Germany bypassed Britain’s battleship race by attacking unprotected supply lines.
Evidence
The Germans apparently realized they would never catch up with Britain’s naval construction frenzy, so they secretly shunted funds from battleships to submarines, assembling a fleet of stealth U-boats. Ironically, Germany used its U-boats to greatest effect not by targeting and sinking naval battleships, which were now protected by squadrons of destroyers, but by sinking merchant ships crossing the Atlantic unprotected. There was no way the British (or any) navy could protect all of these merchant ships. They became easy targets for the submarines, crippling transport of war materials and personnel and undermining the Allied war effort. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 453
Categorization
- XREF: Attacking the unprotected periphery rather than the defended core mirrors how sneaker males target unguarded resources or satellite females.