Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…After the fall of France in June 1940, Germany has all these U-boats. They're actually themselves running a very effective maritime strategy. In the Atlantic, they're not in the narrow seas. They can actually go to the ocean and cut off British trade through the Atlantic. In October of 1940, they sink close to 400,000 to 500,000 tons of British shipping. The Germans are running this very effective blockade of Britain. The reason it fails is just that the Americans eventually can produce many more ships than the Germans can even sink. Ultimately it wasn't a matter of who ran the better maritime strategy. It was who could keep up the industrial output to sustain this strategy. It comes back to industry and not strategy, even for these maritime operations. A, they're not blockading Britain. Britain's getting all its stuff out, but then they get sunk somewhere else. Blockade is when you're actually keeping things in. Germany has exactly zero merchant marine going anywhere. The stuff that you're talking about being sunk, they're naval ships but a lot of it is merchant marine because the British are getting things out. Tremendous amounts of it are getting out. That's just a difference. You're correct about the importance of productive bases. Britain's problem in World War II is different from the Napoleonic Wars. When you change to oil for what's powering your ships and things, Britain doesn't have that at home. Whereas coal, it does. It has some A-list coal. When you're doing age of sail and coal, the British are okay. But then when you're changing energy sources, they're definitely not okay. There are other factors that are going on with them. But you're right about the productive base. There's another game to play which I think is worth playing. It's the game of takeaway. You're telling me that there's this factor which is economic size. It's decisive and this will determine the outcome of wars. You're absolutely right that it’s important. Air power enthusiasts will say, "No, no, no, that's nonsense. It's all about controlling the skies." That when you control the air and you get air cover for your convoys, that's what does it. Let's talk about why the Battle of the Atlantic turns out the way it is. If I took away cryptography, would it have turned out the same way? Negative. If I take away not just the sheer amount of technology, but certain key pieces like radar and those things, what happens? Does it change? Yes, it does. What happens if the United States just doesn't like alliances and you don't coordinate things particularly well? Does it change things? Yes, it does. You can go through a list of this. Different people are designing different types of ships. You are also determining that you're going to share things with Britain. Britain's providing a lot of free stuff. If you play remove any one of these things, that Battle of the Atlantic turns out differently. The story is, it's probably a package of many things. This whole game of takeaway, when you have people who will come up with a monocausal explanation for you and they'll go with one cause, they'll probably be right that their one cause is really important. But then they are just ignoring all these other things. That's the more important thing in strategy. Your thing is truly important. The question then is what does "changing things" mean? Does it mean that the war could have gone on longer, or shorter? Yes, anything would have changed that. There's another question of would it have changed who won the war. I'd claim that cryptography, radar, even oil… Even if Germany had a huge reserve of oil, maybe it would have lengthened the length at which Germany could have sustained itself. But if you change the fact that the Axis had one-fourth of the GDP of the Allies combined, I think switching that genuinely changes who wins the war, whereas these other things actually wouldn't change who won the war.…

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