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The Lusitania Sinking
- By George Fowler Great Britain declared war against Germany in August, 1914 after Germany invaded Belgium. At first confident of an early victory, it soon became clear in London that Germany could not be defeated without the direct intervention of the United States. Now the only question was: How could that be accomplished? When RMS Lusitania was torpedoed off Ireland on May 7, 1915 a "sea change" relative to Main Street America's strong disposition toward neutrality was accomplished. Americans were shocked by the loss of 1,198 people (94 of them children and 140 of them their fellow citizens) aboard a "defenseless ocean liner." It brought the general population, whose sons would have to fight and die in a tragically commenced European war, much in tandem with a sub rosa campaign waged by powerful figures within the U.S. government; men who worked in close liaison with their London counterparts. These efforts were buttressed by manufacturers dealing in a highly profitable war goods trade with Britain, as well as by a majority of America's most influential opinion molders. Lusitania's sinking, more than any other event, brought a majority of the public in line with the government's incredibly hypocritical and one-sided "neutrality." Many of its lessons, tragically forgotten a quarter century later, are uncannily similar to "the road to war" traveled in 1939-1941. Well before the end of 1914, although the British still persisted in mounting cavalry charges, it was realized that the land war would be devoid of whatever romance brilliant uniforms, flashing sabers and pounding steeds had brought to history's earlier clashes. It would be an awful and protracted matter of mud and stink and massive death and it would require vast expenditures of the goods of war, as well as the lives of men. As 1915 commenced, the casualty figures on the Eastern and Western fronts already approached one million. At sea, departures from the old rules would prove equally consequential. International law, as expressed in the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, addressed the wartime matter of "prize" ships. All nations had acknowledged that enemy merchant ships should not be sunk before being stopped, boarded and searched relative to the nature of the cargo. Provision would be made for the safety of all on board. The Declaration of London was issued February 26, 1909. It sought to clarify agreements on wartime contraband, convoys and blockades. The question of no blockades in wartime was not seen in Britain's interest, and she was the only nation refusing to sign an agreement forged in her capital. The Germans, relative to their U-boats and surface raiders, abandoned this agreement on February 18, 1915. Britain officially announced its already ongoing blockade on May 1. A primary German consideration was the tremendous increase in wireless-equipped ships between the earlier dates and World War I. A ship under siege could send its naval forces the exact position of attack. But of greater consideration was Britain's successful blockade of Germany. Vital goods could flow into Britain
from all points. British mines (a high percentage of which
snapped their moorings and went astray) and the Royal Navy
were forcing all neutral ships to travel comfortably within
British waters, thus liable to British search and, in a
number of cases, seizure. Britain soon adopted the tactic of
flying the flags of neutrals (the Stars and Stripes being
the preferred flag of In his 1974 book Too Proud to Fight - Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality, Patrick Devlin wrote that British international lawyers were not happy with the legal aspects of Britain's blockade and its violations of the rights of neutrals. Lord Justice Phillmore, who was later to play a considerable part in the development of the League of Nations, wrote Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey on May 27 protesting the blockade. In the British cabinet Lord Robert Cecil "said that the Americans [with William Jennings Bryan still secretary of state] seriously doubted whether the blockade was justifiable in international law and added: 'I am not sure that they are wrong.'" As Patrick Beesly points out in Room 40 (the British code center at Whitehall), the German Foreign Office detected damage to Anglo-American relations due to the blockade. Reports of severe civilian suffering in Belgium as well as Germany were reaching America and other countries. But the situation had become so severe that Germany felt that it must act drastically; one cannot eat, drink or wear sympathy. In February Germany announced that all waters around the British Isles, save for a passby route north of Scotland, would be considered a war zone. The announcement added that "owing to the British misuse of neutral flags" neutral shipping might also be endangered. It might be added that, in a post World War I English book by a Professor Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, he quotes Admiralty records to the effeet that, of the 9,000 British mines laid by January, 1915, 4,000 were adrift and unaccounted for. There seems little doubt that, in a number of instances, neutral and British ships that First Lord of the Admiralty Winston S. Churchill said the nasty Huns had sent to the bottom, had in reality been sunk by Britain's stray mines. In this early 1915 period America's war trade with Britain was well under way. After a period of indecision, President Wilson announced that America would allow open sea commerce with all belligerents, knowing full well that this meant succor to England to the exclusion of Germany. Wilson also turned a blind eye relative to British acts of war against America; flying our flag to ward off submarine attack as well as cases of boarding American ships and seizing their cargoes. But Britain, in addition to enjoying emotional biases in high places, drew considerable economic and material stimulation from the U.S. State Department Counselor Robert Lansing's papers in the Library of Congress show that he moved swiftly to circumvent opposition to British aid. In an October 13, 1914 memo to Bryan, Lansing wrote that "The President of the United States possessed no legal authority to interfere in any way with the trade between the people of the United States and the nationals of belligerent countries." It would not be until between the World Wars that international law would declare that peddling the goods of war to one belligerent constituted an act of war against that belligerent's enemy. With Wilson playing the decent but indecisive statesman and with Bryan effectively shoved aside (he would soon resign, Wilson naming Lansing secretary) and with a thoroughly Anglophile State Department, a de facto New York-Washington-London alliance took hold, with little qualification this side of outright war. To mollify American public opinion regarding British seizure and search of American merchant ships, Lansing sent play-acting protests to the Foreign Office in London. Lansing wrote in his memoirs: "In dealing with the British government there was always in my mind the conviction that we would ultimately become an ally of Great Britain, and that it would not do, therefore, to let our controversies reach a point where diplomatic correspondence gave place to action." Interestingly Lansing admits that, due to such outrages, America had cause to declare war not on Germany, but on England. Even before the time of the Lusitania incident, all trade neutrality objections had been circumvented, with a flourishing cross-Atlantic traffic in full swing. The swift and Admiralty-controlled Cunard liners were of particular value in this business. In a November, 1914 Scribner's magazine article, famed war correspondent Richard Harding Davis wrote of an early wartime Atlantic crossing: " ... on the third day, we came on deck, the news was written against the sky: Swinging from the tunnels, sailors were painting out the scarlet and black colors of the Cunard line, and substituting a mouse-like gray. Overnight we had passed into the hands of the Admiralty, and the [Davis's italics] Lusitania had emerged a cruiser." Interestingly, Lansing was in alliance with two prominent figures who would enter into even more damning and fateful conspiracies within a quarter century; First Lord of the Admiralty Winston S. Churchill and the assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Colin Simpson wrote in The Lusitania that in preparing his book he had sought the valid cargo manifest of the ship from the Cunard Company and other sources. Finally he came across it - at Hyde Park among the private papers of FDR. In Room 40, Patrick Beesly's book on 20th century British intelligence, he reported that in early 1915 Churchill had written to the president of the board of trade, Walter Runciman, that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany. The German formal announcement of indiscriminate submarining has been made to the United States to produce a deterrent effect on traffic. For our part we want the traffic the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still. . . " Regarding Lusitania's manifest, those goods boarded on the huge ship were the immediate concern and total responsibility of Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York and an openly stated Allied sympathizer. In Volume III of The Great Events of the Great War, editor Charles F. Horne, Ph.D., describes Malone's role. It must be noted that this 1923 book, published in America by National Alumni Press, is a riot of Anglomania throughout its dozens of topic chapters: "As Collector of the Port of New York, Mr. Malone was officially charged to carry out President Wilson's 'Proclamation of Neutrality' insofar as it affected shipments from New York to the belligerent countries. He, with a selected staff, examined the Lusitania before she sailed on her fatal voyage. After the catastrophe he made a report, with supporting affidavits by his staff, to the Secretary of the Treasury, explaining just what men and cargo the Lusitania actually carried. This report was not made public until December 4, 1922. It contains the following statements: "The Lusitania carried
neither masked nor unmasked guns. Subsequent to the sinking, the official German statement pointed out that Lusitania was much more than a superior luxury liner. Issued trom Berlin May 28, 1915 by Foreign Secretary Gottfried von Jagow, it may be found in Volume III of The Great Events of the War. Von Jagow stated in part: "The government of the United States proceeds on the assumption that the Lusitania is to be considered as an ordinary unarmed merchant vessel. The Imperial Government begs in this connection to point out that the Lusitania was one of the largest and fastest English commerce steamers, constructed with government funds as auxiliary cruisers, and is expressly included in the navy list published by the British Admiralty." In his reply ("Official Address to the German Government") to von Jagow, President Wilson wrote relative to Lusitania: "Your Excellency's note. . . adverts at some length to certain information which the German Imperial Government has received with regard to the character and outfit of that vessel, and your Excellency expresses the fear that this information may not have been brought to the attention of the Government of the United States. It is stated in the note that the Lusitania was undoubtedly equipped with masked guns, supplied with trained gunners and special ammunition, transporting troops from Canada, carrying a cargo not permitted under the laws of the United States to a vessel carrying passengers, and serving, in virtual effect, as an auxiliary to the naval forces of Great Britain. "It was its duty to see to it that the Lusitania was not armed for offensive action, that she was not serving as a transport, that she did not carry a cargo prohibited by the statutes of the United States, and that, if in fact she was a naval vessel of Great Britain, she should not receive clearance as a merchantman; and it performed that duty and enforced its statutes with scrupulous vigilance through its regularly constituted officials. It is able, therefore, to assure the Imperial German Government that it has been misinformed." Prior to war's outbreak, the New York Tribune reported June 19, 1913: "The reason why the crack liner Lusitania is so long delayed at Liverpool has been announced to be because her turbine engines are being completely replaced, but Cunard officials acknowledged to the Tribune correspondent today that the greyhound is being equipped with high power naval rifles [Guns] in conformity with England's new policy of arming passenger boats." In The Lusitania Case, a 1972 collection of related documents and news stories compiled and edited by C. L. Droste and W.H. Tantum, severe questions are raised regarding the American government's story from Wilson on down. A Washington dispatch to the New York American read: FOUR GUNS ON LUSITANIA Lusitania - The Cunard Turbine-Driven Quadruple-Screw Atlantic Liner was published in London in 1907, the year the ship was launched. Under the heading "The Builders of the Ship" stands this paragraph: "The story of evolution of the design and of the construction of the ship and the results of the trials carry conviction as to the experience of the Messrs. John Brown and Co., Limited, and their staff, and as to the efficient equipment of their works. Our record of this great achievement in marine construction might, however, be considered incomplete without some review of the works where the Lusitania, with its immense castings, forgings, machinery and constructural units have been manufactured with so close an approximation to perfection." The book then goes on, at great length, relative to the Harvey plate and advanced Krupp plate that evolved into the armor which girded Lusitania. This book was discovered by TBR subscriber Joe Spenner of Slayton, Oregon. Mr. Spenner wrote us: "Going through the fine print, one finds that it had to be built strictly according to British Admiralty specifications. All vital equipment had to be below the water line, and it had to be large enough to carry substantial six inch deck guns." The following relates to the question of Lusitania's manifest, further on in the above June 2 New York American story: "It was learned from a State Department official that seven other affidavits questioning the Lusitania's manifest have been received. In the manifest appeared this item: 'Furs, 349 packages, valued at $119,220, consigned to Liverpool.' It was said today that an affidavit would be submitted by a person connected with the firm making the shipment that the packages contained [highly explosive] guncotton. Evidence is expected, also, that the Lusitania's cargo contained acids used in the manufacture of explosives." On June 3 The Washington Post reported: "The State Department does not expect a charge that the Cunard Steamship Company made a false manifest. It is taken for granted that the steamship company was not responsible, as it proceeds on the sworn statements of the shippers that the packages contain the merchandise described by them." In The Lusitania Simpson stated "there was a formidable amount of load, much of it priority government shipments. In these cases special note had to be taken so that any item likely to offend the collector of customs would be left off the 'loading manifest' on which sailing clearance would be given, and then subsequently entered on the supplementary manifest which would be handed in once the Lusitania [or other such ship] was safely on the high seas. On this trip almost the entire cargo was to be contraband. " As to the ship's lack of escort as she approached the U-boat hunting grounds around the British Isles and in the Irish Sea, The Richmond (Va.) Evening Journal observed on June 17, 1915: "It seems to be certain that the Cunard Company and the British naval department were responsible in large measure for the loss of the Lusitania and the lives of her passengers and part of her crew. Several of the steamer's boilers had been put out of commission to save coal and she was incapable of making full speed. She was run through the submarine zone in broad daylight instead of under the shelter of darkness, and no attempt was made to provide her with convoy . . . the British government owes civilization an explanation of why it took no measures to protect the Lusitania." Vice Admiral Henry Oliver was responsible for shipping in the war zone involved. In Room 40 Beesly wrote that, whether Oliver thought Lusitania "was proceeding north up the Irish Sea to Liverpool" or was in even greater danger of U-boat interception in the St. George's Channel or in the southern Irish Sea, "why did he do nothing at all?" Destroyers at both Liverpool and Milford Haven were available either to hunt the U-boat or to escort the liner to port. Suspecting that the British were shipping contraband, and getting no help from the U.S. State Department, the German embassy in Washington attempted to run an ad in 50 East Coast newspapers, including those in New York, warning prospective American passengers: NOTICE! TRAVELERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that ... vessels flying the flag of Great Britain ... do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY, Washington, D.C. April 22, 1915. In The Lusitania Simpson wrote that "Many of the passengers boarding the ship that morning had not seen the papers with the German warning, but nevertheless it was not long before news of it spread throughout the ship . . . A group of travelers stood expectantly around the purser's office eyeing each other and saying nothing. There was none of the party spirit that usually went with sailings." In Room 40, Beesly published "an exact" [author's translation] from the fair copy of the log of Kapitänleutnant Walther Schweiger, the commanding officer of U-20. Schweiger's words were logged by him just before and just after the attack. Beesly noted that "it was first published in an article in the French journal L' Illustration in 1920." Times listed below are German time, one hour ahead of British time. 1.45 p.m. Excellent visibility, very fine weather. Therefore we surface and continue passage; waiting off the Queenstown [now Cobh, Republic of Ireland.] Banks seems unrewarding. 2.20 p.m. Sight dead ahead four funnels and two masts of a steamer steering straight for us [coming from the SSW toward Galley Head]. Ship identified as a large passenger steamer. 2.25 p.m. Dive to periscope depth and proceed at high speed on an intercepting course in hope that the steamer will alter to starboard along the Irish coast. Steamer alters to starboard and sets course for Queenstown so permitting an approach for a shot. Proceed until 3 p.m. in order to gain bearing. 3.10 p.m. Clear bow shot from 700 meters (G. Torpedo set for three meters depth, inclination 90 degrees, estimated speed 23 knots). Torpedo hits starboard side close abaft of the bridge, followed by a very unusually large explosion with a violent emission of smoke (far above the foremost funnel). In addition to the explosion of the torpedo there must have been a second one (boiler or coal or powder). The superstructure above the point of impact and the bridge are torn apart, fire breaks out, a thick cloud of smoke envelops the upper bridge. The ship stops at once and very quickly takes on a heavy list to starboard, at the same time starting to sink by the bow ... she looks as if she will quickly capsize ... Owing to the list fewer boats can be cleared away on the port side than on the starboard side. The ship blows off steam; forward the name Lusitania in gold letters is visible. Funnels painted black, no flag on the poop. Her speed was 20 knots. 3.25 p.m. As it appears the steamer can only remain afloat for a short time longer, dive to 24 meters and proceed out to sea. Also I could not fire a second torpedo into the mass of people saving themselves." Beesly wrote that it seemed almost unbelievable "that one of the largest and most modern liners in the world, holder, with her sister ship Mauritania, of the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, should go to the bottom far more quickly than the Titanic had done when half her side had been ripped out by an iceberg three years previously." Famed ocean wrecks explorer Robert Ballard, who found and instituted extensive diving operations at the sites of the Titanic and Germany's magnificent World War II battleship Bismarck, stated that Lusitania was much better built than was Titanic, with many more compartments. Lusitania had been constructed and engined by Messrs. John Brown and Co., Sheffield and Clydebank. On June 5, 1915, NewYork's Gaelic American published some details that Lusitania's backers would have preferred not to have seen in public print: "The Cunard Steamship Company itself is practically a British government concern. It has subsisted mainly by Government help and has been built up on subsidies. Its two finest ships, the Lusitania and the Mauritania, were built with government money and the British Government was the real owner, the Cunard Company being a mere holding company. "The Government advanced to the Cunard Company a loan of $13,000,000 payable in twenty years, at an interest of 2 3/4 per cent, to build these two vessels. The Government, besides, paid to the Cunard Company a subsidy of $340,000 a year for carrying the mails from Liverpool and Queenstown to New York, and another $750,000 a year for the consideration that the company's vessels should be available as auxiliary cruisers of the British navy in case of war. The Lusitania was in the service of the British government at the time she was sunk, and she was armed." In London, the Admiralty requested that the Board of Trade hold a formal inquiry into the sinking. It was conducted by Rt. Hon. Lord Mersey, wreck commissioner of the United Kingdom, at the Central Buildings, Westminster. Mersey had been in charge of the 1912 Titanic sinking investigation. Mersey began his initial statement by noting Germany's New York warnings, continuing: "In my view, so far from affording any excuse the threats serve only to aggravate the crime by making it plain that the intention to commit it was deliberately formed and the crime itself planned before the ship sailed . . ." Mersey then attempts to make it appear that the whole matter was the steamship company's show: "It appears that a question had arisen in the office of the Cunard Company shortly after the war broke out as to whether the transatlantic traffic would be sufficient to justify the company running their two big and expensive ships - the Lusitania and the Mauritania. The conclusion arrived at was that one of the two (the Lusitania) could be run once a month if the boiler power were reduced by one-fourth. The saving in coal and labor resulting from this reduction would, it was thought, enable the Company to avoid loss though not to make a profit." Accordingly, six of the Lusitania's boilers were closed and the ship began to run in these conditions in November 1914. She had made five round voyages in this way before the voyage in question in this inquiry. The effect of the closing of the six boilers was to reduce the attainable speed from 24 1/2 knots to 21 knots. But this reduction still left the Lusitania a considerably faster ship than any other steamer plying across the Atlantic. In my opinion this reduction of the steamer's speed was of no significance and was proper in the circumstances." Lord Mersey continued that all possible precautions had been taken relative to security against a U-boat attack; a position that would be severely and repeatedly contradicted as the Admiralty and the Fleet Street press, etc. attempted to place overwhelming blame on Captain Turner; usually without addressing the lack of escort in dangerous but home waters. Going to the period of attack, Lord Mersey stated: "At 2 p.m. the passengers were finishing their midday meal. At 2.15 p.m., when ten to fifteen miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, the weather being then clear and the sea smooth, the Captain, who was on the port side of the lower bridge, heard the call, 'There is a torpedo coming, sir,' given by the second officer. (Turner) looked to starboard and then saw a streak of foam in the wake of a torpedo traveling towards his ship. Immediately afterwards the Lusitania was struck on the starboard side somewhere between the third and fourth tunnels. The blow broke number 5 life boat to splinters. A second torpedo was fired immediately afterward, which also struck the ship on the starboard side. The two torpedoes struck the ship almost simultaneously." Sir Edward Carson, when opening the proceedings as barrister, described the policies of the German government as "contrary to international law and the usages of war" and in the eyes of all civilized countries "a deliberate attempt to murder the passengers on board the ship . . . It was a murderous attack because it was made with a deliberate and wholly unjustified intention of killing the people on board." Incredibly, and with little oversimplification, this was to be Britain's line; the best defense being an outrageous offense. It was the 1915 version (among other hate dreams and half truths) of the 1914 Belgium scenario; Huns bayoneting babies that had been tossed in the air, Belgian civilians having their hands cut off, German factories where Belgian bodies were used for the production of soap. At the hearings in New York and London, much was held from these grand jury-type inquiries. Room 40's author states that "By the middle of May, Room 40 knew very well that only U-20 had been involved, and that Schweiger's first wireless reports from sea, before any pressure could have been put on him by his superiors, had stated unequivocally that he had only fired one torpedo. But none of the people directly involved in preparing the Admiralty case were aware of this. What they did know was that the Lusitania, in common with other Cunard fast liners, had for some time past been regularly carrying shells and other munitions ordered principally from the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in the States on every eastbound voyage. "They also knew where these munitions were stowed, and could have established precisely their exact nature. The munitions were stowed, according to a telegram from Cunard's general manager in New York to their general manager in Liverpool, dated 29 June, 1915, 'in the trunkway meat boxes and 2 baggage deck. . . This 'trunkway' was on the lower . . . deck below the bridge and just forward of the foremost bulkhead of the four boiler rooms - the exact point of impact of the torpedo observed by Schweiger, conforming precisely with the unusual second explosion which he recorded." Beesly stated that these munitions were not empty shell casings but filled, as confirmed by the original Lusitania dives of John Light. Beesly continued that "these were consigned, as were all regular munitions shipments, to the 'Royal Arsenal, Woolrich.' It should be noted, again according to Cunard's New York general manager, in a telegram to Liverpool, that Lusitania on her previous voyage had carried 'Special shipments, Bethlehem, 18 cases fuses, 1,466 cases shrapnel shells filled. . .'" Lord Mersey and his assessors readily accepted the evidence of those witnesses called who testified that the ship had been struck by two torpedoes. As Beesly stated: "This of course effectively disposed of any unwelcome suggestion that the cargo might have exploded!" In Exploring the Lusitania, Ballard's exquisitely illustrated "coffeetable" book, writer Spencer Dunmore recounted that Cunard's Chairman Alfred Booth testified at the end of the London inquiry; "stating without apology that it had been a company decision to run the Lusitania at three-fourths boiler power"; resulting in a speed reduction from 24 to 21 knots. Booth stated that Cunard's directors were of the opinion that, given the slowness of submarine pursuit, the three knot difference was not of significant consequence relative to the ship's safety. Dunmore then wrote: "The inquiry ended. It placed the entire burden of guilt on Germany, while absolving Cunard and the Royal Navy of any blame." The years did not bring with them candor to Sir Winston's pen. Writing in Chartwell, Kent in 1930 he completed The World Crisis, an abridgment of his four volume history of World War I. (This was also one of his periods of severe financial jams; he hoped for great sales from this work and was accepting crucially needed help from his plutocratic friend Bernard Baruch.) In it he completely ignores the matter of Lusitania's total lack of escort in the war zone. He reprints what he stated were the four local warnings "to all British ships" and two specifically to Lusitania. They involved warning of submarines "active off south coast of Ireland" and "Submarines active in southern part of Irish Channel." The messages advised both speed and zigzagging to avoid a sub telescope fix. Unfortunately the Room 40 records, as gone over by Beesly relative to Churchill's claims about the four messages, do not jibe with Sir Winston's contention. Churchill continued: "In spite of these warnings and instructions, for which the Admiralty Trade Division deserves credit, the Lusitania [which had changed course from off the Irish Coast toward Liverpool] was proceeding along the usual trade route without zigzagging at little more than three quarter speed when, at 2:10 p.m. on May 7 she was torpedoed eight miles off the Old Head of Kinsale by Commander Schweiger in the German submarine U-20. Two torpedoes were fired, the first striking her amidships with a tremendous explosion, and the second a few minutes later striking the aft." Later in these extensive paragraphs he wrote: "This crowning outrage of the U-boat war resounded through the world. The United States, whose citizens had perished in large numbers, was convulsed with indignation, and in all parts of the great Republic the signal for armed intervention was awaited by the strongest elements of the American people. It was not given, and the war continued its destructive equipoise. But henceforward the friends of the Allies in the United States were armed with a weapon against which German influence was powerless, and before which after a lamentable interval cold-hearted policy was destined to succumb." In 1989, J.M. Winter wrote The Experience of World War I (Oxford University Press). He stated that amid the propaganda following the torpedoing "several important facts were ignored. Germany had given clear warning about the risks of traveling in the war zone. The ship was in fact carrying war materiel. The British First Sea Lord admitted to the presence of a small quantity; in fact the quantity was substantial ... the greatest neutral power, the United States of America, was inextricably drawn toward the Allied cause." Yet he still maintained that "the submarine fired two torpedoes." In The Great War Cyril Falls wrote that the severity of American reaction to the Lusitania sinking "scared [German Chancellor Theobald von] Bethmann-Hollweg and perturbed the emperor. The chancellor's advice was that the unrestricted campaign should be abandoned. The fierce old Admiral (Alfred von Tirpitz) fought him tooth and nail because he believed Germany had no hope of victory without the 'sink on sight' policy." In any event Bethmann-Hollweg prevailed, and on September 1 Germany informed the United States that its demand for the limitation of submarine warfare had been accepted. But in early 1917 a desperate Germany's resumption of its submarine offensive, plus the seldom erring German diplomatic capacity for brutish stupidity, brought America into the war. The Anglo-American war and bountiful profits hawks had won. The brilliant crystal and mirrors of Versailles, and all that it would portend, could now be seen at the end of the tunnel. Bibliography Source: THE
BARNES REVIEW |
convenience) from the masts of her merchant ships. Germany
was being starved of many military and civilian essentials.