Page 84 - All About History - Issue 53-17

What if…

The Allies had

lost the Battle

of the Atlantic?

Professor Marc Milner has spent 35 years studying
the Atlantic war. We ask him what might have

happened had Germany emerged victorious

What if the Allies had lost the Battle of can’t change one variable and expect the others to
the Atlantic? remain unchanged. The Brits built for the threat —
Britain would not have been able to carry on Germany’s surface fleet. The rest could be — and
its war effort for very long. In 1939, Britain was was — improvised in a time of crisis. Simply put:
dependent for at least half of its food imported from the Germans could never have won the Battle of
overseas, so it would have been in a very serious the Atlantic, but Britain could have lost it.
situation in this regard. Also, Britain’s economy in The greatest threat to imports in 1940-41 was
1939-40 is pretty much export-based, so to survive the bombing and closure of key British ports and
economically it needed to import raw material and that’s a Luftwaffe responsibility, nothing to do with
export finished goods. It would have been virtually the Kriegsmarine. Many historians make a facile
impossible for Britain to survive if it had not been and erroneous link between import decline and
able to use the sea. The Germans reached the sinkings at sea in this period, but it’s just not that
French coast in the summer, so Britain would have simple. The Germans did not have the power in
that year’s harvest. 1940-41 to inflict a knockout blow at sea. ‘Death
If the Germans had put the squeeze on Britain by a thousand cuts’ was a more plausible scenario,
in the winter of 1940-41, which they tried to do, I but even that could not be done fast enough to
think it would have been just a matter of weeks, ensure the death of the victim. The Germans are
perhaps months, before the British government really the engine of the Atlantic War because if the
would have had to make a decision about Germans don’t do anything, the Allies win. It is just
accommodating German requests. I don’t see a that simple.
great surge of Germans coming across the English
Channel, at least not initially, because the Germans So if Germany were to have won the war in the
could not have launched an invasion at the same Atlantic, it would have been in the winter of 1941
time they were trying to do an effective blockade when Britain was standing alone in Europe? MARC MILNER
of Britain. The big question for the British would Yes. Someone said that Britain had 500 million
have been, apart from accommodating Hitler’s people around the world backing it up, but it really Marc Milner is Professor
of History and Director of
wishes and succumbing to the pressure, the is the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke in the Gregg Centre for the
extent to which it would have been an occupied the winter of 1941. That’s the only moment when Study of War and Society
country. That would certainly have been an the Germans have a clear, measurable, obtainable at the University of New
Brunswick, Canada. He
interesting situation. objective in the Atlantic War — and that is to has published extensively
blockade Britain and force it to surrender. But the on the Battle of the Atlantic and the history of
the Royal Canadian Navy. A contributor to the
How would it have been possible for the problem for the Germans is that they don’t have official histories of both the RCN and the RCAF
Germans to have won the war in the Atlantic? the resources to do it. One of the biggest impacts in World War II, Milner’s book, Battle Of The
Most people tell me that if the Germans had had on British imports in the winter of 1940-41 is Atlantic, won the CP Stacey Prize for the best
book on military history in Canada in 2004.
300 U-boats in 1939 they would have won the the Blitz. Most people don’t associate that with His recent work has been on the Normandy
Battle of the Atlantic. My response is always that if the Battle of the Atlantic, but the bombing and campaign, including Stopping The Panzers:
the Germans had had 300 U-boats, the Brits would closure of ports along the English south and east The Untold Story Of D-Day, which won the US
Commission on Military History’s ‘James Collins
have had 250 destroyers, sloops and frigates. You coasts promptly cuts into British imports far more Book Prize’ for 2014-15.

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