Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1939. GERMAN RAIDERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 33, 18 November 1939, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1939. GERMAN RAIDERS.

Hitlerism cannot hope to contest Britain’s supremacy on the sea, but .t has strained every nerve to forge a weapon of which* much is expected in the endeavour to bring about the overthrow of Great Britain. The German leaders have realised that lack of economic self-sufficiency makes their country particularly susceptible to the offensive weapon of blockade. But Germany’s weakness is also the weakness of Great Britain. It is clear for all the world to see that the island kingdom overlooking Europe depends largely on overseas supplies both of industrial raw materials and foodstuffs. That has been the central point of Nazi strategy —strike a telling blow at Britain’s sea communications and Britain herself will be starved into submission. Unable to build a fleet capable of engaging the Royal Navy in open combat the Nazi leaders planned for a highly-specialised form of maritime offensive and, with the lessons of the last war still ccpnparatively fresh in memory, it is not surprising that they should have built up the new German Navy primarily for the task of commerce raiding. Their objective all along has been a combination of sea and air attack to undermine Britain’s naval strength. Their battleships, “pocket battleships” and cruisers have all been built with heavy armament and wide cruising, range to enable them to destroy British convoys on the high seas, facilitating submarine attacks on merchant shipping, while it has always been fond hope that the German Air Force could succeed in harrying the British Navy to such an extent that the task of protecting seaborne commerce would be beyond its powers. But those hopes have been falsified. A blow at Britain’s maritime supremacy could be struck successfully only by an overwhelming defeat of the British Navy at sea, and that is an enterprise which the German Navy dare not undertake. Secondly, and arising in part out of this prior argument, commerce raiding against convoyed merchantmen can be entrusted only to warships that are faster and more powerful than the vessels escorting the convoys. Germany has such vessels in limited numbers, but all of them, with the hypothetical exception of the “pocket battleship” Admiral Scheer, are effectively bottled up inside the Kiel Canal," with an immeasurably superior force standing guard in the North Sea. An occasional raider may perhaps slip through the British cordon, but, if she does so, she is certain to be relentlessly hunted until she is found and destroyed.