Ships like the Lusitania have many chambers. If a torpedo hits one or two of them, the ship is not threatened (given there is no ammo stored in them).
Battleships are more endangered because they usually carry a lot of ammunitions and are way smaller.
The British Blockade During World War I: The Weapon of Deprivation
And if the Germans killed 10.000 Belgian and French civilians in WWI it is still far less then the Coalition killed only in the Libya war in 2011.
Warships have those same Chambers. In fact, they have many more chambers. Yet two Battleships were sunk with a single torpedo each. Pfui. Propaganda might work on the uninformed but not on anyone with a modicum of knowledge.
Your final argument is even dumber. What anyone else has done does not relieve me of the responsibility of my own actions. If someone else robs five banks it does not mean I am not a bank robber for only holding one up.
It is good to see you have stopped with the insane argument that it was legal, a contention now thoroughly discredited.
There were many “great” plans in military history. The ones that work are lauded. The ones that didn’t are the subject of endless bickering. National pride means that Germans want to believe they were close to victory. Just a little bad luck stopped them. Nonsense.
It is in a way like the lie that five minutes was what doomed the Japanese Carriers at Midway. Carriers of the era could launch, or recover aircraft. They could not do both. We are told that there were fully armed and fueled aircraft on the deck waiting to take off. Or that some were being rearmed and bombs were stacked on the deck.
It never happened. The four Japanese Carriers were landing fighters to rearm them and refuel them. They were shooting down squadrons of torpedo bombers and aircraft from Midway. They needed ammunition. They could not land if planes were parked on the flight deck awaiting takeoff. Also, the weapons elevators did not go to the flight decks, but only up to the hanger deck. The aircraft were armed and fueled on the hanger deck.
Fuchida wrote the five minute lie, as a sop to National Pride. It was easier to believe a little bad luck doomed the Japanese than they were just beaten by a smaller force.
Your arguments are no less a sop to national pride. The Germans believed you could plan for every contingency. They did, except for one. They had no plan for the British and French retreating and refusing to obligingly die.
Your posts are infested with anti-German hatred and propaganda. This crosses the border of irrationality.
My posts are based upon established historical fact. If you want my objections to American actions, I’ll be happy to give them. Not just the obvious racism. I could wax eloquently for a while on the immoral insanity that had thousands of sailors exposed to radiation at Bikini Atol to study the effects of exposure. One among many subjects where I would and always will object to Americans.
If you want my opinion on Britain, then the failure to live up to the Balfor declaration would be pretty high up on the list. In fact you can trace today’s extremist jihadi crap the Britain promising everything to everyone during War One.
You only learn from history when you deal in truth. Try it sometime.
You have proven to be ignorant to the thread´s topic.
I’ve spoken truth. Knowledge is an inoculation against ignorance.
You have denounced my arguments, even when backed up by links proving the point, as propaganda or anti German bias. To date, you have not offered anything other than disproven conspiracy theory that the Lusitania was carrying munitions. A CT that I was able to disprove with evidence of other, better manufactured ships suffering the same fate off of a single torpedo. The Kaiser had a new idea every minute, and each one was supposedly brilliant. But we are still talking about a man who was so full of himself that he had his daily news printed in gold. He only wanted gold plated news, and only good news.
Germany could never win the war. So long as Britain with the largest navy in the world controlled the seas around Europe, and they did, then vital materials that Germany needed for survival, not just victory, were denied.
The Naval Balance of Power in 1914
The Germans had the second largest, and the Americans came in third. Germany tried to get the message across to Britain that if the war went, then the Americans would be left in undisputed control of the sea after Britain and Germany destroyed themselves in useless battle. Britain responded by increasing the rate of building of the warships. Shying away from battle was worse than losing control of the seas, because the Navy existed to fight.
Britain made a lot of really stupid mistakes in the war. So did France, Russia, Italy, as did Germany and especially the Austria-Hungary empire. Read The Guns of August. It is a great book, and shows the folly of both the French/British/Russian war plans, as well as the folly of the German plans. Nobody was studying Sun Tzu at this point, and they should have been. Nobody was thinking. The French marched off to war wearing Blue Jackets and Red Pants as their field uniforms. They had rejected the Howeitzer Cannon of large caliber, claiming that the French 75MM was superior in every way, and best of all could be moved fast enough to keep up with the advancing armies. The French Soldiers were not issued entrenching tools. The officers were afraid it would make the men “sticky” on attack.
What saved France was the fact that Sir John French of the British did not want to fight a pitched battle and risk his army. When he pulled back, it exposed the flank of the French, and they had to pull back, and it began a series of movements that ended with the stand at the Marne. When the Army of Paris marched out in direct violation of the German order of Battle. Armed Camps, like fortified cities, did not have their armies march out to fight beyond the ramparts.
But in the Schlieffen Plan, the Army was supposed to be eliminated before they got to Paris. The Germans believed the French would not leave Paris exposed, they would stand and fight because losing the city was unthinkable.
The French on the other hands were willing to lose a city, to save the nation.
The French learned, the survivors of the first few days learned to dig in. They got shovels, and pickax’s, and they dug in when they had to fight. The British already knew this trick to survival. They had learned it during the Boer Wars.
The German plan did not account for everything. For example they never had any problems with communications during war games. But the French put the Eiffel Tower to use jamming German signals, and with disruptions to the phone lines, messages which did get through, were usually late, often too late to prevent a mistake.
I honestly doubt if Schlieffen himself could have saved the war and won it on his own timetable. Not if the Government of France had evacuated to Algeria, home of the Foreign Legion, and refused to capitulate. Germany did not have enough troops to occupy France and face the Russians. It is a truth in warfare, if the enemy won’t surrender, you have to destroy them to the last. See Defense of Bastogne by the 101st Airborne for proof of that. By any logic, the Americans should have surrendered, but they did not.
Get off the conspircy theory websites, and start to read, and watch documentaries. It will serve you well in the long run. Later, I’ll explain why the 1903 Springfield Rifle was chambered in a cartridge that wasn’t invented when the rifle was starting production, the 30-06 Springfield.
