Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (16 page)

H
ATE CAMPAIGNS
In recent years, there have been a variety of responses to the Holocaust deniers, ranging from legal prohibitions (in some European countries, including France and Germany, Holocaust denial is now illegal) to the in-depth analysis of the deniers' claims. In Canada, campaigner Ken McVay set up a newsgroup called alt. revisionism, where he tried to set the Holocaust record straight by providing factual information. He also attempted to report on the nefarious activities of certain Holocaust deniers through his Nizkor Project. This soon incurred their wrath and he received several death threats.

In Britain, Penguin Books published
Denying the Holocaust
, an important rebuttal of David Irving's claims. Written by American author Deborah Lipstadt, the book accused Irving of falsifying evidence to support his case and it further suggested that his motive was essentially anti-Semitic. Irving responded by bringing a libel action against Lipstadt and Penguin. At the end of a complicated trial, during which Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans was hired to examine Irving's work in depth, the judge eventually found in favour of Lipstadt.

Today, the debate over Holocaust denial still rages. On the one hand, there are those who feel that free speech is paramount and that no matter what the Holocaust deniers allege they should be allowed to make their point. On the other hand, many Jews are incensed by the Holocaust deniers: they see their claims as outright anti-Semitism of the worst kind and an incitement to racial hatred. Holocaust denial literature is now openly distributed in some Arab countries, which is something that many critics see as a worrying development. Whatever means are adopted to deal with the problem, it seems clear that denial of the Holocaust is just one of a number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that, on close examination, have very little substance.

There are two famous maritime disasters involving great passenger liners during the early part of the last century. One was the
Titanic
and the other the
Lusitania
. The more famous of these is, of course, the
Titanic
, whose sinking was a disaster caused by the emphatic collision of nature and human incompetence. It was so clearly an accident that no conspiracy theorist has yet stepped forward to claim that the iceberg was actually a remote-controlled fake, operated by aliens or Russians.

The sinking of the
Lusitania
in the midst of World War One, on the other hand, has attracted a whole range of conspiracy theories. At the time, it appeared to be a straightforward military matter – a dastardly act of war in which an innocent passenger liner was torpedoed by a German submarine. Over time, however, more and more conspiracy theorists, including many legitimate military historians, have come to suspect that the sinking was a set-up, that the Germans were deliberately encouraged to sink the passenger liner by the British in the hope that the negative publicity would encourage the Americans to join in the war on the British side.

This has been an enormously influential conspiracy theory, with its implication that a state might sacrifice the innocent in pursuit of a greater military and political objective. In the years since the event, innumerable other conspiracy theories have grown up around the
Lusitania
example. They range from Pearl Harbor (was the Japanese invasion deliberately encouraged in order to persuade the American people to join World War Two?) to the UK's Birmingham pub bombings (were they actually the work of the security services, designed to promote an anti-IRA backlash?) to the Kuwait invasion (were the Iraqis encouraged to invade in order to spark off the first Gulf War?).

S
UNK IN EIGHTEEN MINUTES
To return to the case that started all the speculation, was the sinking of the
Lusitania
really the result of a conspiracy by the British or just a regrettable casualty of a terrible war? Let us start by examining the facts. On 1 May 1915 the British passenger liner
Lusitania
, under the command of a Captain Turner, set sail from New York on its journey to the port of Liverpool. On 7 May, when heading past the southern coast of Ireland, the ship crossed paths with a German U-boat. At around 2.10 p.m., and without any warning, the U-boat fired a single torpedo at the
Lusitania
. This caused substantial initial damage which was then amplified by a second explosion that came from within the ship. The
Lusitania
tilted over onto its starboard side and within eighteen minutes it had sunk.

There was terrible loss of life. As the ship was over on its side the lifeboats from the starboard side could not be used. It was two hours before any other ships were able to respond to the
Lusitania
's distress signals. The captain of the closest ship, a battle cruiser called the
Juno
, was afraid to approach because of the danger of coming under attack from the U-boat as well. As a result 1,201 people died: nearly two thirds of the ship's 2,000 passengers. Of these, 128 were American citizens.

There was immediate controversy over the acceptability of firing on a passenger liner. Fierce anti-German riots took place in many countries, as people were horrified to learn that the passenger ship had been sunk without warning. The United States in particular was highly critical of the act. The Germans attempted to defend their action, pointing out that they had issued a warning to say that they would attack any British ship as a response to Britain's naval blockade of Germany, which was starving the German people. Nevertheless the catastrophic loss of life that accompanied the sinking of the
Lusitania
made for valuable anti-German propaganda.

Following the sinking, the United States President, Woodrow Wilson, wrote to the German government demanding “reparation so far as reparation was possible”. After he had repeated the demand four times, Germany gave in.

They accepted responsibility and agreed to stop sinking passenger ships without warning. This was enough to prevent America from becoming immediately involved in the war, but it placed a severe strain on US-German relations. When Germany changed its mind, therefore, and resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, it was almost inevitable that the United States would enter the war on the side of the Allies.

"A
T THEIR OWN RISK
"
Gradually, however, historians came to be suspicious of the politically convenient sinking of the
Lusitania
and began to investigate the precise circumstances of its sinking. In his book
The Lusitania
, written in 1972, Colin Simpson, a British journalist, brought these suspicions together. Firstly, he pointed out that despite increased warnings the Admiralty did not assign any escort ships to the
Lusitania
, nor was the
Lusitania
warned that there had been previous U-boat attacks in the area just days before. Secondly, the
Lusitania
appeared to make no effort to avoid attack. It was travelling slowly through a submarine war zone in an area where U-boats were known to lie in wait. Keeping close to the mainland, it failed to use a zigzagging manoeuvre that would make it a harder target to hit.

The first point, in particular, seems telling. The Germans' intentions were far from mysterious. Indeed, on the day the
Lusitania
left New York the German Embassy had placed an advertisement in the American press warning: "that any travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk".

So why did the
Lusitania
apparently ignore the warnings and appear to offer itself up like a lamb to the slaughter? The official explanation is that warnings were given. U-boats were not meant to attack passenger ships without first warning them and then helping passengers to safety. The official British position puts the blame squarely on the head of the U-Boat commander – Captain Schweiger – who already had a track record of having destroyed neutral, passenger and hospital ships without warning.

C
ONSPIRACY OR CASUALTY?
From a strictly naval perspective it is hard to conclusively prove the matter either way – apart from speculating about whether or not any captain would knowingly allow a ship under his command to be blown up while at sea. As for the supporting evidence that Simpson offers, which centres around a meeting at the Admiralty where the sinking of the
Lusitania
was plotted, it seems profoundly dubious. The meeting was allegedly witnessed by one Lieutenant Commander Kenworthy but the fact is that he was not actually at the meeting in question.

So conspiracy or casualty of war? It seems more likely that it was the latter. However, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the impact of the sinking of the
Lusitania
, and the subsequent controversy, may have given other military and political plotters the idea that something similar might just work...

One of the most damaging military attacks in history was the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941. On that day, Japanese planes flew over the United States air bases on the island of Hawaii and bombed them all, including the ships anchored at Pearl Harbor. The greatest tragedy was the sinking of the battleship USS
Arizona
, which blew up and sank with over 1,000 sailors aboard. Nineteen other ships were destroyed, as well as many aircraft, and more than 2,000 military personnel were killed that day.

Questions began to be asked in the aftermath of the attack. Why were the intelligence systems of the United States military – one of the most powerful forces in the world – unable to predict such a devastating attack from one of the world's less developed countries. (Japan at the time, of course, was not the technologically advanced society that it is today.) And why did Adolf Hitler declare war on America immediately after the event? Could the attack have been allowed to happen in order to help the American government persuade its people to enter the Second World War? Or is such a betrayal unthinkable?

A
SET-UP JOB
On the face of it, it did seem odd that the Americans had no idea that the Japanese were about to bomb their fleet. As many people have pointed out, both at the time and afterwards, US signals intelligence was extremely effective. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) had broken several key Japanese codes and ciphers, including the "Purple" cipher which was thought to relay top security information. It was well known that the militaristic Japanese government was preparing for a large-scale war in order to establish their dominance in Asia, a move that would involve undermining the American forces in the Pacific. So why weren't the Americans on the alert?

Some suggest that the American government, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, knew perfectly well that the Japanese were about to strike, and secretly informed the top military officials at Pearl Harbor to stand aside and let their ships go down. They point out that while the attack was always depicted as a complete disaster for the American military, in actual fact the loss to the Navy – apart from the loss of life – was only five ships in total. Some of the ships damaged in the attack were later repaired and became operational once more. Also, the Japanese could well have sent more bombers to take out the large fuel supplies on the island, but for some inexplicable reason they did not. Thus, the suggestion is that the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was a set-up job that Roosevelt and his advisers colluded in, so that the outraged American public would bay for war, which they subsequently did.