America’s war response 100 years ago

One hundred years ago this month, in February 1917, Germany opened unrestricted submarine warfare on all ships in the Atlantic wartime zone, military and civilian, freight and passenger.

A German U-boat had sunk the Lusitania, a British luxury liner, nearly two years before, killing over 1,000 passengers and crew, including several hundred Americans. The attack occurred off the southern Irish coast.

(Kathy and I saw the graves of many victims in a cemetery in Kinsale, Ireland, a few years ago. The bodies had washed up on shore.)

The resulting protest was so great that Germany ceased attacks on passenger ships.

But Britain’s blockade of Germany’s coasts, using surface naval vessels, proved quite effective, and Germany was facing serious shortages of food and supplies as World War I wore on in its third year.

Germany, without a large surface naval fleet, had no way to respond in like manner to Britain without resorting to submarine warfare.

So on Jan. 31, 1917, the German government announced that its sub fleet would resume its prowling of Atlantic shipping lanes and that no ship was safe.

The German high command knew the announcement would almost certainly generate an American declaration of war, which predictably followed a couple of months later.

Submarines had been around for quite a while, and had been used in battle, including in the American Civil War more than 50 years earlier. But nothing like the fearful German U-boat had previously appeared.

The U-boat (the German word is Unterseeboot) was 214 feet long, carrying a 35-man crew and 12 torpedoes. It could stay submerged for up to two hours.

Submarines by their very nature could not observe the standard rules of war.

They were vulnerable to attack by ships when they surfaced, so stealth attacks from below had to be their method of operation. They obviously couldn’t pick up survivors either.

President Wilson had managed to keep the United States out of war up until the German U-boat declaration. Most Americans wanted to remain neutral, although German atrocities in Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania had created considerable sympathy in America for the Allied cause.

But the German submarine announcement showed that neutrality would no longer protect the United States.

America broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and on Feb. 3 the small American liner Housatonic was torpedoed, proving that Germany was serious, even though all 25 passengers aboard were picked up by a British steamer.

On Feb. 22, 1917 (100 years ago Wednesday), Congress approved a $250 million arms appropriation in preparation for war.

And two days later a sensational news flash sealed the deal.

The British had broken the German codes, and for some time had been intercepting German military dispatches.

On Feb. 24, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent a coded cable to the German ambassador in Mexico. The cable instructed the ambassador that if America declared war on Germany, he was to urge Mexico to join the war on Germany’s side.

The cable said that Germany would provide financial help to Mexico for its war effort, and that when the United States was defeated, Mexico would be awarded the areas it had lost to the U.S. back in the 1840s, including Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Britain turned over the intercepted cable to President Wilson. He revealed the Zimmermann Note to the American press on March 1. An uproar ensued, as Wilson knew it would.

In late March, U-boats sank four more American merchant ships, and in early April, Wilson requested a declaration of war from Congress.

On April 4, the Senate voted 82-6 for war, and two days later the House agreed, 373-50.

The U-boat, Foreign Secretary Zimmermann, and the British intelligence service combined to end American neutrality.

And the Allies, with America now on their side, prevailed.

Nineteen months later, on Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice ended World War I.