Professional Custom Accounting: The German Board of Public Health in December 1918
· Naval warfare in World War I was mainly characterized by the efforts of the Allied Powers, with their larger fleets and surrounding position, to blockade the Central Powers by sea. The Central Powers used submarines and radars to try t break that blockade or establish their own blockade of the United Kingdom and France.
· Shortly after the outbreak of the war, the British navy, the largest and most powerful in the world at that time, began a naval blockade of Germany, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies.
· Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships.
· The German Board of Public Health in December 1918 claimed that 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease caused by the blockade through December 1918.
· The blockade also had a detrimental effect on the U.S. economy and the U.S. government protested the blockade vigorously.
· It is considered one of the key elements in the eventual Allied victory in the war, although historians have argued about its importance.
