gang robs Zurich of top paintings"(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7238470.stm)
. BBC News. London:
BBC. 11 February 2008. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
66. The Earl of Selborne, Minister of Economic Warfare (9 May 1944). "Economic Warfare" (http://hansard.millbanksyste
ms.com/lords/1944/may/09/economic-warfare#column_640) . Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Lords.
col. 640.
67. TIME, 9 February 1942, Vol. XXXIX, No. 6.
68. UK National Archives. Ministry of Economic W
arfare report
69. "Under the Swastika: Hungry and Cold Are the French This Winter"(http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/TWI/TWI-43-01-08.pd
f) (PDF). The War Illustrated. 6 (145): 467. 8 January 1943. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
70. TIME, 23 February 1942, Vol. XXXIX, No. 8.
71. TIME. 7 June 1943, Vol. XLI, No. 23.
72. UK National Archives 1943
73. TIME, 25 October 1943, Vol. XLII, No. 17.
74. TIME, 8 November 1943, Vol. XLII, No. 19.
75. UK National Archives MEW Committee report
76. Beevor, Antony (2009). D–Day: The Battle for Normandy. London, UK: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-6708-8703-3.
77. "Allies Smash Two German Armies". Purnell's History of the Second World War. 5 (70). 1968.
78. UK National Archives, October 1944
79. TIME, 28 August 1944, Vol. XLIV, No. 9.
80. UK National Archives.
81. "The Safehaven Program: A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust" (http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/RESOURCE/GOLD/Gold
S2.htm). U.S. State Department. 2005. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
82. "The Years of Reconstruction".Purnell's History of the Second World War. 8 (123). 1968.
83. Rohrer, Finlo (10 May 2006)."What's a little debt between friends?"(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4757181.st
m). BBC News. London: BBC. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
84. The Times newspaper, London, UK.
85. TIME, 18 April 1977, Vol. 109, No. 16.
86. Blackout (1940) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032356/)on IMDb
87. The Big Blockade (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034512/)on IMDb

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blockade_of_Germany_(1939–1945)&oldid=861852312

"

This page was last edited on 30 September 2018, at 14:20(UTC).

Text is available under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of theWikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.