that is sooooo contentious! you are a bad man, digging up old skelingtons like this.

how dare you suggest that we would even contemplate such a thing, when history recalls it was entirely the filthy Hun's doing...

..but i wouldn't put it past us at the time though. The situation was looking grim for the Allies and we desperatley needed US manpower and resources and to end American neutrality. Plus the Lusitania was indeed carrying contraband and war supplies so the Germans were technically within their rights to attack her, but of course that was a diplomatic disaster.

i was under the impression it was those filthy mexicans fault :p (sorry Z )

@Taw - Technically it was within their rights to attack the ship, they how ever at the time had no idea that the ship was carrying weapons headed to help the allies. At least I didn't think that they did.

Actually the lusatania was put in harms way by a manuver called check and point and slowing down.Check and point is where a ship goes up to the coast and then heads straight in the direction it want's to go . Using loids london the germans found outwhere it would be and knew it would check and point then. Check and point was unneccesary as was slowing down. If it hadn't slowed down it couldn't have been hit because it had enough speed to outrun a sub or a torpedo.
PS this was the lusitania's last voyage it was going to join the british navy after it on board their were even gun mounts

Germans even made a medal for those who attacked the ship

The way I see it, the Germans had no real choice but to sink the ship. It seems that the British were using the civilians on board as a human shield. I'd say the British probably did go out of their way to put the ship in danger just so that the Americians would get involved.

I'm making record time!
If only I had someplace to be...

Well, with the mass slaughter that the Triple Entente was handing to their own men, what's a few civilians here and there?


I'm not evil, just morally challenged

Contentious but probably fair...

My gap year in Borneo

How ironic, using a passenger liner, and then accusing the people of being human shields...

lusatnia was going to be an enormous war ship it is not a spa and cruise luxury liner it was going to be a full decked out Brentonian Battleship

I've harbored a touch of unprovable suspicion that there is more than a passing coincidence between this and what ultimately happened to get the US into WW2... that is, that there is a connection in as much as the First Sea Lord then became Prime Minister and was talking privately to the President quite a bit.

there's often been speculation that Winston was up to skullduggery to get the US into the war, spies within spies, British double-agents ostensibly working for the Germans and influencing the Japanese; he was quite capable of such convoluted plotting and knew full well that we'd have struggled to win the war with anything short of direct American involvement. The night after Pearl Harbour it is said he slept the first full night's sleep he'd had since the start of the war.

Naturally there's only rumour and conjecture regarding this. How could the "special" relationship survive were it ever to be seriously argued that Britain might have "engineered" the Japanese attack on PH in order to get the Americans into the war to save our own skin? Were it to be so, it would also clarify Hitler's decision to declare war on America, which has always been difficult to explain. The only other explanation I've ever heard for this course of action was that Hitler was trying to force the Japanese to declare war on Russia to tie up the Far Eastern armies which would soon drive the Germans back from Moscow.

Of course, no-one believes any of this wild speculation, and I don't myself; but it is a possibility, however remote, and the truth of many of Winston's schemes has not yet been revealed, and never will be probably. Not everything comes out in the wash of the 30 year rule. Some secrets stay secret, and Winston took a lot of secrets to the grave.

Sorry Mistake on my Part

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Edited by - geekus maximus on 2/23/2004 6:49:53 PM

@Geek,

Yeah. We know. The point I was making is that in WW1, the First Sea Lord was none other than Winston Churchill. In WW2, after Chamberlain, the Prime Minister was Winston Churchill.