In 1917, Germany gambled its future on a desperate campaign to starve Britain into submission.

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Facing a worsening war effort, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917. The strategy was clear: sink all shipping around the British Isles without warning to cut off essential supplies. It was a high-stakes gamble intended to force a victory before Germany’s own resources completely ran out.

By early 1917, the German leadership faced a grim reality. With the war dragging on and the economic situation in Russia deteriorating, Germany decided to abandon all previous constraints on its U-boat fleet. On January 31, 1917, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg announced to the Reichstag that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume the following day. The German government framed this as a necessary response to the "destructive designs" of their opponents, declaring that they had been challenged to fight to the end.

This was not the first time Germany had employed such tactics. Unrestricted submarine warfare was initially introduced in early 1915, when Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone. This policy led to the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915. While Germany justified the attack by noting the ship carried munitions, the loss of 1,201 lives—including 128 Americans—sparked international outrage. President Woodrow Wilson demanded an end to attacks on unarmed merchant vessels, eventually forcing Germany to suspend the practice by September 1915.

The decision to resume these attacks in 1917 marked a total shift in German military policy. By choosing to sink all shipping without warning, Germany effectively brushed aside previous diplomatic concerns and neutral rights. The primary objective was to starve Britain out of the conflict, a move deemed essential for Germany to continue the war. It remains a defining moment of the Great War, illustrating the extreme measures nations were willing to take when faced with the prospect of total collapse.

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