Castles of Steel (107 page)

At one point in the argument between them, Bethmann-Hollweg asked Admiral Bachmann what concessions could safely be offered to the United States, adding that “it must be taken for granted that some concession must be made to America, for Germany, if neutral, would not tolerate that a ship with 1,500 German passengers on board should be sunk without warning.” Bachmann repeated what he had said before: no concessions should be offered, and modification of existing orders to the U-boats was unthinkable. Nevertheless, even Germans who supported the chancellor resented the American claim to an inalienable right to travel on belligerent ships. In a note to America, the German government observed that “there would appear to be no compelling necessity for American citizens to travel to Europe in time of war on ships carrying an enemy flag.” As a solution, Jagow proposed that U.S. citizens travel to Europe only on four specially marked passenger liners, which would travel with advance notice to the German navy and which would carry no munitions or other contraband. The American government, the proposal continued, could establish such a service by purchasing four of the German passenger liners that had sought sanctuary in New York. American newspaper reaction to the proposal was explosive: “arrogant,” “preposterous,” “un-heard-of,” cried the editorials; “Americans [are told they] may enjoy limited neutral rights if they submit to German regulations,” declared a Nebraska journal.

Wilson shared this indignation, but he also realized that the overwhelming majority of Americans remained opposed to going to war. And, in any case, the nation was in no position to threaten military action. Accordingly, he rejected the idea of special passenger steamers and continued to negotiate. At the end of July, he made a statement highly agreeable to the chancellor and his allies within the German government: “The events of the past two months have clearly indicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activities of the Imperial German navy within the so-called war zone in substantial accord with accepted practices of regulated warfare.” In other words, if the U-boat captains followed the rules laid down in the kaiser’s June 1 order and behaved as they had in recent weeks, the U.S. government would tolerate German submarine warfare against merchant shipping.

Through the summer of 1915, while Bethmann-Hollweg was struggling to placate Wilson and find some limitation on U-boat warfare that would appease America, Admiral von Tirpitz shook with rage. He hated the chancellor, whom he considered a coward and a traitor; he despised Pohl, whom he described as “ghastly,” “servile,” and “a contemptible little man.” Tirpitz, the founder of the German navy, who in peacetime had insisted that the building of German dreadnoughts should never be limited simply because of English concern, now seemed unperturbed at the idea that submarine warfare might bring the United States into the war. He disapproved of “kowtowing” to anyone and was indignant at the conciliatory tone of German diplomatic notes after the sinking of
Lusitania.
“America is so shamelessly, so barefacedly pro-English,” he wrote on July 25, 1915, “that it is hard to credit that we shall eat humble pie. Yet in this connection I believe nothing to be impossible. . . . I, for my part, will not join in a formal renunciation of submarine warfare, whereby we should abandon the only weapon we have in our hands against England in the future.” When, because of American protests, submarine warfare was restricted, Tirpitz’s hatred of the chancellor intensified. In the future, he told himself, he would use all his powers of persuasion and his access to the machinery of political propaganda to remove this incubus on the German navy and empire.

Not long after Woodrow Wilson’s offer to tolerate limited submarine warfare, another British passenger liner was sunk without warning. On August 19, off Kinsale, the captain of
U-24
stopped the English steamer
Durnsley,
permitted the crew to enter their lifeboats, and then exploded bombs in the vessel’s hold. The
Durnsley
went down slowly and as she was foundering, another, larger steamer approached. Schneider realized that this new vessel was a passenger ship but, “as I had been shot at by a large steamer on the 14th, I decided to attack this one from under water.” He fired a torpedo. His target was the 15,801-ton White Star liner
Arabic,
bound for New York with twenty American citizens on board. The ship sank; among the forty-four passengers who died, three were Americans. No warning had been given; the act, therefore, was in defiance not only of the kaiser’s June 1 order to the Imperial Navy but of the
Lusitania
settlement President Wilson was about to accept. The American president and government, besides having to deal with fresh tragedy, had been made to look foolish.

On August 26, the German chancellor convened a conference at Pless, in Silesia, to deal with the now merged crises of the
Lusitania
and the
Arabic.
He announced at the start that it was useless to belittle the anger these incidents were provoking and that unless strong assurances were given quickly, war with the United States was probable. Further, he said that he could no longer accept sole responsibility for calling an end to the submarine campaign in the face of German popular opinion. “I cannot continue to walk on a volcano,” he cried. General von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the General Staff, who still hoped that America would stay out of the war, supported Bethmann-Hollweg. Indeed, once again, everyone present was united against the two old seamen, Tirpitz and Bachmann, who stubbornly insisted that the U-boat campaign must either be abandoned outright or continued without modification. In the end, the two admirals were overridden and the kaiser authorized the chancellor to conclude a general settlement with America. Both admirals immediately asked to be relieved. Müller struck quickly, removing Bachmann as Chief of the Naval Staff and installing Admiral Henning von Holtzen-dorff in his place. Holtzendorff, an experienced seaman, an opponent of Tirpitz, and a personal friend of the chancellor, believed that the U-boat campaign was overvalued and that if it was to continue, it must be properly regulated. William refused to accept Tirpitz’s resignation, declaring that in time of war no officer was permitted to quit his post without imperial permission. Nevertheless, weary of the admiral’s habitual insubordination and bullying language, the kaiser exiled him from Supreme Headquarters.

Eventually, after an exchange of diplomatic notes lasting more than three months, the German chancellor managed to satisfy the American president. On August 28, William issued an order that no passenger ships of any nationality, enemy or neutral, large or small, were to be sunk without warning. Further, the captains of the attacking submarines were to be responsible for the safety of passengers and crew. Once the president was informed of this order, American feelings calmed and the danger of American entry into the war receded. Thus, in three crises with the United States—the first in February, occasioned by the mere announcement of submarine warfare against merchant ships; the second over the sinking of the
Lusitania
in May; and the third over the sinking of the
Arabic
in August—Bethmann-Hollweg had taken the lead in drafting Germany’s notes to the United States and in influencing the kaiser’s orders to the U-boats.

And then, almost immediately, another episode occurred. On Septem-ber 4, Walther Schwieger, the U-boat captain who sank
Lusitania,
torpedoed the 10,920-ton British liner
Hesperian
without warning off the coast of Ireland. There were Americans on board, but none were among the thirty-two persons killed. Nevertheless, the sinking was in flagrant defiance of the promise just given to Wilson. When asked to explain, German authorities at first assured the American government that no German submarine had been operating near the spot; they suggested that the ship had struck a mine. Later, a board of American officers concluded that the liner had been torpedoed, not mined, and relations between Germany and America again deteriorated. Finally, on September 18, still fearful of alienating American opinion and to ensure compliance with the kaiser’s promise, Admiral von Holtzendorff recalled all U-boats from the English Channel and the Western Approaches, where the densest concentration of U.S. shipping occurred. He sanctioned continued operations in the North Sea, but decreed that they could be carried out only in strict accord with the prize regulations. Pohl, the commander of High Seas Fleet submarines, refused to allow his vessels to operate against commerce under prize regulations procedures and, rather than obeying Holtzendorff’s command, withdrew all High Seas Fleet U-boats from the North Sea, virtually suspending the U-boat campaign for the rest of the year. As a sop to German public opinion, Holtzendorff and Pohl agreed that a small-scale submarine campaign should be waged in the Mediterranean, where few U.S. merchantmen were to be found.

Thus, by the autumn of 1915, the American and German governments had reached an agreement that, in essence, involved an American veto on U-boat tactics. The U.S. government had pronounced the submarine campaign to be legitimate and permissible only when it was directed solely against enemy, not neutral, shipping and provided also that all passenger ships were left untouched. Overall, by September 1915, when the German government settled its differences with the United States, U-boats had sunk 790,000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping. Of this, about 570,000 tons was British. This had been done in seven months by a fleet of about thirty-five submarines, which was being increased every month by four new boats of better design. Since the campaign began in February 1915, thirty U-boats had been reinforced by thirty-five new submarines; during the same period, fifteen U-boats had been lost. Thus, in September 1915, when the first submarine campaign was abandoned, fifty operational U-boats were available. For the German admirals this was stark, infuriating evidence that the campaign had been canceled for political, not military reasons.

The German admirals also knew that, under the rules by which they had been forced to operate, the submarine campaign had failed in its essential purpose. Despite losses, neutral traders had not been intimidated. Nor had economic pressure on Great Britain reached anything like the intensity necessary to coerce the British government into lifting the North Sea blockade. Throughout 1915, monthly imports of foodstuffs and raw materials into Great Britain had exceeded in volume the imports during the corresponding months of peace in 1913. Thanks to the great number of German and Austro-Hungarian merchant ships captured, seized, or detained in the early months of the war, the total tonnage available to Britain and her allies was actually greater in the autumn of 1915 than it had been at the outbreak of war a year before. But, for Britain, there were ominous signs: new merchant-ship tonnage launched, amounting to 416,000 tons for the last quarter of 1914, fell in the first quarter of 1915 to 267,000 tons and in the last two quarters of that year to 148,000 tons and 146,000 tons respectively. The latter figure was only one-third of the tonnage sunk during that quarter. The reason was that shipyards, labor, and materials had all been diverted to other work. Skilled men from the yards had been recruited for Kitchener’s New Army, while yard space and materials had been assigned to Fisher’s new warship-building program. As a result, in 1915, only 650,000 tons of new merchant ships was delivered. Meanwhile, hundreds of oceangoing vessels, amounting to 20 percent of British tonnage, had been requisitioned for military purposes, transporting food, munitions, stores, and supplies. This reduction in shipping available for general trade was substantially greater than the losses inflicted by the U-boats.

Nevertheless, for Britain, the primary achievement of the war at sea in 1915 was that British diplomacy and the Royal Navy had combined to bring all import trade bound for northern Europe under British surveillance and control. During the first submarine campaign, 743 neutral ships carrying supplies to Germany had been stopped by British patrols and their cargoes either seized outright or retained with compensation; this number was three times the number of British ships sunk during the same period by U-boat attack. By December 1914, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were importing only the supplies necessary for home consumption; thus Germany was deprived of even her usual imports of foods and raw materials from her neutral neighbors. With each successive month, the British grip on German economic life tightened; by January 1916, the German people were showing signs of hardship. Textile factories were cut off from raw materials, so collars, cuffs, napkins, and handkerchiefs were made of paper. Sheets were made of wood pulp, which could not be washed. Germans cooked without fats. Shortages stirred discontent. Scarcities were not believed to be genuine. Suspicion abounded that rich people continued to dine sumptuously: townspeople generally accused farmers of hoarding food. Looking into the future, the prospects were bleaker. Germany depended not so much on imported foods as on imported fertilizers and fodder for animals; without fertilizers, the sandy soil of northern Germany would not yield normal harvests; without fodder, the herds would diminish.

Meanwhile, even as it imposed the blockade, Britain maintained a better relationship with America than Germany was able to do. While Germany had obtained grudging American tolerance of its submarine war against shipping so long as passenger ships were not attacked and American citizens not killed, Britain had established wide American acceptance for the blockade. This stemmed, in part, from the degree to which American prosperity depended upon trade with the Allies. It was true that American shipping, industrial, and farm interests regularly protested about the blockade to Washington and that on November 5, 1915, Secretary of State Lansing had told the British government that the doctrine of continuous voyage was “ineffective, illegal and indefensible.” Nevertheless, the blockade continued and no serious rupture in diplomatic relations occurred. The principal reason for this differing treatment of the two belligerents was overwhelmingly simple: the British blockade threatened American property rights, while the German submarine campaign threatened American lives. The point was made in a
New York Tribune
editorial: