Many troops were trapped between Germany army and the cold waters of the English Channel. The only escape route was by the sea. It was a real danger that the entire British army (300,000 men) would be wiped out. On 27th May 1940, the British government led by Winston Churchill. He described it as “a colossal military disaster” The Royal Navy sprang into action and came to rescue most of the people.
On May 2nd 1915 the British passenger liner Lusitania was sunk by a torpedo from a German submarine. 1195 passengers, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. Americans were outraged and put pressure on the government to enter the war. Woodrow Wilson (left) campaigned for a peaceful end to the war. He appealed to both sides to try to settle the war by diplomatic means but was unsuccessful.
5). America was neutral and on one ship 1,260 were dead which showed that Germany didn’t care about neutrality by destroying any ship that wasn’t theirs. Many Americans were outraged at the fact they had sunk an American boat since we were neutral at the time. The Lusitania was later found out to be a ship that carried weapons and passengers. On January 10, 1917 just a few months before America went to war, America got a telegram from Great Britain.
The people of a nation are always held responsible for their leader's actions. We held the German people responsible for Hitler's actions and those of the German military machine, allowing millions of German civilians to starve to death after the end of WWII, without a twinge of guilt. We punished the Japanese civilian population in months of fire bombing of Japan's major cities, barbecuing women and children in their houses, because they allowed their leaders to wage war against the US and other nations. Without a twinge of guilt. We carpet-bombed schools, hospitals, temples and regular old neighborhoods in Hanoi for months because the North Vietnamese wouldn't stop their leaders' war being conducted in South Vietnam.
He couldn’t even believe what was happening. Watching planes crashing to the Trade Center, seeing people only way is to jump off the building from the 78th floor, and then realizing we were being attacked. 9/11 was the day America changed and it is the worst attack in U.S history. More than three thousand died and our country in mixed emotions. Quickly fell on al-Qaeda, and in 2004, the group's leader, Osama Bin Laden, who had initially denied involvement,
Shortly after, the naval ship was visited by a Spanish ship in sheer hope of maybe loosening the tension between American and Spain. On February 15, 1898, an explosion ripped the ship to shreds and sank to the bottom of the Cuban waters and also causing 260 deaths on board. Witnesses say that the fire started on board U.S.S. Maine. America planned on retrieving Cuba from Spain peacefully but this attack was the opening call for war.
Blockades Both countries used their navies to blockade the enemy ports to stop supplies getting through. Britain relied on other countries to bring in food and supplies and Germany knew if their u-boats stopped this trade then Britain would starve. February 1915 Germany said that all merchant ships entering/leaving Britain would be sunk. This was optimistic as there were 15000 sailings a week to and from British ports and the Germans had only 21 u-boats. However by 1917 the Germans had 200 u-boats and were sinking 1 in 4 of the ships heading to Britain.
Cuba, a Spanish colony, had been in rebellion since 1895. The brutal Spanish response turned American sympathies to the Cuban insurgents. The US Battleship Maine arrived in Havanna Harbor in January 1898 with a dual mission to protect American interests and present the Spanish with a show of force. At 9:40 PM on the evening of February 15, an explosion ripped the forward hull quickly sending the ship to the bottom of the harbor, killing two hundred sixty-six of the 345 crew members. Investigations started immediately.
Shipping lanes in the Atlantic had become extremely dangerous. German submarines Destroyed as much as a half million tons of shipping each month. The British navy was losing ships more rapidly than it could replace them. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, argued that the U.S. should deliver vessels itself, yet Roosevelt had a plan of escorting and safe-guarding transport ships through the Atlantic with U.S. navy ships. By July 1941, American ships were patrolling the ocean as far east as Iceland, escorting convoys of merchant ships, and radioing the British of German submarine locations.
Bill Stone taking part in a round-the-world 'Empire Cruise' visiting the Colonies onboard HMS Hood, he took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk, served in the 1943 Sicily landings, experienced first-hand the horrors of the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic In an interview with the BBC in 2007, Mr Stone said: "Dunkirk was the worst part of my life. "One of our sister ships, Skipjack, was bombed, and 200 soldiers and all crew were killed. "During our trips to Dunkirk, I was often stationed on the quarterdeck helping men get aboard Salamander as they swam out from the beach. "Those were awful days but one just carried on as if nothing had happened - there was nothing else that you could do." Harry Patch Quotes: It wasn't worth it.