German memorandum on armed merchant ships

On 10 February 1916 the German Foreign Office handed the United States embassy in Berlin a memorandum from the Reich government on the treatment of armed merchant ships. The document was dated 8 February, and its contents reached the press and the governments of other neutral states the same day. The conclusion was brief: Entente merchant ships armed with guns were no longer entitled to be treated as peaceful merchant vessels, and the German naval forces would be ordered to regard them as belligerents, in practice as warships. Berlin called on the neutral states to warn their citizens against travelling or shipping goods on such vessels. A note attached to the memorandum stipulated that, out of consideration for neutrals already sailing on armed ships, the orders would come into force only on 29 February. The British chronology of the war gives 1 March. On the same day Austria-Hungary sent a similar circular note to the neutral states.

Berlin’s arguments

The memorandum recalled that as early as 26 March 1913 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had announced in the House of Commons the arming of some British liners for defence against the auxiliary cruisers of other states, and that in January 1914 the Admiralty had published a list of 29 ships with guns mounted aft. In August 1914 the British government assured Washington that its merchant ships were armed solely for defence and never fired first. At the same time the British prize regulations of 5 August 1914 laid down that the term warship also covered an armed ship if it sailed under a foreign flag. The Germans accused the British of double standards.

Berlin’s strongest card was the Admiralty’s secret instructions. They had been found, among other places, on the British steamer Woodfield, sunk in the Mediterranean on 3 November 1915 by U-38. The memorandum contained photographic reproductions of them. According to the instructions, the master of an armed ship who in daylight clearly saw a submarine pursuing him was to open fire “even though the submarine may not yet have committed a definite hostile act”. Naval gunners assigned to merchant ships were forbidden to wear uniform in neutral ports. For the Germans this was proof that armed ships were meant not to defend themselves but to attack submarines. The memorandum also listed cases in which merchant ships had been the first to fire on German or Austro-Hungarian vessels.

Lansing’s proposal

The note did not come out of the blue. On 18 January 1916 Secretary of State Robert Lansing informally proposed to the ambassadors of Britain, France and Russia and to the Belgian minister, and in the following days also to Italy and Japan, a compromise called a modus vivendi. Submarines were to stop merchant ships and sink them only after placing crews and passengers in a place of safety, and in return merchant ships should carry no armament at all. Lansing argued that against a lightly armoured submarine even a small gun on a merchant ship was an offensive weapon. In London and Rome the proposal was regarded as favourable only to Germany. The Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, was seriously alarmed by it.

Berlin and Vienna learned of the proposal. At the end of January the Austro-Hungarian chargé d’affaires in Washington, Baron Zwiedinek, asked Lansing when the Central Powers should announce that they could not warn armed ships. Lansing replied that the sooner the better, because he wanted clarity before the Lusitania dispute was closed. Zwiedinek, however, reported to Vienna that the Secretary of State would “welcome” such a declaration. This wording was repeated in a cable from Berlin of 6 February, and on 9 February Lansing made it clear to Zwiedinek that he had not intended to take any initiative. In Berlin the mood was hard. On 8 February Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg told the American journalist Karl von Wiegand that Germany would not accept “humiliation” and would not give up the submarine weapon.

The impression in Washington

In the United States the memorandum caused consternation. It implied that the pledge given by the Germans in September 1915 that liners would not be sunk without warning would not cover ships with a gun on board, and more and more British passenger and cargo ships were sailing with a gun aft. The Americans were just close to an agreement with Berlin on the Lusitania, and the new declaration called it into question. On 15 February Lansing declared that the United States would not change an established rule of international law during the war without the consent of the belligerents, and did not intend to warn its citizens against travelling on ships armed for defence. In Congress some Democrats wanted to go further than the administration. The resolutions of Senator Thomas Gore and Congressman Jeff McLemore, calling on Americans to avoid armed ships, were defeated at the beginning of March in votes in both houses, after President Woodrow Wilson demanded the support of Congress.