100 years ago, on May 7, 1915 a German submarine torpedoed the British 
passenger liner RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland.

We are about 9 months into WWI at this point.

The allies, mainly the British, were buying up war supplies from U.S. 
manufacturers as fast as we could make them and shipping them to Europe on 
anything that would float.

That included civilian passenger liners like the Lusitania.

The Germans argued this made it a legitimate military target.

Surprisingly, the newspapers seem to know all about the munitions the ship 
was carrying.

I thought that had been kept secret until well after the war.

Early in the war there had been a move in congress to ban Americans from 
traveling to the war zone but nothing was done.

There had also been a move to ban such shipments or at least warn civilian 
passengers about them.

This had also failed.


The sinking was the biggest maritime disaster since the Titanic disaster in 
1912.

The image of nearly 1,200 dead civilians, especially including 94 children, 
30 of which were infants, help paint the Germans as barbarians in the eyes 
of the public.

The British were pushing America to get into the war on their side but 
sentiment was completely against this.

There were anti-German riots in England after the sinking but nothing here.

So I don't think the idea that we "almost" went to war over this is right.


I think we look back at WWI through WWII glasses.

It seems natural that the French and British would be our allies.

But the Germans in 1914 were not the Nazis of WWII.

They were a modern progressive state at least as much as Britain was.

France was the only true democracy but it's ally, Russia, was by far the 
worst despotic regime of the group.

About 30% of Americans had cultural and ethnic ties to the German side and 
when you throw in the Irish, who hated the British, and Russian-Jews who had 
recently emigrated here to escape the Czar's pogroms against them, and 
you're at about 50/50.

Regardless, the majority sentiment of time in the U.S. was to just to stay 
the heck out of it.

There were a few vocal hawks, notably former President Teddy Roosevelt, that 
wanted to jump in from the git-go but that was not the mainstream opinion in 
the U.S.

Within a couple of weeks it faded from the newspapers like so many stories 
do.