The Knockout Blow against the Import System: Admiralty Expectations of Nazi Germany's Naval Strategy, 1934–9*

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the performance of the Admiralty in assessing the German navy's intentions and capabilities in the nineteen‐thirties. It demonstrates that the British Naval Staff developed through a methodical war planning process a distinct image of Germany's sea strategy. As the planning process advanced, the Naval Staff became convinced by a steady influx of reliable intelligence that German strategists intended in a future war to launch an aggressive air‐sea offensive against British sea lines of communication. British naval planners maintained that the only way in which German surface and subsurface forces could be made deadly was to combine them with a rapid all‐out air strike on the British import system. Germany did not launch this ‘knockout blow’ in 1939, but its elaboration by the Admiralty illustrates that the Royal Navy's appreciation of German strategy at sea was far more sophisticated, prudent and informed than historians have previously acknowledged.