America at war: hidden intentions?

RMS Lusitania was a British luxury ocean liner torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915. At that time it was the fastest commercial passenger liner in the North Atlantic. The sinking of the Lusitania is considered to have been decisive for the United States declaration of war against Germany and thus the involvement of the country in World War I later in 1917. The attack caused more than 1.000 casualties – more than 100 of them were US nationals -, therefore making the sinking of the Lusitania comparable to that of the Titanic in terms of loss of life.

The RMS Lusitania (click to enlarge)

Despite knowledge that the seas around the British Isles had been declared war zone by Imperial Germany some months before, and also the fact that the German embassy in the United States had emitted a warning to potential passengers of the Lusitania in major American newspapers, the ship nevertheless departed New York the 1st of May of 1915. The 7th of May the ship was sunk near the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-20, hit by at least one torpedo.

The reaction of the US Government didn’t have to wait long: President Woodrow Wilson issued three notes to the German government which fundamentally called Germans to abandon submarine warfare against commercial vessels, whatever flag they sailed under among other demands, as well as rejected the German affirmation that the ship had been carrying munitions for Britain.

For many decades it was believed the German attack on the Lusitania was atrocious for having targeted civilians on board of a commercial ship, Germany having the knowledge that sinking it would lead to a tragedy. In this aspect, the outrage both in the United States and Great Britain was massive; a good example of the public opinion was The Nation newspaper considering the sinking of the Lusitania “a deed for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed, and a Barbary pirate apologize”.

Life loss

However, truth is that the Lusitania had been playing a double role. On one hand it served its innocent role of passenger liner, but for some time since war had been declared, the Lusitania had also undertaken a role as a high-speed munitions carrier to supply Britain with needed munitions for the war, as divers recently found out. This suggests that the Germans might had been right all along in claiming the ship was carrying war materials and therefore was a legitimate military target. As Colin Simpson – a correspondent for the London Sunday Times – would later write in his book, the Germans had been insisting that the Lusitania was being used as a weapons ship to break the blockade Berlin had been trying to impose around Britain since the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.

Most of those munitions and war materiel were not declared on the cargo manifest of the ship, or were declared as other types of cargo which were seemingly harmless. Among the undeclared munitions which the ship carried in its last voyage were artillery shells, gun-cotton (explosive for artillery shells); 1.271 cases of ammunition the ship was also carrying were declared to be ‘1.248 cases of shrapnel’ instead! Those cases of ammunition are estimated to have contained around four million rounds of US manufactured Remington .303 bullets. It is also unknown (and unexplained) why the large amounts of lard, butter and cheese declared in the cargo manifest were actually consigned to a Royal Navy’s Weapons Testing Establishment.

Propaganda machine (click to enlarge)

It is interesting to hear from Gregg Bemis, an American businessman who owns the rights to the wreck and is funding its exploration that ‘those four million rounds of .303s were not just some private hunter’s stash. Now that we’ve found it, the British can’t deny any more that there was ammunition on board. That raises the question of what else was on board. There were literally tons and tons of stuff stored in unrefrigerated cargo holds that were dubiously marked cheese, butter and oysters’.

But the Lusitania was not only useful to the enemies of Germany as a munitions carrier, but also as a political tool. Winston Churchill, who was first Lord of the Admiralty, wrote in a confidential letter shortly before the sinking that some German submarine attacks were to be welcomed: ‘it is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany. For our part we want the traffic – the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still’. This becomes clearly reflected in the fact that the Lusitania continued with its activities almost unprotected (its only effective defense against a submarine was to ram it) and without escort, even though the German embassy had previously warned of the possible outcome of it. It is also known that the British Admiralty, by means of wireless intercepts, had been tracking the movements of U-20 but sent no vessels to protect the Lusitania. Further lies such as Americans being told, falsely, that German children were given a day off school to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania, just helped the American politicians have a legitimate ground on which to wage a war against Germany.

Around 90 years have passed since the sinking of the Lusitania before it has been found out that it was not really an indiscriminate attack against innocent civilians. Basing on false grounds, the public opinion at the time of the sinking found the reaction of the US more than legitimate as payback for the tragedy. But now, knowing all the facts and with hindsight, it is doubtful the American society would have supported its Government declaring war (knowing that it was partly responsible for the tragedy and having played a role in it).

The dogma (click to enlarge)

Since then, long time has passed but the United States of America still seems to persist in the same strategy as always: was Pearl Harbor a surprise attack by the Japanese Navy or was it in fact a well-planned show in order to make America go into war? Same question arises when we think of the World Trade Center attack allegedly by Al Qaeda, but which later triggered a great number of so-called conspiracy theories (or I’d rather call them ‘theories challenging the dogma’); do you remember soon afterwards the US invaded Afghanistan with the excuse of hunting down Al Qaeda? And what about the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which lead America to invade Iraq, the alleged existence of which has never been proved but served as legitimation for the US Government to wipe off the map a non-cooperating government?

Sounds suspicious, doesn’t it?

It is about time we stop blindly believing what the United States say about the wars they wage, even when it might seem to us that the truth is being told. Global – and especially western – public opinion is their best legitimation when fighting questionably legitimate wars and propaganda is their best ally. We have to start thinking about such conflicts from our own point of view and common sense, not just from what the biased western media tells us. Only then we will be able to judge who is right and who is wrong, but without forgetting that in a war, neither side is ever completely innocent or ‘right’.

Sources:

http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.lusitania.net/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/