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CHAPTER 6 LUSITANIA

NOTICE!

TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers [sic] sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY Washington, D.C., April 22, 1915.

—New York Times, May 1, 1915.¹

This warning was published in many newspapers, along with a list of the Cunard Line Lusitania’s European destinations, prior to her departure at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 1, 1915. The German embassy warning was unambiguous—passengers would be traveling “at their own risk.”

On April 30, one day prior to Lusitania leaving New York, Captain Lieutenant Walther Schwieger, in command of U-20, left Wilhelmshaven on Germany’s North Sea coast. Bound for the open seas west of Ireland, his orders were to participate in an aggressive, predatory submarine campaign against merchant vessels. A week later, nearly two thousand passengers and crew of the 787 foot long, 44,060 ton passenger ship would sit in the cross hairs of U-20’s periscope. According to the entry in Schwieger’s log, at 3:10 p.m. on May 7, 1915, “Torpedo shot at distance of 700 meters, going 3 meters below the surface. Hits steering centre behind bridge. Unusually great detonation with large cloud of smoke and debris shot above the funnels. In addition to torpedo, a second explosion must have taken place.”² It would take only eighteen minutes for Lusitania to plunge to the bottom, just eleven miles from her Liverpool destination, bringing nearly 1200 passengers and crew with her. There were only 761 survivors.³

U-boat flotilla at their base at Keil. U-20, the submarine that sank Lusitania, is in the front row, second from the left. (LOC LC-B2-3292-13)

Headline story about the loss of the Cunard liner Lusitania. (New York Times, May 8, 1915)

When Lowell Thomas, embedded reporter during the war, returned to Europe a decade after Armistice, he searched for German U-boat officers willing to share recollections of their service. The sinking of Lusitania would be of particular importance to Thomas’s telling of the U-boat campaign through the eyes of the participants. He was meticulous in his selection of U-boat officers, whom he interviewed in order to accurately portray their point of view. His Raiders of the Deep was published in 1928, a portrayal of life and death in the German submarine service.

Walther Schwieger could no longer tell his story, having died in September, 1917, while in command of U-88, which was lost in the Terschelling Bight mine fields off the Netherlands coast. Schwieger, however, had described the Lusitania sinking to his fellow submarine officers immediately after U-20 returned. One of these officers was U-boat Commander Max Valentiner, and Thomas used the transcripts of their interview to lend Schwieger’s voice to that tragic event:

“I saw the steamer change her course again. She was coming directly at us. She could not have steered a more perfect course if she had deliberately tried to give us a dead shot. A short fast run, and we waited. The steamer was four hundred yards away when I gave an order to fire. The torpedo hit, and there was rather a small detonation and instantly afterward a much heavier one.”⁴

When he returned to Wilhelmshaven, Schwieger was congratulated by his peers and throughout his chain of command. Yet the controversy about whether Lusitania was carrying war materials began immediately. Having fired a single torpedo, the second “much heavier” explosion was considered evidence of a cargo of munitions, a claim that Lowell Thomas described as “an alleged statement [by the] Collector of the Port of New York, that the Lusitania had aboard 4,200 cases of Springfield cartridges, 11 tons of gunpowder, and 5,500 barrels of ammunition.”⁵ Thomas also interviewed Lieutenant Rudolph Zentner, “a slender, pleasantly smiling chap with fiery red hair … [He] tucked a monocle under one bushy brow, and leaned back in his swivel chair.”⁶ Zentner, who was not aboard U-20 at the time of the Lusitania sinking, had followed his famous (or infamous) commanding officer to his next submarine, U-88, after U-20 ran aground and had to be destroyed by the crew. Zentner, however, was ashore when U-88 with Walther Schwieger in command left Wilhelmshaven in September 1917, and fell victim to a British minefield; having survived the war, Zentner told Thomas of Schwieger’s fate:

Commander Schwieger then assumed command of the U-88, a new, big boat of the latest design, and took most of his old crew with him … I made two cruises with him and then missed a cruise, just as I had done when the Lusitania was sunk. The boat never came back. It was lost with all on board during September, 1917 … I have never heard what fate befell my comrades. One rumor is that they hit a mine…. Schwieger and his men had gone to join the victims of the Lusitania on the floor of the sea.⁷

PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON’S RESPONSE (LUSITANIA)

In view of recent acts of the German authorities in violation of American rights on the high seas which culminated in the torpedoing and sinking of the British steamship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by which over 100 American citizens lost their lives, it is clearly wise and desirable that the government of the United States and the Imperial German government should come to a clear and full understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted.⁸

President Wilson, through Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, instructed the American Ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, to pass this diplomatic protest to the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Gottlieb von Jagow, which was accomplished on May 13. Wilson also cited three other cases of attacks on shipping in just over a month prior to Lusitania, which resulted in the loss of American lives: the RMS Falaba (by U-28) on March 28 and the American tanker Gulflight (by U-30) on May 1, both torpedoed, and the bombing of the American steamer Cushing by a German airplane on April 28. Wilson, frustrated by these recent events and the loss of American lives, put Germany on notice that “submarines cannot be used against merchantmen, as the last few weeks have shown, without an inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.”⁹

Lusitania fell victim to a U-boat attack, only three months after the proclamation written by Chief of the Admiralty Hugo von Pohl on February 4, 1915, announcing that on February 18, the waters around Britain and Ireland would be considered a war zone. Germany’s aggressive submarine warfare against commercial shipping was being justified as “retaliatory measures rendered necessary” because of Britain’s policy of “intercepting neutral maritime trade with Germany.” Von Pohl expressed Germany’s rationale for establishing the war zone: “Since the commencement of the present war Great Britain’s conduct of commercial warfare against Germany has been a mockery of all the principles of the law of nations.” Von Pohl’s proclamation was quickly and firmly denounced by the United States, expressing that there would be grave consequences “in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty’s proclamation to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the death of American citizens.”¹⁰ One hundred twenty-four American citizens died on May 7.

On May 28, in response to Wilson’s protest and the worldwide outcry against the sinking of Lusitania, Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow issued Germany’s official reply. Von Jagow’s contention was that Lusitania was armed and carrying war materials, thus, according to Germany, a war vessel. Refusing to accept blame for the loss of Lusitania, von Jagow also argued that if “neutral vessels have come to grief through the German submarine war during the past few months by mistake, it is a question of isolated and exceptional cases which are traceable to the misuse of flags by the British Government in connection with careless or suspicious actions on the part of the captains or the vessels.” Von Jagow continued his reply:

The Imperial Government must state for the rest the impression that certain facts most directly connected with the sinking of the Lusitania may have escaped the attention of the Government of the United States. It is, moreover, known to the Imperial Government from reliable information furnished by its officials and neutral passengers that for some time practically all the more valuable English merchant vessels have been provided with guns, ammunition and other weapons, and reinforced with a crew specially practiced in manning guns. According to reports at hand here, the Lusitania when she left New York undoubtedly had guns on board which were mounted under decks and masked.¹¹

In a carefully and diplomatically worded letter to the Imperial German Government, in spite of the loss of 124 Americans, Wilson responded to von Jagow on the 9th of June, insisting that Germany follow “the principles of humanity, the universally recognized understandings of international law, and the ancient friendship of the German Nation.” Wilson continued:

Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or warning, and that men, women, and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.

Only her resistance to capture or refusal to stop when ordered to do so for the purpose of visit could have afforded the commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy.¹²

Regardless of the possibility that Lusitania carried war materials, the press across the world condemned the act, citing the loss of life among so many women and children.¹³ It was not long before Germany relented to worldwide condemnation. Schwieger was reprimanded by Kaiser Wilhelm, although this reprimand did not sit well within the German navy, which blamed Britain for necessitating their use of submarines against commerce. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, in his 1920 memoir, was demonstrably angered by the British blockade and their use of armed merchant vessels: “Our enemies acted in an unscrupulous manner, especially when bonuses were offered for merchant vessels which should sink U-boats.”¹⁴ By September, 1915, however, the relentless submarine warfare that had begun in February was suspended. U-boats were once again ordered to provide warning before sinking commercial vessels.

Wilson ended his letter to Germany with the following: “The Government of the United States therefore deems it reasonable to expect that the Imperial German Government will adopt the measures necessary to put these principles [of international law] into practice in respect of the safeguarding of American lives and ships, and asks for assurances that this will be done.”¹⁵ This would not be the last time the President had to admonish and threaten the Imperial German Government. Because of Wilson’s increased antagonism toward Germany, there would be a significant change within his Government. On June 9, his pacifist Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned. Bryan felt that there was some merit in Germany’s objections to Britain’s blockade, and that Wilson, representing a neutral country, should have been more evenhanded. Bryan had preferred expressing some level of protest against restrictions on the free passage of neutral ships bound for German ports imposed by Great Britain. He was succeeded by Robert Lansing who, while also objecting to Britain’s blockade, felt that the United States would eventually enter the war as an ally of Britain. Within the German Admiralty, however, there were also objections that went beyond the blockade, pointing out Britain’s conduct after the loss of Lusitania:

It was particularly striking how the English Press persisted in representing the loss of Lusitania not so much as a British, but as an American misfortune. One must read the article in The [London] Times which appeared immediately after the sinking of Lusitania (8/5/1915) to realize the degree of hypocrisy of which the English are capable when their commercial interests are at stake. Not a word of sympathy or sorrow for the loss of human life, but only the undisguised desire (with a certain satisfaction) to make capital out of the incident in order to rouse the Americans and make them take sides against Germany.¹⁶

In his memoir, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, who had replaced Hugo von Pohl as Chief of the Admiralty in January, 1916, expressed his disdain for what he considered the use of this tragedy as a propaganda tool. It was not propaganda, however, that was changing attitudes across America. The reality, which included those 124 American lives, was a realization that remaining neutral in a war that threatened democratic societies was becoming a bitter pill and increasingly untenable as the months went by, as U-boat predation on unarmed merchant vessels continued.