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During 1916, continual and fierce debate took place within the German government between advocates and opponents of unrestricted submarine warfare, the latter led by Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. As the military opposed commerce warfare under cruiser rules , a number of options for an intensified campaign was suggested and in some cases briefly ...
German U-boat U-14 (early 1910s) Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships such as freighters and tankers without warning. The use of unrestricted submarine warfare has had significant impacts on international relations in regards to both the First World War and the Second World War. Its ...
1916 was a year of political struggles between opponents and proponents of unrestricted submarine warfare. Reinhard Scheer became the commander of the High Seas Fleet, and as an effort to "blackmail" command into adopting unrestricted submarine warfare, refused to use his submarines in any sort of limited commerce raiding campaign. [23]
U-995, a typical VIIC/41 U-boat on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial. U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars.The term is an anglicized version of the German word U-Boot ⓘ, a shortening of Unterseeboot (under-sea boat), though the German term refers to any submarine.
A contemporary German depiction of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania during the first unrestricted submarine warfare campaign. Germany, as part of the Central Powers, had been at war with Britain and the other Allies since 1914. Merchant shipping was vital to the Allied war effort, carrying material across the Atlantic to Britain and France.
In 1917, Germany became convinced that it could defeat the Allied Forces by instituting unrestricted submarine warfare before the United States could enter the war. The Sussex pledge was, therefore, rescinded in January 1917, which started the decisive stage of the so-called First Battle of the Atlantic.
Von Trapp (1880–1947) was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of the war. In addition to 11 merchant ships, he also sank the French armored cruiser Léon Gambetta and the Italian submarine Nereide. After the war, he lost most of his money, which had been deposited in an Austrian bank that failed.
In 1915, after World War I broke out, he was recalled to duty to serve as head of the Imperial Admiralty Staff. During his retirement Holtzendorff converted into a strong proponent of unrestricted submarine warfare. He published a memo in December 1916 that was presented to Kaiser Wilhelm II and approved at the Pless conference in January 1917 ...