A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II

by Simon Parkin

The timing was opportune. America’s entry to the war had exerted significant additional pressure on British shipping. Each American infantry division dispatched to Europe required 32,000 tons of shipping to cross the Atlantic.8 This used up space that might otherwise be used for civilian food supplies, refrigerated goods, oil and raw materials. As such, more than 150,000 cubic metres of frozen food destined for Britain was left rotting in American ports.9 The competing demands of troops, food, armaments and resources had ratcheted tension in the supply chain to an unprecedented degree.* ‘We are trying with the equivalent of about one third of normal fleet to feed this country and maintain it in full war production,’ wrote Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s scientific adviser. ‘With all the extra military demands that have emerged… it is not surprising that our imports… have suffered severely. But this cannot go on.’10 The Ministry of Food issued a reminder to the Cabinet that without sufficient imports of flour, meat and other key foodstuffs, Britain could survive only for between four and six months.11 In fact, by March 1943 Britain was consuming at least 750,000 tons more goods than it was importing. The country’s reserves would last for just eight weeks. Seven hundred thousand tons of shipping had been lost to U-boats in November 1942. It was time for Doenitz to press the advantage. In his first conference with the Führer as grand admiral, Doenitz convinced Hitler that no skill...