Random wrote:That's a good question but I suspect not. There were no convoys to Russia as there were to be in WW2 so probably a naval victory in the southern North Sea was unlikely to impact trade with north Russia, at least initially. The farthest that the High Seas Fleet ever ventured was to the latitude of Stavanger, Norway on 24 April 1918 with Scheer attempting to intercept one of the weekly Norwegian convoys from Scotland. That sortie was a fiasco; demonstrating the material decline of the Fleet and accomplishing nothing positive for the war effort.
Historian Norman Stone in The Eastern Front 1914-17 spends a fair bit of space discussing aid to Russia and my understanding is that the Russians were largely incapable of moving the supplies that were sent via the Barents Sea ports, Persia and Vladivostok. It's possible that disruption of deliveries might just have allowed them to clear the huge transportation backlogs.
British firms also defaulted on a number of lucrative contracts after receiving payment from the Russian government, generally using gold currency, and frequently invoked the delivery problems as the reason.
Curiously despite being a vastly inferior force the Russian Baltic Fleet was able to repeatedly interfere with Swedish-German trade, forcing the Germans to run convoys and extracting a steady attrition due to mines and (mostly British) submarines. Because big ships were seldom involved and the Bolsheviks were not inclined to praise the war efforts of the former regime, the actions of the Russian navy in WW1 are mostly ignored in English language histories. It's an instructive campaign to study as it demonstrates the impact of geography and technology on machine-age naval operations and I think shows why the Kaiser's fleet could never defeat Britain.
+1.
Excellent post on the blockade, there are several myths that refuse to die-
British Blockade's dependency on Dreadnoughts
Belgium massacre by Germans
Imperial Germany being = Nazis or worse
Unrestricted SUB Warfare being bad but blockade by Britain being benign.
Ottomans being a push over (due to the geographic difficulties of the 1st Balkan War and Italo-Ottoman War in Cyranecia and Tripolitani of 1911)
Russians not having modern weapons (Russia had a very modern Air force- IGOR SIKORSKY anyone? and excellent artillery as always but corruption, inefficiency and logistics played their part- geography too)
I think CP would have won despite British entry if the USA had not entered the war directly, munition or supplies or war credit support was ok.. but those potential 2 million extra troops scared LUDENDORFF and a normally cool and calculative, efficient, even ruthless general staff took an emotional decision to prepone the attack and wasted it on the British, a well planned tactical + strategic attack on the French would have caused a collapse if those "DOUBHBOY" reinforcements were not there. As it was allied lines did get badly hit, the reason ANZAC and CANADIAN corps were not used to defend were they were at their end of manpower.. there was talk of disbanding one division in each of these corps to compensate other divisions.
Consider this-
In War, IMP. Germany alone raised over 13.25 Million out of a pop. of 65 Mill i.e. 250+ divisions
Austria out of 52 Million raised some 100+ divisions
Bulgaria mobilised 800000 i.e. 1/4 of population.
Turkey too mobilised over 1/4 of Anatolian Population.
UK raised 70+ divisions (30% from commonwealth inc. India, Canada, Anzaz and SA) and was facing man-power shortages in 1917 and 1918..
France raised 100+ divisions and by 1917-1918 had been bled white.
Together FRANCE + UK + WHITE DOMINIONS (Canada, Anzac only, not SA) had about 100+ Million population.
Armies raised was far lesser compared to population - 16 million or so.
A hard knock for FRANCE and a scenario may have been reached wherein armistice with reversed conditions may have been signed.
Also no AMERICA means after CAPORETTO, Von Below's victorious troops would have continued on the ITALIAN front, ITALIANS may have collapsed under continued pressure immediately, instead they were allowed a respite as these troops need not be hastily rushed to the WESTERN front, an offensive in late APRIL/MAY instead of MARCH may have succeeded.
SA not included as it was bearing burden of Africa and was further split due to the BOER sympathy (rightly) for Germany.
India not included as it was a volunteer army (limited volunteers), if conscription was imposed there may be a armed rebellion.