THE OCEANIC SUPPLY ROUTES

The earliest stages of the fighting on, over, and under the oceans have been integrated into the account of the first years of the war, and the last efforts of the Germans to recover the initiative in the winter of 1944-45 will similarly be included in the account of that portion of the war in Chapter 14. For the war in the Pacific in 1942, the surface naval aspect has been dealt with in the preceding chapter, and the naval battles which accompanied the American advance in the Pacific in 1943-45 form an integral portion of that advance. Special features of the struggle for control of the world's oceans, however, require a separate treatment because they dominated the strategy of both alliances in a manner not all recognized at the time and which is too often ignored in retrospect.

In Europe, the difference between the situation in World War II from that of World War I made control of the seas even more critical for the Allies. In World War I, the Soviets pulled out of the war in the latter portion of the conflict, but by that time Germany had been so weakened by her earlier exertions and losses while the Allies had been so strengthened by the entrance of the United States into the war that it was possible to stop the German onslaught in the West in 1918. This enabled the Western Allies to bring their power to bear directly on Germany and to crush her in the summer and fall of that year. In World War II, on the other hand, the Soviet Union had assisted Germany in driving the Western Allies off the continent in the north, west, and southeast in the first years of war, so that thereafter the Allies faced the fundamental problem of how to bring their power to bear on Germany.

A new front in Europe had to be created from across the sea; it did not already exist. This issue loomed over the diplomacy of the Allies— when could they establish a front on the continent?—even as it created a redoubled vulnerability for Great Britain: how to keep in the war at all unless the seas over which her supplies had to come could be kept open.