328 Chapter NineWorld markets beyond the borders of the United States were also
open to Great Britain and France. Indeed, long-standing imperial
roles in Africa, Asia, and Oceania gave the two Allied powers a con
venient head start in tapping the globe’s resources for their war effort.
This meant that planning and control of home production did not have
to balance out completely. Shortfalls could be made good by buying
abroad in nearly every case. Delays in delivery were awkward but
bearable until German submarines in 1917 threatened the Allies’ life
line. Until then, however, a directed economy at home combined very
well with old-fashioned market mobilization abroad, financed by
American bank loans.
Germany, too, supplemented its own national resources by resort to
purchases in adjacent countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland. Occupied Belgium, northern France, and the Polish
provinces of Russia were also compelled to provide some of the
sinews of war—food, coal, and the like. But the populations of oc
cupied provinces cooperated sluggishly and reluctantly with the Ger
man military authorities, and neutrals’ sales to Germany were sharply
limited by the way the British administered the naval blockade.^45
Hence Germany was mainly dependent on home resources, supple
mented by whatever could be gathered within the Hapsburg lands or
from Bulgaria, Turkey, and occupied territories. Within that zone, the
comparatively high cost of overland transport limited Germany’s access
to supplies from outside its own borders. Administrative slackness in
lands still overwhelmingly peasant in their population had a parallel
effect. Moreover, no massive foreign credits assisted Germany in
wresting food and other supplies from Allied and conquered peoples.
Instead, distrust of an emerging German hegemony intensified as the
war years passed, making Germany’s Hapsburg, Bulgarian, and Turk
ish allies less and less enthusiastic in cooperating with anything the
Germans proposed or undertook.
The strain on Germany’s administrative capacity in the end proved
crippling. No one had yet clearly conceived of a way to go about
managing an entire national economy without large-scale supplement
from outside. Important statistics, e.g., reliable estimates of future
food production and consumption, were unavailable or else were dis
regarded by the military men who had the ultimate say on nearly all
disputed points.
- Beginning in 1915 negotiations between Britain and the Netherlands, Switzer
land, and Scandinavian countries restricted imports to the presumed level needed for
local consumption.