The Hidden Weapon. Blockade in the Era of the Two World Wars.

ERC-Synergy Grant  #101166983 (2025-31). Project start date: 1 May 2025.

During the total wars of the twentieth century, the belligerents fought each other with weapons both visible and invisible, with violence both immediate and slow, with guns and with blockades. But while guns and bombs have been studied in abundance, the slow and invisible weapon of blockade has not.
BLOCKADE will be the first to fully explore the two blockades of the First and Second World Wars, and their aftermaths – the greatest in history. In these total wars, the Allies imposed a global blockade on their enemies, and the Central and Axis powers responded with blockades of their own.
Over a period of six years, the BLOCKADE team, based in Trondheim, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Freiburg, will analyse the impact of blockades on households, states, corporations and the international order; on the development of political and military strategy; on how the wars were prepared, experienced and remembered; and on how peace was made.
BLOCKADE sets out to prove that these blockades are crucial to understanding not only the way the world wars were fought but also their globality and totality, their immediate effects and their long-term global repercussions.