Historically speaking

No it wasn't. British GDP was about twice Germany's. Russia and Germany were about tied. Germany just had better military leaders, technology, and shorter supply lines that weren't spread out across thousands of miles of empire.

By this point the U.S. already represented fifth of all economic activity, and dwarfed everyone but Russia in population, and so tangling over shipping was a very bad idea.

Because the standing army available to the British in Europe was minuscule compared to the vast conscripted armies of the other powers. Also, you will find that Germany was indeed defeated in WW1.

user it was the other way round.

Germany was absolutely landblocked. No cargo vessel managed to slip through blockade, warships had hard time to do it.

Submarines sure did slip through it but the tonnage their sank became minimal after British pushed for convoys, which didn't weaken the blockade at all because of sheer dominance Royal Navy had(especially in light ships because they were ready for repelling small raiders), to combat the issue with convoys making raiding with submarines too hard to pull off and all the fast raiders being either wrecked or grounded in ports, Germans introduced a desperate attempt to deal a blow to UK's shipping - attack neutral vessels(also known as unrestricted submarine warfare).

You know how well it ended up.

Because they did beat Germany
/thread

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)

I suppose if you include the rest of the Empire, Britain's economy trumped theirs, but Britain itself (I don't think Australia/Canada/India would've given much money to Britain before the war?) was about parity.

This is why the British just can't get enough of war:

>By 1916, Britain was funding most of the Empire's war expenditures, all of Italy's and two thirds of the war costs of France and Russia, plus smaller nations as well.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_World_War_I

Not really. The British were always able to maintain a large enough fleet to prevent the High Seas Fleet from sortieing, and even at their height the U-boat campaign was never enough to significantly impact the outcome of the war. Monthly tonnage sunk peaked in 1917 (forget which month) at around 800,000 tons, but that was the result of the unsustainable increased sortie rate the U-boats began in concert with the new unrestricted U-boat campaign.

The British may not have been able to secure a decisive victory on land, but they were slowly strangling the Germans to death and the Germans were forced to bet on a series of terror weapons - be they U-boats or Zeppelins or bombers - to bring the British to submission.

To get an idea of how bad the disparity was on a strategic scale, the British were literally buying up all the fish from Norwegian markets at massively inflated prices and just having it sit and rot at port to prevent the Germans from buying it, and Germany had no recourse. Those few U-boat men (the best-fed soldiers in all of Germany) lucky enough to be captured by the British would find that their food in captivity was far better than what they were being fed as soldiers.

>the British were literally buying up all the fish from Norwegian markets at massively inflated prices and just having it sit and rot at port to prevent the Germans from buying it, and Germany had no recourse
neat
i always realized how hugely important the economic side of ww1 was, how important the blockade was
but i still keep getting surprised

You dont even know what you are talking about.

check out Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson. If you can stand reading 800 pages of almost autistic attention to detail, it's an amazing look at the economic side of the war for the Central Powers.

Pretty much, the Central Powers were fucked from the start because they weren't economically self-sufficient.

Your data doesn't include the empire and uses PPP which is a shit measure for military capacity.

axisandallies.wikia.com/wiki/GDP_1913

Britains army was not meant to fight large continental wars, but to defend the colonies from uprisings (just like America's army today).

Most of the WW1 British army came from volunteers and not regular professional soldiers. Nobody really expected WW1 to happen so suddenly.

Also the new technological advancements in artillery, aircrafts, and rifles meant that the size of infantry did not matter that much.

>Ottoman Empire
>14

Lmao what happened to you kebab

How did the blockade prevent Germany from getting goods indirectly via Denmark? Anyone knows?

British economic blockade. They were heavily involved in the markets of those nations not effected by the blockade, buying things at exorbitant prices to keep the Germans from getting it. Also, you had the issue that what the Germans did manage to buy from them wasn't enough to sustain them, especially while they were having to support an Austria-Hungary starving because Galicia got sacked.

Because the colonial army was made up of purely volunteers with little combat experience while the German Empire relied on mass conscripts and their superior war economy (also keep in mind the German navy had been built up over the past 2 decades to be on par with the British navy).

Yeah, but if German companies in Denmark imported high quantities from the US and brought it to Germany, what could Britain do about it? They obviously couldn't buy up American goods like Norwegian fish. Did they impose quantitative restrictions on Danish (and Swedish) imports?

They'd have started blockading Denmark as well. That's the terms they gave to the Netherlands - they'll get blockaded too if they openly support the Germans.

The UK has always been a naval power. It controlled the seas (and therefore trade) and relied on a small extreamly professional army.

Man for man the brit army of 1914 was much better than anyone else in Europe ( and therefore the world) but it had 200k of them and no system of reserves.

The germans on the other hand could bring millions of reservists to the field from the first day of the war and had a much bigger standing army.

The brits took heavy casulties in the middle years of the war as it had to train its new recruits on the job. There was no time to spare.

By the end of the war the brits had the most modern land forces in the world and were responsible for killing/capturing more german forces than both the french and the US combined.

If the UK had stayed neutral germany would have wonand the ottomon empire would still exist.

I would argue that the British Empire was responsible for winning the war. The mental, physical and financial exhausten of doing so was the start of the end for it though.

Colonial gdp is almost entirely used for sustenance.

finally someone posts common knowledge. Worth noting that many lessons had to be learned through the war, and millions of British and French lives were lost due to utter ineptitude on the part of generals in both camps.

Britain's "extremely professional army" got slaughtered the moment they got into combat.

So did everyone.

Indeed, Britain's extremely professional army was just as shitty as any conscript army.