World War I Britain supplies cut?

Question

I was watching a documentary regarding World War I and one of the things that was depicted was how the commercial trade was cut off from Germany by England blocking the sea which resulted in Germany being brought close to starvation, same thing happened when Germany started attacking Commercial boats on its way to England to deliver supplies, provisions and raw materials, until the US joined the conflict and helped them to avoid being brought to starvation. My question here is, weren’t Germany and Britain self maintaining countries and economies already before World War I? What were they doing before war to provide for its people? Was all their provisions coming from the USA and other countries? Where they so reliant on other countries to basically survive? Will appreciate if anyone has insight on this. Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes they were both self maintaining countries but the first world war took 4 years to finish and in that time they jumped into something called all out war which means they basically put all of the country's resources and production into the war and after some time their supplies began to diminish especially with german u-boats (now called submarines) attacking and cutting off their ships supplies and at that time that was still the main way to ship supplies because planes were just coming out or possibly not even out yet depending on how early in the war you are talking about.

-does that answer your question