THE LUSITANIA AND GERMANY’S GAMBLE —“Ten months before Lusitania, on the outbr

THE LUSITANIA AND GERMANY’S GAMBLE

—“Ten months before Lusitania, on the outbreak of war, the United States had immediately declared neutrality, and most Americans wanted to be neutral. There was still a lingering anti-British sentiment left over from the Revolution and a very large population of German immigrants and their descendants naturally favored their ancestral country.

But the British were masters of propaganda, and the British campaign to portray the Germans as “Huns,” who had “raped” neutral Belgium at the start of the war, in violation of its treaty obligations, moved public opinion sharply in favor of the Allies.

The sinking of the Lusitania moved it still further. President Woodrow Wilson managed to resist calls for a declaration of war against Germany, but American anger was so intense that Germany felt obliged to declare that it would not attack neutral ships, regardless of where they were, and would not attack passenger ships at all.

But then, in early 1917, as the British blockade was slowly strangling Germany by causing near-starvation on the home front, Germany decided to gamble. It knew it had to win the war then or lose it from a collapse of morale at home. It reinstituted unrestricted submarine warfare. It knew this would likely bring America into the war (which it did) but it hoped that it could starve Britain into submission before the Americans could mobilize and bring overwhelming power to bear.

The Germans lost that gamble.”—