CHAPTER 29
When they were built seven years before the Great War, the Cunard sisters Lusitania and Mauretania were the largest, fastest, most luxurious passenger ships afloat. Each was eight decks high, 785 feet long, displaced 30,395 tons, and could carry 3,000 passengers and crew. Gold and white, glass-domed, Louis XVI dining salons and mahogany-paneled lounges and smoking rooms with huge marble mantelpieces provided a fashionable setting for first-class passengers. For those who preferred not to mingle at all with other travelers, the ships offered suites, each with a parlor with a working fireplace, two bedrooms, and a private dining room with another fireplace. Besides providing comfort, the new ships offered lofty social prestige. “Just now,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer, “the man who came over in the Lusitania takes precedence of the one whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower.” Both vessels were powered by four turbine engines, which burned 1,000 tons of coal a day and propelled the ship at an average speed of 24 to 25 knots. The two liners were made capable of this speed for two reasons, one obvious, the other shadowy. Cunard’s stated purpose was to defeat the famous “Atlantic greyhounds” of the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-America Lines and reclaim for Britain the “Blue Riband,” the recognition, eventually embodied in a silver chalice, that signified the fastest passenger ship afloat. Lusitania achieved this triumph on her second voyage from Liverpool to New York, which took only four days, nineteen hours, and fifty-two minutes. Within a few years, the two Cunard ships (and a third sister, Aquitania, which entered service in 1914) were exceeded in size by the White Star liners Olympic and Titanic and then by two immense, 54,000-ton Hamburg-America liners,Vaterland and Imperator,each of which had accommodations for 5,500 passengers and crew. But for sheer speed, the Cunard ships were never overtaken.
There was another, less public reason for building great speed into the new Cunard liners. Before the war the Admiralty had no fear of submarines as a threat to Britain’s maritime supply lines. Danger to British trade, the Admiralty believed, would come from fast German liners converted to armed merchant cruisers. Accordingly, the Admiralty subsidized the building of Lusitania and her sisters; in return, Cunard agreed to make the vessels available to the government upon request; their obvious use would be as fast British armed merchant cruisers assigned to hunt down their German equivalents. The Cunard ships, therefore, were designed to carry as many as twelve 6-inch guns; the necessary magazines, shell elevators, and revolving gun rings in the deck were installed during construction. When war broke out, Mauretania and Aquitania were requisitioned but Lusitania was left in Cunard service. On September 24, 1914, the Admiralty officially informed the ship line that Lusitania’s role would be to continue running a high-speed service between Liverpool and New York with the Admiralty having first priority on her cargo space. By May 1915, Lusitania was the only giant, prewar ocean greyhound from any country still carrying passengers across the Atlantic.
It was in this primary role that Lusitania backed away from her pier into the Hudson River just after noon on May 1, 1915, and steamed down through New York harbor to begin her 202nd voyage across the Atlantic. On board, she carried 1,265 passengers, including 129 young children and infants, the bachelor millionaire sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, traveling to England on business concerning racehorses, the theatrical producer Charles Frohman,and a crew of 700; no one aboard, passenger or crew, expressed any unusual worry.
[Frohman, the most successful impresario of his day, was famous for his mordant show-business wit. When the celebrated English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell reacted to criticism of her acting by saying that she was an artiste, Frohman assured her quickly, “Madam, your secret is safe with me.”]
Over this voyage, however, ominous portents had begun to gather. The grimmest was a black-bordered news advertisement published in forty-nine American newspapers the morning the Lusitania sailed:
NOTICE
Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes waters adjacent to the British Isles; that in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or any of her allies are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
Imperial German Embassy
Washington, D.C.
The advertisement was the work of German diplomats and sympathizers in the United States who possessed what they considered to be strong evidence that Lusitania was carrying contraband in the form of munitions and military supplies on her eastward voyages back to Britain. In addition, they were frustrated by frequent statements in the American press of the greater horrors of submarine warfare as compared to blockade. “The American people cannot visualize the spectacle of a hundred thousand, even a million, German children starving by slow degrees as a result of the British blockade, but they can visualize the pitiful face of a little child drowning amidst the wreckage caused by a German torpedo,” said Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, the German embassy’s press attaché.
If the German notice worried Lusitania’s passengers, it was not enough to persuade any of them to disembark. The voyage seemed safe. Since Germany’s February commencement of submarine warfare against merchant ships, the liner had made four round-trip voyages unmolested. Should a U-boat spot Lusitania in the war zone, the liner would be flying a neutral American flag. (Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s special envoy, who traveled to Europe several times on the Lusitania after the war began, noted in his diary on February 5, 1915, “This afternoon, as we approached the Irish coast, the American flag was raised.”) Cunard and the ship’s captain both had assured the passengers that the big ship could easily outrun any submarine. Even if the worst were to happen, there would be sufficient lifeboats; after the Titanic disaster, Cunard had increased the number of Lusitania’s lifeboats from twenty-two to forty-eight.
In fact, there was reason for concern, but it was one of which Lusitania’s passengers were unaware. The ship’s cargo space was—just as the Germans claimed—being used to carry American munitions to Britain. As Lusitania prepared for her last voyage, 1,248 cases of 3-inch artillery shells—four shells to a case—and 4,927 boxes of rifle ammunition—each case containing 1,000 rounds and the total weighing 173 tons, which included ten tons of explosive powder—had been placed in the liner’s cargo. Whether this cargo exploded when a torpedo hit the ship has been the subject of many years of passionate, highly technical, and still unresolved debate.
The ocean voyage was serene. Captain William Turner, a short, stocky, red-faced man known as Bowler Bill for his taste in off-duty headgear, took his meals alone on the bridge to avoid sitting with passengers, whom he had once described as “a lot of bloody monkeys.” As Lusitania approached the German-designated war zone, he asked male passengers to help keep her dark by not lighting their cigars on deck after dinner. At 8:00 a.m. on May 7, Turner was on his bridge. Because dense fog had lowered visibility, he slowed the ship from 21 to 15 knots and began sounding the foghorn. By mid-morning, when the mists were blowing away, he increased speed to 18 knots and set a course for Queenstown on the Irish coast. His plan was to pass through the St. George’s Channel, between Ireland and Wales, and be off the Liverpool bar the next morning at 4:30.
Meanwhile, on that same morning of May 7, Captain Walther Schwieger was standing in the conning tower of U-20 near the entrance to the St. George’s Channel, staring into the fog enshrouding his submarine while he charged his electric batteries. The previous day had brought him success: using three torpedoes, he had sunk two British ships. Now, running low on fuel and with only three torpedoes left, Schwieger made a decision: if the fog had not cleared by noon, he would end his cruise and return to Wilhelmshaven. He ordered the boat to submerge and went below for breakfast. Just before noon, he heard the sound of a ship’s engines coming from the surface over his head. Allowing ten minutes for the vessel to move away, Schwieger carefully rose to periscope depth and saw the British light cruiser Juno zigzagging away from him toward Queenstown. The fog had cleared, the sea was calm, and the sun was bright. He surfaced. And then, at 1:20 p.m., Schwieger saw a plume of smoke fourteen miles to the southwest. He waited, and the source of the smoke grew larger and took shape as a massive steamship with four tall funnels. Submerging, Schwieger set a course that would intercept this vessel at a point approximately ten miles off a rocky coastal promontory called the Old Head of Kinsale.
Two British publications, the 1914 editions of Jane’s Fighting Ships and Brassey’s Naval Annual, were standard issue aboard every German U-boat, and both publications placed Lusitania in the category of “Royal Navy Reserved Merchant Cruiser”—in effect, an armed liner. U-20 also carried a German merchant marine officer whose duty was to help identify any merchant ship targets whose nationality was in doubt. Watching the approaching steamer through the periscope, this civilian officer became increasingly certain of what he saw: “Either the Lusitania or the Mauretania, both armed cruisers used for carrying troops,” he told Schwieger. (In fact, at that moment, Mauretania was 150 miles away at Avonmouth, taking aboard 5,000 soldiers for the Dardanelles.) Schwieger had in his sights what he considered a legitimate target.
At 2:10 p.m., he fired a single torpedo at a range of 800 yards. The torpedo struck the starboard side of the ship just behind the bridge and slightly forward of the first funnel. No second torpedo was fired, but the detonation of the first was followed by a second, larger explosion in the same part of the ship. The forward superstructure was shattered, the bow ruptured, and fire and smoke billowed along the decks. According to Schwieger’s log, Lusitania immediately slowed and heeled to starboard with water rising quickly over her bow. Still submerged, U-20 came closer and made a circuit of the sinking ship. Staring through the periscope, the civilian pilot said, “Yes, by God, it’s the Lusitania.”
On board Lusitania, some passengers were still at lunch and others were strolling on deck enjoying the spring sunshine when the torpedo struck. At first, there was concern, but no panic. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt devoted himself to “trying to put life jackets on women and children.” Charles Frohman, smoking an after-lunch cigar, was handed a life jacket, but “soon gave it away to a woman.” Together, passengers and crew members began tying other life jackets onto wicker baskets brought from the nursery, in which infants remained sleeping. When it became apparent that the ship’s rapid list to starboard would make it difficult to fill and launch the lifeboats, concern turned to alarm, then terror. The lifeboats on the starboard side now hung far out over the sea, while those on the port side swung in over the rails or against the side of the ship. Several lifeboats were released at one end only; the first boat launched in this manner was filled with women and children who spilled helplessly into the water seventy feet below. Other boats, lowered too hastily and steeply, touched water bow or stern first and foundered immediately. Still others smashed inboard against the side of the vessel, crushing their passengers as the lifeboat disintegrated. At the end, as Lusitania’s bow plunged toward the granite seafloor 300 feet below, the liner’s stern rose high in the air; at this angle, guy wires snapped and towering seventy-eight-foot funnels and even taller wireless masts toppled onto the decks. Rumbling internal explosions of steam hurled debris, bodies, and huge bubbles of water into the air. When the clouds of steam had cleared, Lusitania was gone. Since the torpedo struck, eighteen minutes had passed. Only six of the liner’s forty-eight lifeboats floated amid the wreckage, and hundreds of men and women were struggling individually in the calm, green, sunlit sea. A ship’s junior officer swimming through the wreckage found himself listening to the cries of infants floating nearby in their wicker baskets. There was nothing he could do. Gradually, the baskets sank.
Twelve hundred and one people drowned in the catastrophe, among them ninety-four children, of whom thirty-five were babies. Vanderbilt, Frohman, and 126 other Americans died; a total of 764 lives were saved. More would have been rescued if the cruiserJuno,hurrying back from Queenstown and insight of the survivors in the water, had not received a peremptory signal from the Admiralty, ordering her back into port. This command, stemming from the policy of “no live bait in the presence of submarines” laid down after the sinking of Cressy and her sisters, resulted in the passage of almost two hours before fishing trawlers arrived and began pulling survivors out of the sea.
Most of the world was horror-stricken. The first bodies brought in were photographed and the pictures—mostly those of dead children—were circulated in newspapers, ostensibly to help relatives identify their dead. Photographs of corpses recovered later were never seen by the public, but the American consul in Queenstown reported that “faces registered every shading of the grotesque and hideous. The lips and noses were eaten away by sea birds and the eyes gouged out . . . the trunks were bloated and distended with gases and the limbs were partially eaten away or bitten clean off so that stumps of raw bone were left protruding.” The coroner’s jury at Kinsale charged the submarine’s officers “and the Emperor and Government of Germany, under whose orders they acted, with the crime of willful and wholesale murder.”
Schwieger entered in U-20’s log that he had watched the calamity with mixed feelings, but his superiors and many of his countrymen were jubilant. Admiral von Pohl signaled: “My highest appreciation of commander and crew for success achieved of which High Seas Fleet is proud.” The Koln-ische Volkszeitung declared: “With joyful pride we contemplate the latest deed of our navy.” Across Germany, schoolchildren were granted a holi-day. A private citizen in Munich created a copper medal depicting, on one side, passengers lining up at a booth from which a skeleton was issuing tickets, and on the other side, the sinking Lusitania, crammed with guns, armored cars, and airplanes.
[Anti-German feeling in Britain and other countries was vigorously promoted by the activity of an American citizen living in London. The German in Munich stopped when he had struck forty-four medals. One of these fell into British hands, and 300,000 copies were made in Britain and distributed around the world as evidence of German barbarism. These copies were produced by Gordon Selfridge, an American who had opened a department store in Oxford Street in 1909 and subsequently become a friend of Asquith’s. In 1937, Selfridge became a naturalized British subject.]
From the point of view of American and international law, the munitions aboard Lusitania would have justified the stopping of the ship and—once its cargo had been identified and its passengers and crew allowed to take to lifeboats—its destruction. But the sudden, brutal torpedoing and the overwhelming loss of innocent lives made law appear irrelevant and shocked the world. Before the sinking, Americans had been angry at Great Britain because of the blockade; it was likely that, over time, this resentment would have festered and grown worse. After the sinking of Lusitania, American indignation and, ultimately, wrath were focused on the German submarine war, not the British blockade.
The critical question for Britain and Germany was how the American people, and particularly President Woodrow Wilson, would react. Two former presidents, Roosevelt and Taft, called for war. From London, the U.S. ambassador, Walter H. Page, reported that unofficial opinion in England was that the United States must fight or forfeit all respect. Colonel Edward House, the president’s friend and confidential emissary and Page’s guest of honor at an embassy dinner, emotionally told the others around the table that within a month the United States would be at war. In Berlin, U.S. Ambassador James W. Gerard had a similar premonition; he reserved sleeping-car accommodations on a train for Switzerland for himself and his wife.
The president of the United States had a different reaction. Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a man of iron Calvinist principles and deep Presbyterian faith, believed that his country had a special mission in the world. America had been spared the history of tyranny and corruption that had debased older societies. Coming late into being, it now stood as man’s hope; its destiny was to guide, liberalize, and succor all less fortunate nations and peoples. This mission and destiny were not to be squandered by rushing heedlessly into a European war. Wilson’s faith applied to all aspects of his life, political and personal. “My life would not be worth living if it were not for the driving power of religion,” he once told a friend visiting the White House. At the core of his belief was the conviction of being one of God’s elect, a status justified only by unremitting effort to accomplish good. Wilson’s Calvinist God, as described by the president’s biographer August Heckscher, “was stern, absolute in his judgements, and responsible for every event in history and in the lives of individual men and women. To him, and not to any worldly powers, the believer owed a total obedience.”
Wilson acquired this creed from his father, the Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister of Scottish descent who delivered it from his pulpits in Staunton, Virginia; Augusta, Georgia; and Columbia, South Carolina. Thus imbued, eighteen-year-old Tommy Wilson, a tall, thin boy with a long face, gray eyes, sandy hair, and large ears, arrived at the College of New Jersey, eventually to be renamed Princeton University. (Later, at his mother’s request, Wilson renamed himself, taking up her maiden name, Woodrow.) He received a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School and a doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins; he held professorships of history at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton; he became president of Princeton, and, in 1910, governor of New Jersey. He was immediately considered a presidential possibility, but at the 1912 Democratic convention in Baltimore, he won only on the forty-sixth roll-call ballot. In the November election, Wilson won on a plurality, receiving a million fewer popular votes than Taft and Roosevelt combined, but 435 electoral votes against 84 for Theodore Roosevelt and 8 for President William Howard Taft.
Once in office, Wilson easily dominated his administration, particularly in foreign policy. Wilson was his own secretary of state.
[Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, was an outsized figure in American history who occupied an awkward position in Wilson’s first administration. As a leader of the free-silver movement and an opponent of the gold standard, Bryan had captured the 1896 Democratic convention in Chicago with his celebrated cry, “I shall not aid in pressing down upon the bleeding brow of labor this crown of thorns; I shall not help crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” On the spot, at the age of thirty-six, the orator was nominated for the presidency. Defeated by William McKinley, he continued as the champion of the agrarian West and South against the eastern bankers and industrialists. Nominated twice again for president—in 1900 and 1908—he did not choose to run a fourth time in 1912, but threw his support to Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. Wilson, becoming president, offered Bryan the office of secretary of state in gratitude for the Nebraskan’s role at the convention and also because his friends advised him that not to do so would be “political suicide.”
In Washington, Bryan quickly became the despair of foreign diplomats: “talking to Mr. Bryan is like writing on ice,” said the British ambassador. When he served grape juice instead of wine to European ambassadors, he became a subject of ridicule; his relations with the press deteriorated until “by self-inflicted degrees [he] passed from the vulnerable to the absurd.” Nevertheless, because of his fame, his oratorical prowess, and his thirty-year leadership of the Democratic party, Bryan, four years younger than Wilson, always seemed the older man.]
On important matters, he cared little about the views of members of his Cabinet, but he kept a tight finger on the pulse of public opinion. Wilson’s own underlying sympathies were with Britain and the Allies and he told the British ambassador, “Everything that I love most in the world is at stake. . . . If they [the Germans] succeed, we shall be forced to take such measures of defense here as will be fatal to our form of government and to American ideals.” Wilson’s aversion to war and his sense of America’s higher mission were, he was certain, shared by the overwhelming majority of his countrymen; Congress, he knew, had strong isolationist leanings. Accordingly, he was determined that America remain neutral. From the beginning, the effort to preserve this neutrality was arduous; ultimately, it became herculean. At bottom, the difference between Great Britain and Germany was that the injuries inflicted by the two belligerents upon America were of unequal magnitude: the British navy stopped ships and sometimes seized property; the German navy sank ships and sometimes killed people.
Wilson had been at lunch on Saturday, May 8, 1915, when news of the Lusitania sinking was brought to him. By evening, he knew that over a thousand lives, many of them American, had been lost. Quietly, he slipped out into the night and, ignoring a light rain, walked alone along Pennsylvania Avenue. Returning to the White House, he retreated into his study. Over the weekend, he consulted no one, went to church, played golf, and, on Sunday evening, sat down to write the speech he was scheduled to give in Philadelphia the following day. On Monday, he addressed 15,000 people, many of them newly naturalized citizens. America, he told them, was a peaceful nation and therefore, “the example of America must be a special example . . . the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.” In Philadelphia, Wilson’s words stirred prolonged cheering; when this language reached England, mention of the word “America” was publicly booed and hissed.
[The Lusitania crisis coincided with turbulent events in the president’s private life. On August 6, 1914, the second day of the war in Europe, Ellen Wilson, Woodrow’s wife of twenty-nine years, had died of Bright’s disease in their White House bedroom. On May 4, 1915, three days before the sinking of the Lusitania, Wilson had declared his love to a widow named Edith Galt and had been gently rebuffed. Undeterred, Wilson wrote to her after his Philadelphia speech, “I do not know just what I said in Philadelphia . . . because my heart was in such a whirl.”]
On Tuesday, May 11, the Cabinet met and Wilson read aloud the typed draft of a note he had written to Germany regarding the Lusitania. In the note he expressed disbelief that the German government could have sanctioned so illegal and inhumane an act and then went on to explore in moral terms the nature of submarine warfare against merchant shipping:
The government of the United States desires to call the attention of the Imperial German Government . . . to . . . the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is practically impossible for the officers of a submarine at sea to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize of her; and if they cannot put a prize crew on board her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all on board to the mercy of the sea in her small boats. . . . Manifestly, submarines cannot be used against merchantmen . . . without an inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.
Despite the careful, pedagogic tone of Wilson’s language, Bryan objected that the draft was too pro-British and reiterated his opposition to Americans traveling on ships belonging to nations at war. Robert Lansing, the State Department Counselor, riposted that it was too late for that; the American government already had told American citizens that it would hold the German government to “a strict accountability” for American lives and property. The United States “has permitted in silence hundreds of American citizens to travel in British steamships crossing the war zone.” Now, some of them had died. The only course, Lansing urged, was to demand an official disavowal of the attack and a guarantee that it would not happen again. Bryan disagreed and demanded that the United States treat the British and Ger-man systems of economic coercion—blockade and submarine warfare—as equally objectionable; whatever protest was sent to Berlin, he said, must be balanced by an equally vigorous protest to London. The secretary of state was overruled and the American note sent to Berlin emphasized the right of American citizens to sail wherever they wished on whatever ship they chose.
[Naturally, German newspapers vociferously agreed with Bryan. An American passenger on a British merchant ship was called a Schutzengel, guardian angel, and one published caricature depicted a mate reporting to the captain of a British ship that the vessel was ready to sail. “Are you sure the American Schutzengel is on board?” the captain asks.]
Meanwhile, a German embassy official in Washington made a statement that made things worse. Declaring that it was certain that Lusitania had been armed and was transporting munitions, Dr. Dernburg declared that if Americans traveled on unarmed ships carrying no contraband they would be “as safe as if they were in a cradle.” However, all armed vessels carrying contraband would be sunk on sight and Americans traveling on these vessels would be “traveling on a volcano.” This message, challenging a right Americans had been encouraged to believe they inherently possessed—the right to travel freely on the high seas—stirred a fresh wave of anger. Still, Wilson remained cautious, telling both Sir Cecil Spring-Rice and the German ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, that he was awaiting details.
In Germany, where Schwieger and the men of U-20 had been proclaimed heroes, Wilson’s note, arriving on May 15, provoked more bitter argument. Already, Bachmann and Tirpitz had replied to the chancellor’s appeal of May 6, warning Bethmann-Hollweg that submarine operations must either be continued without modification or abandoned outright. To deal with their obstinacy, the chancellor appealed to the kaiser. The same day, May 10—after the Lusitania’s sinking but before receipt of Wilson’s protest note—William had told Bachmann that “for the immediate future, no neutral vessel shall be sunk. This is necessary on political ground for which the chancellor is responsible. It is better that an enemy ship be allowed to pass than that a neutral shall be destroyed. A renewal of a sharper procedure is kept in view.” Subsequently, Bethmann-Hollweg, assuming that this order had been circulated to the fleet, informed Washington that “the most definite instructions have repeatedly been issued to German war vessels to avoid attacks on neutral shipping.” The chancellor and the kaiser, however, had been deceived. The Naval Staff, now persuaded that the war at sea could be won only by U-boats, was determined not to give up, and Bachmann deliberately did not issue the emperor’s order to the fleet. Behind this disobedience lay an important change in German thinking about the ends and means of naval warfare. By the end of April 1915, the naval command realized that its original justification for beginning submarine warfare against commerce—as simple retaliation against the British blockade—no longer sufficed. The Naval Staff now believed that the war at sea could only be won by a U-boat offensive against merchant shipping. Accordingly, the U-boat campaign was represented within the navy and to the German people as an inevitable evolution in naval warfare, coming in a form perhaps unprecedented but unquestionably legitimate. Admiral Scheer expressed the widespread conviction of his fellow officers when he said, “In a comparatively short space of time, U-boat warfare against commerce has become a form of warfare which . . . is adapted to the nature of modern war and must remain a part of it. For us Germans, U-boat warfare upon commerce is a deliverance. It has put British predominance at sea in question. Being pressed by sheer necessity we must legalize this new weapon, or, to speak more accurately, accustom the world to it.”
The German reply to the first American Lusitania note attempted to blame Great Britain for the disaster. Lusitania, the Germans said, was an armed auxiliary cruiser, carrying guns on its decks, that habitually carried munitions to Britain and often illegally flew the American flag. These facts, the German note continued, warranted a careful examination by the American government; until this was done, Germany would delay its response to the American demand that U-boat warfare be halted. While this note was being prepared, Ambassador Gerard spoke to the German foreign minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, and then cabled Washington: “I am myself positive that Germany will continue this form of warfare. . . . The prospect of war with America is contemplated with equanimity.”
During May—in spite of the kaiser’s May 10 order to stop sinking neutral vessels and despite the German government’s promise to the United States that neutral shipping would be spared—Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish steamers were torpedoed without warning. Bethmann-Hollweg realized that the imperial command was being disobeyed and on May 31 convened a general meeting at which the kaiser presided. At this conference, Admiral von Müller supported the chancellor’s insistence that submarine operations be moderated. Further support for moderation came from General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the Army General Staff, who feared the effect a break with the United States would have on other neutrals, particularly Bulgaria. Admirals Tirpitz and Bachmann “stubbornly repeated that they could not discuss any modification of U-boat orders and were only interested to know whether or not submarine operations were to be continued.” William was confronted with another of those decisions he hated to make. Personally, he supported the chancellor, yet he never wished to appear to the public as less courageous than his generals and admirals. Now, not only the military men, but also the press and the Reichstag were generating enormous pressure to unleash the submarines. William’s solution was to announce that if U-boat warfare were to be abandoned, the chancellor must publicly announce that he alone was responsible. Bethmann-Hollweg accepted this burden. Accordingly, on June 1, a new imperial command was issued that repeated the order Bachmann had suppressed a few weeks before: neutral ships were to be spared; U-boats were not to attack any vessel unless they were absolutely certain that the intended victim was an enemy. And, of supreme importance, passenger liners of all nations, even enemies, were not to be touched. Tirpitz and Bachmann lamented that this was an admission that Lusitania had been illegally torpedoed and an abandonment of Germany’s strongest weapon against England. Both declared that they could not be responsible for executing the order and asked to be relieved of their commands. The two admirals were commanded to remain at their posts and, this time, the order was circulated to the fleet. Bethmann-Hollweg had maintained a precarious ascendancy.
When President Wilson met with his Cabinet to consider a reply to the German note of May 28, he brought to the meeting his own typewritten draft of a message in effect setting aside the German allegations that Lusitania had been an auxiliary cruiser carrying munitions: “Whatever may be the facts regarding the Lusitania,” Wilson had written, “the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning and that men, women and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.” In the note’s closing paragraph, Wilson reiterated an American position from which, throughout the months of controversy with Germany, the American government refused to retreat: “The United States cannot admit that the proclamation of a war zone . . . may be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights . . . of American citizens bound on lawful errands as passengers on ships of belligerent nation-ality.”
It was on these points—the right of Americans to travel on belligerent ships, and the larger issue of whether Germany and Britain were being treated equally—that the president and his secretary of state ultimately broke. Germany had promised that ships flying the American flag would not be attacked; the sticking point was the safety of American citizens traveling on British liners. Bryan had watched with mounting dismay the president’s determination to confront Germany on this issue. A lifelong pacifist, the secretary of state had argued in favor of restrictions on the right of Americans to travel in the war zone on ships of belligerent powers. There was more to the growing breach: Bryan, three times his party’s candidate for president, now felt himself ignored, even humiliated, as Wilson turned increasingly to others—the ubiquitous, backstage Colonel House and the ultralegalistic Counselor Lansing—for advice. As discussions on the second Lusitania note continued, Bryan decided that the language in the note was provocative and must be redrafted. One who was present at the Cabinet meeting noticed that the secretary seemed to be laboring under great strain and sat back in his chair most of the time with his eyes closed. Suddenly, Bryan leaned forward and snapped, “You people are not neutral. You are taking sides.” The president, with a “steely glitter” in his eyes, responded, “Mr. Bryan, you are not warranted in making such an assertion. We all doubtless have our opinions in this matter but there are none of us who can justly be accused of being unfair.” On June 5, in an emotional interview with the president, Bryan announced that he had decided to resign, and on June 7, the Great Commoner left office. Lansing was appointed his successor; the following day, the second American note, as written by the president, was sent to Berlin.
At one point in the argument between them, Bethmann-Hollweg asked Admiral Bachmann what concessions could safely be offered to the United States, adding that “it must be taken for granted that some concession must be made to America, for Germany, if neutral, would not tolerate that a ship with 1,500 German passengers on board should be sunk without warning.” Bachmann repeated what he had said before: no concessions should be offered, and modification of existing orders to the U-boats was unthinkable. Nevertheless, even Germans who supported the chancellor resented the American claim to an inalienable right to travel on belligerent ships. In a note to America, the German government observed that “there would appear to be no compelling necessity for American citizens to travel to Europe in time of war on ships carrying an enemy flag.” As a solution, Jagow proposed that U.S. citizens travel to Europe only on four specially marked passenger liners, which would travel with advance notice to the German navy and which would carry no munitions or other contraband. The American government, the proposal continued, could establish such a service by purchasing four of the German passenger liners that had sought sanctuary in New York. American newspaper reaction to the proposal was explosive: “arrogant,” “preposterous,” “un-heard-of,” cried the editorials; “Americans [are told they] may enjoy limited neutral rights if they submit to German regulations,” declared a Nebraska journal.
Wilson shared this indignation, but he also realized that the overwhelming majority of Americans remained opposed to going to war. And, in any case, the nation was in no position to threaten military action. Accordingly, he rejected the idea of special passenger steamers and continued to negotiate. At the end of July, he made a statement highly agreeable to the chancellor and his allies within the German government: “The events of the past two months have clearly indicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activities of the Imperial German navy within the so-called war zone in substantial accord with accepted practices of regulated warfare.” In other words, if the U-boat captains followed the rules laid down in the kaiser’s June 1 order and behaved as they had in recent weeks, the U.S. government would tolerate German submarine warfare against merchant shipping.
Through the summer of 1915, while Bethmann-Hollweg was struggling to placate Wilson and find some limitation on U-boat warfare that would appease America, Admiral von Tirpitz shook with rage. He hated the chancellor, whom he considered a coward and a traitor; he despised Pohl, whom he described as “ghastly,” “servile,” and “a contemptible little man.” Tirpitz, the founder of the German navy, who in peacetime had insisted that the building of German dreadnoughts should never be limited simply because of English concern, now seemed unperturbed at the idea that submarine warfare might bring the United States into the war. He disapproved of “kowtowing” to anyone and was indignant at the conciliatory tone of German diplomatic notes after the sinking ofLusitania.“America is so shamelessly, so barefacedly pro-English,” he wrote on July 25, 1915, “that it is hard to credit that we shall eat humble pie. Yet in this connection I believe nothing to be impossible. . . . I, for my part, will not join in a formal renunciation of submarine warfare, whereby we should abandon the only weapon we have in our hands against England in the future.” When, because of American protests, submarine warfare was restricted, Tirpitz’s hatred of the chancellor intensified. In the future, he told himself, he would use all his powers of persuasion and his access to the machinery of political propaganda to remove this incubus on the German navy and empire.
Not long after Woodrow Wilson’s offer to tolerate limited submarine warfare, another British passenger liner was sunk without warning. On August 19, off Kinsale, the captain of U-24 stopped the English steamer Durnsley, permitted the crew to enter their lifeboats, and then exploded bombs in the vessel’s hold. The Durnsley went down slowly and as she was foundering, another, larger steamer approached. Schneider realized that this new vessel was a passenger ship but, “as I had been shot at by a large steamer on the 14th, I decided to attack this one from under water.” He fired a torpedo. His target was the 15,801-ton White Star liner Arabic, bound for New York with twenty American citizens on board. The ship sank; among the forty-four passengers who died, three were Americans. No warning had been given; the act, therefore, was in defiance not only of the kaiser’s June 1 order to the Imperial Navy but of the Lusitania settlement President Wilson was about to accept. The American president and government, besides having to deal with fresh tragedy, had been made to look foolish.
On August 26, the German chancellor convened a conference at Pless, in Silesia, to deal with the now merged crises of the Lusitania and the Arabic. He announced at the start that it was useless to belittle the anger these incidents were provoking and that unless strong assurances were given quickly, war with the United States was probable. Further, he said that he could no longer accept sole responsibility for calling an end to the submarine campaign in the face of German popular opinion. “I cannot continue to walk on a volcano,” he cried. General von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the General Staff, who still hoped that America would stay out of the war, supported Bethmann-Hollweg. Indeed, once again, everyone present was united against the two old seamen, Tirpitz and Bachmann, who stubbornly insisted that the U-boat campaign must either be abandoned outright or continued without modification. In the end, the two admirals were overridden and the kaiser authorized the chancellor to conclude a general settlement with America. Both admirals immediately asked to be relieved. Müller struck quickly, removing Bachmann as Chief of the Naval Staff and installing Admiral Henning von Holtzen-dorff in his place. Holtzendorff, an experienced seaman, an opponent of Tirpitz, and a personal friend of the chancellor, believed that the U-boat campaign was overvalued and that if it was to continue, it must be properly regulated. William refused to accept Tirpitz’s resignation, declaring that in time of war no officer was permitted to quit his post without imperial permission. Nevertheless, weary of the admiral’s habitual insubordination and bullying language, the kaiser exiled him from Supreme Headquarters.
Eventually, after an exchange of diplomatic notes lasting more than three months, the German chancellor managed to satisfy the American president. On August 28, William issued an order that no passenger ships of any nationality, enemy or neutral, large or small, were to be sunk without warning. Further, the captains of the attacking submarines were to be responsible for the safety of passengers and crew. Once the president was informed of this order, American feelings calmed and the danger of American entry into the war receded. Thus, in three crises with the United States—the first in February, occasioned by the mere announcement of submarine warfare against merchant ships; the second over the sinking of the Lusitania in May; and the third over the sinking of the Arabic in August—Bethmann-Hollweg had taken the lead in drafting Germany’s notes to the United States and in influencing the kaiser’s orders to the U-boats.
And then, almost immediately, another episode occurred. On Septem-ber 4, Walther Schwieger, the U-boat captain who sank Lusitania, torpedoed the 10,920-ton British liner Hesperian without warning off the coast of Ireland. There were Americans on board, but none were among the thirty-two persons killed. Nevertheless, the sinking was in flagrant defiance of the promise just given to Wilson. When asked to explain, German authorities at first assured the American government that no German submarine had been operating near the spot; they suggested that the ship had struck a mine. Later, a board of American officers concluded that the liner had been torpedoed, not mined, and relations between Germany and America again deteriorated. Finally, on September 18, still fearful of alienating American opinion and to ensure compliance with the kaiser’s promise, Admiral von Holtzendorff recalled all U-boats from the English Channel and the Western Approaches, where the densest concentration of U.S. shipping occurred. He sanctioned continued operations in the North Sea, but decreed that they could be carried out only in strict accord with the prize regulations. Pohl, the commander of High Seas Fleet submarines, refused to allow his vessels to operate against commerce under prize regulations procedures and, rather than obeying Holtzendorff’s command, withdrew all High Seas Fleet U-boats from the North Sea, virtually suspending the U-boat campaign for the rest of the year. As a sop to German public opinion, Holtzendorff and Pohl agreed that a small-scale submarine campaign should be waged in the Mediterranean, where few U.S. merchantmen were to be found.
Thus, by the autumn of 1915, the American and German governments had reached an agreement that, in essence, involved an American veto on U-boat tactics. The U.S. government had pronounced the submarine campaign to be legitimate and permissible only when it was directed solely against enemy, not neutral, shipping and provided also that all passenger ships were left untouched. Overall, by September 1915, when the German government settled its differences with the United States, U-boats had sunk 790,000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping. Of this, about 570,000 tons was British. This had been done in seven months by a fleet of about thirty-five submarines, which was being increased every month by four new boats of better design. Since the campaign began in February 1915, thirty U-boats had been reinforced by thirty-five new submarines; during the same period, fifteen U-boats had been lost. Thus, in September 1915, when the first submarine campaign was abandoned, fifty operational U-boats were available. For the German admirals this was stark, infuriating evidence that the campaign had been canceled for political, not military reasons.
The German admirals also knew that, under the rules by which they had been forced to operate, the submarine campaign had failed in its essential purpose. Despite losses, neutral traders had not been intimidated. Nor had economic pressure on Great Britain reached anything like the intensity necessary to coerce the British government into lifting the North Sea blockade. Throughout 1915, monthly imports of foodstuffs and raw materials into Great Britain had exceeded in volume the imports during the corresponding months of peace in 1913. Thanks to the great number of German and Austro-Hungarian merchant ships captured, seized, or detained in the early months of the war, the total tonnage available to Britain and her allies was actually greater in the autumn of 1915 than it had been at the outbreak of war a year before. But, for Britain, there were ominous signs: new merchant-ship tonnage launched, amounting to 416,000 tons for the last quarter of 1914, fell in the first quarter of 1915 to 267,000 tons and in the last two quarters of that year to 148,000 tons and 146,000 tons respectively. The latter figure was only one-third of the tonnage sunk during that quarter. The reason was that shipyards, labor, and materials had all been diverted to other work. Skilled men from the yards had been recruited for Kitchener’s New Army, while yard space and materials had been assigned to Fisher’s new warship-building program. As a result, in 1915, only 650,000 tons of new merchant ships was delivered. Meanwhile, hundreds of oceangoing vessels, amounting to 20 percent of British tonnage, had been requisitioned for military purposes, transporting food, munitions, stores, and supplies. This reduction in shipping available for general trade was substantially greater than the losses inflicted by the U-boats.
Nevertheless, for Britain, the primary achievement of the war at sea in 1915 was that British diplomacy and the Royal Navy had combined to bring all import trade bound for northern Europe under British surveillance and control. During the first submarine campaign, 743 neutral ships carrying supplies to Germany had been stopped by British patrols and their cargoes either seized outright or retained with compensation; this number was three times the number of British ships sunk during the same period by U-boat attack. By December 1914, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were importing only the supplies necessary for home consumption; thus Germany was deprived of even her usual imports of foods and raw materials from her neutral neighbors. With each successive month, the British grip on German economic life tightened; by January 1916, the German people were showing signs of hardship. Textile factories were cut off from raw materials, so collars, cuffs, napkins, and handkerchiefs were made of paper. Sheets were made of wood pulp, which could not be washed. Germans cooked without fats. Shortages stirred discontent. Scarcities were not believed to be genuine. Suspicion abounded that rich people continued to dine sumptuously: townspeople generally accused farmers of hoarding food. Looking into the future, the prospects were bleaker. Germany depended not so much on imported foods as on imported fertilizers and fodder for animals; without fertilizers, the sandy soil of northern Germany would not yield normal harvests; without fodder, the herds would diminish.
Meanwhile, even as it imposed the blockade, Britain maintained a better relationship with America than Germany was able to do. While Germany had obtained grudging American tolerance of its submarine war against shipping so long as passenger ships were not attacked and American citizens not killed, Britain had established wide American acceptance for the blockade. This stemmed, in part, from the degree to which American prosperity depended upon trade with the Allies. It was true that American shipping, industrial, and farm interests regularly protested about the blockade to Washington and that on November 5, 1915, Secretary of State Lansing had told the British government that the doctrine of continuous voyage was “ineffective, illegal and indefensible.” Nevertheless, the blockade continued and no serious rupture in diplomatic relations occurred. The principal reason for this differing treatment of the two belligerents was overwhelmingly simple: the British blockade threatened American property rights, while the German submarine campaign threatened American lives. The point was made in a New York Tribune editorial:
There is no parallel between our differences with Germany . . . and . . . with Great Britain. . . . No question of life divides Great Britain from us and Sir Edward Grey has neither asserted the right of murder nor has he been asked by us to give assurance against murder. Our cases against Great Britain are purely civil.
In January 1916, after seventeen months of war, the German army occupied 90 percent of Belgium and thousands of square miles of French and Russian territory, but victory remained beyond reach. Meanwhile, the German colonies had been stripped away, the German merchant marine, second largest in the world, had been driven from the seas, the surface fleet of the Imperial Navy was tethered to its moorings, and overseas imports of foodstuffs and raw materials had been cut off. Confronting stalemate on land and sea, General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, invited a number of generals and admirals to the Ministry of War in Berlin on December 30, 1915, where he offered two solutions. The first, he declared, would be a massive offensive on the Western Front. In February, the German army, equipped with a great superiority in artillery, would be hurled at the French fortress complex around Verdun. To hold this vital ground, he calculated, the French would pour in many divisions. Falkenhayn’s objective was not so much to capture the city of Verdun or to defeat the French army outright; rather, he hoped to turn Verdun into an abattoir where he meant to bleed the French army to death under German shellfire. This attrition, Falkenhayn was convinced, would force France out of the war by the end of 1916. Then, the general asked the admirals for help. He had previously supported moderation in U-boat warfare so as not to antagonize the neutrals; now he reversed himself and asked the naval leaders to prosecute a vigorous, unrestricted submarine campaign to complement his Verdun offensive. The object was to discourage Britain so that once France was defeated, she, too, would make peace.
The confidence of the German naval command in its U-boats during the winter of 1916 was extraordinarily high. The submarine force had grown in numbers and the submariners were enthusiastic. Holtzendorff, the new Chief of the Naval Staff, who three months before had doubted the value of the U-boat campaign, had changed his mind. German shipping experts had told him that, with seventy U-boats available instead of the thirty-five in service in 1915, the German navy could destroy 160,000 tons of merchant shipping per month, meaning an annual loss of almost 2 million tons. Against this loss, British shipyards could only build 650,000 tons a year. Accordingly, Holtzendorff calculated, “if all restrictions were removed . . . English resistance would be broken in at most six months.” Tirpitz agreed: if submarine warfare was restarted soon and executed ruthlessly, England’s difficulties would become insurmountable. With France and Britain on their knees, Germany need not fear America’s entry into war; long before the United States could provide significant assistance, the Allies would have surrendered.
To document his case, Holtzendorff composed a state paper recommending to the chancellor that submarine warfare be recommenced on the Western Approaches to the British Isles; that all enemy ships, armed or not, be destroyed without warning; that surfacing to examine neutral papers be avoided as much as possible; that torpedoes become the preferred method of attack; that all passenger vessels should be left alone; and that U-boat commanders who made honest mistakes should be protected. Holtzendorff’s proposal, laid before the chancellor, brought back all the familiar arguments. No one doubted that a reintensified submarine campaign, overthrowing the Lusitania and Arabic settlements of the previous autumn, would bring another confrontation with the United States. The naval authorities declared that this did not matter; the war would be over before America could react. And even if America came in and the war continued, the United States lacked the military power to harm Germany. Opponents argued with equal vigor that, even applying unrestricted warfare, the U-boats could not sink as much tonnage as the admirals claimed and thus could not cripple Britain, much less win the war. Further, they would inflame the neutrals, the United States would enter the war, the war would lengthen, and ultimately, Germany would be defeated.
A week after this paper was circulated, the chancellor convened another conference at Pless. Here, Bethmann-Hollweg flatly opposed restarting the submarine campaign. For one thing, he believed that Germany could emerge triumphant from the military stalemate simply by holding on to captured territories and using them as bargaining chips in a negotiated peace settlement. As for Holtzendorff’s prediction that Britain could be forced out of the war in six months by an intensified submarine campaign, the chancellor declared that nothing certain could be predicted about submarine warfare except that it would produce a struggle of unprecedented bitterness. Whether or not it worked would be decided by British endurance, a factor that could not be calculated by simple arithmetic. Britain, he said, would redouble her efforts and spend her last farthing and last drop of blood before allowing naval supremacy to be wrested from her. He added that the campaign now contemplated by the naval leaders would be directed not just at Britain but also at America and would certainly bring the United States into the war. It was foolish to disregard this danger; it would be inviting ruin to increase Germany’s enemies by so mighty an adversary. If this happened, he concluded, the result would be Finis Germaniae.
While Bethmann-Hollweg remained steadfast, other moderates, including the kaiser, began to waver. On January 15, 1916, Müller wrote in his diary, “His Majesty took the humane standpoint that the drowning of innocent passengers was an idea that appalled him. He also bore a responsibility before God for the manner of waging war. On the other hand . . . [he had to] ask himself: could he go against the counsel of his military advisers, and from humane considerations prolong the war at the cost of so many brave men who were defending the Fatherland?” Increasingly, Müller himself was caught in this cross fire of opinion. Bethmann-Hollweg persuaded him that if Germany embarked on unrestricted submarine warfare, the neutrals and the whole civilized world would band together and deal with her as with a “mad dog.” On the other hand, Holtzendorff convinced him that the new, improved U-boats really were technologically capable of dispatching Great Britain; as the condition of Germany and its allies grew worse, it seemed criminal to abstain from using the one weapon that might mean rescue. And yet, reversing the argument again, America’s entry would seal defeat. “A desperate situation!” Müller wrote in his diary on February 10, 1916.
William II, unable to rule either for or against the chancellor or the admirals, came up with another compromise. Again, he accepted the chancellor’s lead and decided that as head of state he could not approve a method of war that would provoke an American declaration of war against Germany. On the other hand, William was now persuaded that U-boat warfare could be decisive within six months; he therefore endorsed Holtzendorff’s proposal that the submarines be sent back to sea—with limitations. As proposed, the new campaign would observe the following rules: enemy merchant vessels in the war zone were to be destroyed without warning; enemy vessels outside the war zone were to be attacked without warning only if they were armed; enemy passenger steamers were never to be attacked, inside or outside the war zone, armed or not. Nothing was said about neutrals. Most German naval officers predicted that the new campaign would not succeed under these restrictions; either U-boat commanders would be carried away by zeal and excitement when a vessel came into their sights and would fail to inspect the target in detail, or, overanxious to stay within the rules, they would allow the enemy to escape. Timing became an issue; the kaiser wished to unleash the U-boats only after Verdun had fallen, but, as the days passed, this triumph seemed ever more distant. Ultimately, the decision was made during a series of conferences at Charleville in the first week of March. Tensions were high: during one meeting, Müller reported, Bethmann-Hollweg nervously “smoked cigarette after cigarette and kept moving from one chair to another.” The kaiser’s mood was scarcely better: “His Majesty’s nerves are strained to the breaking point. Today for the first time . . . he said, ‘One must never utter it nor shall I admit it . . . but this war will not end with a great victory.’” William gave way: on March 13, the second campaign against merchant shipping began. Tirpitz was so disgusted by the limitations that he again announced his resignation: “The grave anxiety at seeing the life work of Your Majesty and the national future of Germany on the path to ruin makes me realize that my services can be of no further use to Your Majesty.” This time, Bethmann-Hollweg seized the opportunity and recommended that the kaiser accept the resignation. William agreed and on March 15, 1916, after eighteen years in office, the founder of the German navy retired. William II never saw Alfred von Tirpitz again. Tirpitz’s fury, reported Princess Blücher, was “indescribable. They gave out as reason for his retirement that he had broken down and needed rest. So he walked with his wife up and down the Wilhelmstrasse for two hours to prove to the crowd that it was not true and that he was in the best of health. Next day, he took off his uniform and appeared in tall hat and frock coat to show he had been ‘deprived of his uniform’ and talked to his wife in a loud voice so that the crowd would be able to hear.”
Meanwhile, another personal circumstance had altered the command structure of the navy. In January, Admiral von Pohl, suffering from liver cancer, had declared that he could not continue as Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet. Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, then commander of a dreadnought battle squadron, succeeded him. Scheer’s views on naval warfare were stark and emphatic. He did not view the submarine war against commerce as a substitute for some other plan, or as a compromise between conflicting plans, or as an adjunct to the campaign on land. Scheer considered the U-boat campaign against commerce as valid an act of modern warfare as an artillery bombardment or an infantry assault in the field, and he believed that it could win the war. Tirpitz’s departure, therefore, had simply replaced one passionate U-boat advocate with another.
By March 1916, Germany possessed fifty-two modern, operational U-boats. During March and April, they accounted for fifty-seven merchant vessels grossing 157,009 tons. During these same two months, the German navy lost four U-boats, but with thirty-eight new submarines due to be commissioned within the next five months, the Naval Staff confidently expected to sink 160,000 tons of British shipping a month, perhaps more. Then, long before the validity of Holtzendorff’s calculation that the U-boats could bring Britain to her knees within six months could be thoroughly tested, an incident at sea ignited another diplomatic crisis with the United States. On March 24, the passenger liner Sussex, with Americans on board, was torpedoed in the Channel. Ironically, this episode had no relation to the orders agreed to by the kaiser and issued by Holtzendorff regarding the conduct of the second submarine campaign. Rather, it stemmed from an earlier, subsidiary order, which had remained in force without cancellation for four months. In November 1915, the Flanders U-boat Flotilla had been ordered to attack troop transports sailing between English and French Channel ports. For three months, German submarine captains had believed that passenger vessels carrying civilian travelers used only the Folkestone-Boulogne route and that all other vessels in the Channel could be sunk without warning without fear of breaking the promises made to the United States. Accordingly, on the afternoon of March 24, when the captain of UB-29 saw through his periscope a vessel about to enter Dieppe whose foredeck was crowded with figures whom the captain believed to be soldiers, he gave no warning and torpedoed the ship. The vessel was, in fact, the French cross-Channel passenger steamer Sussexcarrying 325 passengers, including twenty-five Americans. The explosion severed the entire forward section of the ship. The after part remained afloat and was towed into port, but eighty people had been killed or wounded and four of the dead were Americans. The victims also included the world-famous Spanish composer and pianist Enrique Granados and his wife, who were returning to Spain after a recital tour in the United States. Thus, for the third time, the one principle on which President Wilson and his government had insisted—the inviolability of passenger ships—had been breached.
The news reached Washington the following day. Again, President Wilson chose to wait for details. On April 11, the German government announced that the damage to the Sussex was not caused by the attack of a German submarine. Unfortunately for German credibility, the president already had on his desk the carefully documented reports of British, French, and American experts who had scrupulously inspected the damaged hull and concluded that the Sussex had been torpedoed. The act appeared to be a flagrant violation of the German promise not to attack passenger vessels of any nation. The American press vociferously accused Germany of deceit and Wilson concluded that the United States was being treated with contempt. Again, he withdrew from his advisers, retreated into his study, and sat down at his typewriter. On April 19, Wilson appeared before a special session of Congress. Calling the use of submarines against commerce “utterly incompatible with the principles of humanity and incontrovertible rights of neutrals and the sacred immunities of non-combatants,” he read the ultimatum he already had sent to the German government:
If it is still the purpose of the Imperial government to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of U-boats without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of U-boat warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no other choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German empire altogether.
German alarm at Wilson’s note was very great. Up to that point, the American president had admitted that, properly conducted, submarine attacks on commerce were legitimate acts of war. Now Wilson was threatening to sever relations; war was the next step. The issue was discussed in Berlin in its starkest terms: could Germany achieve victory by unrestricted submarine warfare even if the United States entered the war, before U.S. military forces could be organized and brought to bear? In these discussions, Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow continued to insist on the absolute necessity of preventing a break. The chancellor repeated what he had said before: America’s entry would mean Finis Germaniae. Falkenhayn, now needing help from the navy as his attack on Verdun was failing, pressed for intensification of the U-boat war. But now Holtzendorff again switched sides. Unwilling to provoke war with America, the Chief of the Naval Staff opposed Falkenhayn and declared that Germany was more likely to secure a good peace by not pressing on with intensified submarine warfare. Admiral Eduard von Capelle, Tirpitz’s successor as minister of the navy, also advised against further provoking the American government. In addition, Capelle said that even if prize law restrictions were reimposed on submarine warfare, the toll on Allied shipping need not be much reduced; he estimated that U-boats still could sink 160,000 tons per month.
The decision fell on the kaiser. Although William fretted at Wilson’s “impertinence,” he sided with the chancellor and canceled intensified U-boat warfare. On April 24, he instructed Holtzendorff to issue a command that “until further orders, U-boats may only act against commerce in accordance with Prize Regulations.” Once again, U-boats were ordered not to destroy any ship, even an enemy vessel, without first examining its papers and ensuring the safety of the crew. The only exception allowed would come from an attempt by a ship “to escape or offer resistance.” Admiral Scheer, now the Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet, scornfully refused to accept this new strategy. Following the example set by Pohl the previous autumn, Scheer on April 25 recalled to port all High Seas Fleet U-boats. He informed the Naval Staff that he had terminated the campaign, much as he regretted “the cessation of the most effective form of attack on England’s economic position . . . [which] might have had decisive effect on the war’s outcome.” His decision was influenced by Commodore Bauer, who in March had made a voyage in U-67 to study conditions for himself and had concluded that it was too dangerous for U-boats to operate in the waters around England in accordance with prize law. Unfortunately, Scheer’s recall signal, which ended the second submarine campaign against merchant shipping, caught three High Seas Fleet U-boats still at sea, none of which received the wireless recall message; between April 27 and May 8, they sank eight merchant vessels grossing 26,000 tons. The last of these was the 13,370-ton liner Cymric, bound for America and torpedoed without warning off the Irish coast with the loss of five lives. The Cymric was the thirty-seventh passenger liner sunk by U-boats since the loss of Lusitania and the fourth passenger liner sunk during the second offensive. The captain of the U-boat that sank the Cymric was Walther Schwieger, who had torpedoed Lusitania and Hesperian.
In recalling his submarines, Scheer had a political as well as a military purpose. Submarine warfare was overwhelmingly popular with the Ger-man people, and the admiral hoped that his action would force Bethmann-Hollweg—the principal opponent of unrestricted warfare against merchant shipping—to resign in the face of a storm of public indignation. When a popular uproar failed to arise, Scheer, disappointed, reassigned his U-boats to their role from early in the war: attacking enemy warships in order to whittle down the numerical superiority of the Grand Fleet. To help this plan succeed, Reinhard Scheer decided to risk a North Sea surface action between the dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet.
The wheel of German naval strategy had come full circle.