# Winston Churchill and the Lusitania



## Njaco (Aug 16, 2011)

I wasn't aware of this but some historians believe that Churchill hastened the US' entry into the war by allowing the Lusitania to be sunk. The following excerpts are from internet sites.......

WW1 - The True Cause of World War 1

Rethinking Churchill, Part 2

A week before the disaster, he (Winston Churchill) wrote to Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Many highly-placed persons in Britain and America believed that the German sinking of the Lusitania would bring the United States into the war. And, as Churchill stressed in his memoirs of World War I, embroiling neutral countries in hostilities with the enemy was a crucial part of warfare: "There are many kinds of maneuvres in war, some only of which take place on the battlefield. . . . The maneuvre which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle."

The next step in the maneuvering of the United States into the war came when the Cunard Lines, owner of the ocean liner, the Lusitania, turned the ship over to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. It now became a ship of the English Navy and was under the control of the English government. 

England broke the German war code on December 14, 1914, so that "By the end of January, 1915, [British Intelligence was] able to advise the Admiralty of the departure of each U-boat as it left for patrol...." This meant that the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, knew where every U-boat was in the vicinity of the English Channel that separated England and France.

On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania was sunk off the coast of County Cork, Ireland by a U-boat after it had slowed to await the arrival of the English escort vessel, the Juno, which was intended to escort it into the English port. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, issued orders that the Juno was to return to port, and the Lusitania sat alone in the channel. Because Churchill knew of the presence of three U-boats in the vicinity, it is reasonable to presume that he had planned for the Lusitania to be sunk, and it was. 1201 people lost their lives in the sinking.


What do you think?


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## buffnut453 (Aug 16, 2011)

There is a world of difference between knowing the patrol areas of submarines and being able, with any certainty, to place a "target" (ie Lusitania) in a position to guarantee its destruction. The Lusitania was heading to a port in the UK. It's hardly surprising, then, that the German Navy would place submarines to intercept vessels heading into or out of those ports. Given the immaturity of anti-submarine sensors and weapons, I suspect the presence or absence of the Juno had little impact on the eventual outcome. 

Overall, an interesting conspiracy theory but, in my view, it's simply impossible to choreograph the sinking of the Lusitania using maps in London.


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## Vassili Zaitzev (Aug 16, 2011)

I can't believe it. It's like those conspiracy theorists claiming FDR wanted Pearl Harbor to happen. Churchill wouldn't orchrastrate the sinking at the cost of hundreds of British citizens, and FDR wouldn't waste his Pacific Fleet to get dragged into a conflict.


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## Gnomey (Aug 16, 2011)

I agree with the two posters above me. I can't believe it was deliberate due to the inaccuracies of knowing where the submarines were at specific times.

However the notion of enticing neutral (particularly American) shipping to British ports to increase the chances of them being sunk by the U-boats and thus causing the international incident that would hasten their entry into the war is a plausible Churchill policy and no doubt was done to some degree but I doubt they had any particular ship in mind when doing it. Any ship(s) would of worked, it just so happened that the one that was sunk was the Lusitania and caused more than the necessary consternation and angry from the Americans to serve the aims of the British and the Allies at the time.


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## The Basket (Aug 16, 2011)

A conspiracy theory on the Internet.....a first,

The U Boats were shooting and asking no questions. At some point they knew they would sink American ships but they believed they could win war before USA entry. If it wasnt the Lusitania it would be any other vessel.

The Juno could just be another military FUBAR which is all too often.


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## Coors9 (Aug 16, 2011)

In WW2, didn't he allow the bombing of a British city because they couldn't allow the Reich to know they cracked their code ?????


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## buffnut453 (Aug 16, 2011)

No he didn't. The city in question was Coventry but it was not sacrificed to preserve Enigma. The source of my rebuttal is R V Jones' book "Reflections on Intelligence" on p.42 (and in case you don't know of R V Jones, he was the father of scientific intelligence during WWII and was read into Enigma-based intelligence).


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## Coors9 (Aug 16, 2011)

Can you tell us more about what's on page 42 please.


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## buffnut453 (Aug 16, 2011)

R V Jones recounts letters he received from French former resistance fighters following the publication of Anthony Cave Brown's "Bodyguard of Lies". The resistance fighters were upset because Cave Brown claimed that their lives were considered by Churchill unimportant when balanced against the need to keep Ultra secure. The resistance veterans asked R V Jones to investigate the matter, to which Jones states:

"Faced with so much trust, I took every possible step with old colleagues throughout the wartime intelligence organizations to check whether anyone could recall an instance where an agent had been intentionally betrayed, or which might be so interpreted. In reporting...the firmly negative result, I could only console the French Resistance with the fact that the same author had said that Churchill himself had sacrificed both Coventry in 1940, to preserve the Ultra secret of our breaking Enigma, and also Bomber Command on the Nuremburg raid in 1944....Neither the Coventry nor the Nuremburg claim has, to my knowledge, the slightest element of substance."

Bear in mind that foreknowledge of the raid on Coventry was not just an Ultra secret. The German Luftwaffe used navigation beams to help bombers find their targets. These beams were being intercepted and some deception measures had been successfully implemented. As a key member of the UK's scientific intelligence staff, R V Jones was intimately involved in such matters during the war.


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## Ferdinand Foch (Aug 17, 2011)

Buffnut, interesting post. Thanks for the info. I personally do not think that Churchill masterminded the sinking of the Lustiania. I'm no expert on Churchill, but I am an avid reader about him. So far, a lot of the authors i've read or looked over had found any real evidence about linking Churchill to the Lusitania (One of these books was William Manchester's Visions of Glory). Personally, with the way the submarine war was taking place, I don't think Churchill would have needed to deliberately sink one of Britain's own ships to get the U.S. involved, the German Navy would have taken care of that. I will admit that it was a bit of hit and miss with Churchill during his time as first lord of the admiralty. Vassili knows more, but he did bungle the battle at the Colonels early in the war. Gallipoli is still very much a touchy subject for Churchill supporters and opponents, though I do believe that Winston's original plan would have worked with the admirals on the scene had been a little more daring.


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## davebender (Aug 17, 2011)

During WWI Churchill didn't have much influence on British foreign policy. It was Sir Edward Grey and Colonel House who maneuvered the U.S. into the war as a British ally.

WWII is an entirely different matter.


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## Ferdinand Foch (Aug 22, 2011)

Hey guys, 
I found a site or two on the Lusitania. The first one is from 1999. It's a little older, but most of the information is still reliable. 
Lusitania Controversy - Warning + Conspiracy

RMS LUSITANIA


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## Edgar Brooks (Aug 24, 2011)

There is, and always has been, a "Hate Churchill" faction, who'll say anything to try to make him lose face. As always, it's so much easier to wait until the person is dead before peddling the stories.
Edgar

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## RabidAlien (Aug 24, 2011)

Say what you will about the man, but there's a very big difference between making the most out of a tragedy, and actually taking steps to ensure that the tragedy took place. If you take a step back and look at his life in general (and I'll admit that I haven't read anything specifically on him, no in-depth master's thesis studies, just general accounts where he touched upon the topic I was reading at the time), he doesn't seem to be the guy who would make that kind of decision, to sacrifice 1200 innocents just to bring another ally into the war. The kind of moral bearings that would be required to make that sort of decision would have either destroyed a decent man, or would have guided his decision-making process elsewhere, as well. I may very well be wrong, but for now, that's the impression I get.


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## A4K (Aug 25, 2011)

'What do you think?'

Whether true or not, I believe Churchill would be capable of attempting such a manouevre.


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## stona (Aug 25, 2011)

Almost all of these conspiracy theories evaporate in a puff of smoke when you actually demand hard evidence to support them. Hard evidence is not the wild extrapolation of known facts allied to supposition and conjecture.
This one is no exception.
Steve


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## Mustang nut (Aug 25, 2011)

My tuppence worth

The enigma code breakers when breaking the code took time to do it, the information rarely extended to individual subs actual location in real time.

If any secret was worth the sacrifice of lives to protect it was Bletchley park and later the US equivilant. It is estimated to have shortened the war by a year and D Day may not have succeeded without it. If military commanders were given full access to all that was known all the time the Germans would very quickly have changed their codes and procedures.

I resent small men trying to make a name by dissing the great men of history. I havnt seen anything to suggest Churchill who had many faults was involved in this conspiracy to to mass slaughter.

Churchill was the British P.M. but he was half American .....I just dont believe it and until it is proved let the man rest.


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## BombTaxi (Aug 25, 2011)

And Enigma was not an issue in the Lusitiania sinking, as it had yet to be invented in 1915.

But I strongly doubt Churchill orchestrated the sinking to get the US into the war. Churchill didn't need to mount a false flag operation, he just had to wait until the Germans killed a load of American civilians, which was inevitable given German submarine policy


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## Njaco (Aug 25, 2011)

Just so everyone knows, I don't believe this gobbledigook. Churchill, to me, is one of the three greatest men of the 20th Century next to Theodore Roosevelt and MLK Jr.


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## buffnut453 (Aug 25, 2011)

Churchill typically inspires strong opinions both for and against him. There aren't many people who say "Churchill? Meh...he was ok, I guess." He's typically either respected/venerated or loathed/vilified. Ask an Australian veteran of the Malayan Campaign and he's likely to blame Churchill for the entire debacle and postulate that he abrogated his responsibilities to defend the Commonwealth. Similarly, many Indians merely see Churchill as the man who failed to do anything about the rice shortage in 1943 which resulted in famine and great loss of life. Churchill was far from perfect. He was a man of his age; an ardent proponent of Empire. He made many mistakes but, to me at least, it's a step too far to suggest that he deliberately schemed in a Machiavellian way to sacrifice the Lusitania in the First World War or Coventry during WWII.


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## parsifal (Aug 26, 2011)

Churchill could at times be ruthless. But he was not murderous. theres a difference. He is also criticized for his lack of realism and meddling in affairs military, yet he also provided a great injection of lateral thinking to Allied military planning. He was a master of diplomacy, and in WWII in no small measure was responsible for grooming the US from a sleeping, uncaring giant, to a fire breathing tiger for the allied cause. There have been similar conspiracy theories about his foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbour attack....all poppycock. 

I expect close examination of the Lusitania sinking will yield the same null results for the revisionists working quietly in the background to discredit him.

Churchill was far from perfect, but he was as near to perfect as a wartime leader for britain, as one could hope for.

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## buffnut453 (Aug 26, 2011)

Great post Parsifal. I'm in 100% agreement. I particularly like the distinction between ruthless (which is necessary in war) and murderous which has far deeper personal connotations.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Aug 26, 2011)

parsifal said:


> Churchill was far from perfect, but he was as near to perfect as a wartime leader for britain, as one could hope for.



That is always how I have viewed it. He was the right man, at the right time, for the right job.


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## Messy1 (Aug 26, 2011)

I think much of general history, or the history taught in schools, seems to paint it's great leaders as saints that never seem to do anything wrong. It's not until you do some more research and start reading an honest portrayal of that person or events that you come to know the real person. I was never told anything about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington owning slaves in school, they are generally held up in American history as the perfect leader or president. Abe Lincoln may have suffered from severe depression. I am sure every leader had his share of personal demons and skeletons in his closet he had to deal with, but the average person who does not read or learn history for themselves will never know that, and continue believing all the propaganda that has come down through the years. No one is perfect, but as the past few posts have said, they may be the perfect person, even with flaws for the job they are needed for.

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## Edgar Brooks (Aug 27, 2011)

buffnut453 said:


> Ask an Australian veteran of the Malayan Campaign and he's likely to blame Churchill for the entire debacle and postulate that he abrogated his responsibilities to defend the Commonwealth. Similarly, many Indians merely see Churchill as the man who failed to do anything about the rice shortage in 1943 which resulted in famine and great loss of life.


 Unfortunately said Australian veteran will be unaware that the government (all of it) had written to Dr. Evatt, and made the following promise,"If, however, contrary to prudence and self-interest Japan set about invading Australia or New Zealand on a large scale, I have the authority of the Cabinet to assure you that we should then cut our losses in the Mediterranean and proceed to your aid, sacrificing every interest except only the defence and feeding of this Island on which all depends."
Doesn't sound like abandonment to me. It might come as a surprise, too, to find out that we don't produce any rice in this country, and never have, so quite how we were supposed to divert ships from our convoys to deliver non-existent food, when stringent rationing was already in force, here, is something of a mystery.
There is a biography, on Churchill, written by Roy Jenkins, who, as a member of the Labour party, was adamantly opposed to everything that Churchill stood for, but is one of the most even-handed appraisals that I've ever read, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has an open mind about the man.
Edgar.


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## parsifal (Aug 27, 2011)

At least at the government level, there was a loss of confidence in the british government ( represented by Churchill) in the early months of 1942. Britiain had given a lot of assurances that Singapore would not fall, that the Battle group would act as an effective deterrent to Japanese aggression and that the defences in malaya would hold. In response to those defeats, Australia dcided to withdraw two of its divisions of the AIF to Australia for home defence. Churchill really upset the apple cart when he unilaterally tried to divert tyhe convoys carrying these troops to Burma. He had no authority to do this. The agreements between the Austraqlian government and the british government were very specific, befor3e making major changes to deployment, the Aust5ralian government needed to give its permission. We did not want another gallipoli on our hand, and had already come very close to that in Crete. The attempted Burma diversion was an altogether different turn of events.

All these events, plus the loss of the entire Indies archipelago confirmed to the Australian Govt that they needed to pin their star to the Americans. It was not a complete split in relations, but it was a realization that Britian could not defend the far east


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## buffnut453 (Aug 27, 2011)

Edgar,

There's a huge gulf between perception and reality - the old adage "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" seems appropriate. It's hardly surprising that witch hunts ensued following the Malaya/Singapore debacle when the supposed "impregnable" fortress surrendered rather meekly (at least that's the perception). Similarly, loss of rice shipments from Thailand and Malaya undoubtedly had a huge impact on the food supply problems in India. 

Thanks for the tip re Jenkins' biography of Churchill. I must look for that one.


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## RabidAlien (Aug 28, 2011)

Edgar Brooks said:


> There is a biography, on Churchill, written by Roy Jenkins, who, as a member of the Labour party, was *adamantly opposed to everything that Churchill stood for, but is one of the most even-handed appraisals that I've ever read*, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has an open mind about the man.
> Edgar.



And for that very reason, I just added it to my Amazon list.


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## stona (Aug 29, 2011)

A rather simplistic thought but as an old school imperialist Churchill would hardly willingly abandon any part of the Empire.

I'm not,to put it mildly,a particular fan of many of the things that Churchill stood for. Roy Jenkins,incidentally one of the best and most progressive Home Secretaries that this country ever had, wasn't either but neither of us would deny Churchill his greatness.

Churchill arranged or connived in the sinking of the Lusitania. It's easy to write but noone has ever shown one single shred of credible evidence to back up the proposition. In plain english,it's a load of codswallop!


Cheers
Steve


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## stan reid (May 7, 2015)

The Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk 100 years ago today.

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## nuuumannn (May 8, 2015)

A poignant anniversary 100 Years On, Cunard Remembers Lusitania in Cobh, Ireland -- SOUTHAMPTON, England, May 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Some good info on the ship on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania

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## VBF-13 (Jun 12, 2015)

BombTaxi said:


> And Enigma was not an issue in the Lusitiania sinking, as it had yet to be invented in 1915.
> 
> But I strongly doubt Churchill orchestrated the sinking to get the US into the war. Churchill didn't need to mount a false flag operation, he just had to wait until the Germans killed a load of American civilians, which was inevitable given German submarine policy


Ah, the "cargo" in terms of human status on the Lusitania was a biggie, though.


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## VBF-13 (Jun 12, 2015)

The Basket said:


> A conspiracy theory on the Internet.....a first,
> 
> The U Boats were shooting and asking no questions. At some point they knew they would sink American ships but they believed they could win war before USA entry. If it wasnt the Lusitania it would be any other vessel.


Fact-check. The Lusitania wasn't an American ship.


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## VBF-13 (Jun 12, 2015)

Gnomey said:


> Any ship(s) would of worked, it just so happened that the one that was sunk was the Lusitania and caused more than the necessary consternation and angry from the Americans to serve the aims of the British and the Allies at the time.


I don't know about the "just so happened" part. Anybody who could add two and two together knew this ship had a bullseye on it. The Germans did everything but publicize it by name. It sailed because they knew it could outrun the subs. The captain turned broadside to the sub that hit it after that sub had all but given up on it.


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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2015)

As VBF posted the Lus was a British ship and the British had loaded a _Passenger_ ship with 173 tons of war munitions. More than 1,100 people died including 120 Americans.
Now if you think the death of that many people would have given Winston pause let's look back to 1914 and the First Lord of the Admirlity Churchill and his first campaign.

In 1914, young Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty. He was itching to get into WWI but it was primarily a land war. There had only been one major naval battle: Jutland. Before the Ottoman Empire had even entered the war, in October 1914, Churchill had ordered the naval bombardment of the Dardanelles. Like most British, Churchill considered the Turks to be inferior opponents with old munitions and guns that could not stand up to British firepower. In Feb. 1915 and again in March a combined British and French force sailed up the Dardanelles to bombard the Turkish defenses. The Turks easily push back the attack with British losses of 700 dead, 3 battleships sunk, and 3 others badly damaged. The vice admiral in charge of the attack told Churchill that he could not silence the forts without an infantry assault. And so was born the Gallipoli campaign.
General Ian Hamilton requested 150,000 troops Lord Kitchener allowed only half that number faced with the bloodbath on the western front. Only one veteran division, the 29th was sent. The Royal Naval division sent by Churchill was a hodgepodge of irregulars and marines. Green and untried volunteer soldiers from Australia and New Zealand 700 miles away in Egypt being trained to fight in France were co-opted.
In the predawn darkness of April 25 the landings began. At Helles the British delayed until 8AM and tried to land in broad daylight in front of Turkish guns dug in 50yds away. Of the first 200 troops only 21 made it to the beach. On V and W beaches 950 Lancashire Fusiliers landed. By nightfall 500 were dead and British losses equaled over 2000.
As to the ANZAC troops, they were to land at the Gaba Tepe headland; instead, they landed a mile further up the coast at what would be known as Anzac cove. By sheer force of will the ANZAC troops made it 1500 yards inland but a Turkish counter-attack drove them back. One Fifth of the ANZAC forces died that first day. Hamilton requested evacuation but was rejected by Churchill. Turkish, British, and ANZAC troops built trenches; sometimes only 10yds apart mostly out of corpses. By May 4 the Turks had lost 14,000 men and the ANZACs almost 10,000 men.
As the summer months wore on disease (flies drawn by the rotting corpses covered every surface), thirst, and lack of food took their toll. On Aug 6th in a last ditch attempt to break the stalemate the British landed troops further north at Suvla Bay. The Turks were caught completely off guard but Lieutenant General Stopford moved too slowly to exploit the landings and Turkish reinforcements made it to the high ground and the British were again stopped and the war of attrition continued. In the beginning of September, Hamilton again requested evacuation but Churchill removed him from command in October. Lord Kitchner visited in November and ordered the evacuation. Before this could begin, a massive rain and snow storm hit the battlefield. Hundreds more drowned in the shallow trenches that caved-in and flooded and thousands died of exposure, frostbite, and illness.
Churchill was held accountable for the debacle and lost his position in the War Cabinet and was excluded from the government.
Because of the conditions at the time casualties can only be estimated but most sources give:
British – 119,696 Australian – 26,094 New Zealand – 7571 Turkish – 218,000


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## pbehn (Jun 13, 2015)

Say what you like about Churchill we would have been screwed without him in 1940, by the time he came to be Prime minister he was a veteran of many screw ups from which he had learned. He certainly beat his adversary Adolf hands down.

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## VBF-13 (Jun 13, 2015)

pbehn said:


> Say what you like about Churchill we would have been screwed without him in 1940, by the time he came to be Prime minister he was a veteran of many screw ups from which he had learned. He certainly beat his adversary Adolf hands down.


Let's just call it he got by with a little help from his friends. They'd be serving thuringers and Spaten Optimator in the London pubs if he didn't.


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## pbehn (Jun 13, 2015)

VBF-13 said:


> Let's just call it he got by with a little help from his friends. They'd be serving thuringers and Spaten Optimator in the London pubs if he didn't.



From all his countrymen, he was half English half American.


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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2015)

I've always been one to look under the popular "hero's" skirt as it were
CHURCHILL IN HIS OWN WORDS

(During first World War): “Perhaps the next time round the way to do it will be to kill women, children and the civilian population.”

Churchill on defending the morality of bombing from the air: “Now everyone’s at it. It’s simply a question of fashion – similar to that of whether short or long dresses are in.”

“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.”
Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919.

“It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King.”
Commenting on Gandhi’s meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931.

“I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place.”
Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937.

“The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives and most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre – horrid and inexorcisable.”
Writing in The World Crisis and the Aftermath, 1923-31.

“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate… I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.”
Churchill to Asquith, 1910.

“One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”
From his Great Contemporaries, 1937.

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”


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## parsifal (Jun 13, 2015)

The American reaction to the Lusitania was not a Churchill construct. He was as shocked as anyone at the German behaviour. In respect of the specific incident, the Admiralty aactually warned the Lusitania several days before the event and recommended she stay out of the danger area. It is no secret that the ship was also carrying munitions, but this was at US insistence. moreover, for the purposes of applying the rules and conventions of warfare on the high seas, the quantities of stores being carried on the ship at the time were insufficient to lift her out of the category of passenger liner. There were rules concerning attacks on passenger vessels, and many people were shocked to find that the germans, in their application of their "unrestricted warfare" on shipping included in this blanket breach of treaty obligations, attacks on passenger ships. 

So what are the rules of warfare on the high seas:


Declaration of Paris, 1856

In 1856 and afterward, numerous states, including the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary, France, Prussia, Russia, Prussia (then Germany after 1870) Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire, ratified the Declaration of Paris. It regulated the relationship between neutral and belligerent and shipping on the high seas when the signatories were fighting each other, but not when fighting non-signatory nations. The United States withheld its formal adherence until 1857.

The Rules (in summary)
Part IV, Art. 22 of the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armaments, relates to submarine warfare. It states as follows:

"_In their action with regard to merchant ships, submarines must conform to the rules of international law to which surface vessels are subject.
In particular, except in the case of persistent refusal to stop on being duly summoned, or of active resistance to visit or search, a warship, whether surface vessel or submarine, may not sink or render incapable of navigation a merchant vessel without having first placed passengers, crew and ship's papers in a place of safety. For this purpose the ship's boats are not regarded as a place of safety unless the safety of the passengers and crew is assured, in the existing sea and weather conditions, by the proximity of land, or the presence of another vessel which is in a position to take them on board" _.

20th century

All sides signed treaties (the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907) subscribing to rules of prize warfare before World War I and they were also in effect during World War II. During 1914-1917, Germany adhered to the prize rules until it declared unrestricted submarine warfare, but it failed to clarify the position regarding passenger liners, which was regarded as a special case. During World War II, Germany adhered to the prize rules for the first 2 months of the conflict in 1939 before turning again to unrestricted submarine warfare. The USN applied unrestricted submarine warfare during the Pacific War from the beginning. In addition, the Royal Navy and the Soviet Navy employed unrestricted submarine warfare during World War II against Germany (the RN from March 1940, the Soviets from September 1941) in the Skagerrak and the Baltic Sea, respectively.

In 1912, British Admiral Sir John "Jackie" Fisher, by then a retired First Sea Lord, presented a paper to the Cabinet. He developed the argument that submarines would find adherence to prize rules impossible for practical reasons: a submarine could not capture a merchant ship, for it would have no spare manpower to deliver the prize to a neutral port; it could not take survivors or prisoners, for lack of space: "there is nothing a submarine can do except sink her capture." If a merchant ship were armed, as was permitted by a conference in London in 1912, then a submarine was under more pressure to destroy a ship. He asked, "What if the Germans were to use submarines against commerce without restriction?"

This last comment was thought to be unsupportable. Winston Churchill, in particular, then First Lord of the Admiralty, supported by senior naval opinion, said it was inconceivable that "this would ever be done by a civilised power." However, it was Fisher who was proven correct. Churchill was the head of the Admiralty when the captain of the Lusitania was advised not to enter the disputed ocean area. Something the Lusitania's skipper ignored. Its understandable that he would. nobody expected the germans to behave in quite the way they did

Donitz's decision to engage in such practices again in WWII got him into trouble, particulalry when he ordered in 1941 that not only would survivors not be saved, they should also be machine gunned by the Uboats, something that several US skippers are also known to have done in the pacific. Faced with the fact that navies on both sides of the conflict had engaged in such practices, the charges against Donitz had to be dropped. He went to prison for 10 years for other reasons. The 1912 treaty still stands, unaltered incidentally.


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## parsifal (Jun 13, 2015)

VBF-13 said:


> Let's just call it he got by with a little help from his friends. They'd be serving thuringers and Spaten Optimator in the London pubs if he didn't.



If that had happened, the US would be celbrating the both the Fuhrers and emperors birthday instead of Indendance day. Nobody on the allied side, least of all the Americans were able to tackle the Axis menace alone. The nation that came closest to doing that was Britain, not the US


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## VBF-13 (Jun 14, 2015)

parsifal said:


> If that had happened, the US would be celbrating the both the Fuhrers and emperors birthday instead of Indendance day. Nobody on the allied side, least of all the Americans were able to tackle the Axis menace alone. The nation that came closest to doing that was Britain, not the US


There's no "If" about it. The British couldn't have taken them alone. You mentioned the "Axis," so, OK, maybe they could have taken the Italians, I didn't mean to leave the Italians out. Heck, the Australians could have taken the Italians. But the Germans didn't need the Italians. But the British needed the Americans.


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## mikewint (Jun 14, 2015)

In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, and, during the crises that followed, used every opportunity to fan the flames of war. When the final crisis came, in 1914, Churchill was all smiles and was the only cabinet member who backed war from the start. Asquith, his own Prime Minister, wrote: "Winston very bellicose and demanding immediate mobilization . . . has got all his war paint on."
Churchill was instrumental in establishing the illegal starvation blockade of Germany. The blockade depended on scattering mines, and classified as contraband food for civilians. But, throughout his career, international law and the conventions created to limit the horrors of war meant nothing to Churchill. One of the consequences of the hunger blockade was that, while it killed 750,000 German civilians by hunger and malnutrition, the youth who survived went on to become the most fanatical Nazis.
Whether Churchill actually arranged for the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, is most likely untrue, but it is clear that he did everything possible to ensure that innocent Americans would be killed by German attempts to break the hunger blockade.
A week before the disaster, Churchill wrote to Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany."
The Lusitania was a civilian passenger liner loaded with 173 tons of munitions. Earlier, Churchill had ordered the captains of merchant ships, including liners, to ram German submarines, and the Germans were aware of this. The German government even took out newspaper ads in New York warning Americans not to board the ship.
German U-boat captains were also aware of British Q-ships such as the Baralong. The Baralong, flying the American flag had sunk the German U-27 which had stopped the Nicosian, discovered munitions and mules on board, ordered the crew and passengers into lifeboats, before sinking her. 12 men survived the sinking of the U-27. The Baralong shot those in the water and a Royal Marine boarding party shot the 6-man U-27 boarding party on the Nicosian following LC Godfrey Herbret's orders "Take no prisoners"


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## GrauGeist (Jun 14, 2015)

parsifal said:


> ...Donitz's decision to engage in such practices again in WWII got him into trouble, particulalry when he ordered in 1941 that not only would survivors not be saved, they should also be machine gunned by the Uboats, *something that several US skippers are also known to have done in the pacific*...


My Uncle served in the PTO for the duration aboard submarines (Grayling SS-209, Cavalla SS-244). There was one instance where a sister sub tried to rescue downed Japanese aviators while they were on picket, (watching out for B-29 crews in distress) and they succeeded in rescuing a couple, but one Japanese officer, still in the water, produced a pistol and started shooting at the crew on deck. The gunner on the sail opened up and machine gunned the Japanese officer in response. There was actually an 8mm movie filmed during this rescue operation, but in recent years, only the portion where the sub's machine gunner strafes the Japanese officer is shown has appeared on youtube and other U.S. bashing/atrocities sites.

If this is the incident you're referring to, there is the cause and effect.

There was also the case of the Wahoo (SS-238) where the skipper had her surface to recharge batteries after torpedoing several transports and freighters near Palau. There happened to be (20 estimated) lifeboats of survivors nearby and according to the reports, the Japanese soldiers opened fire on the sub with side arms and rifle fire to which the Wahoo's gunners returned fire.

This incident has been debated time and again and no definitive conclusion has ever been drawn.


..otherwise, I would be very interested in reading credible sources that cover this claim (other than the occasions I mentioned).

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## parsifal (Jun 14, 2015)

no, didnt know about that one. Ill try and dig out the claim if you like. For the record, so too did the Japanese sub commanders, but the Japanese did not sign the treaty or even subscribe to the convention

Edit

It was Mortons attack in the WAHOO in '43. During Wahoo* '​s third war patrol, Morton was responsible for an incident which resulted in shipwrecked soldiers in about twenty lifeboats of sunken Japanese transport Bunyo Maru being fired on while in the water. Morton's exec, Richard O'Kane, who was on Wahoo* '​s bridge when the incident took place, likened to attacks on small craft made during the Dunkirk evacuation, and for the same reason: to prevent the enemy from recovering a body of troops that would shortly fight again.However, the Hague Convention of 1907 bans the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances. There is controversy about claim and counter claim, but for Clay Blair, at least, Morton had deliberately targetted survivors. 

Whatever the case, Morton and O'Kane had misidentified the survivors as Japanese. In fact, they were mainly Indian POWs of 2nd Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment, plus escorting forces from the 26th Field Ordnance Depot. Morton was actually firing on allied soldiers


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## The Basket (Jun 14, 2015)

A few points
The sinking did not bring USA into war

The U Boats stopped unrestricted submarine warfare


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## Njaco (Jun 14, 2015)

I really think its not constructive to go over myths (my terminology) about men shot in the water, men shot in parachutes, etc. It was war and sometimes these things happened. But I've never been able to find anything in the form of an order from the Allies condoning these type of actions. The closest was Churchilll who stated that the only way to beat the Axis was unrestricted warfare.

Regarding Galipoli, Churchill was made the scape-goat for the orders and inactions of others. He definitely had his hands in the mix but it wasn't his alone. As far as the Lus, his heart was far greater than to allow Allied civilians to die.

My 2 cents....

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## parsifal (Jun 14, 2015)

I think your right Chris, I shouldnt have started it. I guess the central question for this thread is, did Churchill deliberately allow the Lusitania to be placed at risk to entice US entry into the war. 

There is motive, but I just cant see the smoking gun.....


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## stan reid (Jun 14, 2015)

Njaco said:


> The closest was Churchilll who stated that the only way to beat the Axis was unrestricted warfare.



Yes, I've heard reports that, before some of his minions calmed him down, Churchill wanted to use chemical weapons against Germany as retaliation for the V2 attacks on England.


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## pbehn (Jun 14, 2015)

The "law" regarding U Boat attacks in WW1 was strange to say the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fryatt


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## mikewint (Jun 14, 2015)

BEFORE the public notaries, Mr. E. Ansley, in the county of Hancock in the State of Mississippi, and Charles J. Denechaud, in the municipality of Orleans in the State of Louisiana, on the 5th and 8th October, 1915, six citizens of the United States of America made the annexed sworn depositions concerning the murder of the crew of a German submarine by the commander of the British auxiliary cruiser "Baralong." (Annexes 1 to 3.)

The names of these witnesses are:

1. J. M. Garrett, of Kiln, in the county of Hancock, Mississippi.
2. Charles D. Hightower, of Crystal City, Texas.
3. Bud Emerson Palen, of Detroit, Michigan.
4. Edward Clark, of Detroit, Michigan.
5. R. H. Cosby, of Crystal City, Texas.
6. James J. Curran, of Chicago, Illinois.

The ages of the witnesses are: Clark and Cosby, 21 years; Garrett and Hightower, 22; Palen, 27; Curran, 32. According to enquiries made on the spot, all enjoy a good reputation; Curran was for a considerable time employed as commercial traveller in various large American business houses.

According to the unanimous statements of these witnesses, the occurrence took place as follows. In August 1915 the British steamer "Nicosia" was [illegible]

When the witnesses were in the life-boats outside the line of fire from the submarine, a steamer which had been already noticed by the witnesses, Garrett, Hightower, Clark, and Curran, when still on hoard the "Nicosian," approached the spot. This, as. afterwards transpired, was the British auxiliary cruiser "Baralong." As this steamer approached all the witnesses noticed clearly that she was *flying the American flag at the stern and that she carried on her sides large shields with the American flag painted on them.* As the steamer carried the distinguishing marks of a neutral ship and *had shown signals, which according to the seafaring members of the crew of the "Nicosian" meant that she was willing to assist* if desired, and as there was nothing in her outward appearance to indicate her warlike character, the crew in the life-boats presumed that she was merely concerned with their rescue.

While the submarine was firing at close range on the port side of the "Nicosian," the unknown steamer came up behind the latter and steamed past on her starboard side. When she was a short distance ahead of the "Nicosian's" bow, she opened fire on the submarine at first, as all the witnesses, with the exception of Garrett, affirm, with small arms and immediately afterwards with cannon, which had been hidden up to that time by screens, and were only visible when the latter were removed. The witness Curran also deposed that the *American flag flying at the stern of the unknown ship was only lowered after the rifle fire.* He repeated this statement in the enclosed affidavit made before the public notary, Robert Schwarz, at New York, on the 21st October, 1915. (Annex No. 4.)

As the submarine after being struck several times began to sink, the commander and a number of seamen sprang overboard, the seamen having first removed their clothes. Some of them (the number is given by the witnesses Garrett and Curran as five) succeeded in getting on board the "Nicosian," while the remainder seized the ropes left hanging in the water when the "Nicosian's" life-boats were lowered. The men clinging to the ropes were killed partly by gunfire from the "Baralong" and partly by rifle fire from the crew, while the witnesses were boarding the "Baralong" from the life-boats or were already on her deck. With regard to this, the witness Curran also further testifies that t*he commander of the unknown ship ordered his men to line up against the rail and to shoot at the helpless German seamen in the water.*

Next the commander of the "Baralong" steamed alongside the "Nicosian," made fast to the latter, and then ordered some of his men to board the "Nicosian" and search for the German sailors who had taken refuge there. The witnesses Palen and Curran testify regarding this incident that* the commander gave the definite order "to take no prisoners." Four German sailors were found on the "Nicosian," in the engine-room and screw tunnel, and were killed.*

The commander of the submarine, as the witnesses unanimously testify, succeeded in escaping to the bows of the "Nicosian." He sprang into the water and swam round to the, bow of the ship towards the "Baralong." *The English seamen on board the "Nicosian" immediately fired on him, although, in a manner visible to all, he raised his hands as a sign that he wished to surrender,* and continued to fire after a shot had apparently struck him in the mouth. Eventually he was killed by a shot in the neck.

All the witnesses were then temporarily ordered back on board the "Nicosian." There the witnesses Palen and Cosby each saw one body of a German sailor, while the witness Curran---who remained on board the steamer with members of the crew absolutely necessary to man her---saw all four bodies, which were thrown overboard in the afternoon.

The commander of the "Baralong" had the "Nicosian" towed for a few miles in the direction. of Avonmouth, and then sent back to the "Nicosian" the remainder .of the crew who were still on the "Baralong"; at the same time he sent a letter to the captain of, the "Nicosian," in which he requested the latter to impress on his crew, especially the American members of it, to say nothing about the matter, whether on their arrival at Liverpool or on their return to America. The letter, which the witness Curran himself has read, was signed "Captain William McBride, H.M.S. 'Baralong.'" That the unknown vessel was named the "Baralong" was discovered also by the witness Hightower from a steward of the steamer, when he (the witness) was on board this ship; while the witness Palen deposes that he, when he was leaving the ship, saw this name indistinctly painted on the bows,

The statements of the six witnesses are in substance corroborated by the 18 year-old witness, Larimore Holland, whose sworn statement before the public notary, Frank S. Carden, in the county of Hamilton, Tennessee, on the 12th October, 1915, is also annexed (Annex 5). The witness, who was a stoker on board the "Baralong," was on board that ship when this unparalleled incident occurred.

According to his statement also, the "Baralong" hoisted the American flag, and, covered by the "Nicosian," steamed towards the scene where, as soon as the submarine was visible, she opened fire on the latter and sunk her. He further states that about fifteen men of the submarine's crew sprang overboard as she sank and were killed by rifle and gun-fire from the "Baralong," some while they were swimming in the water and others as they were trying to climb up the ropes of the "Nicosian." If his statement differs in details from the statements of the other witnesses, this evidently is caused by the fact that he himself only witnessed some of the incidents, and that he apparently only knows by hearsay of other incidents, notably those which occurred on board the "Nicosian."

*By reason of the above evidence there can be no doubt that the commander of the British auxiliary cruiser "Baralong," McBride, gave the crew under his command the order not to make prisoner certain helpless and unarmed German seamen, but to kill them in a cowardly manner*; also that his crew obeyed the order, and thus shared the guilt for the murder.

The German Government inform the British Government of this terrible deed, and take it for granted that the latter, when they have examined the facts of the case and the annexed affidavits, will immediately take proceedings for murder against the commander of the auxiliary cruiser "Baralong" and the crew concerned in the murder, and will punish them according to the laws of war. They await in a very short time a statement from the British Government that they have instituted proceedings for the expiation of this shocking incident; afterwards they await information as to the result of the proceedings, which should be hastened as much as possible, in order that they may convince themselves that the deed has been punished by a sentence of corresponding severity. Should they be disappointed in this expectation, they would consider themselves obliged to take serious decisions as to retribution for the unpunished crime.


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 14, 2015)

stan reid said:


> Yes, I've heard reports that, before some of his minions calmed him down, Churchill wanted to use chemical weapons against Germany as retaliation for the V2 attacks on England.


There is this abiding belief that Churchill ran the war on the U.K. side, but he didn't. There was a coalition government and a War Cabinet drawn from all political parties. For the use of chemical weapons, the War Cabinet would have had to discuss it, and pass it as a suitable way to wage war. They didn't, so all this manufactured angst against Churchill is, once again, just so much hot air.

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## GrauGeist (Jun 14, 2015)

All sides knew that once someone deployed chemical weapons, the Genie would be out of the bottle.

Chemical weapons were in place and ready to be deployed, sometimes too close to the front, as we saw during the Luftwaffe attack on Bari by Ju88s, releasing U.S. mustard gas stockpiles that were aboard the SS John Harvey when it was hit and sunk.


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## parsifal (Jun 14, 2015)

Baralongs actions were really pushing the rules to the limits. But I don't see too much to complain about, for reasons ill try and explain. There are two basic incidents at issue. First occurred in August 1915, against the U-27 and the second was against U-41 about a month later. Both incidents occurred after the Lusitania, after the Germans had declared unrestricted warfare within a "declared area" effectively repudiating the Hague conventions for the war at sea within that zone. Again, it is important to note that British reactions follow from German decision to begin flouting the law, so it is a bit rich of them to start complaining about the allies not sticking to the letter of the law.

The complicating issue is that Herbert, the CO of the Baralong was a very questionable character. Discipline in his command was very lax, and this was to manifest in coming actions. Further, there is evidence that following the Lusitania, RN officers unofficially told Herbert to "take no prisoners" , though evidence of this being a command were never found. 

During the first engagement, the Baralong used what is referred to as a "False Flag" to approach U-27 whilst the latter was busy sinking the Nicosia. That is a perfectly legal ruse in a declared area, so long as the true identity of the ship is revealed before firing is commenced. There is no dispute about these facts, though the Germans over the years have tried to make something of it regardless. U-27 got the worst of the engagement and appeared to be reduced to a sinking condition, but importantly she did not strike her colours. In 1915 that was important, it meant the crew had not surrendered and can still be viewed as combatants. U-27 was not a merchant vessel, in order for her crew to be afforded the protection of the rules of warfare, the Uboat had to show clearly that she had surrendered, which she never did. 12 men got off the stricken Uboat and into the water, 5 made for the abandoned , but still floating, Nicosia, and six made for the Merchant ships lifeboats. There was no indication as to the intent of these survivors, and at the time they were killed they were still combatants. Herbert did three things, firstly he yelled out to the lifeboats not to permit any German sailors onto the boats. Clearly he wanted them to drown. Then his men started to shoot the sailors in the water. Herbert was heard to shout at them to cease firing, but the indiscipline of the crew meant they ignored him. A moral crime? absolutely. A war crime.... Nope, because those sailors by the actions of the Uboat skipper were still combatants.

5 or 6 german sailors made for the abandoned Nicosia. Herbert was concerned they were going to attempt to scuttle the still floating ship. He immediately sent a boat to gain control of the ship and prevent its scuttling. He then gave an illegal order. He told the leader of the boarding party to take no prisoners. Four were found in the engine room, which were subsequently claimed as attempting to sabotage the machinery. There is no record that they attempted to surrender. They were shot on sight. I tend to think that given the behaviour of this crew they probably did attempt to surrender but were murdered. The second incident was in the wheelhouse of the Nicosia. Either one or two Germans were summarily shot there as well. Little doubt here that it was a case of murder.

In the case of the U41, the Baralong failed to haul down the False Flag before firing commenced, but it is disputed as to who started firing first.

Baralong was Q ship, disguised warship. These were always going to produce sticky wickets as to legality, but the root cause was not the Q-Ships, or the Admiralty or indisciplined crews or poor commanders. It certainly wasn't because of anything Churchill did. They are all issues, but not rot causal issues. The root cause, in my opinion, was the German decision to throw out the rulebook and commence unrestricted warfare on unarmed merchant shipping. That was explosive in 1915, and in many sailors eyes amounted to piracy. The treatment of the Uboat crews in these and other cases was pretty poor, but it arose from the choices the German high command had made previously. 

I fail to see what any of this proves. It certainly has nothing to do with the allegations of Churchill's duplicity


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## parsifal (Jun 14, 2015)

> Churchill was instrumental in establishing the illegal starvation blockade of Germany. The blockade depended on scattering mines, and classified as contraband food for civilians.



Planning in the modern sense for the blockade began well before Churchill. Girst planning documents were tabled and approved in 1904 under Balfours regime

There was nothing illegal about the Royal Navy Blockade. 
(The following comes mostly from the following article)
The British Blockade During World War I: The Weapon of Deprivation - Student Pulse
When Britain joined the war on August 4, 1914, they did not immediately execute the entire plan to blockade all German imports. It was not until nearly four months into the war that Britain labeled the North Sea a war zone, and also began directing limited forces in the Mediterranean as well to restrict all German trade routes, these were all in consequence to clear acts of aggression by the germans on the high seas . In spite of this fact, British intelligence apparatus began the long process of accumulating data on where the Germans were obtaining their goods from, and analysts compiling this data into reports so that the Royal Navy could quickly cut all avenues of trade once the full blockade was established.

A part of the reasoning for the delay in full action was due to the U.S. government's insistence that all belligerents respect neutral rights of free trade, and not impede enemy merchants from reaching their destinations if they were transporting only civilian supplies. These rights had been discussed during the second Hague International Peace Convention in 1907, and set forth in a legal document at the International Naval Conferences in London in 1909. This document became known as the Declaration of London, and was signed by all major belligerents that were to fight in WWI, but was only ratified by the United States. The most notable country that did not ratify the declaration document was Britain.

They refused to do so because Britain's leaders could not agree on several passages including the rights of neutrals to transport goods to their own home ports, even when they knew these materials would be sold to the enemy. Even so, Britain was in a precarious situation because while they did not legally have to follow the declaration, the U.S. expected them to do so. It was paramount that Britain tread lightly in this grey area of legality because as Siney notes, it was evident from the beginning of the war that the U.S. would be the principle supplier of financial capital and munitions to the Entente during the war. Therefore instituting a full blockade of Germany imports when war broke out could have been the death knell not for Germany, but for Britain and its allies.

The final shift to establishing the full blockade came on November 11, 1914, when the germans made clear an overt aggressive actions that placed their behaviour outside of the law, and placed sufficient distance between themselves and the Americans as to allow the British to take action. These events included several German light cruisers being observed attempting to lay mines off the coast of southern England. This act of aggression gave British leaders the casus belli to take action. With this expose of german disdain of the laws and conventions of naval warfare as it existed at that time, the british had the impetus they needed to declare the full blockade without U.S. resistance because during the first four months of the war, Britain had confined itself to blocking only war materials from reaching German ports directly. World opinion of Germany during this time began to deteriorate because of repeated reports of brutality directed against Belgian and French civilians. With world sympathies firmly shifting in the Entente's favor, Britain gained the necessary advocacy it needed to declare its right to institute the blockade, and defend its realm against the aggressive German empire. From that point the full blockade began to take shape. There was plenty Machiavellian about it, and plenty of partisan politics to boot. But in the end, the spark that ignited this came from German indiscretion, not anything the British initiated.

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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2015)

Michael, while I agree that a naval blockade is a legitimate tactic of war, the blockade's purpose is to cut off MILITARY supplies. While the British blockade did indeed stop such things the British also classified FOOD as a military supply. It was here that Churchill learned his war lessons very well: *Target Civilians*
*The Blockade*
On November 11, 1914, the British set out in the most literal sense to starve the German people into submission; an idea best described by *First Lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill himself when he stated, "The British blockade treated the whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress, and avowedly sought to starve the whole population - men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound - into submission." * By 1917, this mission was rapidly coming into fruition, and every month the war was prolonged, the situation in Germany became even more dire. While the German people certainly experienced hardship during 1914-1916, it was during the last two years of the war that their suffering reached its zenith. It was also during this period that the frontline soldiers began to truly feel the effects of the blockade for the first time.
The situation in Germany going into 1917 was one of growing chaos, disorganization, and sickness all stemming from the blockade, and subsequently Germany's inability to provide its people with adequate provisions to sustain normal productive lives. While few individuals starved to death between 1914-1918. Official British post-war statistics counted that 772,736 starved to death because the blockade. According to a post-war analysis conducted by University of London physiologist Ernest Starling, throughout 1917-1918, the average German ate less than 1500 calories per day, down from the already meager diet of 1700 calories per day in 1916. These unsustainable eating habits and unhealthy weight loss caused a greater proportion of the German population to suffer from a host of chronic illnesses which ranged from mild aliments like influenza and dysentery, to more serious afflictions such as typhus, tuberculosis, and scurvy. One possible reason for this drastic increase in fatalities is that without access to foods containing proper nutrients, the body's immune system begins to shut down, leaving the individual highly susceptible to contracting communicable diseases. Thus because the British blockade prevented Germany from importing foodstuff, the population was unable to properly feed themselves and maintain basic body functions. Combined with the scarce availability of cleaning products or fresh clothing, a great proportion of the German population was keenly susceptible to infections and disease.
Without access to quality fodder, farm animal's health began to suffer, and they subsequently produced less than adequate byproducts for human consumption. According to one report from the Centre for the Care of the Young, the results of cattle that ate less nutritious foods was milk that was 'considerably watered,' and lacked fats needed for youth during this important stage of development. By 1917, and going into 1918, German livestock counts reached all time lows, and those that survived weighed significantly less than they would have if proper fodder supplies were available. As the war dragged on into a third year, swine stocks fell by nearly seventy-seven percent of pre-war levels, and cattle to just thirty-two percent of peacetime inventory. What remained of these important sources of human nourishment were severely emaciated animals that often provided little or no meat for human consumption. As food became more scarce, German civilians began acting out primal instincts to feed themselves, and in many cases this need dominated their entire lives. Morals, cultural norms, and laws were often blatantly disregarded as millions sought to obtain what they and their families needed to survive. This often caused otherwise law abiding citizens to engage in illicit acts such as theft, cheating, or assaulting other citizens in their never ending quest to feed themselves. 
In the southern German city of Stuttgart alone, within a three month span in 1917, two hundred and seventy three children ranging between the ages of twelve and fourteen were arrested, and convicted of theft. In every one of these cases, the accused child was charged with attempting to steal food from farms. It was these starving children and young adults that would grow-up to become the most fanatical Nazis.
At long last in 1917-1918, for the first time since the war began, the German army also began to experience deficiencies in the amount of food it had available to feed its troops. When compared to Entente rations, Germany's military provisions were lacking. Throughout the war, British soldiers consumed approximately 4000 calories per-day, while their German counterparts were provided with supplies that amounted to around 3200 calories per day. By 1917, with the blockade in full swing, and food reserves at critical levels, the German rations dropped below 2900 calories per day, which meant that frontline soldiers were not consuming enough calories to replenish their bodies after engaging in strenuous activity.


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 15, 2015)

Well, it'll be some comfort to those passengers on the Lusitania, that Germany's submarine blockade of the U.K. only went for military supplies, and never affected food.


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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2015)

We can very easily get into a tit for tat arguement here, the Hatfields and the McCoys feud. I would also remind you that the Lusitania was listed by the Admiralty not as a passenger ship but as an "Auxiliary Cruiser". Also that the German Embasy posted plain warnings of the submarine warfare potential and equally honest were the British warnings to the passengers that the "passenger" liner was loaded with 173 tons of munitions. Did you notice those?
Civilians killed in time of war is unavoidable but using civilians as shields or as direct targets is inexcusable


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 15, 2015)

mikewint said:


> We can very easily get into a tit for tat arguement here,


Well, you started it; Lusitania was owned by Cunard, so how the Admiralty listed it is academic, since Cunard listed it just as a "steamer."
I'd also be interested to know where this listing occurs, since I've never heard of an auxiliary cruiser that was unarmed.
The Allies blockaded Germany with their navy; Germany blockaded Britain with submarines, and both sides went for food supplies, so, as far as this country is/was concerned, there is no discernible difference between the two methods.


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## buffnut453 (Jun 15, 2015)

mikewint said:


> Civilians killed in time of war is unavoidable but using civilians as shields or as direct targets is inexcusable



So every bomb dropped on a city by any air force during WWII was inexcusable? Who was being targeted during all the raids against German industry during WWII if not the civilians who worked there?


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## VBF-13 (Jun 15, 2015)

mikewint said:


> Also that the German Embasy posted plain warnings of the submarine warfare potential and equally honest were the British warnings to the passengers that the "passenger" liner was loaded with 173 tons of munitions.


I'd say anybody who doesn't know about the first one doesn't know the first thing. Those passengers thumbed their noses at those warnings. She could outrun the subs, and if Vanderbilt, et al., was on her, that's good enough for them. There's the attitude, in a nut.

On the second one, where did you get that from? As far as I know, that's still shady, speculative.


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## parsifal (Jun 15, 2015)

> The situation in Germany going into 1917 was one of growing chaos, disorganization, and sickness all stemming from the blockade, and subsequently Germany's inability to provide its people with adequate provisions to sustain normal productive lives


.

Part I of my response

Actually not correct, or at least substantially not correct. There was nothing illegal, or even immoral with the British enforcing a total blockade for goods entering ports controlled by Germany. That included food. If Germany had been short of water, it would have been legitimate for the British to blockade that too. This is where the Americans of pre-1915 have a view that was uniquely their own. they strongly advocated the notion of freedom of passage on the high seas, including trade with the central powers in 1914. They acquiesced to the British applying the blockade rules of Germany ....a perfectly legal and moral position....outside the German territorial limits, particularly after it became clear that the germans were taking the interdiction on the high seas by neutral shipping as well, or rather, first. 

Both countries were coming to terms with the concepts of total war, in which civilians were as much a target as the frontline armies. So, in my opinion, arguing that one side was moral whilst the other was not is a nonsense. Total war is by definition, valid to target civilians. But to restrain the worst effects of that, the western nations attempted to control the horrors and costs that might bring by introducing rules of engagement. The Hague convention and the London Treaty of 1907 and 1909 respectively were meant to do that. But Germany chose to ignore those rules, firstly by deliberately targeting civilians in France and Belgium, and then engaging in unrestricted warfare on the high seas, including the laying of mines in foreign and international waters. A definite no under her treaty obligations. As I stated earlier this gave the british justifiable and moral cause to expand the blockade to include those neutrals known to be trading with the enemy. There was never any question that food could not be included in the blockade, even the Americans thought it a justifiable strategy

British blockade strategy a summarised above was the result of a last minute change in the plan in July 1914. This second strategy was called the observational blockade and the observational blockade was again modified to become the 'distant blockade.' In this final revision, the two entrances into the North Sea were blockaded first between the Dover Straits and northern France, and then between Norway and Scotland . As Kemp noted, this final operational change was described in the new official War Plan as to have the movement of ships "be sufficiently frequent enough and sufficiently advanced to impress upon the enemy that he cannot at any time venture far from his home ports without such serious risk of encountering an overwhelming force." The distant blockade thus covered two operational concerns - stopping merchant ships from reaching German ports, and giving German Naval leaders visual stimuli that should they set sail, it was at their own peril. The Americans reluctantly accepted the notion of board and search within this zone, but initially the british only applied contraband rules to shipping whose manifests were bound for german ports. The british did not target food at all for the first 8 months which I will discuss a little later. 

It is easy to assume that the British simply placed ships in strategic locations and waited for craft containing contraband to approach; or for Germany's High Seas Fleet to try escape the North Sea confines. The truth is much more complicated than that because the blockade was conducted on more than just the world's vast oceans. In reality the blockade was not even entirely a product of the Royal Navy. As Greg Kennedy contends, the blockade was only executed by the Royal Navy, but was administered and guided by the British Foreign Office The blockade was not applied universally from Day 1 as is so often proclaimed by the pro-German apologists. Not that britain would not have done that if they could, but simplt because the nature of their blockade at the beginning had to be far more targeted than that. The FO activities allowed the British to determine when ships were sailing and their destinations. The responses necessarily became targeted ones. In 1915-16, over 70% of German war making strategic materials being imported from overseas were intercepted whereas foodstuffs were being intercepted at the rate of less than 40% of imports. Up to 1916 it made no sense for Britain to apply with great rigour a blockade aimed at starvation. The blocking of strategic war materials however caused decisions to be made by the germans themselves that caused the majority of their food problems and the famines of 1916, brought on by the failed crop seasons of 1915 and 1916, changed all that.

To better demonstrate just how dependent Germany was on foreign goods we can look at what they were importing. During the years 1899-1913, on average nearly 77% of the total import tonnage was raw materials and chemicals needed to feed the tremendous growth in German industry including, and in particular, their armaments industry. A significant portion of these chemical imports were sodium nitrate, a compound used by most German farmers to replenish nutrients lacking in the poor quality soil found throughout the country, but also an essential ingredient to the making of certain industrial and military products . Another 17.5% of the imported tonnage was foodstuff, while the remaining 4-5% of German imports were manufactured goods. What we can gain from this information is that Germany was predominately a manufacturing nation, and was heavily dependent on foreign raw materials to produce finished goods. We can also see that Germany did produce the majority of its own food. A food blockade was not going to effective unless circumstances changed, but a raw materials blockade had every chance of success, hence the targeted response of the British through to the end of 1916.


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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2015)

Edgar, When Lusitania was built, her construction and operating expenses were subsidised by the British government, with the proviso that she could be converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser if need be. *A secret compartment was designed in for the purpose of carrying arms and ammunition*. When war was declared the Lusitania was requisitioned by the British Admiralty as an _armed merchant cruiser_, and she was put on the official list of AMCs. Lusitania remained on the official AMC list and was* listed as an auxiliary cruiser in the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships*, along with Mauretania.
Buff, as I stated civilians killed in time of war is going to be unavoidable. If you work in a munitions plant, fighter/bomber plant, tank plant, ect. or live next to one for example then you are an unavoidable casuality if that plant is bombed. Placing a poison gas plant in the basement of a hospital is using civilians as a shield. If Lusitania were strictly a "Passenger ship" who put those "Passenger Munitions" on board?
Let's separate the Myth from the man here. No, Churchill did not deliberately cause the Lus to be torpedoed and sunk but he certainly created a climate in which it was bound to happen thus to turn neutral nations against Germany.
“A curse should rest on me,” Churchill said, “Because I love this war. I know It's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment and yet I can't help it. I enjoy every second.”
VBF - her cargo had included an estimated 4,200,000 rounds of rifle cartridges, 1,250 empty shell cases, and 18 cases of non-explosive fuses, which was openly listed as such in her cargo manifest. The day after the sinking, The New York Times published full details of the ship's military cargo. Assistant Manager of the Cunard Line, Herman Winter, denied the charge that she carried munitions, but admitted that she was carrying small-arms ammunition, and that she had been carrying such ammunition for years. The fact that Lusitania had been carrying shells and cartridges was not made known to the British public at the time. In the 27-page additional manifest, delivered to U.S. customs 4–5 days after the Lusitania sailed from New York, and the Bethlehem Steels papers is stated that the "empty shells" were in fact 1,248 boxes of filled 3" shell, 4 shells to the box, totaling 103,000 pounds or 50 tonnes.


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 15, 2015)

Listing a ship as something doesn't mean it was actually used as such. The Lusitania never carried out any belligerent act, and (unless you know different) was never kitted out as an armed cruiser.
You make much of the British blockade, while ignoring the German blockade, and also conveniently ignoring that Zeppelin raids started in January 1915, hitting those famously military targets of Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and King's Lynn; any idea that the British public was going to accept gentlemanly treatment of the Germans was doomed from that moment.


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## parsifal (Jun 15, 2015)

Part II

What changed this was twofold. Firstly the failed cropping seasons of 1915 and 16 forced Germany to the brink. Secondly, and more importantly, or paerhaps relevantly, it was the decisions made by the german leadership in response to the shortages of strategic materials that cause most of the suffering in Germany to the end. 

During the first eight months of the war, the blockade only affected the German home front in minor ways that can be described as more of a nuisance than actually being harmful to the health of the German population. A part of the reasoning behind this was the fact that the 1914 harvest had been planted before the war started. Also as noted before, during the first four months of the war, Britain did not attempt to confiscate imports that were not military in nature. Thus during this period Germany was largely able to obtain food imports from foreign traders. The only real shortages that were of any consequence during this early stage were imported delicacies not native to Central Europe such as rice, corn, and coffee.

Changes in the availability of most food stocks began to reverberate throughout Germany late in the spring of 1916. The shortages seen here were the result of several issues. First by this point in the war the blockade had been in full operation for over a year, and was running at peak efficiency. Also the government needed to requisition large quantities of food to feed the military; and finally the blockade cut Germany off from most sources of chemicals like salt peter and cordite, both used as propellants in munitions. To solve the latter problem, German chemists devised substitutes from regular foods such as milk, vegetable fats, and certain oils. The effects of this discovery added greatly to the diminishing availability of fatty foods and milk for civilian purchase and was the major reason for the shortages in those areas. By the actions they had taken themselves, the germans had contributed to the shortages, and firmly placed foodstuffs as a legitmate military target. Unless we are going to argue that britains principal blockade 9to 1916) was illegal because it denied access to vital strategic war making materials , ther is no basis to the argument that the blockade led directly to the starvation issue. After 1916, it becomes irrelevant, because after that time the germans were using foodstuffs for military production. necessary compounds from any other source. Therefore a direct line can be drawn to the blockade for causing many of the shortages seen in late 1915 and early 1916.


Moreover after 1917 the argument becomes academic, because after that date the US entered the war, and brought about a total blockade for Germany. again, Germany's decision to reinstitute unrestricted attacks on shipping was the root cause of this.

The blockade was nasty, and it was effective. It contributed to the food shortages, but it did not cause them. The main causes of the German starvations were the war itself 9somethig they started) the failed crops of 1915-16, and finally the decisions made by the germans themselves concerning the use of proteins and fats in war production. Finally it is undeniable that the blockade influenced all these elements (except the decision to got war), but it was not the main reason for Germany's ills.


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## nuuumannn (Jun 16, 2015)

> n 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, and, during the crises that followed, used every opportunity to fan the flames of war. When the final crisis came, in 1914, Churchill was all smiles and was the only cabinet member who backed war from the start. Asquith, his own Prime Minister, wrote: "Winston very bellicose and demanding immediate mobilization . . . has got all his war paint on."



You can argue all you like about Churchill's warlike tendencies and how mad the Dardanelles fiasco was, Mike, but he was the right man in the job at the time; he had a very real understanding of strategy and tactics and throughout his military career could see a very different view of things to the established status quo. You can also state that his desire for war was merely war mongering, but he had a deep sense of justice and injustice. As for references to genocide in times of war; he was a man of his time; he might have been discussing it, but others were perpetrating it while he looked on in horror. He was also one of the very few who could see a way out from the stalemate on the Western front - few others in such a position had the temerity to enact a diversion on the scale of the Dardanelles campaign - after all, if it didn't receive approval from the war cabinet and the office of the Prime Minister, it wouldn't have gone ahead.

To analyse the Dardanelles correctly isn't just to highlight Churchill's suggestion of it, nor his wholehearted support for it. Remember, Kitchener among others was all for the idea and it had gained considerable mileage in discussion in the Admiralty before the war started. The concept was extraordinarily far sighted and amounted to the biggest combined land, sea and air operation to that time; its failure cannot be laid squarely on Churchill's shoulders - that's pandering to historical judgements that aren't entirely accurate. 

It failed for many reasons, not necessarily down to a lack of understanding of the Turks either. It is not so commonly realised that it very nearly succeeded too. The naval attack against the forts just about exhausted the Turks' armament supply and if it weren't for de Roebeck deciding to withdraw the fleet on 18 March after three battleships were sunk by an unspotted minefield, the fleet could have easily made its way through the Narrows and into the Sea of Marmara unmolested. The British mine sweepers being manned by civilians who had never experienced operations under gun fire was also a factor that led to the British/French/Russian fleet withdrawal. Keyes wanted to launch the naval offensive again after 18 March, but de Roebeck was unconvinced. His hesitance gave the Turks time to resupply through Bulgaria. The incompetence of leadership in the land campaign was immense, to say the least. All factors Churchill had little influence over, not being present in the Aegean himself.

Jutland was also not the only major naval battle; there were significant naval battles throughout the war; before Jutland, Heligoland, Dogger Bank, Coronel and the Falklands etc; there were naval operations that resulted in gun fights in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas throughout the war. The belief that naval activity was confined to one battle in the North Sea is again ignoring history and choosing an angle. And as far as Jutland was concerned, the Royal navy won the tactical and strategic battle, despite losing a greater number of ships and personnel - afterwards, the strategic situation hadn't changed as the Germans had wanted it to; the naval blockade was still in place and the Grand Fleet, despite its losses was more than capable of fighting Jutland Round Two as Jellicoe expected to do so the next day, unlike the High Seas Fleet, back on the Jade River licking its wounds.

This victory for the British had far reaching consequences and it is often ignored how effective the blockade was in inciting disillusion among the German populace for the war. It brought about a very real moral and mental defeat of the German people; the army could have fought on, but for what? Germany was starving to death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Germany

Anyway, It's very easy to demonise Churchill based on his failures, very easy and so many have done it, Mike; join the queue. But he possessed genius in equal measure and his success places him above those failures, however monumental - in essence he was human; a brilliant but fundamentally flawed man of his time.

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## pbehn (Jun 16, 2015)

Whatever people say about Churchill, we needed him. The British would have folded if we had some Bertie Wooster character at the helm.

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## mikewint (Jun 16, 2015)

Bear with me, one at a time:
Edgar, now we're doing Zeppelins? So if I follow your logic A is justified because of B and C is justified because of D and E because of F and ect. until the Germanic Cain slays the Britisher Abel. Sounds like the present day Mid-East which by the way was also a Churchill creation. Cunard neglected to notify its passengers that (A) they were on a registered British warship and (B) it was loaded with 173 tons of munitions in a secret compartment. Without A B the sub captain had no right to simply fire a torpedo but in the place of that sub captain, I see a ship, looks like a passenger liner but is listed as an "Auxiliary Cruiser" and with Q-ships roaming around, I'd fire a torp too.
Who is more to blame, the man who sets the scene and baits it or the fool who blunders into it?
Nuuumannn, First let's review Gallipoli. Churchill was not on the scene giving direct orders BUT, the Apr 25th landings were a fiasco and by the end of that bloody day the British had lost well over 2500 and the ANZAC had lost 1/5 of their men. * Ian Hamilton seeing the impossibility of it requested evacuation and CHURCHILL said NO.* By May 4th losses were over 10,000. Through the summer heat, flies, rotting corpses, lack of water, and disease had taken a heavy toll. *At the beginning of Sep Hamilton again asked for evacuation and CHURCHILL, comfy and cozy, in London, said NO and removed Hamilton from command.* Finally in November Kitchener himself visited and ordered an immediate evacuation. Churchill was responsible for the lost of well over 153,000 British, Australian, and New Zealand lives not to mention 218,000 Turks.
Saying Churchill was the "right" man for the job I guess I'd have to agree, it takes a butcher to make a steak and one could make the same statement about Adolf.
The WWI Germans had lost their "Churchill", Otto von Bismarck. He'd been removed by a German who, through sheer stubborn blockheadedness fell into every trap and alienated just about every European nation: enter Wilhelm II. Although quick witted, he was also emotionally unstable and had a violent temper and was under the influence of his Prussian advisors. After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb on June 28, 1914, Wilhelm offered his support to Austro-Hungary if it were to take action against the Serbians and the dominoes began to fall. As soon as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, the Russians began to mobilize troops along both the Austrian and German borders. Seeing this, and recognizing that since France had not declared itself neutral, it would therefore come into the war on the side of Russia. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1 followed by a declaration of war on Russia’s main ally France on August 3. When Belgium asserted its neutrality, by denying Germany the right to cross its territory, the Germans invaded anyway on August 4. Now here is where it gets tricky and Imperial Britain shows its hand.
The 1839 Treaty of London guaranteed Belgian independence as a collective agreement among several nations with the exception of Germany which had not been allowed to become a nation by the Four Powers until 1871. Legally the treaty called for a collective, not an individual response. Legalities aside Britain had the excuse it needed and had been looking for and the countries leadership took it. Imperial Britain could not allow Germany to once again defeat France and change the cozy "Spheres of Influence" worked out by the Four Powers. Had it not been for the Four Powers Imperial delusions, WWI may never have been fought in the first place. If Britain had not intervened, and Germany had defeated France in a European war, the circumstances that bred Hitler would never have eventuated. A German victory would have refashioned the face of Europe, with the next big war likely to have been a clash between Germany and the rising tide of Communism in the east. World War II would have been avoided. And with nothing to hasten the fall of the old imperial powers, the way would not have been so clear for the United States and the USSR to emerge as the two contending superpowers of the second half of the twentieth century


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 16, 2015)

mikewint said:


> now we're doing Zeppelins? So if I follow your logic A is justified because of B and C is justified because of D and E because of F and ect. until the Germanic Cain slays the Britisher Abel.


Obviously you don't (deliberately?) follow; we have a nation which violates the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, sinks, without warning, ships crewed by civilians (the Merchant Navy has never been part of the military,) chucks bombs on civilian "targets," bombards coastal towns with its ships, and then it (and its apologists) has the brass nerve to complain about RN ships operating a blockade of its shores, and intercepting "neutral" ships.


> If Britain had not intervened, and Germany had defeated France in a European war, the circumstances that bred Hitler would never have eventuated.


It would seem that it isn't just Germany which doesn't recognise what the word "ally" means. You really need to look at the Kaiser, and his behaviour before the war; he wanted war with Britain, because of some engendered hate that had consumed him over a perceived slight, and you really believe that, with France defeated, he'd have stopped there? Please, don't be so naïve; he would have found some excuse to have a go at us, and mobilisation in 1914 put a stop to all that farrago of nonsense.


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## mikewint (Jun 16, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> Obviously you don't (deliberately?) follow; we have a nation which violates the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, sinks, without warning, ships crewed by civilians (the Merchant Navy has never been part of the military,) chucks bombs on civilian "targets," bombards coastal towns with its ships, and then it (and its apologists) has the brass nerve to complain about RN ships operating a blockade of its shores, and intercepting "neutral" ships.
> 
> Please read again the very line you yourself quoted. i.e.: A because of B because of C... It's the selfsame argument that is still keeping the Mid-East and Balkans stirred up today. It is an endless argument, totally pointless, and endless with no real solution.


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## nuuumannn (Jun 16, 2015)

> Churchill was responsible for the lost of well over 153,000 British, Australian, and New Zealand lives not to mention 218,000 Turks.



No, Mike, he wasn't. 

Mike, tell me something I don't know about Gallipoli. From as far back as I can remember it has been a part of my country's conscience, but to blame Churchill for these losses is utter silliness and betrays a distinct lack of knowledge by you of the machinations of the campaign as a whole; like I said, he's an easy target. You're forgetting one thing, initially the campaign was to be a solely naval operation led by Churchill and the Admiralty, with the idea of storming the Dardanelles by sea and then attacking Constantinople, without a land invasion. initially Carden, the man on the street at the time, was asked by Churchill about the feasibility of storming the Dardanelles and Carden stated that it could be done and Churchill took this on board after much consultation with the War Council. 

One factor that is almost universally ignored in current overviews of the history of the campaign is that admirals knew how difficult it was to breach land based fortresses using naval guns because the fall of shot couldn't be gauged as easily as it could against a vessel at sea, but a solution was at hand in the form of wireless carrying aircraft, as put forward by Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the War Council. Churchill, being Churchill agreed and it was decided that aviation assets in support of naval bombardment were to be sent to the Dardanelles. Initially Carden suggested the French seaplane carrier Foudre, whose Nieuport VI aeroplane had been temporarily used aboard the cruiser HMS Doris in support of land offensives by navy troops against Turkish positions in the Sinai and Suez, especially after an abortive invasion of the Suez canal by the Turks, which was successfully repelled by the British and French after said seaplane spotted the Turkish advance, thus proving the worth of aerial reconnaissance. Churchill, not wanting to leave the aerial aspect in the hands of the French, sent the seaplane carrier Ark Royal to Carden. These offensives show that Carden was already engaged in combat operations in the Aegean and Mediterranean before the campaign and Churchill trusted his knowledge of the situation there.

Let’s look at things outside of Churchill's jurisdiction. After Carden fell ill and was succeeded by de Roebeck and the 18 March fiasco, Kitchener pressed for a land invasion and so it became a joint army/War Office and naval/Admiralty operation. Hamilton stuffed it up in the first instance, so had things gone to plan initially with the land invasion, losses would not have been so high. The invasion would have taken place earlier than 25 April had the boats sailing from Alexandria in Egypt to Mudros carrying supplies for the invasion hadn't been packed properly. When they got to the invasion beaches, Hamilton found the useful stuff was all packed at the bottom, so what did he do, send the ships back to Alex to have them all repacked, so the useful stuff was at the top! Meanwhile, the wily Turks, realising what was about to happen, began reinforcing what had previously been a sparsely defended coastline. Then the ANZACs landed too far to the north of Gaba Tepe. Such incompetence of leadership was not uncommon. 

You also are probably not aware that Churchill actually opposed the appointment of Hamilton in his role, despite being a close personal friend; Churchill didn't believe Hamilton had the right stuff to carry out an amphibious assault of that nature, he was a cavalry officer whom Churchill had served under at the North West Frontier in India, but he was chosen by Kitchener to lead the assault - this is where your dislike of Churchill is allowing your knowledge of the situation to slip - Hamilton was not subservient to Churchill; he had no say over the conduct of the land invasion.

Here is a caption from a little book I picked up on the campaign recently for the wee sum of $20, for which it is probably worth a lot more, about Hamilton and Kitchener;

"A degree of ruthlessness was required to order his subordinates to act, to dismiss those who were patiently inept, yet, such was Hamilton's nature that he only advised, and having given a broad outline of his strategy left the implementation of it entirely to his generals. He urged instead of ordered and believed that a suggestion of an obvious course of action was sufficient, not realising that his subordinates lacked drive or the intelligence he possessed. Even when this became obvious, he was unwilling to impose his own command; alone of the generals he appreciated the significance of the unopposed landing at 'Y' Beach, and was in a position to order an immediate reinforcement and advance which might well have achieved the objective of the landing at a stroke; yet he declined to act. He remained far from the scene of the action, aboard ship and later on Imbros, and this divorce from the realities of the campaign perhaps contributed to the over optimistic tone of his reports. Brave, charming and almost universally liked, Hamilton was essentially a weak commander given a task beyond his abilities and resources."

"If Hamilton bears some of the blame for the mismanagement of the campaign, much of it must be accorded to Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Secretary of State for War." "His actions over the Dardanelles campaign were ill conceived, he delayed sending the military forces, then sent them terribly unprepared, kept them short of supplies and reinforcement, and appointed the wrong generals."

So much for Churchill being responsible, then.


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## mikewint (Jun 16, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> It would seem that it isn't just Germany which doesn't recognise what the word "ally" means. You really need to look at the Kaiser, and his behaviour before the war; he wanted war with Britain, because of some engendered hate that had consumed him over a perceived slight, and you really believe that, with France defeated, he'd have stopped there? Please, don't be so naïve; he would have found some excuse to have a go at us, and mobilisation in 1914 put a stop to all that farrago of nonsense.


Oh, I totally understand. It was those interlocking treaties and alliances that forced a continental brushfire war to grow into a world-wide war which solved nothing. Wilhelm II was a fool that the British played like a fiddle. Willy could hardly "hate" the British, he was after all the Queen's grandson and he counted on those familial ties to keep the British out of the war. He failed to really understand the true depths of British imperialism. Let's review:
The late nineteenth century was the last major era of imperialist expansion. All the great European powers were involved. Africa was rapidly carved up between the main European powers and harsh conditions were imposed on independent states that could not be conquered outright, such as China. Eventually every available territory was claimed as a colony by one or other of the major European powers.
By the turn of the twentieth century Germany was a rising force in the world eager to acquire an empire comparable to Britain. In 1871 the Germans achieved their dream of unification which had been strongly resisted by France who preferred a weak and divided Germany. By 1884 Germany had put together an overseas empire, but a small one compared to those administered by Britain and France. The scramble for African colonies had been driven by the idea that a nations economic survival depended upon it being able to offload surplus products into overseas possessions. Thus German imperialists argued that Britain’s dominant position in the world gave it an unfair advantage in international markets, thus limiting Germany’s economic growth and threatening its security. *Britain meanwhile was determined to continue its expansionist plans because it foresaw a possible decline in its share of the world’s export trade with the rise of competition from Germany, America, and France.*
During the Bismarck period, the Iron Chancellor managed to gain what he wanted by subtle means, without overt confrontation. However when the young, inexperienced, and impatient Wilhelm II was made Kaiser the situation started to spiral out of control. *Britain put pressure on Germany to limit the size of its naval fleet in the North Sea and hemmed in the Germans on land by their treaties with France and Russia. * France was also trying to oust the Germans from their territory, Alsace-Lorraine, acquired by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. All these pressures fed German resentment until the moment it exploded.
*In 1902 Britain signed a new alliance with Japan to prevent German expansion in that area.* The British assured Germany that their alliance with France and Russia were only about ending old disputes and had nothing to do with joining those nations in the event of war. Assurances aside, the fact remained that Britain had allied itself with two nations convinced that Germany was their enemy. The Germans were worried.
In the first Moroccan Crisis of 1905, Wilhelm II supported Moroccan independence, thus removing them as a French protectorate. Britain had to choose between supporting French ambitions or the German move toward an independent Moroccan state. *In response Britain entered into military consultations with the French* and delivered a blunt “Hands off” message to Germany.
Meanwhile in South Africa, the British (unsanctioned but a good example of the British left hand not knowing what the right was doing) Jameson raid into the Transvaal was repulsed. Ever the diplomat, Wilhelm II sends a telegram to the President of the Transvaal, the infamous Kruger telegram:
_"I express to you my sincere congratulations that, without appealing to the help of friendly Powers, you and your people have succeeded in repelling with your own forces the armed bands which had broken into your country, and in maintaining the independence of your country against foreign aggression."_
Sent from British telegrapher to telegrapher along British telegraph wires through British relay stations, the telegram soon became public and was printed in British newspapers. British public opinion turned quickly against the Germans in what was seen as an attempt to interfere in a British sphere of influence.
By the time of the second Moroccan crises *Britain was firmly on the French side and Germany was encircled by hostile forces.* *In 1912 Britain added fuel to the smoldering fire by signing a naval agreement with France* pledging to defend the French coast along the channel and the Atlantic. More fuel was poured on in 1913 with the *formation of the British Expeditionary Force*, which comprised six divisions created to fight on the continent.
British imperial ambitions simply could not afford for France to be defeated in another war with Germany. For that would make Germany the strongest nation in continental Europe, at a time when that country, was attempting to gain control of the oceans and expand its sphere of influence into the Balkans and Turkey. *Britain’s leaders clearly felt that they had to join France in standing against Germany sooner or later; they simply awaited the right pretext.*


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## GrauGeist (Jun 16, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> Obviously you don't (deliberately?) follow; we have a nation which violates the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, sinks, without warning, ships crewed by civilians (the Merchant Navy has never been part of the military,) chucks bombs on civilian "targets," bombards coastal towns with its ships, and then it (and its apologists) has the brass nerve to complain about RN ships operating a blockade of its shores, and intercepting "neutral" ships.


Yes, Yes...poor Britain

Never mind that a passenger ship was allowed to carry munitions aboard, placing the passengers in harm's way. Regardless if it was torpedoed or not...



Edgar Brooks said:


> It would seem that it isn't just Germany which doesn't recognise what the word "ally" means. You really need to look at the Kaiser, and his behaviour before the war; he wanted war with Britain, because of some engendered hate that had consumed him over a perceived slight, and you really believe that, with France defeated, he'd have stopped there? Please, don't be so naïve; he would have found some excuse to have a go at us, and mobilisation in 1914 put a stop to all that farrago of nonsense.


Now if we can put aside the notion that Britain was just sitting up there watching the world fall apart prior to WWI, we'll see that it wasn't just those evil, nasty bastard Germans stirring up trouble.

It was *ALL OF EUROPE*. Europe (this includes the Ottomans by way of Austrian alliance) was one bigass powder keg waiting to go off. You had backroom deals and intertwined alliances being made by Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy and on and on and on. It should have been extremely obvious that amongst all this posturing, brokering, positioning and saber-rattling, that eventually someone would blink and war would be the immediate result.

If you want to point fingers at the Kaiser, perhaps it's because Britain joined the French and Russians as an ally, when Germany already had a bone to pick with either one - this is why Germany pushed through Belgium when war broke out: to knock out France before Russia could mobilize per General Schlieffen's plan.

It is interesting that the Bulgarian - Serbian conflict didn't set the whole place on fire in 1912, as the Balkans were a hotbed of trouble and it actually comes as no surprise that WWI did, in fact, start in that region when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated. If the assassination attempt had failed, then something else would have lit the fuse on that powder keg.

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## buffnut453 (Jun 16, 2015)

mikewint said:


> Buff, as I stated civilians killed in time of war is going to be unavoidable. If you work in a munitions plant, fighter/bomber plant, tank plant, ect. or live next to one for example then you are an unavoidable casuality if that plant is bombed.



That's a fine hair to split. They're still civilians. And what of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or napalm attacks on Vietnamese villages? Sorry, mate, but either killing civilians in wartime is acceptable given the scope and scale of the conflict (WWI and WWII were as close to Clausewitz's definition of Total War as we've ever come) and ROE of the time or it's not. 

One thing that confuses me - if the armaments carried on Lusitania were openly declared on the cargo manifest, why the secret storage room? Isn't there a logical disconnect there? Or was the room large enough to house something more sinister than small arms? Then again, if the room was that large, how was it possible for it to remain "secret"? The twisted logic is ludicrous, as it is with most conspiracy theories. 

Let's be realistic...the loss of 4 million rounds of small arms isn't going to make any dent in Britain's wartime capacity. That's hardly enough for a decent offensive in WWI. And yet that is supposed to be the big bait Britain used to tempt Germany into sinking a liner? Really? Surely, given some time to consider, the German Navy could figure out that sinking an ocean liner was going to cause a furore that would outweigh any military benefits? The logical decision by the Germans would be NOT to sink the Lusitania. However, the fog of war creeps in, the Lusitania and the U-boat happen to meet (by accident, not by design) and a trigger-happy U-boat captain orders torpedoes to be fired. Not a conspiracy, not a heinous act by a Machiavellian Britain and a suitably gullible Germany...just a screw-up of the kind that happens in war which, sadly, resulted in the loss of so many lives.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 16, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> Obviously you don't (deliberately?) follow; we have a nation which violates the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, sinks, without warning, ships crewed by civilians (the Merchant Navy has never been part of the military,) chucks bombs on civilian "targets," bombards coastal towns with its ships, and then it (and its apologists) has the brass nerve to complain about RN ships operating a blockade of its shores, and intercepting "neutral" ships.
> 
> It would seem that it isn't just Germany which doesn't recognise what the word "ally" means. You really need to look at the Kaiser, and his behaviour before the war; he wanted war with Britain, because of some engendered hate that had consumed him over a perceived slight, and you really believe that, with France defeated, he'd have stopped there? Please, don't be so naïve; he would have found some excuse to have a go at us, and mobilisation in 1914 put a stop to all that farrago of nonsense.



If the Merchant Navy is carrying munitions and war supplies then it is a valid target. Regardless if it is crewed by civilians.


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## buffnut453 (Jun 16, 2015)

GrauGeist said:


> It was *ALL OF EUROPE*. Europe (this includes the Ottomans by way of Austrian alliance) was one bigass powder keg waiting to go off. You had backroom deals and intertwined alliances being made by Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy and on and on and on. It should have been extremely obvious that amongst all this posturing, brokering, positioning and saber-rattling, that eventually someone would blink and war would be the immediate result.
> 
> If you want to point fingers at the Kaiser, perhaps it's because Britain joined the French and Russians as an ally, when Germany already had a bone to pick with either one - this is why Germany pushed through Belgium when war broke out: to knock out France before Russia could mobilize per General Schlieffen's plan.



I don't disagree with your statements about the European powder keg but please explain to me how the actions taken by individual nations differ from international relations today? Are there not backroom deals and treaties made, all of which are done in the best interests of the participants based on their perceived needs? The Cold War was another such pressure-cooker, though we thankfully had gained some more experience/maturity and nobody was crazy enough to launch a nuke...but the Cuban Missile Crisis and constant fears of regional conflict flaring into World War III just illustrate that exactly the same thing was happening 50 years after WWI.

Unfortunately, the same issues are present in international politics today. Was Iraq invaded for a justifiable reason? What about the political pressure being applied to Iran over nuclear weapons, primarily by nations who possess enough nukes themselves to wipe Iran off the map. We have become a little smarter and realized that global trade is more profitable than global war...but that doesn't mean there aren't potential powder kegs today...like Ukraine!


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## parsifal (Jun 16, 2015)

> Never mind that a passenger ship was allowed to carry munitions aboard, placing the passengers in harm's way. Regardless if it was torpedoed or not...



We have to deal with technicalities here. The truth is that the war was amoral in its totality, so to that extent Ive got no beef to pick. Your making a valid point on that score. The difficulty I have here is the sweeping assumption (and an incorrect one I might add) that the Lusitania carrying what is referred to as "incidental cargo" somehow made it a bigger target than it was. Aside from the fact that the 170 tons of explosives was a slight ordinance risk, it made it no more legal what happened to the ship than if it wasnt carrying explosives.

The Germans had every right to sink combatant warships, and every right to stop detain and hold under arrest any ship within the declared area shown to be carrying contraband. If it chose to sink the merchant ship, it had an obligation under the Hague convention of 1907 and the treaty of London to make the crew and passengers safe. Placing them in a lifeboat was specifically deemed as not making the civilians safe. 

With only 170 tons of explosive carried the amount of cargo being carried by the LUSITANIA was too small to qualify her as a warship, and too small to say she was a ship engaged in the transport of contraband traffic. If the law had been observed correctly, the germans would have needed to get the crew and passengers off the ship and onto another ship, appoint a prize crew and take the ship into custody. An impossible task.

Trying to apply the law realistically, the Germans should have stopped the vessel, put the crews and passengers into lifeboats, and then sunk the ship, not because she was carrying explosives, but simply because she was british. Whilst not completely lawful, in my opinion such action would retain the moral high ground. Everybody assumed that at the least the german navy would at least do the morally correct thing, and this, it was assumed would make them not attack passenger ships like the LUSITANIA. It was too difficult to retain the moral high ground, because lives of innocent civilians would be at risk. The world under-estimated just how ruthless the germans were. 

The Germans had declared a policy of unrestricted warfare within a declared area which meant they would sink any vessel within that area, on sight. Nobody believed that they (the Germans) would be so morally bankrupt as to extend that policy to passenger ships. But they did, and with the loss of the LUSITANIA, the world learnt a bitter lesson. It set into train a reaction, which led to incidents like the Baralong, but the root cause of the descent into barbarism was the unrestricted warfare declaration


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## parsifal (Jun 17, 2015)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> If the Merchant Navy is carrying munitions and war supplies then it is a valid target. Regardless if it is crewed by civilians.



After the declaration of the combat zone in 1915, any ship entering that zone was a target. That in itself was of questionable legality, but has no moral baggage in my opinion. The declaration of unrestricted warfare is a bit harder for me to come to terms with. Germany never repudiated her obligations under the 1907 hague convention, and that placed on her an obligation to preserve the safety of civilians on any ship. It might be deemed that the LUSITANIA was carrying contraband because of the cargo she was carrying, though thats not my understanding. If she had been searched, the ship should have been declared as carrying an incidental cargo and taken into custody.

Of course there is an element of unreality to all of that . It was not possible for the Uboats to follow such ridiculous procedures, as Fisher predicted. But what they could have done is stop and search and at least ensure the passengers were in the lifeboats and as safe as was practicable, which is what many uboats actually did in both wars 9until in the 2nd war Donitz ordered no such assistance or warning be given) . The Germans didnt do that, U-20s skipper Schwieger elected to launch torpedoes with no warning. On that basis the carrying of explosives had no impact on the german decision to sink the LUSITANIA. They didnt know what she was carrying


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 17, 2015)

parsifal said:


> After the declaration of the combat zone in 1915, any ship entering that zone was a target. That in itself was of questionable legality, but has no moral baggage in my opinion. The declaration of unrestricted warfare is a bit harder for me to come to terms with. Germany never repudiated her obligations under the 1907 hague convention, and that placed on her an obligation to preserve the safety of civilians on any ship. It might be deemed that the LUSITANIA was carrying contraband because of the cargo she was carrying, though thats not my understanding. If she had been searched, the ship should have been declared as carrying an incidental cargo and taken into custody.
> 
> Of course there is an element of unreality to all of that . It was not possible for the Uboats to follow such ridiculous procedures, as Fisher predicted. But what they could have done is stop and search and at least ensure the passengers were in the lifeboats and as safe as was practicable, which is what many uboats actually did in both wars 9until in the 2nd war Donitz ordered no such assistance or warning be given) . The Germans didnt do that, U-20s skipper Schwieger elected to launch torpedoes with no warning. On that basis the carrying of explosives had no impact on the german decision to sink the LUSITANIA. They didnt know what she was carrying



I wasn't speaking of the Lusitania, so...


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## GrauGeist (Jun 17, 2015)

buffnut453 said:


> I don't disagree with your statements about the European powder keg but please explain to me how the actions taken by individual nations differ from international relations today? Are there not backroom deals and treaties made, all of which are done in the best interests of the participants based on their perceived needs? The Cold War was another such pressure-cooker, though we thankfully had gained some more experience/maturity and nobody was crazy enough to launch a nuke...but the Cuban Missile Crisis and constant fears of regional conflict flaring into World War III just illustrate that exactly the same thing was happening 50 years after WWI.
> 
> Unfortunately, the same issues are present in international politics today. Was Iraq invaded for a justifiable reason? What about the political pressure being applied to Iran over nuclear weapons, primarily by nations who possess enough nukes themselves to wipe Iran off the map. We have become a little smarter and realized that global trade is more profitable than global war...but that doesn't mean there aren't potential powder kegs today...like Ukraine!


Bear in mind that the "Great War" was the last war of a bygone era. It was the end of the great age of exploration, of military adventure and establishing colonies in mysterious far-off lands. It was thought to be a short clash, and everyone would "be home by Christmas".

Unfortunately, the Golden age was overtaken by the technological age and Pandora's box was opened. It was a war that sank humanity to new depths, threw away the "book of chivalry" and unleashed horrors that were soon to be repeated on an even larger scale in the form of WWII.

In the 70 years since, the world has grown smaller and the lessons learned mean that a war of that scale cannot be repeated without dire consequences. There have been wars since WWII but even if you combine all military actions of the last 70 years, that won't equal the material, manpower or monetary cost of WWII.

There were close calls during the Cold War, sure...the Cuban Missile Crisis, the confrontation between Chairman Mao and President Eisenhower over Taiwan, etc. But then those were no different than other confrontations in the past, where diplomacy kept a cool head and averted disaster, it's just that the stakes were higher.

In this modern environment, there is still saber rattling, such as China antagonizing Japan, North Korea constantly provoking South Korea, Putin's bullsh!t and the ongoing turmoil in the middle-east...but the days of WWI cannot revisit this day and age because the geo-political climate is far different.


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 17, 2015)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> If the Merchant Navy is carrying munitions and war supplies then it is a valid target. Regardless if it is crewed by civilians.


You, too, are missing the point; our friend was whingeing about ships being intercepted by the blockade. As far as I'm concerned, if it's fine to sink British ships, because their cargo is considered "valid," why shouldn't cargo carried by ships working for Germany also be considered valid, because this supposed difference is what we're being expected to accept.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 17, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> You, too, are missing the point; our friend was whingeing about ships being intercepted by the blockade. As far as I'm concerned, if it's fine to sink British ships, because their cargo is considered "valid," why shouldn't cargo carried by ships working for Germany also be considered valid, because this supposed difference is what we're being expected to accept.



Those ships are fair game as well...


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## buffnut453 (Jun 17, 2015)

GrauGeist said:


> Bear in mind that the "Great War" was the last war of a bygone era. It was the end of the great age of exploration, of military adventure and establishing colonies in mysterious far-off lands. It was thought to be a short clash, and everyone would "be home by Christmas".
> 
> Unfortunately, the Golden age was overtaken by the technological age and Pandora's box was opened. It was a war that sank humanity to new depths, threw away the "book of chivalry" and unleashed horrors that were soon to be repeated on an even larger scale in the form of WWII.
> 
> ...



I agree pretty much with everything you're saying. My point, though, is that the actions of the European powers in the run up to August 1914 were no different from international politics of today. The key difference is that we have better knowledge of the destructive power of warfare. 

In 1914, everyone thought it would be a short war that was "over by Christmas". Today, we're still looking for quick-win silver bullets to complex geopolitical challenges - look at the initial attacks on Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq for a couple of prime examples. The threat of global war may have reduced, at least in the conventional sense of the actions of nation states. However, the impact of aggressive acts continues to escalate...it's just that it's largely invisible to the West (how much attention did we really pay to the Arab Spring and ongoing events in Syria?). The impact on local civilian populations has been shattering, and certainly of a substantial (albeit not global) scale.

Perhaps the more interesting question is what will happen if/when America's global military dominance is eroded to the point where there are more players? We'll be returning more to the conditions of 1914 and before, with multiple nations able to inflict equivalent amounts of damage on each other but nobody with an overriding supremacy. It might never happen, but never is a very, very long time. Putin has clearly signalled an intent to resurrect Russia's global prestige and China continues to grow it's military capacity so maybe the day will come sooner than we think.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 17, 2015)

Fortunately, many of the large powers understand the impact of a global escelation...for example, China, who is an ally of North Korea, recently told them to tone down their shannanigans instead of jumping in and backing them full force, as was the case in the Korean war of the 1950's.

There are several other good examples of a hesitance to react in recent years, and this is most likely not due to a fear of nuclear deployment, but rather an economic one. Like I mentioned before, the world has become a very small place in the half century following WWII. There is no industrialized nation now, who can survive soley on their own for any extended period of time. To wage an all-out war would not only be devestating from a military point of view, but risks the economic collapse of participating nations...even if they "win" a modern full-scale war.

If we wanted to use a parallel example to the Lusitania, let's look at the recent downing of the Malaysian passenger jet over the Ukraine. Had this event happened even 50 years ago, you can be sure that the Russian backed "rebel" war in the Ukraine would have escelated as allies of Russia would rush to decry the "accusations" put forth against the Russian BUK missile battery and on the otherside, the growing evidence that indicated the BUK battery was in fact responsible would cause the Allies of the Ukraine (or foes of Russian interests) to call to arms. And here we go...game on.

As it turns out, the Allies of the Ukraine unleashed a tirade of strongly worded letters of condemnation and fired a savage volley of sanctions aimed at what? Russia's economy. Was there immediate military assistance for the beleagered Ukrainians? No. 

And there it is.


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## buffnut453 (Jun 17, 2015)

The reason none of these events have escalated is because they simply aren't worth the risk/cost. That may change as major powers vie for resources like oil and, increasingly, water. It all comes down to a question of priorities and perceptions related to national needs. Again, we now see the impact of global war but I'm not naive enough to believe it could never happen again. The major powers in 1914 didn't envisage a global war while WWII became a global war almost by accident - a coalescing of several regional conflicts. There is the possibility of some unifying force to push in a similar direction in the future.


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## parsifal (Jun 17, 2015)

I think the war broke out as much as anything because of huge miscalculations by just about anyone that was involved. In the case of this issue of unrestricted Uboat warfare I certainly don't think the Germans approached this because they wanted to stir people up. I think they didn't understand, or give sufficient weight as to just how deep the feelings of attacking non-combatant and neutral shipping would bring.

In the second war the reactions were much calmer, despite the fact that the ramp up to full commerce war was far quicker. One of the spin offs though of the German decisions made 39-40 was that more than 12 million tons of shipping willingly passed to Allied control. These leakages to Allied control arose principally because of two events. First was the shoot on sight policy that was firmly being implemented by Novemeber 1939, the second was the socalled board and seizure policy they implemented. The latter really did amount to piracy. Ships delivering goods to Germany, could be boarded, either at sea, or in ports. Cargo confiscated and ship appropriated for german use. It was a short lived policy, abandoned by the look of it after the fall of France, but by then the damage had been done. In the Med, the Italians adopted a similar policy, and yielded a lots of captured shipping initially, but benefitted the allies far more. The germans through their board and seizure policy yielded them a lot of shipping as well, but from what ive been reading a lot less than 12 million tons. most of the german seizures were undertaken in the Baltic and during the immediate periods following an invasion, for example the invasion of Denmark.


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2015)

From Michael - *"With only 170 tons of explosive carried the amount of cargo being carried by the LUSITANIA was too small to qualify her as a warship, and too small to say she was a ship engaged in the transport of contraband traffic."* I repeat again that Lusitania did not need to carry munitions to qualify as a Ship of War. She was *already* listed as an "Auxiliary Cruiser" and was carried as such in Jane's Fighting Ships. And further contraband is contraband no matter the amount and 173 tons makes a big bang. Thirdly operating Q-ships flying false flags makes the surfacing of a U-boat to challenge a ship a game of Russian Roulette. 
Brooks - *You, too, are missing the point; our friend was whingeing about ships being intercepted by the blockade.* Not entirely sure what WHINGEING is but on my computer the forum makes no sounds. Putting that aside, tis not the stopping of ships that bothers me it is the reason/cargo that they were stopped. IMHO food, medicines, clothes, etc. for the civilian populations should not be restricted. Yes, yes, I know those things can also be used by the military and are needed by the military as well so the logic of blockading them does not escape me...the morality does.
As Buff states we have become more circumspect about such things today. Kennedy blockaded Cuba but it was never put to the test. In Vietnam there was no blockade of Hanoi and/or Haiphong, war supplies of all kinds lined its wharves. The US eventually did bomb in and around the harbor then stopped for 4 years. Nixon bombed again in '72 but nothing ever stopped the ships bringing in those munitions


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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 18, 2015)

mikewint said:


> IMHO food, medicines, clothes, etc. for the civilian populations should not be restricted. Yes, yes, I know those things can also be used by the military and are needed by the military as well so the logic of blockading them does not escape me...the morality does


And the morality of sinking ships without warning (how many plying their trade to Germany were sunk without warning by the RN?) as well as bombing and shelling civilian targets escapes me, too.


> we have become more circumspect about such things today.


 Really? Have you seen the behaviour of this so-called Islamic State? If that's your idea of "more circumspect," it certainly isn't mine. 
To return to the Lusitania (hopefully,) you make much of this "auxiliary cruiser" listing in a book, but, to qualify as a warship, it needs to be operated by the Royal Navy, crewed by R.N. personnel, and be flying the White Ensign. No mention of this has ever been made (unless you have proof of something different?) which rather tends to undermine this "Ship of War" business.
The conspiracy theorists love to blame the secondary explosion on the munitions, but an investigation, carried out several years ago, came to the conclusion that the likeliest culprit was coal dust flung into the air in the bunkers by the torpedo; there was a wide swathe of coal dust, on the seabed, marking the final track of the ship as she settled. Try throwing a handful of coal dust into a bonfire, and see the result.


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## parsifal (Jun 18, 2015)

> I repeat again that Lusitania did not need to carry munitions to qualify as a Ship of War. She was already listed as an "Auxiliary Cruiser" and was carried as such in Jane's Fighting Ships.



I wasnt aware of the janes listing, but thats not particularly relevant in any case, and i suspect they may have confused the ideas of Armed combattant warships and Defensively Armed Merchant Ships, or perhaps Fleet Auxiliaries, both the latter are still classified as non combattant, except if in company of a commissioned warship. Whether or not a ship is deemed to be a combatant or civilian warship is determined by its status on the Lloyds register of ships. There are (or rather, were) subsidiary organisations across the world, including Germany, and it is from here, not a publication like Janes, that the determination of whether a vessel was a warship or a mercantile vessel comes from. looking up the Lusitania you will find she was not registered as a warship at the time of her loss. You will also find the rules concerning incidental cargoes with Lloyds. it is the place to go if you are seeking to classify any non-military vessel. The mere fact that LUSITANIA was registered with Lloyds means that by both definition and also in practical terms, she was not a warship. 



> And further contraband is contraband no matter the amount and 173 tons makes a big bang.



I disagree, because of the rules of classification contained in the international register of shipping and the so called "Lloyds shipping rules". However, the Uboats would probably agree with you, even if such classification is not lawful or correct interpretation of the laws of the sea. But such positioning is superfluous since the Lusitania was sunk without any stop and search procedures carried out. 



> Thirdly operating Q-ships flying false flags makes the surfacing of a U-boat to challenge a ship a game of Russian Roulette.



Of course, but the Q ships arose in response to the German declaration of unrestricted warfare. They are warships, but disguised, in much the same way as the german disguised raiders were. There were no Q ships until well after the commencement of the sink without warning policy instituted by Germany. German unrestricted attacks began in February 1915, The first Q-ship was not put into service until May 1915, and the first victory was on 23 June 1915, when U-40 was sunk off Eyemouth by the submarine HMS C24, cooperating with the decoy vessel Taranaki, commanded by Lieutenant Frederick Henry Taylor CBE DSC RN. 

There were also DEMS or Defensively Armed Merchant Ships, of which Lusitania was an example. Once the Germans named the North Sea and surrounding oceans of great Britain a comabat are, in November 1914, under the Hague convention it was lawful to fit guns to the merchant fleet. These were still non-combatants, because they were guns manned by civilian crews. Perfectly legal, and known to all combatants. 

You need to concede that it was the German declaration of unrestricted UBoat warfare that led to tragedies like the Lusitania, apart from the even bigger tragedy of the war itself. It had little to do with Churchill, or the alleged illegaility of the british blockade, or Q ships, or any of these other spurious claims. There was a set of rules concerning the conduct of trade war on the high seas. germany had agreed pre-war to sticking to those rules. The rules were unworkable. But it was Germany that crossed the law and decided to rip up the rule book, not the British. To be fair, britain didnt need to....if things stayed as they were in 1913, they were going to win.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 18, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> The conspiracy theorists love to blame the secondary explosion on the munitions, but an investigation, carried out several years ago, came to the conclusion that the likeliest culprit was coal dust flung into the air in the bunkers by the torpedo; there was a wide swathe of coal dust, on the seabed, marking the final track of the ship as she settled. Try throwing a handful of coal dust into a bonfire, and see the result.


It was, by a high degree of qualified expert analysis and examination, the boiler(s) that detonated. Not coal dust.

The damage is not consistent with the Aluminum compounds detonating, the Gun Cotton would have not delayed in it's detonation but instead been an immediate explosion without the 15 - 20 second delay according to eyewitness accounts.

Coal dust needs to be under a certain amount of compression to create a highly explosive reaction, free-floating coal dust is certainly combustible, but not to the degree of shattering bulkheads. Additionally, coal dust tends to float on or settle slowly in, water. At a depth of 300 feet, any coal dust would have drifted countless miles from the scene and dispersed, leaving no trace. It is entirely possible that the coal bunkers disgorged during the sinking, but finding a "trail" after all these years in that murky and sediment rich environment would be a miracle on the order of parting the red sea.


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2015)

Michael - "*You need to concede that it was the German declaration of unrestricted UBoat warfare that led to tragedies like the Lusitania, apart from the even bigger tragedy of the war itself. It had little to do with Churchill, or the alleged illegaility of the british blockade, or Q ships, or any of these other spurious claims. There was a set of rules concerning the conduct of trade war on the high seas. germany had agreed pre-war to sticking to those rules. The rules were unworkable. But it was Germany that crossed the law and decided to rip up the rule book, not the British. To be fair, britain didnt need to....if things stayed as they were in 1913, they were going to win.*
Well stated as always, Michael. One thing stands out "The rules were unworkable". A submarine with its single pop gun, by the time it surfaces, clears, loads, and aims is no match for any armed merchantman, Q-ship, destroyer, etc. Subs are only effective because of their stealthy ambush-type tactics. The Germans did not have the fleet to contend one-to-one with the British fleet, so I may agree to your Marquess of Queensbury rules by day, but down-and-out, you on top, choking, I'm gonna, bite, scratch, kick, and gouge.


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> And the morality of sinking ships without warning (how many plying their trade to Germany were sunk without warning by the RN?) as well as bombing and shelling civilian targets escapes me, too.


And we are again back to the specious "Eye for an eye" logic. England had certainly done its share in provoking WWI. Their colonial policy of "Make the world England" and the use of their fleet to club everyone into submission is a "As you sow, so shall ye reap" scenario.

*Really? Have you seen the behaviour of this so-called Islamic State? If that's your idea of "more circumspect," it certainly isn't mine. * 

And now Islamic states!, and you post "hopefully" return to Lus? OK but One cannot equate religious fanatics engaged in a Jihad with the actions of a present day country. The horrors perpetrated in the name of God and religion are beyond any rationality. 
and again I reiterate: A* week before the disaster, Churchill wrote to Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany."*


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## pbehn (Jun 18, 2015)

100 years after the event it is being discussed how to wage a war using submarines between two European powers while trade with the USA is not to be affected, the conventions on warfare were fantasy at the start and became even more outlandish as it went on. When a nation is facing destruction rules about legitimate targets, rules of engagement and permissible actions go out of the window.

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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2015)

Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir and that's without religious fanaticism thrown in


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## parsifal (Jun 19, 2015)

Mike, now that we at least have an understanding of the opposing points of view, I would offer this piece of conciliation. Without detracting in any way from the position ive submitted, I think that it was almost inevitable that Uboats would sooner or later be more or less forced into unrestricted attacks. Nor do i believe that the attacks they made were delivered with any sort of malice or ill intent. It made perfect military sense to attack enemy shipping on an unrestricted basis. Perhaps the best compromise would have been to refrain from arming merchant shipping in exchange for stop and search policy. put the crews into lifesboats, then sink the ship. 

Neither side had the best interests of passengers or crew as paramount. The allies ended up using the rules as some kind of moral shiled whilst the germans threw all sense of tight and wrong out the window to pursue their strictly military solution to their problem. Neither approach maximised survival for the noncombattants.


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## mikewint (Jun 19, 2015)

Michael, no need to conciliate anything. We are different people with different points of view who look at the same data and see different things and to me that is the BEST thing about the forum. I do understand your point of view and I deeply respect your posts and the intelligence behind them.
I do not believe that war can ever be moral in any sense of the word. Pbehn said it perfectly in his post. I guess the best we can ever hope for is semi-barbaric when humans are involved. Even in sports we see the breaking of rules to gain an advantage real or imagined why would war be any different when so much more is at stake.
Westmoreland's policy of attrition was doomed from the start as any of us who were there could see unless you want to push it to the point of genocide. They can't fight if their all dead. 
There's a song that says it perfectly
*Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.
*
One more thing. As you can probably tell, I'm not a Churchill fan (Don't like Abe Lincoln either) BUT, no human is all one thing. We are all part this and part that so to Winston's credit:
As a 36-year-old Home Secretary, Churchill was the principal dissenting voice in the Cabinet when the possibility of armed conflict was being discussed in 1911.
At a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defense that year, he presented a memorandum he had prepared on how he saw a German campaign against France developing. According to his prediction, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s forces would launch a major offensive through Belgium and the French would have no chance of stopping them on the frontiers and should instead prepare to defeat them inside France. He also argued that any British force sent to help the French should therefore be kept well back from the fighting until it could be reinforced by bringing additional troops home from overseas garrisons. A larger British force would then fight to decisive effect when the Germans had overreached themselves.
His proposal was dismissed at the time as “ridiculous and fantastic”.
It is certainly true that the French would have been able to manage without British forces in the first two months. The French had sufficient manpower to replace the British troops that were sent and the BEF, if it had been held back at Amiens, where Churchill had suggested, and its numbers built up to 300,000, which was perfectly doable, in October it should have been able to launch a counter-stroke into the German’s open flank between Abbeville, in northern France, and the North Sea.
It’s pure speculation at this point, but such a move might have been decisive and the German flank might have been turned and pushed back to the Meuse.
Let me also add this: Churchill had indeed pushed the idea of Gallipoli in 1915. IMHO it was the only decent strategic idea of the war, however its planning and execution was a disaster and Churchill, in some ways, a scapegoat, was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a meaningless position. Now, you have to admire him at this point because rather than sit by while the world tore itself apart, he resigned his post (though he remained a member of Parliament) and decided to rejoin his regiment in November 1915 at the age of 41. 
On January 5, 1916, he took command of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers battalion of the Ninth Division, currently in reserve just behind the line. It had been involved in the battle of Loos in September and had suffered greatly. When Churchill took over, the battalion had been reduced from 1,000 men to less than 600.
On January 27, the battalion took over its 1,000 yards of front at Ploegsteert, Belgium. While no offenses were launched in this sector during Churchill's tenure, there was constant shell-fire and forays into no-man's-land. Churchill set up his headquarters in a shell-battered farm behind the trenches. The barn was sandbagged, providing refuge when shells came in.
When the battalion was in the line-- it rotated six days in the trenches and six in immediate reserve-- he and his officers would enter no-man's-land through the barbed wire and visit the forward positions in shell craters to keep an eye on the enemy, yards away. At least one time he came under direct machine gun fire. Also, the farm itself was shelled frequently and the buildings occasionally were hit. One time, a shell landed on the house and a piece of shrapnel hit a lamp's battery holder he was toying with.
By May, his battalion and others had been so weakened by constant shell-fire, it was decided to merge them into the 15th Division. Instead of seeking a new command, Churchill took this opportunity to be allowed “to attend to my Parliamentary public duties which have become urgent”. This request was granted. 
So ended Winston Churchill's six months at the Western Front during the First World War.


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## Njaco (Jun 21, 2015)

Mike, I guess you can tell I'm a Churchill fan. You should try reading William Manchester's tome, "The Last Lion". I found it a very balanced account of his life.


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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2015)

I do wish people would stop confusing England and the UK.

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## Edgar Brooks (Jun 21, 2015)

Njaco said:


> Mike, I guess you can tell I'm a Churchill fan. You should try reading William Manchester's tome, "The Last Lion". I found it a very balanced account of his life.


It's also worth trying "Churchill" by Roy Jenkins, a Labour politician, and therefore a lifelong political opponent of Churchill. Lusitania never gets a mention, though, but he does point out that Churchill's so-called "sacking" over the Dardenelles campaign, was actually as a result of the government being changed to a coalition of all parties, with the Prime Minister carrying out a "reshuffle" (as they all do, and have done, for years immemorial) to give positions to members of the other parties.
As "pbehn"says, above, critics of the U.K. really should stop calling us "England." It drives the Scots, Welsh and Irish to distraction.

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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2015)

Edgar Brooks said:


> As "pbehn"says, above, critics of the U.K. really should stop calling us "England." It drives the Scots, Welsh and Irish to distraction.



It also drives the English to distraction. Scots Irish and Welsh involvement in the British Empire is slowly being written out of history. In her recent tour of the USA the first minister of Scotland saw common cause with the USA in their fight for independence from England, as if no Scots ever opposed of fought against American independence.


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## parsifal (Jun 22, 2015)

Im a New South Welshman and Im Australian. You can call me either whatever you like. Just don't call me British

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## Njaco (Jun 22, 2015)

Another digger heard from.........

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## GrauGeist (Jun 22, 2015)

Reminds me of that scene from Donovan's Reef, where Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) yells at a group of Australian Sailors and calls them "limeys" and all hell breaks loose (while the Sgt. of the French Colonial Police watches from the bar).

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## stona (Jun 22, 2015)

pbehn said:


> as if no Scots ever opposed of fought against American independence.



Nicola queen of Scots, like all politicians, tends to have a rather fluid interpretation of historical fact!

It's no accident that the Scots signed the Act of Union in 1707. They saw which way the wind was blowing and wanted a slice of what was until then largely an English Empire. Of course the sorry fate of Scotland's own imperial ambitions a few years earlier influenced the decision.

The Scots just had a lucky escape. I've just been in Norway and seen first hand the results of the collapse in oil prices there. One colleague was bemoaning the loss of nearly 3,000 oil industry related jobs in Stavanger and Rogaland.

Cheers

Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 22, 2015)

Njaco said:


> Mike, I guess you can tell I'm a Churchill fan. You should try reading William Manchester's tome, "The Last Lion". I found it a very balanced account of his life.


That's OK Chris we all have our foibles, all in all you're a decent, likable, person anyway


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## pbehn (Jun 22, 2015)

stona said:


> The Scots just had a lucky escape. I've just been in Norway and seen first hand the results of the collapse in oil prices there. One colleague was bemoaning the loss of nearly 3,000 oil industry related jobs in Stavanger and Rogaland.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve



There are even more job losses in UK from the collapse in oil, I know I am one of them. Strictly speaking I am not a "job loss" because like a huge number in the oil industry I worked as a limited company. However having worked all over for 30 years it was a good time to call a halt.

The point I was making was a general one, nations seem to be able to just walk away from their history as if a change of government is a change of brand. We have no idea how people individually or as a nation perceive us and why. I was once asked by an Italian why England never produced any artists scientists or philosophers just brutes like Nelson. You have to read a lot into Nelsons history in the Mediterranean to even get an idea what he was on about but in that guys mind Napoleon was a great man of vision and Nelson was a homicidal brute trying to oppose the natural European order.


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## redcoat (Oct 6, 2015)

Njaco said:


> I really think its not constructive to go over myths (my terminology) about men shot in the water, men shot in parachutes, etc. It was war and sometimes these things happened. But I've never been able to find anything in the form of an order from the Allies condoning these type of actions. The closest was Churchill who stated that the only way to beat the Axis was unrestricted warfare.


Churchill and Dowding the C in C of Fighter Command had an informal after dinner discussion during the Battle Of Britain about shooting pilots who had baled out of their aircraft, Dowding took the view that it was wrong to shoot pilots when over our territory when they would be taken prisoner, but that it was OK to shoot them if they were over their own territory and could soon return to combat duty, Churchill was horrified, he took the view that it was morally wrong to shoot them at any point.

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## The Basket (Oct 6, 2015)

I agree that warfare is about winning and any tactic that wins is accepted.
Lusitania is also propaganda so trying to split the truth and the fiction is hard work. 
I do agree that Churchill was no angel and like all historical figures can be equally saint or sinner.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Oct 7, 2015)

The Basket said:


> I agree that warfare is about winning and any tactic that wins is accepted.
> Lusitania is also propaganda so trying to split the truth and the fiction is hard work.
> I do agree that Churchill was no angel and like all historical figures can be *equally saint or sinner.*



Good traits to have when leading a nation at war.

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## vdorta (Jul 30, 2016)

This is a myth, Churchill had very little to do with the sinking of the Lusitania. The sinking and its consequences were mostly due to the fight within the German High Command about the war and the role of the submarine force in it, on whether it was enough to sink British merchant ships or to sink any and all merchant shipping that could help Britain. The hardcore German side (Tirpitz and the Navy) didn't care if this brought the US into the war, because they thought the war would be over by then if they succeeded in defeating the British. The moderate German side (Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and the Kaiser himself) was defeated and the rest is history.


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## pbehn (Jul 30, 2016)

vdorta said:


> This is a myth, Churchill had very little to do with sinking of the Lusitania. The sinking and its consequences were mostly due to the fight within the German High Command about the war and the role of the submarine force in it, on whether it was enough to sink British merchant ships or to sink any and all merchant shipping that could help Britain. The hardcore German side (Tirpitz and the Navy) didn't care if this brought the US into the war, because they thought the war would be over by then if they succeeded in defeating the British. The moderate German side (Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and the Kaiser himself) were defeated and the rest is history.


I didn't know that he wad submarine commander, what a talent he had.


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