Germany, Blockade and Strategic Raw Materials in the Era of the Two World Wars

Abstract

The concrete lessons that the Nazi regime drew from the Allied sea blockade of the First World War have only been studied in fragments. Our knowledge of the effects of blockade and the effectiveness of German countermeasures during the Great War is vague, contradictory and, above all, incomplete, mainly for a lack of data. Based on hitherto unused secret surveys and statistics commissioned by the Nazi government to examine Great War lessons, this article shows that imports of raw materials were drastically reduced early in the war, and that this reduction was largely due to blockade. Despite this massive decline and low pre-war stocks, substitution and conservation measures made Imperial Germany surprisingly resilient in the case of many essential raw materials. Based on these quantifications and the conclusions drawn, explicitly or implicitly, in interwar studies, this article presents the general lessons the Nazi government drew from the Great War blockade. As the post-1933 measures show, the Nazi regime did learn the lessons, at least in this respect. This had important implications for the Second World War: as Nazi planners became convinced that, with proper preparation, Germany could withstand a raw materials blockade, they became more willing to gamble on war.