Bismarck: How the War Nearly Could have Ended

I think we underestimate the potential of the Bismarck to have changed the course of the Second World War.  I think that this is due to a common fallacy in historical thinking.  This fallacy is that what happened was somehow fated to have happened and could not have happened any other way.  This is such a strongly held view that counterfactuals are regarded as fantasies when in fact I think they should be taken more seriously and historical facts taken with far more than a pinch of salt.

Bismarck was a very large and powerful warship which proved more than a match for the best ships of the Royal Navy.  The Battle of The Denmark Strait was hugely symbolic.  The pride of the Royal Navy HMS Hood was destroyed.  The shock of is best conveyed by the scenes in the film Sink the Bismarck (1960).  At the Ministry of Defence, the news is read out in a terrified voice to an astounded war room.  "The Hood is gone".  They are amazing words that equal "Baldor the Beautiful is Dead" in their simplicity and their impact.  Something that was so permanent has been destroyed quickly and efficiently at a range of nearly fifteen miles.

With the passing of Hood goes the passing of the myth of British invincibility at sea.  This myth had taken a battering at Jutland but now a new truth had been forged that the British could be defeated by the worst people possible.  The Nazis.  In May of 1941, the Second World War was by no means decided in favor of the British.  History has represented the British as a small island nation standing against a monolithic totalitarian power that is more romantic than true.  It was an industrial giant capable of great technological and industrial production but lacking in material.  The war-winning materials had to be brought from overseas and it was here that one of the greatest wrestling matches of the second world war would take place.  

Germany needed to cut those supply lines and to do so invested in their navy.  It is well known that the U-boat threat nearly brought Britain to disaster and I think that a similar threat was posed by Bismarck and the other powerful ships of the German Navy.  The danger to the British was that those ships could join up to become a fleet.  Indeed it was a fleet action by the British that destroyed the Bismarck and only then because of a lucky hit by an obsolete torpedo plane.  If that lucky hit had not happened the Bismarck, being faster than the British ships would have made it under air cover before the fleet would have been able to engage.  As a propaganda coup for the Germans, this would have been a catastrophe for the British.  They had sunk Hood and got away with it.  Second, they would have been able to link up with other heavy German united and seriously contested the North Atlantic with the British.  That would be a battle the British would have to have won.  A German victory on the high seas would have changed the game that had been played since 1812.  The convoy system would have been destroyed.  Communications with the rest of the world and the armies fighting in Africa would have been cut.  Without imported food, the nation would have had to come to terms with Germany and we would have been living in a very different world today.

Bismarck was prevented from escaping by a lucky hit from a torpedo launched an obsolete Fairy Bi-Plane.  The damage to the stearing gear caused the ship to sail North away from safety and towards the British who were able to engage her.  Bismarck it must be noted was not sunk by the British she was scuttled by her crew to prevent her being taken.