Posted on 09/02/2014 8:11:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
About how America became involved in certain wars, many conspiracy theories have been advanced -- and some have been proved correct.
When James K. Polk got his declaration of war as Mexico had "shed American blood upon the American soil," Rep. Abraham Lincoln demanded to know the exact spot where it had happened.
And did the Spanish really blow up the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the casus belli for the Spanish-American War?
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, involving U.S. destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, remains in dispute. But charges that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships on the high seas led to the 1964 resolution authorizing the war in Vietnam.
In 2003, Americans were stampeded into backing an invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein had allegedly been complicit in 9/11, had weapons of mass destruction and was able to douse our East Coast with anthrax.
"(He) lied us into war because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it," said Rep. Clare Luce of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, according to many historians, made efforts to provoke German subs into attacking U.S. warships and bring us into the European war through the "back door" of a war with Japan.
This week marks the 75th anniversary of World War II, as last month marked the 100th anniversary of World War I.
Thus, it is a good time for Eugene Windchy's "Twelve American Wars: Nine of Them Avoidable." A compelling chapter in this new book, by the author of "Tonkin Gulf," deals with how Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, schemed to drag America into Britain's war in 1915.
In 1907, Britain launched the Lusitania, "the greyhound of the sea," the fastest passenger ship afloat. In 1913, Churchill called in the head of Cunard and said Lusitania would have to be refitted for a war he predicted would break out in September 1914.
The Lusitania, writes Windchy, was "refitted as a cargo ship with hidden compartments to hold shells and other munitions. By all accounts there were installed revolving gun mounts."
On Aug. 4, 1914, after war was declared, Lusitania went back into dry dock. More space was provided for cargo, and the vessel was now carried on Cunard's books as "an auxiliary cruiser."
Churchill visited the ship in dry dock and referred to Lusitania as "just another 45,000 tons of live bait."
When war began, German submarine captains, to save torpedoes, would surface and permit the crews of cargo ships to scramble into lifeboats, and then they would plant bombs or use gunfire to sink the vessels.
Churchill's response was to outfit merchant ships with hidden guns, order them to ram submarines, and put out "Q-ships," disguised as merchant ships, which would not expose their guns until submarines surfaced.
German naval commanders began to order submarines to sink merchant ships on sight. First Sea Lord Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher said he would have done the same.
Churchill, seeing an opportunity to bring America into Britain's war, wrote the Board of Trade: "It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany. ... We want the traffic -- the more the better -- and if some of it gets into trouble, the better still."
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan wanted to warn Americans not to travel aboard British ships. But President Woodrow Wilson, writes Windchy, "said that American citizens had a right to travel on belligerent ships with impunity, even within a war zone," a defiance of common sense and an absurd interpretation of international law.
On May 1, 1915, Lusitania set sail from New York. As Windchy writes, the ship "secretly carried munitions and Canadian troops in civilian clothes, which legally made it fair game for (German) U-boats.
"After the war, Churchill ... admitted that the Lusitania carried a 'small consignment of rifle ammunition and shrapnel shells weighing 173 tons.' New York Customs Collector Dudley Malone told President Wilson that 'practically all her cargo was contraband of various kinds.'"
Future Secretary of State Robert Lansing knew that British passenger ships carried war materiel. German diplomats in New York warned American passengers they were in danger on the Lusitania. And instead of sailing north of Ireland to Liverpool, the Lusitania sailed to the south, into waters known to be the hunting ground of German submarines.
Lusitania blew up and sank in 18 minutes. Munitions may have caused the secondary explosion when the torpedo hit. Some 1,200 people perished, including 128 Americans. America was on fire, ready for war when the next incidents occurred, as they would in 1917 with the sinking of U.S. merchant ships in similar waters.
Had Wilson publicly warned U.S. citizens not to sail on the ships of belligerent nations and forbidden U.S.-flagged merchant ships to carry contraband to nations at war, America might have stayed out of the war, which might have ended in a truce, not a German defeat.
There might have been no Adolf Hitler and no World War II.
I read once that in 1982 salvage divers managed to detach three of Lusitania’s four propellers. IIRC two of them are on public display.
The name “Lusitania” was still legible on the wreck at that time. The artist who specializes in painting depictions of sunken ships showed the Lusitania’s hull with hundreds of fouled fishing nets & glass floats waving eerily in the deep.
The idea of Churchill trying to pull the United States into the war would be unlikely due to the following reasons:
In 1915, the United States had not yet mobilized for war, and Britain was dependent on the US for the British Army in France. If the US had declared war right after the Lusitania‘s sinking, the supplies that had once been going to Britain would have stayed in the US, leaving the British without ammunition to fight the Germans.
Churchill and Fisher were known to keep information to themselves and micromanage the affairs of Room 40. Fisher was close to a nervous breakdown at the time and Churchill was in France at the time of Lusitania‘s sinking. If Churchill had wanted Lusitania sunk, such a plan could not have happened without his explicit approval, and he would have stayed in Britain to supervise the plot instead of being in France.
Diana Preston advances a theory that, without Fisher and Churchill, Captain William Reginald Hall could have masterminded such a plot. Captain (later Admiral) Hall was known to use cloak-and-dagger tactics, had access to all the relevant decodes of Room 40, and capable of acting independently of Fisher and Churchill. Whether he could have executed such a plan without Churchill’s knowledge and approval, however, remains speculative.
Too many Churchill bashers here at FR!
Kent Lyon is quite correct. My grandfather’s log shows that this was just a routine voyage and, as far as I can see, there was no period of refit which, in any case, would not have been undertaken in Liverpool and which would have taken weeks, if not months!. If, and it’s a very BIG ‘IF’, Churchill did say what Simpson claims Peskett reported, the more obvious answer is that Churchill was concerned about the safety of the ship in a war zone!
Simpson made a number of unsubstantiated claims in his book almost all of which were aimed at discrediting Winston Churchill. It is difficult not to believe that his motive in writing the book was, therefore, more of a personal vendetta against Churchill rather than an investigation of the sinking. His main allegations were that:
1. The ship was armed with a number of 6” guns;
2. She was carrying contraband HE; and
3. Churchill, with the connivance of the Admiralty, deliberately allowed the ship to sail into the path of waiting U-Boats.
Simpson was unable to provide any reliable historical evidence in support of his claims. It seems that much of his so called evidence appears to come from somewhat dubious sources that cannot be independently checked or which has mysteriously disappeared! If, indeed, any such evidence does materialise then I shall be the first to acknowledge that I was wrong in which case my grandfather, father and other members of the family must have also been complicit in the conspiracy! I, and a number of other authors, have tried in vain to engage with Simpson on various matters and he has refused to discuss them or even contact us. If there had been anything like a whiff of suspicion on any of the above claims it would have come to light long before anyone started writing books about it!
Both my grandfather’s brothers attended the Lord Mersey Enquiry and found nothing sinister or questionable at that time. It was wartime and, to those of us who are now accustomed to negligence claims in the law courts, would not seem unusual. Yet there are those who still believe there was a government led cover-up when there was really nothing to cover up.
A lot of Churchill haters in Britain as well!
Impressive posts, thank you.
Yes... and Wilson was dilly dallying like mad to keep the US out.
How many young men died in the year or two that Wilson delayed solely for his own political benefit. If there is a case of a president lying and people dying it is Wilson not Bush.
I read this.
I checked the author.
I stopped reading.
Stampeded? The invasion of Iraq was bipartisan and had wide public support when it was voted for.
9/11? The basis for the invasion was due to repeated violations of the cease-fire terms from the Gulf War. Anything else is a MSM fabrication.
WMDs? The claim that was made that Iraqi posession of WMDs was imminent. Meaning: we don't know if they have 'em, but they can have in very little time.
douse our East Coast with anthrax? Patsie pulled this one out of thin air.
Eddystone was also making the Lee Enfield Pattern 14 under British contract. Production shifted to the U.S. version, the M1917 Enfield in 30 06 after the U.S. entered the war.
I do not agree that Wilson wanted into the war. I believe that he naively thought that he could stay out of the war and still reap the economic benefits. When this proved impossible, Wilson threw the country into war and used it as an excuse to implement his progressive/socialist schemes of governance by executive fiat. I wonder where Obama got his idea for the same approach?
Wilson was NOT our best President or anywhere NEAR best.
Www.lusitania.net/deadly cargo
You can read the cargo manifest AND the supplemental manifest filed after she was at sea in the originals at the above site.
Lusitania went into Liverpool in 1913 to have the gun mounts and magazines installed. Whether the guns themselves were ever loaded aboard is a good question.
You know, speaking of Winston, I wonder what the Chancellor of the Exchequer was doing on Black Thursday October 24, 1929.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/churchill-winston_philip-snowden-1932.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.