The British luxury passenger liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed a century ago. The sinking was deemed an atrocity of war and encouraged American intervention in World War I. But the ship was carrying munitions through a war zone and left unprotected by the Royal Navy. The “Great War” was a thoroughly modern conflict, enshrouded in government lies.
Indeed, the British were propaganda pros, creating an entire “information” operation based in the U.S. dedicated to misleading America into the conflict. London began with a brilliant campaign built on the faked “Belgian atrocities” allegedly committed by the German Army. Years after the Lusitania went to the ocean’s bottom the British government still obstructed efforts to learn the truth about the ship.
We see similar activities today. Washington attributed phantom horrors to countries which had committed more than their share of documented crimes, Iraq and Serbia. Americans were lied into invading Iraq when the Bush administration relied on falsehoods from Iraqi exiles, most spectacularly Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Much was made of Muammar Khadafy’s nonexistent plan to slaughter Libyan civilians after he threatened his armed opponents. Most recent has been supposed Iranian “support” for Yemen’s Houthis, a local group fighting over domestic grievances for decades.
World War I was a mindless imperial slugfest triggered by an act of state terrorism by Serbian authorities—the murder of the heir apparent to the Austro- Hungarian Empire. Contending alliances acted as transmission belts of war. The Serbs wanted to destroy the so-called “dual monarchy,” which in turn believed it had to impose “regime change” in Belgrade. The Russians backed Serbia to ensure their predominance in the Balkans, but Imperial Germany was unwilling to allow the destruction of Austro-Hungary, its main ally. The revanchist French supported Czarist tyranny as the only means to recover Alsace and Lorraine, territories lost to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War 43 years before. Great Britain entered the conflict citing Berlin’s violation of Belgian neutrality but mostly to maintain the continental balance of power and neuter German maritime power. Every state was willing to risk war for interests that look dubious, even foolish in the light of history. Nearly 20 million died in the resulting military avalanche.
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SeagateVoice 6 Habits To Make Your Small Business More Productive America’s Woodrow Wilson initially declared neutrality, though he in fact leaned sharply toward the motley “Entente.” The German-led Central Powers (Austria- Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) were no prize. However, the British grouping included a terrorist state (Serbia, whose ruling dynasty was built on murder), an anti-Semitic despotism (Russian Empire, which held numerous peoples in bondage), a ruthless imperial power (Belgium, which brutalized unfortunate residents of the Belgian Congo), a militaristic colonial republic (France, which once had plunged the entire continent into war and was responsible for starting the Franco-Prussian War), and Britain. The latter was the best of the lot, but it ruled much of the globe without the consent of those “governed” and cared little for those crushed beneath its global ambitions. This clash of empires was no “war for democracy” and “war against war,” as often characterized.
Britain’s Prince Charles places carnations on the graves of Turkish soldiers at the 57th Turkish Regiment cemetery and memorial site at the Gallipoli peninsula, Turkey, Saturday, April 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
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Never a great land power, London relied on its navy to dominate. The outnumbered German navy ventured out only once—winning a tactical victory at Jutland, but achieving nothing strategically. The maritime war centered around commerce, an especially effective tactic given British and German dependence on international trade.
London ignored the traditional rules of war when imposing a starvation blockade on Germany and neutrals supplying the Germans. Belligerents traditionally stationed ships near the three-mile territorial limit, but the Royal Navy conducted a “distant” blockade, declaring entire seas and oceans to be war zones. Moreover, Britain treated food and other civilian goods as unconditional contraband of war. Previously such goods were “conditional contraband” only subject to seizure if meant for military use.
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