In this compelling study of the impact of the law on warfare, Lawrence Sondhaus demonstrates how the German decision to adopt unrestricted submarine warfare failed to win the First World War, brought the United States into the conflict, and ultimately sank Imperial Germany. persuasively demonstrates how GermanyвЂ™s submarine policy cost them the war. The results were immediate, Sondhaus notes: AmericaвЂ™s declaration of war and the Royal NavyвЂ™s adaptation of вЂconvoys, countermeasures, and barrages.вЂ™. By 1916, with the war stalemated, the German government saw вЂno alternativeвЂ™ to unrestricted submarine warfare, whatever the risks of U.S. Doctrine and policy for the projected campaign were embryonic, and, as Sondhaus shows, the resulting false start culminated in the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania and significantly antagonized America without seriously troubling Britain. GermanyвЂ™s submarine force was small its primary objective was intercepting warships, not merchantmen. The German navyвЂ™s relative ineffectiveness against its opponent further encouraged the German high command to seek an alternative-even at the risk of offending the U.S., whose economic interests were linked to the principle of freedom of the seas.

He correctly describes the genesis of total war at sea as a response to a British surface blockade that, from the warвЂ™s beginning, was an ever-tightening noose around the ReichвЂ™s economic windpipe. Sondhaus, professor of history at the University of Indianapolis, concisely and perceptively analyzes GermanyвЂ™s U-boat campaign during WWI. Because US manpower proved decisive in breaking the stalemate on the Western Front and securing victory for the Allies, Sondhaus argues that GermanyвЂ™s decision to stake its fate on the U-boat campaign ranks among the greatest blunders of modern history. But by bringing the United States into the war, while also failing to stop the deployment of its troops to Europe, unrestricted submarine warfare ultimately led to GermanyвЂ™s defeat. In rationalizing the risk of resuming the unrestricted campaign in 1917, they took for granted that, should the United States join the Allies, German U-boats would be able to stop the transport of an American army to France. Sondhaus explains that in their initial, somewhat confused rollout of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, German leaders underestimated the extent to which the policy would alienate the most important neutral power, the United States. Although the German people readily embraced the argument that an вЂњundersea blockadeвЂќ of Britain enforced by their navyвЂ™s Unterseeboote (U-boats) was the moral equivalent of the British navyвЂ™s blockade of German ports, international opinion never accepted its legitimacy. Noted historian Lawrence Sondhaus shows how the undersea campaign, intended as an antidote to BritainвЂ™s more conventional blockade of German ports, ultimately brought the United States into the war. This compelling book explores GermanyвЂ™s campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare in World War I, which marked the onset of total war at sea.

Total war great war