When this war began, many expected the resulting navies to sail out and fight a great naval battle. In fact, this only ever almost happened at Jutland, and that was inconclusive.
The British knew that their navy was the only part of their military who could lose the war in an afternoon and decided not to use it in a massive battle but to blockade all the shipping routes to Germany and try and starve their enemy into submission.
To do so they seized the shipping of neutral countries and caused a lot of upset, but Britain was able to soothe ruffled feathers and come to agreements with these neutral countries. Of course, Britain had the advantage, as it was between Germany and the Atlantic shipping routes, so US purchases were effectively cut off.
Germany also decided to blockade Britain, but not only did they cause upset they caused their own destruction. Basically, the German above sea fleet was restricted to cat and mouse operations, but their submarines were told to go out and blockade the British by stopping any Atlantic trade reaching them. The Germans thus began sinking the ships coming to Britain: enemy, neutral, civilian alike.
Unrestricted submarine warfare, because there were no restrictions on who to sink. Sailors were dying, and theoretically neutral nations like the US were livid. In the face of opposition from the neutrals like the US who threatened to join the war , and demands from German politicians for the submarines to be brought under control, the Germans changed tactics. But Germany knew they were out producing the allies when it came to submarines and were still having success with their more careful policy.
High command wondered: if we began unrestricted Submarine warfare again, could our blockade force Britain to surrender before the US was able to declare war and get their troops over the seas? Ludendorff , practical ruler of Germany, made the decision, and in February unrestricted submarine warfare began. At first, it was devastating, and as supplies in Britain dwindled the head of the British Navy told his government they could not survive.
But then two things happened. The British began using the convoy system, a tactic used in Napoleonic times but adopted now to group traveling ships into tough groups, and the US entered the war. The convoys caused losses to reduce, German submarine losses increased, and the specter of US troops finally broke the German will to continue after their last throw of the dice in early a move which occurred as the Germans tried a last land tactic before the US arrived in force.
A string of attacks on merchant ships followed, culminating in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, Although the Lusitania was a British ship and it was carrying a supply of munitions—Germany used these two facts to justify the attack—it was principally a passenger ship, and the 1, people who drowned in its sinking included Americans. The incident prompted U. President Woodrow Wilson to send a strongly worded note to the German government demanding an end to German attacks against unarmed merchant ships.
German navy commanders, however, were ultimately not prepared to accept this degree of passivity, and continued to push for a more aggressive use of the submarine, convincing first the army and eventually the government, most importantly Kaiser Wilhelm, that the U-boat was an essential component of German war strategy. In a joint audience with the kaiser on January 8, , army and naval leaders presented their arguments to Wilhelm, who supported them in spite of the opposition of the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who was not at the meeting.
Though he feared antagonizing the U. On January 31, , Bethmann Hollweg went before the German Reichstag government and made the announcement that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume the next day, February 1: "The destructive designs of our opponents cannot be expressed more strongly. We have been challenged to fight to the end. We accept the challenge. We stake everything, and we shall be victorious. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
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The Allies and Americans considered the sinking an act of indiscriminate warfare. Faced with the possibility that the U. The order, however, was temporary. Germany built new and larger U-boats to punch holes in the British blockade, which was threatening to starve Germany out of the war.
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