| |
N0KFQ > TODAY 31.01.12 23:40l 94 Lines 4619 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 17093_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jan 31
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JE7YGF<F6CDD<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 120131/2130Z 17093@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.48
Jan 31, 1917:
Germany resumes submarine warfare
On January 31, 1917, Germany announces the renewal of unlimited
submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed
submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including
civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters.
Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations
with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner
Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. None of the 25 Americans
on board were killed, and all were later picked up by a British
steamer.
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson
pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the
vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of
America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose
between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted
quarantine of the British isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to
Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February
1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships,
neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.
One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk
the William P. Frye, a private American vessel that was
transporting grain to England when it disappeared. President
Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and
called the attack an unfortunate mistake.
The Germans' most formidable naval weapon was the U-boat, a
submarine far more sophisticated than those built by other
nations at the time. The typical U-boat was 214 feet long,
carried 35 men and 12 torpedoes, and could travel underwater for
two hours at a time. In the first few years of World War I, the
U-boats took a terrible toll on Allied shipping.
In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a
warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans
traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their
own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an
advertisement of the imminent sailing of the British-owned
Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool. On May 7, the
Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of
Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including
128 Americans.
The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying
munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German
attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August,
Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking
unarmed vessels but in November sunk an Italian liner without
warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public
opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against
Germany.
In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against
the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare. The
United States broke off relations with Germany, and on February
22 Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill
intended to make the United States ready for war. Two days later,
British authorities gave the U.S. ambassador to Britain a copy of
the "Zimmermann Note," a coded message from German foreign
secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the
German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and
deciphered by British intelligence, Zimmermann stated that, in
the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked
to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany
promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona. On March 1, the U.S. State Department
published the note, and American public opinion was galvanized
against Germany.
In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on
April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for
a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate
voted 82 to six to declare war against Germany. Two days later,
the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration by a vote
of 373 to 50, and America formally entered World War I.
On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in
France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody
stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's
well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point
in the war. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918,
more than two million American soldiers had served on the
battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of these men had
lost their lives.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
Outpost Version 2.5.0 c33
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
