Why does the Lusitania have the greatest notoriety as a cause for the US entry into WWI?

[raharris1973]

Why does the Lusitania have the greatest noteriety as a cause for the US entry into WWI?

This applies both to popular disscussion, and discussion on this board.

But there's not particularly strong reasons for Lusitania to have notoriety above and beyond all the other incidents that happened before the US declared war on Germany.

The Lusitania was sunk in May 1915. The US did not declare war until nearly two full years later, with the incumbent winning a campaign while using the slogan, "he kept us out of war" in between.

Between the May 1915 Lusitania sinking and the April 1917 US DoW on Germany, several other incidents occurred:

The sinkings of other ships by submarines in which American lives were lost in 1915 and 1916

German sabotage operations in the United States against munitions production, including the 'Black Tom' explosion in New Jersey, from 1916 I think.

German meddling in Mexican factional strife, on the side of factions who sometimes took anti-American stands.

The 1917 German declaration of unrestricted U-Boat warfare.

The actual German U-Boat sinkings from early 1917 on, which not only killed Americans on belligerent ships, but killed Americans on American-flagged ships for the first time

The 1917 Zimmerman Telegram, a contingent proposal for German-Mexican alliance against the US, involving German support for Mexico, and Mexican territorial gain at US expense.

So why single out the Lusitania as such an important cause, and so often post scenarios where, with a different political leadership, it brings the US into the war much sooner?

Sincerely,

Puzzled

 

[Mikestone8]

So why single out the Lusitania as such an important cause, and so often post scenarios where, with a different political leadership, it brings the US into the war much sooner?

Because it set America on a slippery slope.

It gave rise to that string of notes from President Wilson, seeking to lay down the law as to how a belligerent power might wage war, so creating a situation where almost inevitably, sooner or later, he would hve to choose between eating his words or going to war. The nores also created an impression in Germany that Wilson was hostile to them, and at some point would end up on the Entente side in any case. So when the crunch came in 1917 they made no serious attempt to avoid war.

 

[TonyA]

After considerable thought, I voted for the last reason. I chose it because it's a completely petty reason to do something, and, somehow, that seems so very American to me.

 

[Driftless]

The proverbial "last straw" for public opinion? Especially, with a clear undeniable trail of culpability for a large number of civilian deaths. Some of the other destructive events mentioned above have "yes, but...." connections.

*edit* Even if this event take time to mentally process, any member of the public could later point to the sinking of the Lusitania as a great wrong. The idea that it carried war materials were easily suppressed.

 

[Resurgam]

Ironically, I should point out, Wilson didn't even mention the Lusitania when he finally declared war.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Because it set the tripwire that led to US entry in 1917. It forced Germany to renounce USW in 1915, which when they resumed it in 1917 started the ticking clock to US entry that the ZT then accelerated. Without the Lusitania that problem for Germany doesn't exist until they sink a ship with a bunch of Americans on it without them having the ability to survive the sinking.

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

Missed out the option I would select: efficient British propaganda.

 

[raharris1973]

The proverbial "last straw" for public opinion? Especially, with a clear undeniable trail of culpability for a large number of civilian deaths. Some of the other destructive events mentioned above have "yes, but...." connections.

*edit* Even if this event take time to mentally process, any member of the public could later point to the sinking of the Lusitania as a great wrong. The idea that it carried war materials were easily suppressed.

Seems more like the "first straw" than the "last straw" to me. Personally, I voted for A, the parallel to the Maine. Americans of the age may have been conditioned to summarize the cause of their foreign wars under the loss of a single ship. It's a nice shorthand.

 

[Mikestone8]

Missed out the option I would select: efficient British propaganda.

Yet the propaganda would have counted for nothing had Germany not started torpedoing American ships, as distinct from British ones which merely had Americans aboard. Lusitania or no Lusitania, the US would never have gone to war without that.

From time to time on this forum, you hear talk about America entering the war in 1915 as a result of the Lusitania, but there was never the remotest chance of it.

 

[Dave Howery]

I always thought it was because the reason(s) the US got into WW1 was a murky web, and the sinking of the Lusitania is a simple single thing you can focus on... people like to be able to point at something and say 'this is why'...

 

[raharris1973]

Yet the propaganda would have counted for nothing had Germany not started torpedoing American ships, as distinct from British ones which merely had Americans aboard. Lusitania or no Lusitania, the US would never have gone to war without that.

From time to time on this forum, you hear talk about America entering the war in 1915 as a result of the Lusitania, but there was never the remotest chance of it.

Which is why I think the Lusitania is a sort of a red herring, if used as a shorthand, it's sort of misleading.

 

[Mikestone8]

Which is why I think the Lusitania is a sort of a red herring, if used as a shorthand, it's sort of misleading.

But it still mattered, inasmuch as it led to Wilson "painting himself into a corner" with his notes, so that when USW resumed in 1917, he had to choose war or humiliation.

 

[raharris1973]

But it still mattered, inasmuch as it led to Wilson "painting himself into a corner" with his notes, so that when USW resumed in 1917, he had to choose war or humiliation.

But it was the first straw and not the last.

And when it happened, his choice was to raise a stink and make threats or be quiet and chalk it up as a hazard of traveling on belligerent ships. Essentially the Gore-McLemore resolution was to declare that such travel was a hazard to avoid incidents leading to a casus belli.

Would any other US President have handled the Lusitania differently, especially to the point of sweeping it under the rug?

 

[Mikestone8]

But it was the first straw and not the last.

And when it happened, his choice was to raise a stink and make threats or be quiet and chalk it up as a hazard of traveling on belligerent ships. Essentially the Gore-McLemore resolution was to declare that such travel was a hazard to avoid incidents leading to a casus belli.

Would any other US President have handled the Lusitania differently, especially to the point of sweeping it under the rug?

Not sure what you mean by "sweeping it under the rug". But clearly Bryan would have handled it differently, given that Wilson's course led him to resign. So, very probably, would Champ Clark.

Vice President Marshall also expressed the opinion (in a speech at Tupelo MS on May 11) that it was unwise for Americans to travel on belligerent ships. As he put it, to board an English ship was effectively to go onto English soil, and that Americans who did this should perhaps be ready to abide the consequences. A few days later he "muddied the water" by insisting that there was no difference between himself and President Wilson, but his earlier words suggest that as POTUS he would have accepted something like Gore-McLemore, perhaps even recalling Congress in order to pass it. OTL, Wilson left Congress in recess until December so that G-McL wasn't voted on until Jan 1916.

So the three most likely alternatives to Wilson as POTUS were all significantly more isolationist than he was.

 

[Scott Washburn]

America's entry into the war was sort of dependent on which of the belligerents screwed up first. The US was none too happy with either side's naval policy. The Naval Act of 1916 where the US declared its intention to build a fleet 'second to none' was aimed at the British every bit as much as at the Germans. If the British had done something totally outrageous against the US on the high seas, it's not impossible the declaration of war would have been against England. But as it happened, the Germans screwed up first and worst. As for the Lusitania, it was an easy one word thing to remember and wave around. International law, blockades, freedom of the seas, and unrestricted submarine warfare was too big a mouthful for most.

 

[DougM]

Well I think it is simply that what passes for history classes in public schools sucks and does not want to actually go into detail about US history after the civil war (probably because they spent so much time on European history and the settlement of America) and they want an easy 30 second talking point, And saying we went to war to protect a bunch of rich folks from losing a lot of money should France and England fall is not good for buisness as it teaches kids to think that the wealthy have influence on the government....

 

[raharris1973]

The nores also created an impression in Germany that Wilson was hostile to them, and at some point would end up on the Entente side in any case.

So you think the notes made the Germans feel hopeless and made them discount American opinion? Wouldn't the fact that they paused USW suggest that the notes deterred them for awhile, for over a year, but that couldn't last while both their U-Boat tech improved and they felt they were running out of other ways to win?

 

[raharris1973]

Ironically, I should point out, Wilson didn't even mention the Lusitania when he finally declared war.

Really - did he mention any other ships by name?

Yet the propaganda would have counted for nothing had Germany not started torpedoing American ships, as distinct from British ones which merely had Americans aboard. Lusitania or no Lusitania, the US would never have gone to war without that.

Yet I can't name a single one of the American ships, they were not preserved in popular or elite memory, and I've read plenty about WWI.

If the Germans had not sunk the Lusitania and luck had spared large numbers of Americans on British ships, and consequently Wilson sent no Lusitania notes in 1915, how long before the existing German ROE would have led to torpedoing of American ships?

 

[Michele]

I did not vote, because it is actually a combination of factors. It's easier to remember, it was the first incident; it also had a high death toll in comparison to other sinkings. It also can be considered as representative of other sinkings, as in "the Lusitania, and later other ships".

 

[Mikestone8]

Yet I can't name a single one of the American ships, they were not preserved in popular or elite memory, and I've read plenty about WWI.

Hindsight tends to "telescope" time. There is a tendency to "read history backwards".

Thus after America had come into the war, the Lusitania came to seem, in retrospect , as the beginning of a slide toward it. The two-year interval, during which US relations with Britain were often worse than with Germany, was increasingly forgotten, and the whole period remembered, falsely, as one of steady drift toward intervention.

Memories of earlier events are often "coloured" by later ones. A good British example would be Appeasement. When Chamberlain returned with that famous piece of paper, he was cheered to the echo, with almost all newspapers and (so far as it can be measured) of public opinion firmly on his side. Yet, had the country been polled again in *1946*, we can safely assume that an overwhelming majority would "remember" having firmly opposed Munich and having "known all along" that Appeasement would never work. They would not, for the most part, have been lying. Rather their experiences during the intervening years would have caused their brains to "amend the record" .

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I can add a personal note. My mother, in the 1980s, told me that her experience of living under the Attlee government after WW2 had given her such an aversion to the Labour Party that she never voted for them again. Yet I had a perfectly clear memory - and not even a childhood one. I was eighteen - of her telling me in 1966 that she had just voted Labour in the election of that year. Again, she wasn't lying, but in the interim had become a firm Conservative voter, and her 1966 vote had slipped from her memory, Shades of "We have always been at war with Eastasia", but entirely self-inflicted.

The human memory is the most unreliable of all the senses.