"Napoleon was supreme on the Continent but he never managed to defeat the British navy. As a result the British were able to send supplies and reinforcements to their allies and damage the French economy by sinking French shipping and blockading French ports. In the First World War the British navy successfully enforced a naval blockade on Germany which included interdicting goods which the British deemed necessary for the German war effort even if these were carried on neutral ships. While the impact of the blockade is still debated, senior German officers blamed it for their defeat. ‘We were in the end defeated by sea power,’ said Erich Raeder, who headed the German navy from 1928 to 1943, ‘which deprived us of our food and raw materials, and slowly throttled by the blockade.’"