U-boats resumed unrestricted attacks against all ships in the Atlantic, including civilian passenger carriers. They hoped to break the British stranglehold blockade of crucial German supply ports and knock Britain out of the war within the year. Germany was already experiencing food shortages and had imposed unpopular compulsory service either in armed forces or war industries.
By 1917, it had 140 and the U-boats had destroyed about 30 percent of the world's merchant ships.Īt the dawn of 1917, the German high command forced a return to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, engineering the dismissal of opponents of the policy that aimed to sink more than 600,000 tons of shipping a month. Germany built new and larger U-boats to punch holes in the British blockade, which was threatening to starve Germany out of the war. Army Signal Corps film, from the collection of the National World War I Museum and Memorial might go to war over the incident, Germany backed down and ordered its U-boat fleet to spare passenger vessels. The Germans asserted the Lusitania was carrying war matériel and was therefore a legitimate target.įaced with the possibility that the U.S. The Allies and Americans considered the sinking an act of indiscriminate warfare. Nearly 1,200 men, women, and children, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. On May 7, 1915, German submarine U-20 torpedoed the Lusitania, a Cunard passenger liner, off the coast of Ireland. The goal was to starve Britain before the British blockade defeated Germany. They were Germany’s only weapon of advantage as Britain effectively blocked German ports to supplies. The formidable U-boats ( unterseeboots) prowled the Atlantic armed with torpedoes. Germany retaliated by using its submarines to destroy neutral ships that were supplying the Allies. Britain's blockade across the North Sea and the English Channel cut the flow of war supplies, food, and fuel to Germany during World War I.
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