Was The Lusitania a Conspiracy?
The evidence suggests the ship was just in the wrong place at the wrong time
“It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany . . . . For our part we want the traffic — the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.” — Winston Churchill to Walter Runciman, the President of Britain’s Board of Trade.
On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat fired a torpedo at the Lusitania and shot it off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.
When I was in high school, my high history teacher talked about how the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 was a conspiracy theory. The US and the United Kingdom intentionally wanted to put the Lusitania in danger because they wanted the United States to enter World War I. At the time, I thought he was full of shit — he was a history teacher, and he was teaching us about conspiracy theories?
However, I was just young and naive — the conspiracy theory appears to have some veracity. According to the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, the ship carried 139 Americans along with 1,070 others — and 128 Americans lost their lives. The Churchill Project later said:
“The German government issued…
