The War at Sea

- Not a war for casualties, but a war for control over supply lines
- British stopping Germal supply lines was a big factor, as important as any battle victory
- A very cautious war
- There were some battles at sea - in 1914 the Royal Navy scored a small but very tactical victory in
Heligoland
- Early in 1914 Germans bombed some British towns
- German ship Goeben evaded the British Navy to enter Constantinople - this was very important for Turks,
because they were pro-german, it was a boost for their choice to enter the war, otherwise they would have
to send Goeben back
- In 1915 after many small battles only the ships that were initialy in the German ports remained existant.
- Germans tried to blockade too by using U-boats to sink merchant ships, this was very sucessful
- In 1915 the American ship Lusitania was sunk by German U-Boats, killing over 1000 passengers.
- One big sea battle in Jutland in 1916 - Germans sink 14 British ships but lose 11 themselves, an
undecisive victory
- In the beginning germans concentrated on sinking Allied Warships, when Allies learned to
protect their warships, Germans attacked Allied merchant ships instead]
- The USA declared the sinking of the liner Lusitania by the German U-Boats as one of the
reasons for them to declare war on Germany in 1917
- By June, 1917 Britan had lost 500,000 tons of shipping to the U-boats.
- At one point, it was estimated that London had only six weeks of food supply rmaining
- After 1916, the Allies improved the ways in which they dealt with the U-Boats, for example
they started building so many ships that the U-Boats could not possibly sink them all
- Mines, convoys, depth charges, long-range aircraft and especially Q ships now prevented the
high loss of merchant and armed ships.
- The British blockade had a major impact on Germany's strength
- 300,000 deaths related to malnutrition among civilians in Germany during 1914 through 1918
- 1/3 of all pigs in Germany had to be slaughtered in order to keep food supply alive due to the
Blockade
- The blockade had stopped the supply of nitrates to Germany, nitrates were essential to farmers
for fertilisers, and to Germany for explosives
- Germany had such big problems with food supply that in 1916 the adult meat ration for one
week was the same as two burgers in a fast-food restaurant today.