The Blockade of Germany β , also known as the Economic War , involved operations carried out during World War II by the British Empire and by France in order to restrict the supplies of minerals, fuel , metals, food and textiles needed by Nazi Germany β and later by Fascist Italy β 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 , but also included the bombing of economically important targets and the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries in order to prevent their sale to the Axis powers.
At the beginning of the First World War in , the United Kingdom used its powerful navy and its geographical location to dictate the movement of the world's commercial shipping. 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. 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 their bunker fuel control facilities.
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. Late in the war a large minefield , known as the Northern Barrage , was deployed between the Faroes and 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 β 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 warships was hemmed into its bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and mostly forbidden by the leadership from venturing out.
By this had almost swung the war the way of the Central Powers. In Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and, 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 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 β still the world's most powerful navy β would be ready to begin stopping shipments to Germany immediately once war was declared.
