Sarah Paine

So maritime powers do blockade.

The response of continental power is commerce raiding.

And then the maritime response to that is you're going to convoy your merchant ships.

Okay, as the war begins in Europe, the United States is not in, but Roosevelt is coordinating with Latin America to set up a big neutrality zone all around the Americas, 300 nautical miles.

And then the Lend-Lease Act, also before U.S.

belligerency, there's pieces of it which say the United States is going to take over British bases in Iceland and set up bases in Greenland.

Why do we care about those locations?

They're really important if you're going to send convoys.

back and forth across the Atlantic, both to attack and to defend.

So that's what we're up to.

But even so, the Axis visits a real nightmare in the Battle of the Atlantic.

A lot of things are going down.

So how does that all work?

So before the United States gets in at the very beginning, these U-boats turn the North Sea into a kill zone, and then Britain is losing an awful lot of stuff off of its shores and also off the shores of Africa.

And the Germans get really good at commerce raiding really fast.

And there's also the fall of France, which is a mess, because prior to the fall of France, Britain is only convoying just beyond Ireland.

Once you get the fall of France and all of those submarines on French territory, then the

400 miles further west, and they've lost an awful lot of destroyers between the fall of Norway and then the Dunkirk evacuation.

So they haven't got enough ships to convoy properly.

And then the Germans are really creative.