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00:00In August 1914, the two greatest navies in the world made ready for war.
00:30Now the Royal Navy will settle the question of the German fleet, and if they do not come
00:36out and fight, they will be dug out, like rats from a hole.
00:41But the two fleets rarely met.
00:43Instead, a new kind of war evolved, more stealthy, more cruel.
00:48A war not against battleships, but people.
01:00A war not against battleships, but people.
01:15The world's capital ships in 1914 were the products of a Cold War.
01:38Britain's HMS Dreadnought had set the benchmark, heavy armour, big guns, fast.
01:47Dreadnoughts were bargaining chips in a great naval poker game.
02:00Germany had 13 and 7 building, Austria-Hungary 3, America 10, Britain 20.
02:11They kept the peace, but then the Cold War turned hot.
02:19Britain and Germany were the main opponents, staring each other down across the North Sea.
02:38The longer the two sides looked at the map, the more obvious their problems became.
02:44Germany's ships couldn't get clear of the North Sea.
02:47To the south, the Channel, blocked by mines and the Dover Patrol.
02:51And to the north, the British Grand Fleet at Scarpa Flow.
02:58But Britain couldn't get at the German fleet unless it came out from its heavily protected bases.
03:05And if they actually met in the North Sea, the result could be catastrophic.
03:18Everyone feared.
03:20Austro-Hungarian battleship, the Istvan, sunk late in the war by a tiny Italian torpedo boat.
03:35In 1914, the German Navy believed torpedoes and submarines might tip the balance their way.
03:41A hit-and-run war, with little history and no rules.
03:47Jackie Fisher, Britain's sharpest admiral, predicted radical change ahead.
03:54The use of submarines has convinced us that in wartime, nothing can stand against them.
04:00The submarine is the coming type of war vessel for sea fighting.
04:04It means that the whole foundation of our traditional naval strategy has broken down.
04:10Two days into the war, Germany unleashed ten U-boats into the North Sea to hunt down the British fleet.
04:20One of them, U-21, made her way to the Firth of Forth, where the British cruiser HMS Pathfinder was leaving Rosyth Naval Base.
04:29U-21 sunk her with a single torpedo.
04:40Within a fortnight, the Germans had more good news.
04:43This 1927 film celebrates the voyage of Captain Weddigan and the U-9.
04:48The U-9 had found the British cruisers, Hogue, Aboukir and Crecy, on patrol off the Dutch coast.
05:17Practically obsolete, they were nicknamed the Live Bait Squadron.
05:26Captain Weddigan seized his chance.
05:30Fired torpedo at 500 metres.
05:33Target was middle ship in a three-ship formation.
05:36Thirty-one seconds later, the torpedo struck Aboukir.
05:48On board was Kit Musgrave.
05:50We were woken by a terrific crash, and the whole ship shook, and all the crockery in the pantry fell.
05:57Then Crecy and Hogue arrived and let down their boats.
06:00The Aboukir went down suddenly, and we slid down her side into the water.
06:07Musgrave jumped into the North Sea and became the only man in the war to be sunk on three ships within one hour.
06:13I swam to the Hogue and was just going on board, when she was struck and sank in three minutes.
06:20I then swam onto the Crecy and was hauled up the side with a rope.
06:24But she was struck also, and we sank.
06:31Georg von Müller was chief of Germany's Imperial Naval Cabinet.
06:35On our return from the morning ride, the first news of the successful torpedo attack by the U-9 on three English cruisers.
06:44We are all delighted, and the Kaiser is in seventh heaven.
06:49The British were appalled.
06:55First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, got the blame.
06:59Over 1,400 men, many of them young cadets, had died in a single submarine attack.
07:05Winston's war babies, they were called.
07:12British submarine Lieutenant Ronald Trevor wrote to his parents.
07:16The news tonight is sad, but what we submariners have been expecting for weeks.
07:21The Commodore has repeatedly warned the Admiralty that those ships ought not to patrol the North Sea.
07:26What has happened is exactly what we predicted.
07:29Ships stand by to rescue the sinking one's crew, then the submarine gets two sitting shots.
07:35Commander-in-chief of the British Grand Fleet was Admiral John Jellicoe.
07:43He joined the Navy in 1874 as a midshipman.
07:54Known as Silent Jack, he was experienced, capable and cautious.
07:58He ended patrols off the German coast, confining his most valuable ships to Scarpa Flow and Rosythe,
08:05at the very limits of the U-boat's range.
08:08He warned the Admiralty.
08:10The Germans have shown that they rely to a very great extent on submarines, mines and torpedoes,
08:16and there can be no doubt that they possess an actual superiority over us in these particular directions.
08:25Germany's forward submarine base was on the island of Heligoland.
08:31The U-boats were ordered to sweep the North Sea.
08:38But the British had gone.
08:40On the 16th of December 1914, hoping to lure the British out, five German warships steamed across the North Sea.
08:58At seven in the morning, they opened fire on Scarborough and Hartlepool.
09:03There was a terrific crash. We thought it must be sudden thunder.
09:07But when another crash came, we rushed to the window and saw a lot of smoke and cried,
09:12It's the Germans!
09:14Two of the wee girls hung on to me and said,
09:17Are the Germans going to kill us?
09:20A hundred and twenty-two people died in the attack.
09:23It was the first time enemy warships had killed anyone on the British mainland in over a century.
09:29Jellicoe, too, had been thinking about attacking the enemy's homeland.
09:35But his weapon would not be a hit-and-miss naval bombardment,
09:39but a blockade, tight as a drum and lethal.
09:46What we have to do is starve and cripple Germany.
09:49The destruction of the German fleet is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.
10:01Here was a use for those huge battleships.
10:04As sentinels, sealing the exits from the North Sea.
10:08Stopping Germany's fleet getting out and her vital food and war supplies getting in.
10:13The North Sea would become no man's land.
10:19A dead sea.
10:28Jellicoe was helped by an invention more important than dreadnoughts or even submarines.
10:34Wireless.
10:35Every day, every German ship radioed its position back to fleet headquarters at Wilhelmshaven.
10:52Across the North Sea, in the Coast Guard station at Hunstanton in Norfolk, British naval intelligence was listening.
10:58The German messages were passed on to a group of codebreakers working in one of Britain's most secret departments,
11:11Room 40, deep in the heart of the Admiralty Old Building.
11:20According to one of their officers, the men in Room 40 were a mixed bag.
11:25They knew ordinary literary German fluently, and they could be relied on.
11:30But of cryptography, of naval German, of the habits of war vessels of any nationality, they knew not a jot.
11:40Some, like Dilwin Knox, would help crack the German Enigma code in the Second World War.
11:47But in 1914, they desperately needed some clues.
11:50The break came in the Baltic Sea, where a German cruiser, the Magdeburg, was captured by the Russians.
12:01On board, they found one of the most valuable documents of the war and passed it on to their British allies.
12:09This is the Magdeburg's code book.
12:12It allowed the men in Room 40 to read nearly everything the German Navy was planning.
12:16Oh well, the Kaiser said, on learning of the Magdeburg's capture, sparks are bound to fly at a time like this.
12:32But the Kaiser had no idea his enemies had his code book.
12:36No idea of the immense advantage they now possessed.
12:51Britain's sea strategy in the First World War was simple.
12:55To isolate and starve her enemies.
12:56At Scarpa, Flo and Rosythe to the north, at Dover and Harwich to the south, the Royal Navy closed the North Sea to German ships.
13:09The blockade was a brutal vision, brainchild of Maurice Hankey, of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
13:24My belief in sea power amounted almost to a religion.
13:28The Germans, like Napoleon, might overrun the continent.
13:31This might prolong the war, but could not affect the final issue, which would be decided by economic pressure.
13:40The Director of Naval Intelligence agreed.
13:43Grass would sooner or later grow in the streets of Hamburg.
13:47And widespread death and ruin would soon be inflicted.
13:50Germany began the war with a merchant fleet of nearly four million tonnes.
13:58Within months, she lost a quarter of her ships, seized in harbours, or caught making a dash into the no man's land of the North Sea.
14:08Lloyds of London kept a log of every vessel sunk.
14:12Their records show that on one day alone, the 8th of August 1914, Germany lost 41 ships.
14:20Newtral countries, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, were not spared.
14:32Germany depended on ports like Rotterdam for grain and raw materials.
14:36So Britain forced neutral ships to submit to the blockade.
14:44Starting with Holland, the British pressured shipping companies into declaring their goods.
14:50In every country, she built up a network of agents.
14:54They tracked ships coming and going.
14:56Who was sending what where.
14:59Any ship could be stopped.
15:01Any found with banned supplies for Germany had its cargo seized.
15:08Within weeks, the German government started to ration food.
15:11Caroline Ethel Cooper was an Australian stranded in Leipzig since the start of the war.
15:20Every week, she wrote to her sister in Adelaide.
15:23My dear Emmy, the government has seized the whole bread, flour and meal supply of the country.
15:31We are allowed only four pounds of bread and can only buy one pound of white flour at a time.
15:36Now that the war against neutral ships and food supply has begun, prices rise every week.
15:40Sailors like Richard Stumpf were stuck in harbour, frustrated and hungry.
15:482nd of April 1916.
15:51We spend most of our time worrying about our bellies.
15:54Even the officers are embittered and dissatisfied.
15:56To end Germany's isolation, her navy came up with a revolutionary plan.
16:10An unarmed submarine over 200 feet long that could carry a cargo of a thousand tons.
16:19In June 1916, the Deutschland set out for America.
16:23The first time a submarine had ever tried to cross the Atlantic.
16:29Because of the wet weather and the high running seas, the deck hatches were closed most of the time.
16:34The diesel engines pumped hot, humid air throughout the boat.
16:38Sweat ran down the bulkheads and water leaked around loose rivets.
16:42The drinking water tasted like diesel.
16:45And every meal the cook cooked had a layer of oil across the top.
16:48As we approached the American coast, Captain Koenig ordered the crew to say nothing to anyone about the strains we'd undergone during the trip.
16:57And to especially avoid mentioning our seasickness.
17:03Now, after two world wars, it's taken for granted that America and Britain are the closest of allies, naturally on the same side.
17:10But in the First World War, it wasn't so clear.
17:178 million Americans had German parents or grandparents.
17:24Four and a half million were of Irish descent.
17:27Many of them had little love for England.
17:29At the outbreak of war, thousands of US citizens had tried to enlist in the German army.
17:38And America was enjoying a massive economic boom.
17:46Half Britain's war budget was spent in the States.
17:49Companies like Bethlehem Steel were swamped with orders.
17:54They hauled in six times the profits they'd made before the war.
18:01The Deutschland was just another good customer.
18:05Her brave Atlantic crossing, dodging Royal Navy warships, became a rallying point for anyone who had suffered from the British blockade.
18:20Our crossing gradually became a triumph.
18:27All the neutral steamers we met, American or others, greeted us with three hoots or with their sirens.
18:35Only an English steamer sailed past in deadly silence.
18:39While we were proudly raising the black, white and red flag in the wind.
18:45The Deutschland's crew received a hero's welcome.
18:47There were dinners in their honour.
18:51Captain Koenig was invited to meet the President.
18:54The three weeks we spent in the United States were a non-stop party.
18:59Everywhere we went, people gathered round us.
19:02They all wanted a souvenir of some kind.
19:04I even sold the buttons off my shirt and the stripes off my tunic.
19:07German families introduced this to their daughters, and we never had to pay for beer.
19:16The Deutschland returned to Germany with a vital cargo of nickel and rubber.
19:21The help it gave the economy was nothing compared with a boost to German morale, as even Caroline Ethel Cooper had to admit.
19:32The town is flagged today, because the Deutschland has got safely back.
19:38The sight of those red, white and black flags always makes me sick.
19:42But I'm glad she got across all the same.
19:45It was a sporting run.
19:46But the Deutschland was too small to break the blockade.
19:56In Germany and Austria, there were not enough people to work the land,
20:01and too many officials trying to ration what food there was.
20:04The situation with the hunger and queues is turning nasty.
20:09People wait for potatoes in their hundreds, four deep, from four in the morning until the afternoon.
20:15Every morning there are queues lined with armchairs and cushions upon which people sit and sleep.
20:23The shortages worsened after the terrible harvest of 1916.
20:28The Germans called it the turnip winter.
20:30Many had nothing to eat but cattle fodder.
20:34There were fifty food riots that year.
20:37Oh, what days of terror!
20:39Everything's in turmoil.
20:41There was havoc in town last night.
20:43The window panes were smashed in at Café Kaiserhof.
20:47Angry crowds were shouting outside bakeries and inns.
20:51Up at the castle, they cursed the Maedron words I shan't repeat.
20:56The army appeared at eleven.
21:00It's horribly cold, and because the rolling stock has all been taken for the war effort, there is an extreme shortage of coal.
21:10We are learning how to be freezing, which isn't the most pleasant feeling.
21:15Schools, theatres and cinemas have all been closed until further notice because of the lack of coal.
21:20The German navy did nothing to help.
21:21Even if large parts of our battle fleet were lying at the bottom of the sea, it would have accomplished more than it does now, lying well preserved in our ports.
21:26At Wilhelmshaven, people wrote graffiti on the walls.
21:29Dear Fatherland, you may rest assured, the fleet's in harbour, safely moored.
21:35Admiral Reinhardt Scheer had been ordered not to risk his ships against the full British fleet.
21:42But by mid-1916, the pressure to do something was intense.
21:49On the 31st of May, Germany's high seas fleet steamed out of Wilhelmshaven, hoping to enter the ship.
21:52The fleet's in harbour, safely moored.
21:53Another reinforce was lava accordingly.
21:55A reconstruction comrade to the United States.
22:00The reasons why it is overcrowed are on huge matter, the ships have pressed against the against the British fleet.
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22:23But the British were one jump ahead.
22:36The men in room 40 had already decoded Scheer's orders.
22:40Three hours before the Germans had even left harbour,
22:43the entire British Grand Fleet was on its way to intercept them.
22:49Now the world would get the great sea battler to be waiting for.
22:53Jutland.
23:05It was a titanic clash.
23:07250 warships, 100,000 men.
23:10Britain's first great fleet action since Trafalgar.
23:16It was a fight they had to win.
23:19If Germany ended up masters of the North Sea,
23:21the blockade would be finished,
23:22the British army in Europe cut off,
23:24Britain herself open to invasion.
23:29Admiral John Jellicoe was, Winston Churchill said,
23:31the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon.
23:34Less well armoured than Germany's, Britain's ships preferred to fight at very long range.
23:46But at Jutland, the range was just five miles.
23:49We fired very slowly, with deliberation, while the Kaiser-class ships in front of us shot like mad.
24:02Now the English were in an unfavourable position.
24:04Our first shot hit the bridge of a German destroyer and blew it to hell.
24:21Shells fell all around us, and what with ships sinking and dying and dead bodies floating about,
24:26it made one shiver at the sight of it.
24:34At 4.30pm, the battlecruiser Queen Mary was hit by a shell which exploded in the ship's magazine.
24:41A horrible sight it was.
24:43First, an enormous height of dull red flame, followed by a great mass of black smoke,
24:48amongst which was the wreckage thrown in all directions.
24:53The blast was tremendous.
24:57Admiral Beattie watched from HMS Lyon.
25:01There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.
25:08About seven o'clock, we passed the wreck of a large ship,
25:11which at that time we hoped was a German, but later learned was one of ours.
25:15She was broken right in two.
25:18The bow and stern was sticking up about 50 feet and quite independent.
25:26But the British had the Germans outgunned and outnumbered.
25:32As evening fell, the German fleet broke off the action.
25:38We were in a regular death trap.
25:40There was only one way to escape the unfavourable tactical situation.
25:43Turn the line about and withdraw on the opposite course.
25:47We had to get out of this dangerous enemy envelopment.
25:52To Silent Jack Jellicoe, peering through the fog of battle,
25:56he didn't look as though the Germans were running for home,
25:59but lulling the British into a trap.
26:03If the enemy battle fleet were to turn away from an advancing fleet,
26:06I should assume that the intention was to lead us over mines and submarines.
26:19So Jellicoe ordered the British to turn as well, away from their vulnerable foe.
26:24As night fell on the 31st of May 1916, the men in room 40 tracked the retreating German fleet.
26:39They passed its positions on to the Royal Navy, giving Jellicoe a last chance to finish the Germans off.
26:44But the Royal Navy failed to catch them, and the German fleet made it home.
26:53During the night, telegrams arrived, giving the estimated losses of the English,
26:57which are two to three in our favour.
26:59The Kaiser was therefore able to announce at breakfast,
27:03we have won a great victory in the North Sea.
27:14Based on the maths alone, the Kaiser was right.
27:17Germany had lost 11 ships and 2,500 men.
27:21Britain, 14 ships and 6,000 men.
27:24But that wasn't the point.
27:30The Kaiser's battleships were back in harbour
27:33and stayed there till the end of the war.
27:35The British fleet still ruled the North Sea,
27:39ever more tightening the blockade.
27:40From the start, Germany had replied to the British blockade with her own economic war.
27:56She too tried to cripple the enemy by cutting off supplies.
28:02This light raider, the Merva, was one of the few surface ships Germany ever sent into the North Sea.
28:08Her target, not warships, but cargo boats.
28:13She sunk 20,000 tonnes, building a large collection of captured crews.
28:23According to the English, we are in league with the devil,
28:27and have acquired the Flying Dutchman.
28:29The captain of the Merva said recently,
28:31You can imagine what a great moment it was when I had eight English captains standing in front of me,
28:36and I could tell them all, this is the work of the German fleet.
28:39Germany's U-boats joined in the war against Allied trade.
28:48One British admiral was horrified.
28:49Submarines are underhand, unfair, and damned on English.
29:00As for U-boats attacking civilian ships, it is impossible and unthinkable.
29:03If they do, their captured crew should be hanged as pirates.
29:19The U-boat blockade of Britain would have to be ruthless.
29:22But Germany's Chancellor, Bettmann Holweg, realised the effect this would have on world opinion,
29:30as he told Georg von Müller.
29:33Spent the afternoon with the Chancellor, who wished once more to discuss the U-boat question.
29:39Bettmann envisaged the remaining neutrals united against us as the mad dog among the peoples of the world.
29:46That would mean the end of Germany.
29:50Germany's admirals were furious at having their hands tied.
29:54But submarines were ordered to stick to the old rules of war.
29:58They gave warnings of their attacks.
30:01They did not attack underwater.
30:03They gave merchant crews time to escape.
30:12German submarines sunk a quarter of a million tons in 1914.
30:16But Britain built new ships faster than the U-boats could sink them.
30:22Far from being choked by the German blockade, the British economy flourished.
30:29The British farm Vickers, with a workforce of 78,000, turned out guns, aeroplanes, battleships and record profits.
30:42If Germany was trying to play fair, Britain wasn't.
30:47Q-ships looked like unarmed traders, but carried hidden guns.
30:51They looked like easy prey.
30:53But when submarines came close, the Q-ships uncovered their guns and attacked.
30:57To add to the deception, they often sailed under foreign flags.
31:01Lieutenant Henry Crompton, on the U-41, was caught by just such a trick.
31:11As the two ships came within 300 metres of each other, the steamer opened a heavy, accurate rifle fire from all along the railing, immediately joined by large calibre guns hidden fore and aft.
31:22The U-41 immediately returned three rounds from the forward gun, all hits to the hull.
31:32Throughout the action, this steamer continued to fly the American flag.
31:36On the 1st of February, 1915, in response to the British blockade, the Kaiser stepped up his campaign.
31:48He declared that all the waters around Britain were a war zone, in which any ships, including neutrals, might be sunk.
31:57This decision set Germany on a collision course with America.
32:01The pride of the Cunard Line, the Lusitania, was the largest, most luxurious liner in the world.
32:16She could carry over 2,000 passengers.
32:22There was a ragtime dance written in her honour.
32:24On the 1st of May, 1915, Cunard posted a list of her departures in the New York Times.
32:41Next to it was an advertisement placed by the German ambassador.
32:45Those sailing to Britain, it said, did so at their own risk.
32:48At 11.30 that morning, the Lusitania left New York for Liverpool.
33:03Her captain made light of the submarine threat.
33:07It's the best joke I've heard in many days.
33:10This talk of torpedoing the Lusitania.
33:18This is the last picture of her ever taken.
33:23The Lusitania sighted the Irish coast on the 7th of May.
33:27The lighthouse on the old Head of Kinsale was traditionally used by ships on the Atlantic Run to get their bearings.
33:42At ten past two, the Lusitania was hit by a single torpedo.
33:45As I watched, one funnel went, then the other, then the other, until the ship had gone and the sea was calm.
33:56And all you could see was bodies and wreckage of furniture.
34:00And everything that had been in the ship, floating in the water.
34:03My husband and I got into a lifeboat, the ropes of which jammed and had to be cut.
34:10Since when I have not seen or heard of my husband.
34:12I've lost all I ever possessed, and my dead boys, ages eleven years and eight.
34:21I was rescued by a trawler. My dear husband was lost.
34:29But I had the great satisfaction of finding him on Saturday, and seeing him laid to rest in the cemetery in Queenstown.
34:36Police reports were sent to relatives to identify the bodies.
34:49Twelve hundred people died on the Lusitania, including a hundred and twenty eight Americans.
34:55At the battlefronts in Europe, tens of thousands were dying every day.
35:04But the fate of the great Cunard liner overshadowed them.
35:12It led to the most widespread anti-German riots of the war.
35:15In Liverpool, a newly arrived American joined the mob outside a German-owned shop.
35:24The crowd was muttering and growling, and the shop was dark.
35:29But there were people upstairs, so I just picked up a brick and heaved it through the window.
35:34Then everyone took to shying them, and in a few minutes the place was a wreck.
35:39There were several policemen at the corner, and they just grinned.
35:46With the sinking of the Lusitania, Germany had crossed a line.
35:51The whole world hates us, because we are conducting the war in such a brutal manner,
35:56and the brutality is increasing.
35:58I was at a party when the report of the torpedoing of the Lusitania arrived.
36:03I saw two officers' wives, who mad with joy, started to dance about the room.
36:09Don't forget, I said, that there were also women and children aboard.
36:12That doesn't matter, they said.
36:15They danced on.
36:17The more who go to the bottom, the better.
36:25The Lusitania came to stand for German barbarity.
36:33Britain stirred the indignation with its own propaganda.
36:35Posters and even posed photographs rammed home what had happened.
36:44The German embassy in Washington received bomb threats.
36:50President Woodrow Wilson himself began to see Germany as the mad dog of the world.
36:54In God's name, how could any nation calling itself civilized do so horrible a thing?
37:07It seemed America might clamber down off the fence.
37:10But outrage soon gave way to caution.
37:14Wilson reassured the nation that America would not go to war.
37:18There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.
37:22There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
37:30And anyway, war would be very bad for business.
37:37Wilson kept the United States prepared but neutral for two more years.
37:48The sinking of the Lusitania was terrible.
37:50But that didn't seem reason enough to throw away more lives and profits by joining in a distant war.
38:05Germany's policy in America after sinking the Lusitania was complex.
38:13She kept her U-boats in check, but not her spies.
38:21In 1916, German agents blew up Black Tom Island, a loading depot in New York Harbor.
38:34It held 900 tons of ammunition destined for the Allies.
38:39Several thousand persons lined the seawall and acquired a real picture of what the firing line in the European war looks like.
38:47A water line was one mass of red glare.
38:58The explosions were so strong they were felt in Philadelphia, 90 miles away.
39:07German agents slipped bombs onto ships in American ports.
39:11There were several assassination attempts and even a bomb planted in the U.S. Capitol.
39:15German agents are everywhere.
39:21Extraordinary measures of precaution have now become necessary in all the arms factories, at the docks and on board vessels.
39:28Even vessels of the United States Navy.
39:30Hard evidence tying Germany to espionage operations against America came from one of the spies himself.
39:44Heinrich Albert left his briefcase on New York's elevated railway.
39:48It held documents proving the German embassy was bankrolling the sabotage.
39:54Two senior diplomats, including Franz von Papen, Hitler's future vice-chancellor, were expelled.
40:01But nothing got in the way of business on the New York Stock Exchange.
40:15When Germany won a battle, Allied stocks fell.
40:18When Britain won, her shares rose.
40:22American investors were betting on the war.
40:25For British Cabinet Minister David Lloyd George, there was a direct connection between battle and bank.
40:31Success means credit.
40:34Financiers never hesitate to lend to a prosperous concern.
40:40France and Russia paid for the war by borrowing from Britain.
40:46Britain, in turn, raised money on the American stock market through her Wall Street bankers, JP Morgan.
40:51It was spent buying American armaments, American supplies.
41:00Of all the money raised in America to pay for the war, 99% went to Britain and the Allies.
41:06It was something that made many Germans wonder just how neutral America really was.
41:1230th of January, 1916.
41:15In financial circles, it is openly said that England has won the war already.
41:19And every day that it goes on after March can only make the ruin of Germany completer,
41:25no matter what our military successes may be.
41:29America lent so much that by the end of 1916, the Central Bank warned that people were betting too heavily on Britain.
41:37If the Allies lost, they might never get their money back.
41:40The mere thought that American cash might be backing the wrong side wiped a billion dollars off Allied stocks in a week.
41:53Germany's generals felt the odds were stacking up against them.
41:56They grew impatient at hesitant politicians tying their hands.
42:01In view of the military situation, we must lose no time in adopting the measure of torpedoing armed enemy merchantmen without notice.
42:11Without notice.
42:12The Entente are continuing the war with all the resources at their disposal.
42:23Our ambassador prophesies war with America if we persist in our intention of torpedoing armed merchantmen without warning.
42:31The Kaiser wrote in the margin of the report, I do not care.
42:40The Kaiser didn't care because of some key German calculations.
42:46His generals gambled that if America joined the Allies, she would not have a decisive impact on the fighting in Europe until 1919.
42:53Long before then, the U-boat campaign would have brought Britain and France to their knees.
43:09One thing stayed Germany's hand.
43:14In December 1916, she put out a peace feeler to the Allies, believing she could hold on to her gains.
43:19The French and British leaders met in Paris and rejected the offer.
43:34Germany now staked everything on a new submarine campaign.
43:38U-boats would sink all ships on site without warning.
43:42February the 2nd is a special and uplifting day for us Germans, the beginning of the all-out submarine war.
43:52We are all holding our breaths and hoping that with this radical medicine, we will finally cure England of our arrogance and secure a quick peace, the terms of which we will dictate.
44:05In April 1917, Germany sunk over 800,000 tonnes, causing panic at the British Admiralty.
44:15But Germany didn't have enough U-boats to sustain the success, and Allied ships were getting better at protecting themselves.
44:24Merchant ships now travelled, not singly, but in convoy, with more destroyers to protect them.
44:30Airships and aeroplanes scouted overhead, looking for the tell-tale signs of submarines lying in wait.
44:3863 U-boats were sunk in 1917, three times the losses of the previous year.
44:44One captured U-boat was put on display in London.
44:5513,000 people paid to view it on the first day.
44:59Its German sailors couldn't believe the contrast between the Allied home front and their own.
45:04We remained in Dover for two and a half days, and we were plentifully supplied with food, drink and smokes, for you notice nothing of the war here.
45:17There are no wooden soles or bicycles with wooden tyres, and the butcher's shops have rows and rows of pigs hanging up.
45:25There is no prospect of starving England.
45:27I am glad, for the war is over for me.
45:35The second U-boat campaign was a double failure.
45:38It didn't deliver militarily.
45:40German submarines could not sink enough Allied ships to make a difference.
45:43And it was a diplomatic disaster, pushing America to the very brink of war.
45:56The final shaft came from the men in room 40.
46:01On 16 January 1917, Britain intercepted a coded telegram from German Foreign Secretary Zimmerman to his ambassador in Mexico City.
46:13The Zimmerman telegram was made up of a thousand numerical code groups.
46:18It took two weeks to decipher.
46:20And as the meaning emerged, the men in room 40 realised they were holding the most extraordinary intelligence of the war.
46:28Destined for the Mexican government, the telegram outlined Germany's plan for Mexico to invade the United States.
46:35We make Mexico a proposal of alliance with an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
46:46The settlement in detail is left to you.
46:48Zimmerman's scheme was harebrained. Mexico was in the middle of a revolution.
46:59US troops are already fighting bandits on the border.
47:03There was no way the Mexican government wanted more trouble.
47:05But Germany's proposal was a godsend to Britain.
47:13It was just what she needed to end America's neutrality.
47:21Two weeks into the U-boat campaign, Britain called the US ambassador to the Foreign Office and passed over the Zimmerman telegram.
47:27It was, said Britain's Foreign Secretary, as dramatic a moment as I remember in all my life.
47:39On the 2nd of April, President Wilson went to the capital.
47:43The United States had not declared war when the Lusitania went down.
47:48It had not declared war when spies blew up its shipyards.
47:51But Germany urging Mexico to attack America was in a different league.
48:00On the 6th of April, 1917, the United States declared war against Germany.
48:063,000 miles from home, an American army is fighting for you.
48:12Everything you hold worthwhile is at stake.
48:15Only the hardest blows can win against the enemy we are fighting.
48:21Invoking the spirit of our forefathers, the army asks your unflinching support to the end that the high ideals for which America stands may endure upon the earth.
48:36For three years, the country had played the war's banker and supplier.
48:48Now, as far as President Wilson was concerned, America was fighting a crusade for international justice and democracy.
48:59The North Sea would remain dead until the very end.
49:02The Germans now set themselves a desperate task to win the war before American troops arrived in force.
49:15And President Wilson's liberal crusade would be up against new ideas of socialism and revolution.
49:21In the next episode of the First World War, German spies sow rebellion in Ireland and Russia.
49:34And French troops mutiny on the Western Front, a war against war itself.
49:38Kelly's father, German büy
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