A Higher Form of Killing (12 page)

In mid-March 1915, Ernst Lehmann, the commander of the army airship
Sachsen
,
diverted from an attack on Britain’s east coast by fog, turned toward Calais where he decided to test his invention of a tiny observation car that could be lowered on steel cables. Its purpose to enable airships to survey their targets while remaining hidden in the clouds—in other words to provide airships with the aerial equivalent of a submarine’s periscope. As the
Sachsen
hovered in clouds above Calais, Lehmann ordered a crewman to descend into clear air in his prototype observation car whence he telephoned precise guidance for bombing Calais. Lehmann described the “shattering” effect: “The anti-aircraft batteries could hear us, but they couldn’t see us. They fired blindly into the air with no effect whatever. We planted our bombs nicely, but the bombs seemed to cause less panic than the fact that we were invisible.” Learning of Lehmann’s experiment, a week later Peter Strasser tested the observation car for himself and was so impressed he ordered new naval airships to be equipped with them.

*
Meanwhile, Count von Zeppelin had set up a company—the Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktiensgesellschaft, known as DELAG—to operate what was effectively the world’s first commercial airline. By July 1914 DELAG zeppelins had carried more than ten thousand passengers and flown some one hundred thousand miles between Germany’s largest cities.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“A Most Effective Weapon”

By January 1915, only four months into the war, both the British and German governments were developing strategies to break the stalemate that had already ensued. The British War Cabinet, with Winston Churchill playing a prominent role, saw the solution in a naval expedition to the eastern Mediterranean. Their plan was to control the Dardanelles, the heavily guarded strait leading from the Aegean through the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, so that, at a minimum, they could get supplies through to Russia and, at best, force Ottoman Turkey, which had joined the Austro-German alliance at the end of October 1914, quickly out of the war. Success might draw Greece and perhaps Bulgaria and Rumania into the Allied camp. Churchill believed that “at the summit true politics and strategy are one. The manoeuvre which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle.” To that end he was also taking a leading role in the wooing of Italy to join the Allies. Conscious of the need for new weapons to break the deadlock in the trenches, in February he gave the Admiralty’s support and funding to the development of “land ships.” Under their code name of “tanks” they would make their first appearance on the battlefield in September 1916 and first be used en masse at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 and become one of the lasting major advances in weaponry of the First World War.

Perhaps surprisingly for a nation whose power was historically land based, one of the principal areas to which Germany was looking to break the deadlock was the sea and the submarine. At the beginning of the war, Germany’s U-boats had been used to attack enemy warships like the
Cressy
and troop transports, leaving surface vessels to do the commerce raiding. However, on October 20, 1914, a U-boat captain demonstrated the U-boat’s potential as a commerce raider. Captain Johannes Feldkirchner in
U-17
forced the British merchant ship
Glitra
to stop in waters off Norway. He briefly searched her cargo of whisky and sewing machines and ordered her crew into their boats. The
U-17
then sank the
Glitra
but obligingly towed her laden lifeboats for a quarter of an hour toward the shore. The
Glitra
was the first British merchant ship to be sunk by a U-boat and, as he sailed home to Germany, Feldkirchner worried how his superiors would react. According to a fellow U-boatman his action was “entirely unexpected. Attacks on commercial steamers had not been foreseen. The possibilities . . . had not been anticipated.” Feldkirchner need not have been concerned. He was commended for his attack.

Lack of a single head of the navy bedeviled German naval policy. Although the inspiration of Germany’s naval buildup and preeminent in naval matters before 1914— instantly recognizable by his great domed bald head and forked white beard—Secretary of the Navy von Tirpitz was formally only head of the Imperial Naval Office, responsible for finance and political affairs, including new construction and budgets. Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl commanded the High Seas Fleet. Separate from both was the Admiralty Staff headed in January 1915 by Hugo von Pohl, responsible for planning and directing operations in war in a way analogous to a land army’s general staff. Finally, there was the kaiser’s naval cabinet under Georg von Müller. All reported direct to the kaiser and policy decisions rested with him alone.

In October Hermann Bauer, commander of one of Germany’s submarine flotillas, had, unknown to his crews, already suggested to his superior von Ingenohl using submarines as commerce raiders. Feldkirchner’s success confirmed the practicability of the idea. Von Ingenohl circulated the proposal to von Pohl and others, writing, “From a purely military point of view a campaign of submarines against commercial traffic on the British coasts will strike the enemy at his weakest point and will make it evident . . . that his power at sea is insufficient to protect his imports.” Von Pohl worried about the restrictions of international law since submarines would find it extremely difficult to follow the Cruiser Rules—U-boat commanders were already complaining how hard it was to distinguish enemy shipping from neutral vessels. He knew too that surfacing to stop and search would expose fragile submarines to enemy attack.

However, von Pohl changed his mind after what he saw as Britain’s attempt to starve Germany when Britain in November 1914 declared the “military area” and made all food contraband—the latter on the grounds that one could not be sure whether food was for military or civilian use and that in case of shortage military requirements would take priority over civilian. When he saw the proposal Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg was concerned about the effect on neutrals such as the United States. The kaiser too worried about neutrals but also about killing and wounding women and children, and would not endorse the action. Von Pohl persisted. Von Tirpitz, often opposed to von Pohl in the maneuvering for support in the German naval hierarchy, then threw his authority behind the use of the submarine, convinced it was Germany’s “most effective weapon.” A young naval officer admired how von Tirpitz “fought, with a doggedness which can hardly be described . . . for the inauguration of intensified U-boat warfare.”

At the end of November von Tirpitz gave an interview to a German-born American journalist in which he criticized the United States for not protesting against the British military zone and asked, “Now what will America say if Germany institutes a submarine blockade of England to stop all traffic?” When the journalist asked whether Germany was going to do so, von Tirpitz responded, “Why not? . . . England is endeavouring to starve us. We can do the same, cut off England and sink every vessel that attempts to break the blockade.” The article when published in Germany received great support from naval officers, and von Pohl and von Tirpitz pressed hard for a submarine campaign. In mid-January von Tirpitz told the kaiser that if Germany did not use the submarine “to get our knife into the English . . . we should accomplish nothing.”

On February 4, his last day as chief of the naval staff before he succeeded von Ingenohl as commander of the High Seas Fleet and was himself succeeded by Admiral Gustav Bachmann, von Pohl accompanied the kaiser to some naval exercises at Wilhelmshaven. While the emperor was preoccupied with the maneuvers, von Pohl secured his signature on a declaration agreeing the launch of a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare whereby enemy merchant vessels would be sunk without search or even warning and citing as justification Britain’s blockade of Germany. From February 18, the waters around Great Britain, except for a designated route north of Scotland from the Atlantic to Scandinavia, would be a war zone in which all enemy ships “would be destroyed even if it is not possible to avoid thereby the dangers which threaten the crews and passengers . . . It may not always be possible to prevent the attacks meant for hostile ships from being directed against neutral ships.” In a telegram to its Washington embassy, Berlin was even more specific, advising that “neutral vessels will not in most cases be recognizable as such in the war zone and will therefore be destroyed without more ado.” The embassy was instructed to use the press to warn American vessels to keep clear of the war zone “to avoid dangerous complications.”

Not long afterward, Berlin dispatched another telegram to Washington containing the draft of a notice to be inserted by Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff in the American press, warning Americans against traveling through the war zone on British ships or those of its allies. “Thinking it a great mistake,” von Bernstorff threw it into his desk drawer and “hoped Berlin would forget about it.”

U-boats were now equipped with machine guns, grenades, and formal instructions about contraband. Shipping schedules were distributed and scarce copies of the British-produced
Lloyd’s Register
listing every ship in the world became a highly prized aid to identifying targets for German submariners.

Despite the German declaration of unrestricted U-boat warfare, the British navy continued throughout the war to follow Cruiser Rules in any attacks their submarines made against merchant vessels—a decision made easier not only by the need to retain the good will of neutral governments like the United States, but also by the limited number of German merchant vessels still operating— almost exclusively in the Baltic or coastal waters.

When the war began the British and German governments requisitioned passenger liners and converted them for war duties as armed merchant cruisers. The British Admiralty reminded Cunard of its agreement to hand over the
Lusitania
and the
Mauretania
but then decided neither was suitable as an auxiliary cruiser—they simply consumed too much coal. The
Mauretania
was dazzle-painted to camouflage her for duty as a troop transport and hospital ship. Although having had four six-inch gun rings fitted in 1913 to her deck to allow guns to be mounted quickly in wartime, the
Lusitania
was left unarmed with Cunard to continue the commercial transatlantic run, but under strict conditions. The Admiralty would inform her master of the course she was to follow; any contact between Cunard and the ship, while at sea, must be through the Admiralty; her cargo space must be at the Admiralty’s disposal.

By the beginning of 1915 the
Lusitania
was the only one of the great prewar liners of any nation still plying the Atlantic although some smaller British, U.S., and other neutral vessels were also making the crossing. The British Admiralty’s Room 40—using improved instruments developed by Guglielmo Marconi—was able to pick up German transmissions to and from U-boats for the day or two after they left port before they were out of range of radio contact with their base. Among some of the early targeting information they intercepted and decoded was:
FAST STEAMER LUSITANIA COMING FROM NEW YORK EXPECTED AT LIVERPOOL 4TH OR 5TH MARCH
. The purpose of the communication was clear especially compared with another sent to U-boats:
AMERICAN SS PHILADELPHIA AND WEST HAVERFORD WILL PROBABLY ARRIVE IN THE IRISH SEA BOUND FOR LIVERPOOL. BOTH STEAMERS ARE TO BE SPARED
. Obviously the
Lusitania
was not.

On March 2
U-27
lay submerged on the approaches to Liverpool. In his war diary, her captain recorded letting several tempting targets pass close by because “the
Lusitania
was expected to arrive in English waters on 4 March and in my present position I believed I had a good chance of attacking her.” On March 5, he turned reluctantly homeward. The
Lusitania
arrived a few hours later. On this occasion the British Admiralty had tried to provide her with a naval escort but it failed to rendezvous with the liner due to a comic opera series of communication failures.

Woodrow Wilson had recognized early in 1915 that the stalemate in the war offered a good opportunity for America to lead arbitration to secure a peace settlement before casualties rose too high and both military and political positions became too entrenched to allow concessions. He sent Colonel House on a secret mission to investigate the prospects for a brokered peace. The small, softly spoken, slightly frail House, whose rank was an honorary one, was throughout the war Wilson’s most trusted adviser. Wilson wrote of him “Mr. House is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one.” Surprisingly, given his neutral status, House sailed to Britain not on an American ship but on the
Lusitania
.

Nearing the Irish coast in early February the
Lusitania
raised the U.S. flag. The press pursued House about the incident as soon as he landed. He wrote in his diary: “Every newspaper in London has asked me about it, but fortunately, I was not an eye witness to it and have been able to say that I only knew it from hearsay.” The incident caused fury in Germany, which insisted that it was illegal for British shipping to hide behind neutral flags. In the United States fears were roused that U-boats would attack American vessels suspecting they were disguised as enemy ships. President Wilson protested to London that using neutral flags would create intolerable risks for neutral countries, while failing to protect British vessels. The British government responded blandly that the flag had been flown at the request of the
Lusitania
’s American passengers to indicate that there were neutral Americans on board. Germany’s declaration that it would sink British merchant ships on sight made such actions necessary and legitimate.