Why did war in the 20 th century challenge so completely global supply lines? To answer that question one must first comprehend how thoroughly dependent Europeans had become on overseas supplies of basic materials, including food. There was too a second supply war at sea: the Allied campaign to deny Central Power access to world resources through blockade, black lists, and by sweeping the sea free of Central Power ships. That battle, however, simply highlighted two far more fundamental challenges that haunted the Allies from nearly the beginning of the conflict: how to find sufficient numbers of ships and how to manage shipping and port logistics in the midst of total warfare. The real sea battle in the First World War pitched German surface raiders, mines, and especially submarines against merchant shipping in an effort to interdict and destroy Allied overseas supply lines. War at sea therefore entailed far more than the classic confrontation of capital ships. Few other moments have so starkly illuminated the paramountcy for contemporary societies of international transport and trading networks or the global interconnectedness that informed them.
Even American intervention required the means to ship 2 million men across the seas, supply them, and all the time retain sufficient transport to feed, fuel, and sustain civilian populations and mass armies in the field. The First World War was a war of colossal land battles on the continent of Europe, but it was the ability of the Allies at sea to sustain global transport and supply that determined their ability to prevail in the conflict.
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