Lusitania sinking centenary marked by memorial services

[Vouthon]

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-32616231

**The centenary of the sinking of the Lusitania has been marked by memorial services in Liverpool and Ireland.

About 1,200 people died and 771 survived when the British liner was torpedoed by a German submarine on 7 May 1915 during World War One.

One of the largest ships in the world, it was sailing from New York to its home port of Liverpool when it was sunk off the coast of Ireland.**

A minute’s silence was held at about 14:10 BST - the time of the attack.

The disaster provoked outrage especially in Britain, with rioters targeting German businesses in Merseyside, Manchester and London.

Public opinion in the US, which had been officially neutral, was said to have changed after the death of about 130 Americans, although it was another two years before the country declared its official entry into the war, in 1917.

Ian Murphy, from Merseyside Maritime Museum, said: "In 1915, Lusitania was the world’s most famous ship and the jewel in Liverpool’s crown.

“Her sinking sent shockwaves around the globe and was said to have influenced America’s entry to the war.”

 

[Vouthon]

The sinking of the Lusitania caused mass outrage across the world at the time. A modern comparison would be the outrage provoked by Putin-backed Russian rebels downing the Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014. It was denounced as a war crime, since it changed the rules of war, making civilians targets, something that would become even more pronounced in WWII. My great-great grandfather who was a German national living in the UK had his shop windows broken and was taken to an internment camp in the aftermath.

The New York Times responded with a spread of samples from the disparate press in the city, headlined with the term “Lusitania Murder” and alleging that a “slaughter of neutrals and non-combatants” had been committed, “a crime against civilization”, “unequalled piracy” which gave Germany a “criminal record…in the annals of history” that only “the exercise of superior force” could rectify.

It was the beginning of the long road to the United States ultimately declaring war on the Kaiserreich in 1917 and therefore finally involving itself for the first time in overseas European affairs.

blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2015/05/07/twe-remembers-the-sinking-of-the-lusitania/

News of the Lusitania’s sinking shocked the American public, much as Pearl Harbor and September 11 would shock future generations. Unlike those two tragedies, however, the sinking of the Lusitania didn’t produce a national consensus in favor of war. True, staunch nationalists like former president Teddy Roosevelt, who thought that President Woodrow Wilson had erred eight months earlier in declaring the United States neutral in the war in Europe, denounced the attack as barbarous and demanded a confrontation with Germany. So did some newspapers. The day after the Lusitania’s sank, the New York Herald ran a headline exclaiming, “WHAT A PITY THEODORE ROOSEVELT IS NOT PRESIDENT!”

But as horrified as most Americans were at the thought of civilians being attacked without warning and left to a cruel fate in the sea, they recoiled at the thought of war. Many Americans still saw Washington’s advice to stand apart from Europe and Jefferson’s warning against “entangling alliances” as gospel. Irish Americans had no interest in fighting to help Britain so long as it denied Ireland its independence. German Americans sympathized with their ancestral homeland. And still other Americans saw no virtue in either war or the squabbling European powers. When New York newspapers asked editors around the country how the United States should respond to the Lusitania’s sinking, only six out of the thousand who responded urged war.

Hawkish voices were more numerous in the Wilson administration. Wilson’s close confidante and in many ways his de facto secretary of state, Colonel House, spoke for many of Wilson’s other advisers when he counseled that “America has come to the parting of the ways, when she must determine whether she stands for civilized or uncivilized warfare. We can no longer remain neutral spectators.”…

Wilson tried to steer a middle course. He hoped to satisfy what he saw as the public’s “double wish,” to stop future German attacks yet keep the United States at peace. He drafted the first in what turned out to be a series of stern diplomatic notes to Berlin. Even this was too much for Bryan. When Wilson decided in early June to write a second note to Berlin, he resigned in protest.

Unbeknownst to both Wilson and Bryan, Kaiser Wilhelm II had recognized the damage the attack on the Lusitania had done to Germany. Three days before Bryan resigned, he ordered German submarines to cease attacking cruise liners. But reluctant to take any action that suggested that the sinking of the Lusitania had been unjustified, Berlin kept the order secret. It wasn’t until September that Germany told Washington that its submarines would not launch unprovoked attacks on passenger ships. The policy remained in place until February 1917. Berlin’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare placed it on a collision path with the United States. On April 6, 1917, Congress voted to declare war.

So King George got the answer to the question he posed to Colonel House. The sinking of the Lusitania would produce outrage and diplomatic protests. It would not, however, push the United States into war.

 

[Nelka]

A modern comparison would be the outrage provoked by Putin-backed Russian rebels downing the Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014.

There is no proof in that.