A World at Arms (80 page)

In the hope of profiting as much as possible from the needs of others, the neutrals accordingly sold as much as they could at the highest prices possible to the Germans, defying Allied blockade pressures as much as they dared. In the early years of the war this tendency was reinforced by fear of Germany, in the latter years by the hope of insulating their own peoples from the privations which the great struggle imposed on
others. But they would make the Allies pay as high a price as possible for defending the freedom of Swedes, Turks, Swiss and others alongside that of their own people.

Anticipating the efforts of the Allies to deprive them of important materials which might be obtained from overseas, the Germans and to a lesser extent the Japanese had looked to ships which slipped through the blockade. Germany needed rubber and vegetable fats from East Asia which were carried across the Soviet Union as long as Germany respected its Non-Aggression Pact with that country, but would have to be brought in some other way once she attacked the Soviet Union; while Japan needed mercury and industrial technology from Europe. As the Germans anticipated that their attack on Russia would close the loophole in the blockade, they made preparations to compensate by other means. The first blockade–breaker had left Japan on December 28, 1940, arriving in France on April 4, 1941.
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Measures were then instituted on a far larger scale.

A major program of blockade–breakers was organized early in 1941, and during the 1941–42 winter, when the conditions for such trips were best; out of seventeen ships only four were lost. Germany thereby acquired 32,000 tons of rubber plus over 25,000 tires, enough at that stage of Germany’s synthetic rubber production to cover her needs for two years.
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The Allies, who knew of this program but were largely incapable of stopping this first group of ships, made extensive preparations for interfering with the expected resumption of blockade–breaker voyages in the winter of 1942–43.
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In the face of determined German planning and operations, the Allies did very much better in the second season, sinking most of the ships involved and forcing the Germans to begin building transport submarines to take over by underwater journeys what could no longer be done at reasonable loss rates by surface ships, especially in the Bay of Biscay.
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The fact remains, however, that four of the blockade–breakers did get through and the 7850 tons of rubber they carried could cover Germany’s needs for a full year now that advances in her synthetic rubber industry had further reduced her need for natural rubber.
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Both sides made even more elaborate preparations for the 1943–44 winter season; and the Allies were increasingly successful, this time sinking four of the five ships incoming from East Asia and, as a result of this, leading Hitler himself to cancel the planned four outgoing ship
journeys. In spite of this apparent Allied victory, which included a British naval victory on December 28, 1943, in which a German destroyer and two torpedo boats were sunk, and an American operation which sank three German blockade–breakers from East Asia in January 1944, the basic fact remains that the
one
ship which had gotten through covered German rubber, tin and wolfram needs for the rest of 1944.
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The use of surface blockade–breakers had been costly for the Germans and now had to be abandoned, but it had served its purpose.

The high losses in surface ships had led the Germans to consider using transport submarines on occasion in 1942 and 1943. An additional number of originally thirty-six transport U-Boats was ordered in January 1943; and until these could be ready, the Germans took over Italian submarines either already designed for or converted to transport duty.
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The interim project with Italian submarines did not work out very well as only two were eventually so employed. Both German submarines headed for or returning from East Asian waters on standard war cruises and some Japanese submarines were, however, used to carry small but significant amounts of cargo. While nothing came of the great plans to carry increasing amounts of rubber, tin and other products with a volume of over 14,000 tons by 1947,
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some cargo was carried by submarines in the last year of the war. Included were small but significant quantities of rubber and wolfram as well as patents and drawings for new weapons.
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High-ranking officers and officials also used this means of transport. The trip of Bose to East Asia has been mentioned; Vice Admiral Nomura Naokuni, the Japanese navy representative in Germany, and Rear Admiral Yokoi Tadao, the naval attaché, both also returned to Japan by submarine in 1943.
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In the winter of 1944–45, Dönitz decided to send one more series of submarines, eventually scheduled to leave on January 10, 15, and 20 and March 5, 1945, for Japanese waters.
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Some of these submarines actually left in February and March of 1945.
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In addition to plans, drawings, and technicians for new weapons such as rockets, jet engines, and the ME-262 airplane–all advanced technologies Germany had developed but Japan lacked-Dönitz was also hoping to send a group of eight line and two engineering officers, who were to be assigned to Japanese battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers to assimilate Japanese experiences for the rebuilt future German navy which Dönitz confidently anticipated.
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Ironically, while the Japanese agreed in principle to this fantastic project for assigning German officers to ships already on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, a German actually sent on one of the submarines which left Germany was General Ulrich
Kessler, who was being sent as the new air attaché to replace the one who had been in Tokyo for years; the submarine was surrendered on the Atlantic when the war in Europe ended.
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These last-minute gyrations with submarines, whatever they might tell us about Japanese hopes for benefits to draw from a Germany in its death–throes and about German hopes about a huge blue-water navy for some future Fourth Reich, were in part a sign of the desperation for communication between the two powers. The last two years of the war had seen continued agitated discussions of various projects to establish and maintain airplane contact between the Axis partners. All foundered on the inadequacy of available airplanes and Japanese concern about possible Soviet objections to overflights.
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The interminable discussion of this abortive project at the highest levels does show, however, the importance attached to it by the Germans, Japanese and, until their surrender in 1943, the Italians. Because Japan and the Soviet Union were not at war with each other, there was a courier connection between Germany and Japan across Turkey and the Soviet Union, but all the available evidence suggests that very little was ever transmitted by this route.
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Basically, what was exchanged by blockade-breaking ships and submarines was what each especially wanted from the other. And what was the balance?

The critical balance is that in spite of the very great effort expended by the Allies in trying to restrict German access to raw materials from neutrals and by blockade-breakers, and the substantial assistance provided to their naval operations against the latter by their breaking of some German and most Japanese codes, the Germans did get what they most needed.
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By the time that the neutrals were pressured into restricting or ending exports to Germany and the naval and air forces of the Allies had driven the Germans off the surface of the seas into the use of transport submarines, enough critical raw materials had been brought through to Germany to cover her most essential needs. It would certainly have been easier for the Germans to hold out longer had it not been for the blockade, but their armaments industry succumbed to the land and air forces of the Allies, not to shortages imposed by blockade.

On the other hand, it is evident that Japan’s inability to cope with the advances of the Americans and, very late in the war of the British, was due to a considerable extent to the successful blockade of Japan. Her war industry, unlike Germany’s, was dramatically affected by losses of shipping, and many of the factories bombed by the United States air force in 1945 had already stopped operating because needed raw materials simply could not be brought there. Furthermore, when the Germans late in the war finally decided to assist the Japanese with the
production of the new weapons on which they themselves had pinned such great hopes, they found it practically impossible to transfer the needed knowledge and experts to Japan. What knowledge the Japanese did receive came to an industrial economy being paralyzed by the loss of shipping. The fact that Japan could not utilize the added months beyond the collapse of German resistance in early 1945 to bring into effective use the new weapons, which were developed too late for use by the Germans, was surely an important, if little noticed, result of the blockade.

While the battles and difficulties at sea which accompanied the Allied convoys to Murmansk have been mentioned repeatedly in this chapter as well as in
Chapter 5
, no reference has been made to the Soviet navy and Russian shipping. The role of the Soviet navy was primarily one of supporting land operations. In the north, the units of the fleet there assisted in the defense of Murmansk and played a small role in receiving the convoys from the West. It was precisely because the Soviet Union did not have either the shipping to carry the goods or the warships for escorts that the bulk of the cargo ships and escorts was provided by the British and Americans. Russian ships were regularly included in the convoys and Soviet warships played a role as escorts and in clearing mines laid by the Germans. To reinforce their northern fleet, the Western Powers transferred numerous smaller warships to the Russians, and in 1944, as a compensatory arrangement in connection with the surrender of the Italian navy, turned over a battleship, a cruiser, and a destroyer. All the Russian ships as well as the units of the Red Air Force stationed in the far north played a part in protecting the convoy route.
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It was because the Western Allies had to bear the majority of the load on this shortest but most dangerous route to the Soviet Union that it became such a subject of friction. The need to interrupt the convoys in the summer of 1942 and again in the spring of 1943 because of the dangers in the endless summer days, the heavy loss of ships with their cargoes, the competing demands of operation “Torch” in 1942 and the crisis of the war against the U-Boats in 1943, caused enormous trouble. The Russians simply refused to believe that there were real problems, or pretended not to, and repeatedly made life as difficult rather than as easy as possible for those sailors, soldiers, merchantmen, and airmen who were trying to help them at enormous risk to themselves.
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It was not really until the Moscow Conference of October 1943 that these issues were worked out satisfactorily
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–not surprisingly at a time when
the Russians were winning on the Eastern Front and the Western Powers had finally turned the tide of battle in the North Atlantic.

While about a fifth of the supplies sent by the northern route ended up on the bottom of the ocean, the losses among cargoes sent to the Persian Gulf for shipment to the Soviet Union via Iran were kept at 8 percent.
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The problems on that route were the enormous distance, the need to build adequate facilities in Iran, and the extra burden placed on the internal Russian transportation system. On this route, of course, the escorts were all British and American as was almost all the shipping as well.

The situation was the reverse on the third major route, that to Vladivostok and other Soviet Pacific ports. The Russians had few merchant ships in the Pacific; the United States, therefore, began transferring ships to the Soviet flag so that they could cross the Pacific from the American Northwest to the Soviet Union without escort, as the Japanese allowed Soviet ships to travel designated routes unmolested. In 1942, relatively few ships were available and the American ports were crowded, but in 1943 vast quantities of food and other supplies were shipped on this route.
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In terms of volume, this was by far the most important route for deliveries from the Western Allies to the Soviet Union with about half going this way and less than a quarter each by Murmansk and Iran.

This development, not surprisingly, annoyed the Germans. In the very years that the Red Army was tearing the guts out of the German army, a huge volume of supplies was flowing unhindered to the Soviet Union under the noses of their Japanese ally. As the volume of shipments increased in 1943, the level and frequency of German protests to the Japanese increased as well. The latter, however, regardless of their feelings on the subject, believed very strongly that they could not interfere with the shipments or refuse to recognize the transfer of American ships to the Soviet merchant fleet without endangering their own relations with the Soviet Union. The converse of no Japanese interference with American supplies to Russia seemed to them to be no Soviet bases for American planes in the Soviet Far East. Accordingly they regularly turned aside the Germans’ demands for action and simultaneously pretended that the volume was really not as great as the Germans correctly suspected and in any case included no war materials.
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On the few occasions when the Japanese detained Soviet vessels, the repercussions were immediate. The government of the Soviet Union, with Molotov repeatedly intervening personally, insisted on the release of the ships and let it be understood that any other action by Japan would constitute a violation of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Treaty of
1941. As an angry Molotov explained to the Japanese ambassador on July 8, 1943: “We are fighting a war and have to have stuff. We have lost some fine industrial and agricultural land and we must have food, machinery, and raw materials, and we are not going to stand for you Japanese standing in our way of getting them.”
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Ambassador Sato Nao-take consistently and insistently urged his government to acceed to the Soviet demands and to refrain from ship seizures in the first place. Japan in his view simply could not afford to antagonize the Soviet Union in 1943 and 1944 and was in no position to argue about the legal status of the reflagged American ships. Tokyo gave in reluctantly but comprehensive ly.
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