The British prevented American companies from selling FOOD in Germany; that was considered “contraband”. In the meantime, when the Lusitania was sunk it contained arms - and the German embassy in NY warned passengers embarking on it that the ship was a target because of those weapons.
I live within a dozen miles of TWO sites used by the US to violate our neutrality in WWI - Black Tom Island in Jersey City and the “Canadian Car and Foundry Company” in Lyndhurst NJ. Both were destroyed by pro-German saboteurs (though the Lyndhurst incident is less clear), and both were providing weapons to kill German troops before our entry into the war. Our neutrality was a hoax, exposed when we had to engineer an excuse to enter the war when Russia fell. There was plenty of justification for the Zimmermann telegram, considering our “un-neutral” actions; it was a convenient excuse for war (along with the Lusitania lie).
“The British prevented American companies from selling FOOD in Germany; that was considered “contraband”. ... when the Lusitania was sunk it contained arms ...
I live within a dozen miles of TWO sites used by the US to violate our neutrality in WWI ... both were providing weapons to kill German troops before our entry into the war. Our neutrality was a hoax, .... There was plenty of justification for the Zimmermann telegram, considering our “un-neutral” actions; it was a convenient excuse for war ...”
And here I was thinking Pat Buchanan’s “analysis” was deficient.
kearnyirish2 appears to have a blinkered view of personal morality, and to believe such rules ought to be applied to national policy.
Blockading imports of food into Germany might strike forum members as inhumane; they need to grow up. And to study up a little more, in order to gain a better understanding of what was really at stake during the period 1914-1918. Faulting the Allies at this late date is ex-post-facto moralizing: condemnation without any consequence. Also the worst form of presentism.
After starting the war, the German leaders had no right to be taken seriously, in any complaint about adverse impacts to their civil population. Their army in any event suffered no shortage of food nor ammunition, as they were living like kings, confiscating whatever they felt like from conquered territories, and putting the pinch on their own civil population.
The Allies would have been foolish to let their actions be influenced by any such complaint.
The Imperial German government was wracked by severe disagreement during most of the war, over unrestricted submarine warfare. Some factions thought it Germany’s best hope (including Army senior leaders; upper ranks of the Kaiserliche Marine flip-flopped); others (including the Chancellor) thought it would bring American intervention and German defeat. The first group lied to the second and concealed decisions, hoodwinking their own colleagues and countrymen as they went.
Arthur Zimmermann - a self-appointed “expert” on the United States - became German foreign minister in November 1916. He was the very model of the overbearing Teuton, and went out of his way to embody everything about Germans that Americans detested. While still assistant foreign minister during the Lusitania crisis, he threatened the American ambassador: mentioning the large population of German descent inside US borders, he said the 500,000 German reservists already on American soil would rise against the government (the ambassador responded with his own reminder that there were more than half a million lampposts in the country, on which the reservists would be strung up accordingly).
The mere hint was an act of war.
The German government decided to go ahead with unrestricted submarine warfare in early January 1917, but kept the decision secret from their own ambassador to the US until days before formal commencement; he was ordered to keep quiet until the public announcement hours before the start time of midnight, 31 January.
Foreign minister Zimmermann had already planned to propose a Mexican-German alliance (though he lied about it, and other particulars, to the US ambassador), offering Mexico financial support and US territory from Texas west to the California border; in return, Mexico was to open hostilities, and work to involve Japan. It was contingent on any failure of unrestricted submarine warfare to defeat the Allies
The scheme was sent (encrypted) by US State Dept diplomatic wire to the German ambassador to the US, in violation of that ambassador’s word to the US Secretary of State that it would not be used so; it was to be sent to the German ambassador in Mexico City in the event an American declaration of war against Germany appeared likely.
The British intercepted and decrypted the telegram, held it for almost three weeks, then gave the American ambassador to London a copy. In the interim, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany.
Comparing the dates of the telegram and the break in relations, the Americans found the Germans had committed another act of war.
In the context of the German acts of sabotage at Black Tom Island and Lyndhurst, kearnyirish2’s complaints about lack of American neutrality are looking more like a playground complaint of “he hit me first” coupled with spurious protests about legal procedural niceties tossed around by an increasingly desperate defense attorney.
All of which are trivial, compared to the following.
All we must do is ask ourselves this question: would we really wish to live in a world where Imperial Germany had gained the victory in the First World War?