The journalist Ida Tarbell, just back from a tour of the Midwest, tells President Wilson’s confidant Edward House that she is impressed by Americans’ resolve in the crisis over Germany.
A Foreign Office official in Berlin tells H. L. Mencken that Germany hopes to maintain peace with the United States, even as Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations.
Lieutenant Hans Rose, skipper of the U-53, tells the captain of an American freighter he has encountered on the North Atlantic that he considers the ship a legitimate target. The Housatonic, sent to the bottom by the U-boat, becomes the first U.S. casualty of...
Raymond Swing, Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, gleefully tells a visiting H. L. Mencken that Americans in Germany are going to face serious consequences if war breaks out.
Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Washington, had warned Berlin against provoking the Americans. But on January 30 Germany announces unrestricted submarine warfare in the eastern Atlantic, targeting any ships heading to an Allied port. This...
