The concise encyclopedia of world war II 2 volumes (greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars) ( PDFDrive ) 245

Blockade

German response was a call for total war. As Stalin noted in May 1943, that was a
sure signal that the original plan for Blitzkrieg had failed.
See also BAGRATION; keil und kessel; Kesselschlacht; kotel; Kursk; Normandy; Pacific
War (1941–1945); Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945); Stalingrad; Vernichtungskrieg; VistulaOder operation.
BLOCKADA
See siege of Leningrad.
BLOCKADE The Western Allies employed economic and food blockades of the
Axis states as a core war policy during World War II. That was partly based on false
assumptions of the supposed efficacy of their earlier blockade of Imperial Germany
in bringing about capitulation in 1918. The Allied blockade during World War II had
multiple aims: to slowly strangle Axis war economies by limiting access to critical raw
materials not available in Europe or Japan; to created a “neurosis” of encirclement; to
stretch Axis military assets in defense of distant supplies; and to create a real shortage
of critical war matériel. The efficacy of the blockade of Germany was greatly reduced
from 1939 to 1941 by two things: Germany’s conquest and economic exploitation
of multiple neighboring states and intimidation of others; and Soviet matériel assistance to Germany under terms of the Nazi–Soviet Pact (August 23, 1939). The Germans counter-blockaded Britain with unrestricted submarine warfare during the Battle
of the Atlantic (1939–1945), but ultimately lost this most crucial campaign of the war
in the west. The British were especially careful to ration exports of critical goods to
neutrals such as Sweden, to limit potential transshipment to Germany. The Western
Allies also used competitive buying from poor countries such as Portugal and Spain
to keep stocks of critical supplies of tungsten and wolfram out of German hands.
The Germans countered by offering top dollar to the Swedes and others. Following
the DRAGOON landings in southern France and closing of the Spanish border in
August 1944, those supplies stopped. Turkey was also pressured to cease deliveries of
chromium to Germany. That also stopped with Western Allied military success in the
Mediterranean theater and, to a lesser extent, in the Italian campaign (1943–1945).
The Japanese failed to even consider true economic warfare against the Western
powers, either offensive or defensive. That was a remarkable omission considering
how access to natural resources of the South Pacific and Southeast Asia was the

major war aim pursued by Imperial General Headquarters in 1941. The omission
continued throughout the war. For instance, Japan failed to assign IJN submarines to intercept Pacific or Indian Ocean convoys, retaining them instead as fleet
auxiliaries for an illusory “decisive battle” to be waged by the main war fleets. Sea
blockade was not critical to the ultimate defeat of Germany for reasons described
previously. But savaging the Japanese merchant marine by mining Japan’s home
waters from B-29s, combined with economic blockade via cargo ship and tanker
interdiction by submarines and naval and land-based air power, proved a major
contribution to the collapse of the Japanese war economy. As one result, in 1945
American bombs often fell on idled Japanese factories whose workers had already

168