Unrestricted submarine warfare

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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 history has been dominated by German decision making. There have been attempts to limit the use of unrestricted naval warfare, with some dating back to before the turn of the 20th Century. Some of these have not succeeded in outlawing this type of warfare. To be deemed acceptable, naval attacks needed to follow prize rules, which called for warships to search merchantmen[1] and place crews in "a place of safety" [2] before sinking them. To follow these rules a submarine must surface, defeating the purpose of submarines and putting itself in danger of attack.

History[edit]

German art of the sinking of the Linda Blanche on 30 January 1915 by SM U-21. Passengers and crew are being allowed to disembark into lifeboats, which was not always done in practice.

Limitations on warfare at sea date back to the 1899 Hague Convention.[3] However, the Imperial German navy was heavily criticised internally by high level officials for their relative inactivity at the start of WWI. To boost the role of the navy, and buoyed by early successes of U-boat warfare, Admiral Tirpitz and Admiral von Pohl suggested a plan whereby U-boats, given a free hand to attack British (and in some cases, neutral) shipping, could potentially force Britain into a "concillatory mood" in as few as six weeks. The admirals appealed to public opinion through press interviews,[4] posing the submarines as "miracle weapons", despite the extremely small number of vessels available. It was believed that a "shock effect" would cause shipping to cease, and that neutrals would judge the campaign a reasonable reprisal for the British naval blockade. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg accepted this strategy on February 1, 1915 and a directive issued the next day, with a public announcement on the 4th.[5]

In the most dramatic episode they sank Lusitania in May 1915 in a few minutes.[6] In the face of US anger, German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg obtained a secret directive to exclude passenger vessels from being targetted and to make strenuous measures to avoid striking neutral vessels, a measure made into a formal and public suspension of unrestricted warfare after the sinking of the SS Arabic in August 1915.[7]

Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, chief of the Imperial Admiralty staff, argued successfully in early 1917 to resume the attacks and thus starve the British. The German high command realized the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare meant war with the United States but calculated that American mobilization would be too slow to stop a German victory on the Western Front.[8][9] The United States, who were previously neutral, joined the war in favour of the British. The decision made by Germany became one of the "trigger mechanisms" causing the USA to enter the war.[10]

Following Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917, countries tried to limit or even abolish submarines. The 1909 Declaration of London required submarines to abide by prize rules, but the declaration never came into force. These regulations did not prohibit arming merchantmen,[11] but having them report contact with submarines (or raiders) made them de facto naval auxiliaries and removed the protection of the prize rules.[12] This rendered the restrictions on submarines effectively useless.[11] While such tactics increase the combat effectiveness of the submarine and improve its chances of survival, some[13][14][15][16][17] regard them as a breach of the rules of war, especially when employed against neutral vessels in a war zone.

After World War I, there was a strong push to construct international rules prohibiting submarine attacks on merchant ships.[3] In 1922 the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy signed the Washington Treaty on Poison Gas and Submarines, to so restrict the use of submarines as to make them useless as commerce raiders.[18] France did not ratify, so the treaty did not go into effect.

In 1936, states signed the London Protocol on Submarine Warfare.

Interwar prohibitions on unrestricted submarine warfare have been described as being too unspecified, thus leading to disagreements over how to interpret the rules and agreements.[3] For example, it was unclear what differentiated merchant ships from military ships, in particular given that Britain wanted to retain the rights to arm its merchants.[3] Furthermore, it was considered impractical for small submarines to take on the crews of noncombatant ships due to a lack of space.[3] Crews could be placed in emergency boats, but there was disagreement as to how safe that was.[3]

Prior to World War II, 48 states had accepted the prohibitions on unrestricted submarine warfare, including the great power combatants during World War II.[3]

Instances[edit]

There have been four major campaigns of unrestricted submarine warfare, one in World War I and three in World War II:

  1. The U-boat campaign of World War I, waged intermittently by Germany between 1915 and 1918 against Britain and her allies. One of the most infamous acts was on May 7, 1915, when U-boat U-20 deliberately torpedoed the British Cunard luxury liner RMS Lusitania. Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, together with the Zimmermann Telegram, brought American entry into World War I on the British side.
  2. The Battle of the Atlantic during World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, it was waged between Nazi Germany and the Allies and also from 1940 to 1943 between Fascist Italy and the Allies.
  3. The Baltic Sea Campaigns on the Eastern Front, during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, especially from 1942, it was waged between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, primarily in the Baltic Sea.
  4. The Pacific War during World War II, between 1941 and 1945, waged between the Allies and the Japanese Empire.

The four cases were attempts to impose a naval blockade on countries, especially those heavily dependent on merchant shipping to supply their war industries and feed their populations (such as Britain and Japan), when their enemies were unable to institute a conventional naval blockade.[citation needed]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Holwitt, Joel I. "Execute Against Japan", Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2005, pp.5-6.
  2. ^ Holwitt, p.92: quoting Article 22 of the Naval Treaty.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Legro, Jeffrey W. (1997). "Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the 'Failure' of Internationalism". International Organization. 51 (1): 31–63. doi:10.1162/002081897550294. JSTOR 2703951. S2CID 154368865.
  4. ^ Ritter, Gerhard (1972). The Sword and the Scepter vol III: The tragedy of statesmanship. University of Miami Press. p. 18-19.
  5. ^ Ritter, pp.119-14
  6. ^ Eardley, Nick (1 May 2014). "Files show confusion over Lusitania". BBC News. Archived from the original on 30 November 2017.
  7. ^ Ritter, pp.148-150
  8. ^ Steffen, Dirk (2004). "The Holtzendorff Memorandum of 22 December 1916 and Germany's Declaration of Unrestricted U-boat Warfare". The Journal of Military History. 68 (1): 215–224. doi:10.1353/jmh.2003.0412. S2CID 159765016. Project MUSE 50680.
  9. ^ See The Holtzendorff Memo (English translation) with notes Archived 2005-03-09 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Manseck, Hartmut (2007). "The U-Boat, A German Fate?". Naval Forces. 28 (1). ProQuest 199358222. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  11. ^ a b Holwitt, p.6.
  12. ^ Stockton Naval War College Archived 2017-08-22 at the Wayback Machine, p.324 (retrieved 9 July 2017); Holwitt, pp.76-77; Zabecki, David T. "Doenitz: A Defense", pp.48-49, at Google Books Archived 2018-05-13 at the Wayback Machine (retrieved 9 July 2017); Dönitz, Karl. Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days; von der Poorten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II (T. Y. Crowell, 1969); Milner, Marc. North Atlantic Run: the Royal Canadian Navy and the battle for the convoys (Vanwell Publishing, 2006)
  13. ^ Holwitt, p.294, for instance. Holwitt, however, persistently refuses to acknowledge armed merchantmen are not protected, and most of the merchantmen sunk by both sides in World War II were armed. See Blair, Silent Victory passim
  14. ^ Parillo, pp.114-115
  15. ^ Zabecki, p.71, at Google Books Archived 2018-05-13 at the Wayback Machine (retrieved 9 July 2017)
  16. ^ Assmann, Kurt (1950). "Why U-Boat Warfare Failed". Foreign Affairs. 28 (4): 659–670. doi:10.2307/20030803. JSTOR 20030803.
  17. ^ Wilson, George Grafton (1930). "Armed Merchant Vessels and Submarines". The American Journal of International Law. 24 (2): 337–339. doi:10.2307/2189406. JSTOR 2189406. S2CID 146834100.
  18. ^ "Washington Conference | Treaties & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-04-11.

Sources[edit]