4. All this Britain and France were obliged to watch without the power of effective intervention. Their own preparations for the struggle that lay ahead were on a great scale. First among them was the completion of the maritime domination which would at once allow the concentration of the resources of the British and French Empires and deny’to Germany much of her overseas sources of supply. So far as the United States was concerned a revision of the Neutrality Act meant in effect that the American market was open to the Allies for the purchase of war and other material on the “ cash-and-carry ” principle. The German attempts to establish a counter-blockade were even in those early days formidable. The sinking of the AtHenia in waters far distant from any German port on the first day of the war showed that the Nazis had laid their plans for U-boat warfare and placed their underwater vessels in position before the actual declaration of war. The British and French resources of naval craft, great as they were, were unable to provide adequate protection for their newly organized convoys. Nor were submarines the only menace. The threat and presence of surface raiders, of which the pocket battleship, Graf Spec, was the most dangerous, constituted a serious menace to the Atlantic communications. The Graf Spee met an ignominious end when she scuttled herself off Montevideo after an unsuccessful fight with the much smaller ships disposed against her, the New Zealand cruiser Achilles and the British cruisers Ajax and Exeter.
3rd September 1939 Sinking of the Athcnia off N.W. Ireland.
20th November 1939 Germany begins to use magnetic mines.
13th December 1939 Battle of the River Plate. German pocket battleship, Admiral Graf Spee damaged by H.M. Cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter.
17th December 1939 Scuttling of the Graf Spee.
