{"id":29178,"date":"2016-10-26T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T19:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=29178"},"modified":"2016-10-24T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T22:09:13","slug":"100-years-great-war-arrived-americas-doorstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/100-years-great-war-arrived-americas-doorstep\/","title":{"rendered":"100 years after the Great War arrived on America\u2019s doorstep"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

One hundred years ago, in October 1916, the German submarine U 53 <\/em>made an unannounced visit to Newport, Rhode Island. After sailing, the U-Boat proceeded into international waters to intercept and sink a number of merchant ships in sight of the coast. Conducted according to the \u2018stop and search\u2019 requirements of customary international law, there was no loss of life, as passengers and crew were allowed to leave before their ships were sunk. Nevertheless, the attacks were a stark demonstration to both the Americans and the Allies of the oceanic reach of Germany\u2019s new submarines.<\/p>\n

That seemed at the time to have been a propaganda victory for the Germans but, in both frightening and alerting the United States, may have been a misguided initiative. The decision to attack merchant shipping without warning may have been Germany\u2019s most significant error during the World War I, as arguably nothing but the deaths of its nationals in torpedoed ships could have brought the United States into the war.<\/p>\n

There were other effects of the unrestricted campaigns of 1915 and 1917 that had profound consequences on Germany\u2019s ability to wage war. The initial effort, which began in February 1915 was conceived fundamentally as a campaign of terror, in the hope that neutral merchant ships and Allied merchant seaman would be too frightened to enter the declared war zone around the British Isles. The only economic motive was the concern of German shipping interests that their share of the global carriage trade was being captured by the British, prospectively shutting them out from the revival of commerce that would follow a negotiated peace.<\/p>\n

Despite the Allies\u2019 deficiencies in anti-submarine warfare and shipping management, the German Navy didn\u2019t have the numbers to make the first campaign work\u2014there were only two U-Boats at sea in the \u2018sink at sight\u2019 area on the day it was declared. This reflected the lack of rational calculation that marked so much of the German effort. Terror was no more effective at sea than it proved to be from the air with the Zeppelin raids.<\/p>\n

What the German Navy\u2014and German shipowners\u2014also missed was that global trade with Germany had been reviving rapidly by the end of 1914 and the Allied blockade proved less than effective. The British always feared that the Netherlands would be the likely conduit for illicit business with Germany and, while that country remained an important entrep\u00f4t, Scandinavia had begun to play an important role. American commercial interests were active as they sought to exploit the windfall profits that could be made. The truth was, however, that British businesses were also deeply involved. That had several causes. One was certainly the placement of profit before patriotism, occasionally to the point of outright treason, but there were other reasons. A healthy national economy, partly financed by the adversary\u2019s hard currency, would have a better ability to sustain the expenses of war than one that didn\u2019t have the stimulus of the additional trade. That was the reason why Napoleon created the \u2018Continental System\u2019\u2014specifically to prevent British commerce with Europe. It took bitter internal debate before authorities such as the Board of Trade recognised that industrial war in the twentieth century required a different approach.<\/p>\n

The U-Boat campaign had three effects, which combined to undermine the German position. First and directly, it was an \u2018own goal\u2019 in that the German submarines unknowingly sank cargoes whose final destination would otherwise have been Germany. Second, the German initiative allowed the Allies to go much further in the imposition of a blockade than international law allowed (or the Americans wanted) with the justification of reprisal. The reality that \u2018the British are thieves but the Germans are murderers\u2019 kept the US from reacting too strongly to such limitations on its commerce. Third, and perhaps most important, although it\u2019s a point rarely made by historians, the submarine attacks and the Allied reprisals first restricted and then removed the Germans from the business world of the US. The Allies would always be better positioned to exploit the Americans\u2019 industrial strength and their increasing ability to provide financial support, but the indirect trade with Germany that was being developed through neutral nations was on a scale\u2014and could have become even larger\u2014that would have ensured that significant elements in Wall Street had an interest in supporting the Germans. That would have created an obstacle to US entry to the war on the Allied side.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the German campaign of 1917 had more economic calculations behind it than 1915, with the idea that a sustained effort by the U-Boats could sink sufficient tonnage in six months to make it impossible for an import-dependent Britain to feed itself. But those calculations were gravely flawed, as was demonstrated when the Allies were able to compensate for their staggering losses by much more effective management of their remaining tonnage, their repair and shipbuilding effort and their ports and storage ashore. The introduction of convoy was an important operational contribution, but only a part of a national and allied effort that showed how the democracies were much more effective than the ramshackle Imperial German state.<\/p>\n

We spend much time thinking of the \u2018war of territory\u2019 that was waged on the Western and Eastern Fronts. The fact is, as U 53\u2019s<\/em> visit to Newport provided an uncomfortable reminder, the \u2018war of supply\u2019 mattered just as much between 1914 and 1918.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One hundred years ago, in October 1916, the German submarine U 53 made an unannounced visit to Newport, Rhode Island. After sailing, the U-Boat proceeded into international waters to intercept and sink a number of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":29179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[694,1104,31,678],"class_list":["post-29178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-germany","tag-submarine","tag-united-states","tag-world-war-i"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n100 years after the Great War arrived on America\u2019s doorstep | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/100-years-great-war-arrived-americas-doorstep\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"100 years after the Great War arrived on America\u2019s doorstep | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One hundred years ago, in October 1916, the German submarine U 53 made an unannounced visit to Newport, Rhode Island. 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