Terrorist Attacks in New York

[Louis VI the Fat]

No, not 2001, but 1916.


In order to force America to either submit to German demands or to provoke America into war, the Second Reich made several terrorist attacks on US soil, starting 1914.

The 'Black Tom' attack counts as the largest terrorist attack against America, behind only Oklahoma and 9-11. It is in this attack that the Statue of Liberty got damaged. The torch of the statue has been closed ever since. The symbolism of trying to destruct the Statue that represents both liberty and US-French friendship was not lost on the Germans.

As with the murder of Litvinenko by the KGB, where the poison used counted as a signature of the Russians, the idea was that it would be abundantly clear to America that this was a German attack. America had to feel vulnerable. Its ships threatened by submarines, its industry and cities within reach of German destruction.

President Woodrow Wilson had declared neutrality, but American rights to "freedom of the seas" were affected by British naval control of the Atlantic sea-lanes. According to Jules Witcover in Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917, this situation resulted in the work of German saboteurs to prevent British receipt of munitions from the US (257, 266-267).

Black Tom was only one of a number of homeland attacks in retaliation to the British naval blockade of Germany. In New Jersey, on January 1, 1915, a fire took place at the Roebling Steel foundry in Trenton. And after the Black Tom incident, on January 11, 1917, a fire took place at the Canadian Car and Foundry plant in Kingsland. These facilities had contracts for goods being sent to the Allies. The US entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, after numerous claims of German espionage and violations to American neutrality.

http://www.njcu.edu/programs/jchisto..._explosion.htm

[Louis VI the Fat]

This thread serves two purposes.

One, to show the eagerness of the Second Reich to plunge itself into war, to provoke others into war. Germany had sought a European conflagration ever since the 1890's, had tested the resolve of the British, French and Russians for two decades. As it would teste the resolve of America ever since 1914.

Secondly, because of the issue of...reparations. Yes, you can see where this is going:
Ever since before the ink of the peace treaty had been dry, there has been an enormous amount of criticism levelled at France for daring to ask for reparations. However, Washington, with breathtaking cynicism, granted itself what it denied France.

In 1939 after seventeen years of deliberation, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission claimed Germany responsible of sabotage. Germany was ordered to pay reparations of $50 million to all claimants, but the restitution was not paid due to the intervention of World War II. After the war, Germany agreed to settle on outstanding war claims that included those related to the Black Tom explosion and they were paid in 1979.

I'm going to be a pest and return all the nonsense regarding French claims for reparations to civil damages:

While the Americans were still cowering with fear while the Germans blew up their ships and cities, America's ally France was kicking the German Empire all over Europe. Even so, Washington resisted French claims for damages in France, while demanding full reparation for damages in America. And pay to America Germany did: all the way to 1979. France hasn't asked for, nor received any, reparations ever since before Hitler. Washington, however, beofre Hitler, during Hitler, and after WWII insisted that America receive full reparations for WWI damages, and kept it up until 1979.


Ridiculous!
Germany did not really lose the war! Americans did not occupy Germany! How dare America sue for reparations when America itself declared war against Germany! Without French help America would've been overran in WWI! American troops never even managed to cross the Rhine!

* and breathe *

[Vladimir]

I'm confused. Is everything all right? What time is it there?

By "there" I mean Texas, of course.

[Brandy Blue]

Was America cynical? Perhaps. But the verdict of history is that they were correct.

Demand for reparations for acts of terrorism by Germany = reparations paid

Demand for reparations for German damage done in France (even unpaid) = terrific propaganda for the Nazis

I don't blame the French for demanding reparations. It was a mistake anyone could have made in their shoes. However, American foreign policy was correct for a change, although possibly only by luck.

By the way, it is very comforting to learn that French politicians over the past 90 years or so are so noble. Unlike those cynical Americans, they have never renewed a demand for reparations simply out of generousity. Not once did it occur to them that it might be in France's best national interest to let sleeping dogs lie.

My apologies if that last part came out sounding anti-French. My point was that the French seem to have reached the same "cynical" conclusion that the Americans did.

[PanzerJaeger]

One, to show the eagerness of the Second Reich to plunge itself into war, to provoke others into war. Germany had sought a European conflagration ever since the 1890's, had tested the resolve of the British, French and Russians for two decades. As it would teste the resolve of America ever since 1914.

Germany was not eager to plunge itself into war - it was already two years into one; and the two million tons of munitions stored at Black Tom were destined to supply Allied forces. This was not a 'terrorist attack', it was sabotage against a military supply dump.

And yes, these reparations are ridiculous as well. When you sell munitions under the banner of neutrality, you can expect some repercussions. America certainly came out ahead financially during WW1.

[Brandy Blue]

And yes, these reparations are ridiculous as well. When you sell munitions under the banner of neutrality, you can expect some repercussions. America certainly came out ahead financially during WW1.

1: To the best of my knowledge, international law does not forbid neutrals to sell munitions to belligerants, and Germany has done so before.

2: I think Germany would have been very surprised if, for example, the Japanese had blown up a German factory to prevent export of German weapons to Russia during the Russo-Japanese war.

Yes, the arms trade is morally questionable. But it is not somehow worse when The US sells arms to Germany's enemies than it is when Germany sells weapons to someone else's enemy.

[PanzerJaeger]

1: To the best of my knowledge, international law does not forbid neutrals to sell munitions to belligerants, and Germany has done so before.

2: I think Germany would have been very surprised if, for example, the Japanese had blown up a German factory to prevent export of German weapons to Russia during the Russo-Japanese war.

Yes, the arms trade is morally questionable. But it is not somehow worse when The US sells arms to Germany's enemies than it is when Germany sells weapons to someone else's enemy.

Oh I agree. I was not attempting to mount a legal argument. The sabotage was certainly against international law. Of course, when one is mired in a world war and everything is on the line, international law quickly loses its luster.

I was merely pointing out how far Louis is stretching the facts in order to make his tortured point by evoking 9/11 and terrorism. The 'Black Tom' attack was certainly not against the Statue of Liberty and was not meant to terrorize Americans. It was an effort to stem the rapidly increasing supply of munitions to Allied forces in Europe. IIRC, it is difficult to prove even one fatality.

[Louis VI the Fat]

My apologies if that last part came out sounding anti-French. My point was that the French seem to have reached the same "cynical" conclusion that the Americans did.

Let us all not too easily regard contributions to this and other debates as 'anti-this or anti-that'. People simply express their opinion, with on the whole little to no malice intended.

This thread is not an exercise in anti-Americanism, or even criticism of its policy. It is about 'reversing' some commonly held opinions, with some peskyness thrown in to see if it can create a fresh perspective and see if it makes me, or others, have different intuitive ideas about what is justice and what not.
(And also to remind people of just why America fought, and against who.)

[Strike For The South]

Oh I agree. I was not attempting to mount a legal argument. The sabotage was certainly against international law. Of course, when one is mired in a world war and everything is on the line, international law quickly loses its luster.

I was merely pointing out how far Louis is stretching the facts in order to make his tortured point by evoking 9/11 and terrorism. The 'Black Tom' attack was certainly not against the Statue of Liberty and was not meant to terrorize Americans. It was an effort to stem the rapidly increasing supply of munitions to Allied forces in Europe. IIRC, it is difficult to prove even one fatality.

I'm P'Ming my address as we speak. No personal checks please

My children will never be able to go into the flame of the statue of liberty.

This thread is not an exercise in anti-Americanism, or even criticism of its policy. It is about 'reversing' some commonly held opinions, with some peskyness thrown in to see if it can create a fresh perspective and see if it makes me, or others, have different intuitive ideas about what is justice and what not.
(And also to remind people of just why America fought, and against who.)

To defeat the evil Germans and pereserve Freedom!

Except for women....or brown people....jews to....and catholics

But hey that would be crazy

[gaelic cowboy]

It seems to me like governments have been pedaling terror threats for longer than we appreciated.



Tens of thousands of Irishmen marched off to get blown to hell for absolutely nothing still at least the Yanks got paid.

[Louis VI the Fat]

To defeat the evil Germans and pereserve Freedom!

Except for women....or brown people....jews to....and catholics

But hey that would be crazy

...dear oh dear....college not good for Strikey...all sorts of silly leftist ideas getting into his head...


But yes, racial equality, anti-imperialism, the 'Third World' - these issues were relegated to the back burner at Versailles. By the standards of today, this is a weakness of the peace treaties. The peace treaties saw some of the loftiest, most idealistic peace settlements in the history of mankind - for Europe. Magnanimous to the losers, forgiving, forward-looking. Seeing to the rights and interests of all. In the European system, Versailles reinforced or even introduced minority rights, self-determination, Jewish rights, extensive human rights.
But the idealism was mostly limited to Europe.

Tens of thousands of Irishmen marched off to get blown to hell for absolutely nothing

Well in crooked, indirect way Irish independence owed a good deal to allied victory and the subsequent peace settlements.

The allied victory ensured the right of self-determination in European politics, which was a corner stone of that most noble treaty in the history of mankind, Versailles.

Germany, Turkey, Russia, and Britain too, could no longer use other European nations as colonies.

[Strike For The South]

...dear oh dear....college not good for Strikey...all sorts of silly leftist ideas getting into his head...


But yes, racial equality, anti-imperialism, the 'Third World' - these issues were relegated to the back burner at Versailles. By the standards of today, this is a weakness of the peace treaties. The peace treaties saw some of the loftiest, most idealistic peace settlements in the history of mankind - for Europe. Magnanimous to the losers, forgiving, forward-looking. Seeing to the rights and interests of all. In the European system, Versailles reinforced or even introduced minority rights, self-determination, Jewish rights, extensive human rights.
But the idealism was mostly limited to Europe.
.

Well yea, minorities and women were not really on an equal playing feild until the early 70s. Hell doesn't France have a whole bunch of black people whom were born in America? Ain't that a kick in the nuts.

People do what they always do. Talk big

[gaelic cowboy]

Well in crooked, indirect way Irish independence owed a good deal to allied victory and the subsequent peace settlements.

The allied victory ensured the right of self-determination in European politics, which was a corner stone of that most noble treaty in the history of mankind, Versailles.

Germany, Turkey, Russia, and Britain too, could no longer use other European nations as colonies.

Another thing is it was a death blow to the Anglo-Irish ascendancy they now no longer had any sons to pass on there titles and land to even the far out cousins were blasted to bits.

This was a small economic benefit to people like my great grandfather born just after the famine they had a once in life time chance to expand there business and not just farmers but shops, pubs and hotels etc etc

Of course many of these things would have happened anyway because of the various land acts designed by the British to suck the life out of the Home Rule movement but WW1 hastened a death spiral that was in evidence anecdotally for maybe 40yrs

[Louis VI the Fat]

The OP pointed to reparations for civilian damages on US soil. Which, unlike the reparations in Europe, Germany was forced to pay. Another issue then, for all of us to question our mind:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Germany made a substantial financial profit from WWI reparations. (I'm going to repeat that another 100k thousand times before I die. Germany did not suffer crippling reparations payments.)
Popular history tragically has come to embrace the German ultra-nationalist / Nazi propaganda about outside forces seizing temprorary German weakness to exploit Germany with crippling reparations. These devilish outside forces are alternatively Jews/Democracies/Western capitalist imperialists, or, in the anglo-fascist variant, the French.
Reality is the opposite:

Germany declared itself defeated in 1918. In accordance with the fourteen points and explicit pre-armistice agreements, Germany in the armistice agreed to pay full reparations for civil damages. Despite this agreement, in the actual peace treaty of Versailles and in subsequent agreements, Germany was asked to pay a mostly token amount.

To help Germany pay for these reparations, it recieved substantial financial aid in the form of loans. These loans were greater than what Germany was expected to pay in reparations.

However, Germany barely paid any reparations at all. Of what little it paid, only one third was paid in money. The remainder was paid for largely simply in returned loot and stolen art. A mere return of property, which nonetheless the allies had grudgingly come to accept as counting towards reparations payments.
The substantial loans that Germany received, meanwhile, Germany used to prepare itself for another war. And, since 1922, to prop up Germany's new ally, with whom it sought to overthrow the peace and order of Europe: the Soviet Union.

In 1932, Germany defaulted on the loans, declared they would not be paid back. The allies woulod never receive their money back. This way, the allies had now not only borne all of the costs for WWI, they had also paid towards Germany's renewed bid for supremacy. A few months later, early 1933, the German military-industrial caste thought it had found just the right puppet who could intimidate the world not to ask for its money back. The deed had been done.
In this way, a duplicitous Germany had outwitted the victors of WWI: the allies had not only footed the bill for WWI, they had paid towards German preparation for WWII too.

That's the short version of the long version, which is still too long, so very brief:

Germany paid no reparations. Instead, Germany received money. Vast loans from America to pay for reconstruction. Duplicitously, Germany used these American loans for preparations for WWII.



Now America wants its money back:

More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

Now, a half-dozen U.S. bondholders are turning to federal courts in an effort to force Germany to make good on its promise to repay the debts, which today could be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. Action has been heating up in lawsuits filed in Miami, New York and Chicago, including a victory for investors last month when an appeals court rejected Germany’s attempt to dismiss their case.


If the bondholders ultimately win, their lawyers could ask judges to seize German assets in the U.S. to repay them, a tactic that has worked in other legal disputes over money owed by foreign governments.
http://lubbockonline.com/world/2010-...i-german-bonds

[KrooK]

I don't understand this discussion.
Politics is not fair, is not equal and has nothing to human rights. You are good into this game if you succed.
You may be absolutely right but if you won't succeed with your arguments - you fail.
If some people here think that Germany should pay USA for attacks, USA should pay Libya too.
Or they should pay Vietnam.
We can't demand from politicians being saints. They just have to win.

[PanzerJaeger]

The substantial loans that Germany received, meanwhile, Germany used to prepare itself for another war. And, since 1922, to prop up Germany's new ally, with whom it sought to overthrow the peace and order of Europe: the Soviet Union.

In this way, a duplicitous Germany had outwitted the victors of WWI: the allies had not only footed the bill for WWI, they had paid towards German preparation for WWII too.

I am not sure whether you wrote that or got it from somewhere else. Regardless of the sourcing, the truth seems to be a victim of some very creative rhetoric yet again in this thread.

Germany did indeed begin to rebuild its military after the war. The Weimar Republic also almost immediately made the decision to ignore the absurd limitations placed on the German military by the Versailles Treaty. I can only assume that the author has used these two facts to reach the conclusion that Germany was preparing for another war - as opposed to budgeting normal defense expenditures in line with other European nations - during the time the loans were being given. Such a premise is simply false, as the decision to initiate WW2 was made long after the loans had been given and subsequently defaulted on and by a different government. Further, the reason Germany defaulted on the loans was not out of sinister motivations but out of economic destitution, which also consequently ate up the vast majority of the American loan money, that would be for bread and not tanks. WW2 was paid for by the German economy that rebounded under Nazi rule.

So the ideas that a) Germany immediately began to plot WW2 after the loss of 1918 and b) that the US/Allies somehow paid for Germany's military buildup prior to WW2 are demonstrably false (unless you want to get into certain US and European industrialists' private support for the Nazis, which is beyond the scope of this thread).