Jake Tapper and the Sinking of the Lusitania

Jake Tapper is tapped in to the pulse of current events. Ed takes him out to sea to assess the historic disaster that was the sinking of the Lusitania: a chaotic, cataclysmic act of treachery that ignited wartime efforts faster than you can say "U-Boat." Don't miss out this holiday season, look for Ed's New York Times Bestseller, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups, wherever you get your books, or go to: www.snafu-book.com See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with the, I believe it's the upside down pineapple? No, what's that? If you put this like sticker or symbol on your door, it means like you're a swinger. Oh my god. Or you're open to swinging with other, with other upside down pineapples. As opposed to a regular pineapple? Well, then you're just a dork. You're just like, no one wants, no one wants to swing with you.

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• 2:11Speaker 00

  Hello, I'm Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups, or more specifically, the show where I ask brilliant guests to help me unpack some of the least brilliant moments in history, and in the process, perhaps, understand ourselves a little bit better. This week, I am talking with one of the legendary TV journalists of our time. He's an anchor and chief Washington correspondent at CNN, host of The Lead with Jake Tapper, and State of the Union. He's also someone with a shockingly, dare I say, offensively expansive grasp of politics, history, pop culture, world affairs, and

• 2:54Speaker 00

  so much more. He is a delightful conversationalist, an Emmy winner, a prolific author, and he has a brand-new book out, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. It's out now. He is smart, thoughtful, funny, and a lot of people say we look like brothers. Please welcome Jake Tapper.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  Thank you so much. It's great to be here. We do, we do, there's a lot of forehead going on right now, on this podcast. It's eight-head.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, we got a 10-head, one might even say. Well, I'm super grateful that you're here and allowing us to be part of your free time. Your passion for work is admirable, and it's just the new cycle is so intense every day. I'm curious, is that exhilarating for you as a journalist, or is it more just like a furious treadmill from hell, like a Sisyphean torture where you can't get into a story and give it the depth it deserves?

• 3:56Speaker 04

  That's a great question. I do remember, so I've been a journalist for a long time, and I do remember periods where there didn't seem to be a lot to cover. There didn't, you know, like, you know, times when I was an anchor. So since 2013, when I first got my own show, where, like, how are we going to fill the hour today was actually a question. And that wasn't fun, although, looking back on it, it's kind of a stupid question because there's so much that you could report on, but like in terms of like compelling news, interesting news, it didn't seem as easy as it is now. Now, does that mean I'm

• 4:36Speaker 04

  excited about the threats being made to TV news stations by Donald Trump because I get to cover it? No, I'm not. I prefer, I would prefer that not be happening, but it is true that there is no shortage of stuff to cover, to the point that I, you know, we really have to prioritize.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  You know, there are times when there are like serious erosions of democracy, or what are traditions in the United States that we're used to, such as the president and his administration using the power of the government to silence and squelch speech and speakers they don't like, Mr. Kimmel being the most recent example, and, and that, you know, that also is a time and a cause for alarm.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Well, we should say that that's, Kimmel is the most recent example as of the, the date of recording this, but it will be out later and we'll see.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  You and I will be in Guantanamo by the time this post is probably.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Oh, God, that is grim.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Then they came for the podcasters.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's a good jumping off point because this story I want to tell you today is rooted in another book that a friend sent to me. Ryan Holiday, who you may know is the host of the Daily Stoic podcast, he gave me Erik Larson's incredible book Dead Wake. Do you know this book?

• 6:03Speaker 04

  I know, I know Erik Larson. I don't know Dead Wake.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  It's the story of the sinking of the Lusitania.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  It's written almost as a thriller, and it's just a phenomenal piece of, of history writing. Ryan sent me this book because he knows I'm a snafu nerd, and it's a hell of a read, and it just struck me as the perfect Jake Tapper story because it's not just about a shipwreck, it's about politics, international conflict, and even a fight over the narrative itself at the end of the day. And that's just a battleground that you navigate every day as a journalist. So let's just dive right in, the sinking of the Lusitania.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Now, our backdrop here, of course, is the Great Wall, AKA World War I. I don't want to get too bogged down in the war itself, but basically in 1914, a guy named Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot, and then Europe basically just descends into a full-on Looney Tunes bar fight. Austria swings at Serbia, Russia's like, "Oh, hell no." Germany hops up and smashes a chair over Russia, and then takes a swing at France, elbowing Belgium along the way. This gets Britain up off its stool like, "Oi, don't mess with Belgium." And the Ottomans leap in, Japan comes flying in through a window. It's just absolute chaos. And then, of course, Yosemite Sam fires his pistol, and the dust settles, and you've got two sides.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  The Central Powers, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire versus the Allies, Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Japan, Portugal, and a handful of others. How did I do? Is that a good summary?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  That's great. I love that. Oh, my God.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  All right. Good. That's a little...

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Is America Yosemite Sam, or was Yosemite Sam just a thrown-in refer?

• 7:56Speaker 00

  You know what? He could, he kind of could be, but we're not there yet.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Because doesn't, yeah, because doesn't the US kind of come in a little bit and save the day? A little bit, teeny bit?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  In this metaphor, Yosemite Sam's just that guy that walks into the saloon and kind of like, and like shuts everyone up for a second?

• 8:12Speaker 04

  I know Blackjack Pershing is a huge character in the war. That's what, that's my main knowledge point.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Amen. The sort of initiation of World War I is so fascinating because it just shows how a single spark can just kind of ignite this simmering powder keg of tensions. And, I don't know, it feels like there, there are, it feels like this is just a recurring thing throughout history and even perhaps all around us as we speak.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and like the Arab Spring, you know, if that one merchant hadn't set himself on fire in protest in Tunis, would the Arab Spring have even happened, right? It's the corollary of the great man theory of just like, one man getting killed or setting himself on fire, whatever, that changes history. That is the spark.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like the domino metaphor because these things just they escalate so quickly. And and before you know it, there's so many dominos on the ground.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  So the Western Front of the of the war, which was the that's the bloody battle line across Northern Europe where Germany is trying to push into France. It gets very quickly bogged down in this nightmare of trench warfare, a brutal stalemate. But out on the ocean, things are a lot more dynamic. Britain threw up a massive naval blockade to choke off German supplies. So Germany rolled out its new toy, the U-boat.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Which, by the way, is short for unterseeboot, a word that sounds way scarier in German, but it literally just means undersea boat. So thanks, guys, for that.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Everything sounds scarier in German.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  This is the first U-boat, I believe, the very first U-boat.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  And these things were incredible feats of technology for their day, about 210 feet long, crewed by 35 men, all crammed in there. They were able to, say, submerged for a few hours at a time. They carried torpedoes as well as a deck gun. And as you might imagine, life on board was just a total nightmare. While diving, the subs became unbearably hot with diesel fumes, food rapidly spoiling. There was so little fresh water that sailors never bathed, ever. But the payoff was huge. Throughout the war, the U-boats sank thousands of tons of Allied shipping, casting a shadow of fear that was far larger than the actual numbers themselves. Could you could you think you could handle life on a U-boat?

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Oh, God, no. I can't even handle going down in like one of those water parks to look at like the fish and the coral. Like, I mean, I can scuba I like scuba dive, I like it, but that's free and open. The claustrophobic nature of a submarine sounds just I haven't even seen das Boot because of like, I don't this seems like it would be really awful.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Oh, and the they were so dangerous. I mean, the the batteries were Filled with sulfuric acid and if any seawater touched them, it instantly turned into chlorine gas. Um, any, I mean, it was just a

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Didn't this just happen like 10 years ago, like a Russian sub, they got stuck somewhere and they all died. Do you remember this?

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Uh, this has happened a couple of times in Russia.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  It happens all the time. Yeah. It's all Russian, everyone or Soviet or Russian. They're every one of these disasters, but there's been a bunch in 2000, there was one, an explosion in the torpedo compartment caused a catastrophic event. All 118 people were killed. But the one I was thinking about, um, was in 2008, uh, the Nerpa accident, a crew member activated the fire suppressant system, releasing Halon gas. 20 people died, 40 other, one injured. I mean, it's just that kind of non-stop chemical risk. Like what you were talking about the second ago with like, this could turn into chlorine gas or whatever. Like it's all so insane.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Oh my God. And just, but just the claustrophobia alone would probably, would probably kill me. Like I would have a heart attack before.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  Dangling your head against the wall.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, America at this point was basically, uh, that guy at the bar trying not to get dragged into the fight. President Woodrow Wilson's official stance was strict neutrality, but to be clear, we were still feeding the allied war effort with tons of financial credit, grain, oil and weapons, et cetera. So maybe not that neutral, but this is where today's story officially kicks in because Americans weren't just trading with Britain, they were also hopping aboard British ships in the booming transatlantic travel business. Enter the star of today's snafu, the RMS Lusitania.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  So that's an American ship or a British ship?

• 12:54Speaker 00

  It is a British ship. It is launched in 1906 by the Cunard line, um, a huge passenger shipping, uh, enterprise. Here she is. Yeah. In all of her glory.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Holy smokes. That's a big ship.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  It's a big boat. Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  No, no water slides, I'll note.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, let's, I'll give you a little rundown of some specs. Uh, 787 feet long, 87 feet wide, four steam turbines. You can see their smokestacks there. Carried over 1,200 passengers and over 600 crew. Had elevators inside, which was like a breathtaking marvel. The, the first class suites had marble amenities, a wireless telegraph, and it was fast. It was legit fast. It could go 26 knots or about 30 miles per hour, which for a ship that big is just no joke.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  This is before the Titanic sank, right?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Titanic was 1912. But the Lusitania was, was launched a lot earlier. It had, it had a success. It had many successful transatlantic crossings.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  The Lusitania is introduced and the Titanic has not yet been sunk. And everyone's like, nobody's thinking that it's going to sink. Everyone's thinking it's unsinkable because it's this big, beautiful ship.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's giant, it's beautiful, it's the latest technology, and it's also incredibly fast. Uh, it, it goes about 30 miles an hour, which is fast enough to win the Blu Rebond Prize, was the quickest ship across the Atlantic. Uh, this is very significant, the speed, because it also, um, it also gave a sort of false sense of confidence to Cunard as a company and, and the, the, the, the crew, uh, the captain and crew of the ship, that they weren't subject to threat from other, uh, from any sort of military enterprise because they could basically out.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Escape.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, they could, they could outrun just about anybody. Are you a cruise guy in general? Do you ever, do you ever go on cruises?

• 14:52Speaker 04

  I would, but my wife, uh, has made it very clear. I think pretty early on in the relationship that that was, that that was never going to happen. You're a David Foster Wallace fan? He wrote a great essay for, I forget if it was the Atlantic or Harper's. I think probably Harper's called A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  It's about.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  And then Gary Steingart, uh, did, did another sort of like revamp of that, uh, a, a new one, um, in the last few years.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  I think a cruise sounds great if you are in the mindset of. Of all you can eat and drink like 20 year old me would love all you can eat and drink.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  56 year old me, no thanks.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  I'm also a little freaked out by like a giant seafood buffet. I don't know what it's just, I can't do, I used to, I used to love that and see, oh, crabs, shrimp, like load me up lobster.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  Unless you have control of the passenger list, do you want to be locked on a ship?

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  People.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  People.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  You don't know.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  About people.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Other people.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  People, right?

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Yes, other people. I have met some people, I've met some great ones, but you just.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  I'm not talking about them. I'm not talking about the great ones. That's not who's on the ship with you.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Are you, are you familiar with the, I believe it's the upside down pineapple?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  No, what's?

• 16:09Speaker 00

  There's this, it's like a, it's a, I read this somewhere that I think it's an upside down pineapple. If you, if you put this like sticker or symbol on your door, it means like you're a swinger.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Or you're open to swinging with other, with other upside down pineapples.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  As opposed to a regular pineapple?

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Oh, come on, Jake.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Why even get married? I don't even understand it. All right, never mind.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  I'm getting you a ticket for a swinging cruise.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  A swinging cruise. It's called the upside down pineapple.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Is there anything more of an aphrodisiac than, than a seafood buffet?

• 16:43Speaker 04

  A seafood buffet on a swinging cruise.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Oh, God. Oh, boy. Diving back in, here we go.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  Lusitania, got it.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  We got way off track.

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• 19:22Speaker 00

  On May 1st, 1915, the Great War is in full swing. The Lusitania left New York's Pier 54 bound for Liverpool.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  And this is just a cruise ship? This is not a military?

• 19:36Speaker 00

  The short answer is, yeah, sure, of course, that's what it is.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  At the helm was Captain William Thomas Turner, a veteran mariner known for his steady hand, but the ship's role was a bit more complicated than it looked. The British Admiralty had helped bankroll the building of the Lusitania with the understanding that she could be requisitioned in wartime. So while on paper, she was just a glamorous passenger liner, in practice, she and a number of ships like her were sometimes carrying munitions alongside their paying customers.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Can I just make an observation on that?

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  That's some, that's some dirty shit. Like, that's not cool.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Well, especially because a lot of the passengers are completely none the wiser.

• 20:24Speaker 04

  All of them, except for the, except for the, except for the seamen.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, are we back to the swinging?

• 20:31Speaker 04

  No, C N, C, S E A, Matt, C.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  The crew. Let's call them the crew.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  I'll pause. I'll pause between the syllables next time.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  The Germans caught on to this, and by early 1915, they declared the waters around Britain a war zone, warning that even passenger ships might be targeted. Uh, and on the morning of the Lusitania's departure, the German Embassy even published that warning in very stark terms in New York City newspapers. Um, so it, this was not a secret. Now, if you were Captain William Turner, would you have set sail under such conditions?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  He was British?

• 21:11Speaker 00

  He was a Brit.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  He was probably, I mean, just based on my limited knowledge of the UK and the military in the UK, he probably was a Navy veteran. And so I would assume that he was loyal to the Crown and, you know, once a sailor, always a sailor. Like, I personally, I don't know what I would have done. I, I like to think that I would have been noble and loyal and, and full of courage. But I'm just saying, like, putting myself in his shoes, he's a Navy veteran. He hates the bad guys in World War I. Uh, I don't know who is king or queen at this point, but let's just assume that they are calling him on the telegraph and saying, we need you to do, we need you to do this.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I, I don't, first of all, that was a terrible British accent, but.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  I'm not a comedian. I'm a, I'm a newsman.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  So that's interesting you say all that. I believe he came up through the Merchant Marines and, and was a, and worked his way up, uh, as a, uh, Cunard Company man. Um, he had tremendous experience, but I also don't know for sure.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  By the way, just, just, just doing a quick search of this fella, Mr. Captain Turner, married his cousin, like, right off the bat. That's one of the first things I learned about him.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  No, but Jake, it's a different time.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Isn't that crazy? Isn't it insane when people say that? Like, it was a different time.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  He married his sister. Well, it was a different time.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  It's like people explain away the most horrific shit with, it was a different time.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Let me just say that he's lucky that we don't know his name as being the captain of a ship that went down. Like, he very easily could have. He's basically gone down anonymously in history, but we could know, like, people could call each other, oh, you're such a Turner. You know what I mean?

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know that, I don't know how much.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  You're suggesting he knew that there were British munitions that were being smuggled in the ship?

• 22:58Speaker 00

  What he definitely knew, and what a lot of passengers even knew, was that Germany had said, be careful, because that's a war zone and we're taking out passenger ships because we think some of them are carrying munitions. Despite all this, the Lusitania just steamed forth, her passengers trusting that speed and prestige and maybe a dash of hubris would carry them safely across.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we can go 30 miles an hour.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. They weren't so lucky. Things did not go as planned.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  The U-boat that you introduced in the, at the beginning of the segment.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is where he comes back.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Check off the U-boat.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  On the afternoon. I like that. Check off the U-boat. Yeah, you can't introduce a U-boat in a story.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  I just assumed.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  And not have a torpedo get fired out of it. On the afternoon of May 7th, 1915, six days out from New York, the Lusitania was gliding past the gorgeous southern coast of Ireland under clear skies when a German U-boat struck. A torpedo slammed into her starboard side, ripping open the hull. Moments later, a second explosion tore through the ship. Now, this second explosion is a sort of, is a very hotly debated subject. Some folks believe it was the boiler getting sort of like jarred and having it.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Explosion, a lot of people think, I think the most common or the most sort of agreed upon version is that the first torpedo impact actually kicked up a ton of coal dust in the engine rooms and that's incredibly volatile. So like literally any spark in that would cause an explosion. That had happened to other ships. But other, there were other sort of theories that perhaps the torpedo had struck some of the munitions stores in the belly of the ship and that's what caused an additional explosion. That's, but we don't, we don't really know for sure. But an interesting tidbit, a quick flash

• 25:13Speaker 00

  forward into 1993, divers exploring the wreck of the Lusitania verified the presence of munitions in her hold. Until then, it was still contested and hotly contested and records were conflicting and, and again, it's just unclear who knew what and how and when people knew what. But

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Fascinating.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  How far off the coast, how far away from Ireland is, was the ship saying?

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Very close, within sight. I think it was about 10 miles off the coast.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  But that, you know, but they could see Ireland from there. But you are, you sort of went here automatically. But this all forces a brutal question, right? When civilians and weapons share the same ship, where do you draw the line between a fair target and an atrocity? I mean, there's like 2,000 people on this boat.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  I think, I mean, I think it's, it's a huge question because first of all, this story shows that the idea of using human shields, well, I mean, I guess that wasn't human shields in the sense of like what we see in the Middle East or whatever, because it wasn't as though they were advertising it. They were smuggling it. But there is without question a responsibility that any government has when they Use a civilian vehicle or whatever to hide something military related because the conceit of civilized warfare is we don't target civilians.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  And once you as a country violate that separation, it is on you, not your enemy, for doing that, I think.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  I want to give you a little more context for sort of what was happening regarding the kind of rules of war at that moment. So there was a whole framework of sort of maritime rules and traditions and U-boats had been expected to follow the prize laws, which are these sort of like maritime traditions. And this, in the case of this war, these laws required a sub to surface and stop a merchant ship, check it for contraband or weaponry or whatever, and if found, then give passengers time to leave the boat before sinking it.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  There was a German U-boat U-17 that sank a British ship Glitter in October 1914, and it followed this playbook exactly. But surfacing left these submarines very vulnerable and the British were starting to exploit this, attacking the subs as they were surfacing to follow the rules. And so by 1915, all of these rules were in tatters. And sometimes a ship was stopped politely, other times a torpedo just came without warning.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  It's so fast.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Isn't that wild?

• 28:17Speaker 04

  The rules are so weird. And just the one that I'm reminded of is the fact that the chemical warfare in World War I was so horrific. That they didn't engage in chemical warfare in World War II.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Even the Nazis, they gassed Jews and Poles and whatever in the concentration camps, but they would not use chemical warfare against the Brits and the Americans, et cetera. And it's just, these rules are so weird to me because we can torture you over here, but not over here, you know? It's so strange.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then you go back to like the Revolutionary War and the rules were just so rigid, like they would, soldiers would line up.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  Behind a drummer.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  And then just shoot each other in an open field. It is wild, if you think about it, like, the point of a war is just to win. But there is also this, and I guess this says something good about humanity, that there's this, there is this kind of overarching morality that we want to preserve human dignity somehow.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  It's all such a slippery slope of hypocrisy.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, and when one, one side starts to kind of break the rules, the whole structure, whatever this sort of rule scaffolding, just implodes. It all collapses.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  But you can always justify it, because I'm sure the Brits were like, "Well, we're breaking the rule, but the Germans broke this rule to even start the war."

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. So, back to our sinking of the Lusitania. It struck by the torpedo. A dire panic ensues. Most of the lifeboats become impossible to launch because the ship was, started listing so severely to one side, almost immediately. It took just 18 minutes for the entire ship to sink.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  For reference, it took the Titanic about two hours to sink.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Was there structural weakness, or was it just, this is what happens when a torpedo hits a ship?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Well, it was this second explosion in the belly of the ship that really, like a single torpedo hitting the Lusitania, a lot of historians believe, should not have taken it down. It shouldn't have necessarily, like, sunk it.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  So, it was likely the munitions that were hit and the ones smuggled.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Or the coal dust explosion, or whatever caused that second explosion.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  But the divers didn't solve that problem? They didn't solve that mystery?

• 30:49Speaker 00

  No, that is not clear. That is not, it's, that's still in, in the land of theory.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  The ship sank so fast and only a few lifeboats were able to be launched. The human toll was staggering. Of the almost 2,000 men, women and children aboard, about 1,200 perished.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  The exact numbers are still disputed, but the total also included 123 Americans. Of course, this headlines just were screamed across the world. Here's the New York Times.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Wow. Look at that. Lusitania sunk by submarine, probably 1,260 dead. Twice torpedoed off Irish coast, sinks in 15 minutes. Captain Turner saved, Froman and Vanderbilt missing. Washington believes that a grave crisis is at hand. That's the headline. They weren't very, they weren't very pithy back then.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  No.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  If CNN was around, that mean that Chyron would be the whole screen. That's, that's a lot of information. Captain Turner saved.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  He did not go down with the ship.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Did not go down with the ship.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Outrage erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. This wasn't just another wartime tragedy. It was a turning point.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Let's move into the aftermath. Eric Larson's book Dead Wake, which I cannot recommend more strongly, suggests that British intelligence may have actually known a U-boat was stalking her or at least prowling around where the Lusitania was. They had captured German code books and cracked naval ciphers. And they were reading the enemy messages. And according to Larson, they knew a sub was patrolling the very waters Lusitania was heading into. And yet they gave no warnings.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Now, this is really interesting. There are a couple of factors at play that I'm curious to get your take on. Winston Churchill, who was at the time the Lord of the Admiralty, felt that the Lusitania was a very badass ship and really wasn't in that much danger because of its speed and maneuverability, et cetera.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  But also, there is the cold logic of protecting secret intelligence, right? Because the minute you act on secret intelligence, you might be revealing that you have a way of acquiring secret intelligence, which endangers your code breaking, etc. It was a felt that to act on that would reveal too much and that they're better off waiting for a bigger message of like maybe a much more substantial naval maneuver that they could crack.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  And this is the cold logic of an intelligence professional. The Lusitania sinking doesn't actually hurt British, the British war effort beyond the loss of those munitions. And in fact, could rally the Americans to join the effort. I mean, that's, that's how these, that's how these bastards think.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  So where does America fall on all this? Well, President Wilson urged caution. He's still very reluctant to drag the US into the war. Of course, former President Theodore Roosevelt is like, give them hell. He wants to just dive right in.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's riding a dolphin on the way there.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  He's like, he's super, he's riding a great white shark on the way, just furious. Germany defended itself, insisting the Lusitania was carrying weapons, which while technically true, was unprovable at the time. So this was not received well. Tensions ratcheted even further when Germany sank another British passenger ship, the SS Arabic, resulting in just a tidal wave of anti-German sentiment across the US and, and of course, already in Britain. Germany promised more restraint, but in 1917, British intelligence intercepted the infamous

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Zimmerman telegram, which revealed that Germany not only planned to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, but that it was also dangling an alliance with Mexico if the US had the audacity to join the fight. So what was in it for Mexico, you might ask? Well, Germany said it would financially Assist Mexico in reclaiming its old territory from the US, which included Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. This was a breaking point. Wilson released this telegram and the American public was outraged. And they were now firmly in favor of entering the war. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war and on April 6th, 1917, the US joined the Allies against the Central Powers.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  Incredible. So, so the history shows that had it not been for the sinking of the Lusitania and the Arabic, the US might, and we can only say might, not have joined the war? Is that possible?

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Well, it, so it wasn't a Pearl Harbor moment. It wasn't, it wasn't a thing that it was like, here we go. We're definitely in, but it was, it was like a domino, right? And it was something that started this cascading effect. So then when the Zimmerman telegram was intercepted, there was enough tension that it was like, oh, hell yeah. This is on, like we're getting, we're diving in.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  If it were not for the Americans, it's not clear that the Germans wouldn't have won World War One.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 05

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• 38:32Speaker 09

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• 38:43Speaker 10

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 38:59Speaker 09

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• 39:04Speaker 00

  I'm curious, like, just some bigger picture takeaways. I mean, what, what, this is like my favorite part, where we just kind of deconstructed a little bit. And what strikes me most about the Lusitania is, is what a turning point it was, and the domino effect that precipitated. I mean, it was one torpedo, one ship on one afternoon, and suddenly, public outrage, policy shifts, and eventually, America's entry into the war. And the thing about dominos is, you don't always know which ones are going to keep going and keep falling, or which ones are just going to kind of tip over and stop, right? So looking back, it's easy to see the chain reaction. But in the moment, it had to just be so unclear and confusing.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Do you think we're any better now at spotting which events are just noise and which events are true turning points?

• 39:57Speaker 04

  We're not. We're not. And one of my favorite monologues in a film is in Charlie Wilson's War, when the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing a, I think, a CIA officer, is trying to give the Texas congressman a lesson on even though the Mujahideen have successfully beat back the Soviets in Afghanistan, who knows what the dominoes will fall. And it's this whole thing about the Zen Master and the child. The short version for your listeners is, a boy gets a horse, and everybody in the village is like, oh, that's so wonderful. And the Zen Master says, we'll see. And then the boy falls off the horse, or the horse

• 40:38Speaker 04

  falls on him, and he breaks his leg and injures him forever. And everybody in the village says, well, that's so horrible. And the Zen Master says, we'll see. And then all the young men in the village are called to war, but he can't go because Because of his broken leg. Because of injury. And everyone's like, isn't that great? And the Zen Master's like, well, and that's, and that is everything. Like, you could, while you were telling, talking about trench warfare, I immediately, I always immediately think of the World War Two, World War One movies I've seen. In the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was done by a German director, writer, et cetera, I believe, they add a scene where the Germans are surrendering. And the, I think the Brits and the French are being like,

• 41:22Speaker 04

  really tough. And this was a German way of looking at World War One, which is, because of the austerity measures and what you did to Germany during the armistice of World War One, World War Two happened. And that is a very German view of, well, not just German, I think there are historians who think that, that the armistice and the peace of World War One, in many ways, set the conditions that created World War Two. So, I don't know. I mean, I was about to say, well, that guy who smuggle, who ordered the smuggling of munitions into the Lusitania, probably had some really bad months. And then, at

• 42:04Speaker 04

  the end of it, you know, the Americans come in because of that domino that fell. And save the day.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  It's like a we'll see moment.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Right, exactly, we'll see, but then there's also the we'll see of the of the victory of World War I is and it could then causes World War II.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Okay, yes.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Because it's Hitler's rise to power, you know, would it have been better in history if if Germany had had won World War I? I mean, maybe then Hitler wouldn't have come to power and all and all the horror from there. So, I don't know.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  So, that's a, I love that analysis, Jake. It's a very, I think, sort of prudent and responsible way to to look at the way dominoes fall through an historical lens.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Well, and that's how it happens, as we talked about with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. But I'm guessing that whoever made the decision to to hide the munitions in the Lusitania, definitely, like, probably, at the end of the day, like, got like all sorts of war medals.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  You know?

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is, you're speaking to the the one constant in all of these snafus, which is that no one is ever held accountable.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  And and more likely, they are rewarded in some way for for the snafus. So.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  But also, like, this guy would have, I'm assuming it's a guy, please don't condemn me for my sexism when I suggest that there were no female admirals or whatever at the time. But I will say, like, whoever that guy was, also, the decision was bad, so it could only have been made by a man.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  That that person could say, like, look, because of that, we won the war.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. And also, there were a lot of very successful passenger ship munition shipments,

• 43:51Speaker 00

  you know, apart from the Lusitania. So, they were, they were getting lots of sort of contraband across the ocean.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Don't you think that still happens today? Don't you think that our government, not just our government, but all governments are hiding stuff in?

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I would.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the CIA was fully, like. Fully engaged in cocaine trafficking.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  In the 80s, like, it was, it started out as kind of like, oh, we're trying to kind of get inside undercover. And then it was just like, oh, but also, we don't mind if you profit a little bit on the side. And it's, yeah, there's, it's wild.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  So the snafu in this is the decision to put the munitions in the, in the ship?

• 44:36Speaker 00

  You're drilling down on, on the, on the sort of technical specificity of our, of our.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with it. I'm just saying that.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  No, I, I would say that the snafu is the disaster. The snafu is the sinking of the ship, the epic loss of life. And.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  See, that's a human approach. I'm, I'm going at it like a journalist. Who do I blame? Who do I blame? Who's responsible?

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Good. But no, but that is, that is such a sort of exciting part of discovery when you dig into this story is, is the, the who's to blame just becomes this very murky web.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Did anybody else have submarines?

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. Submarines, the, the Brits had submarines, but the, the Germans had, were really pushing the technology forward in, in ways that, that others just hadn't quite caught up to.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Whoever made that decision, that's who I give the snafu award to. Not that you give awards at the end of these, but still like that's, but you should perhaps think about that for future, but, um, I mean, that, that's the decision.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Or, or the Brit who decided we're going to start shooting U-boats while they're coming up and following instructions and.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Yes, the prize laws. I, I agree. That's where it gets, that, that's where it gets real, real dodgy. Yeah. The rules are for you guys. They're not for us.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  I feel like I've, I've now very dangerously entered terrain where I'm, I'm blaming the British for their own ship getting shot by the Germans, but which I do not mean to do. And it's obviously the Germans fault. And I proved that with my accents earlier in the episode.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Jake, it's the fog of war. All right. Let's be clear. This is, that gives you a very, a whole lot of leeway here.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  I just do think that like when you are hiding military material and materiel in a civilian ship.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  You are creating an untenable situation for the civilians. I feel comfortable making that assertion.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  I don't disagree.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Even if the Germans are the bad guys.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Tell me just a little bit about this book you have.

• 46:40Speaker 04

  Oh, great. Thank you so much.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  It's right behind you. I can see it. It's a beautiful cover.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  Race Against Terror. So there it is. So it's really just an interesting story. Did I send you one yet? I'll send you one if I haven't.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Text me your address and I'll send you one.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  So it's just this really interesting story that I heard from a guy about it's the Arab Spring.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  That does not sound legit, by the way.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  That's totally true.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  From this guy named Louis. I made a bar.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  No, well, you need to ask me who the guy is and I'll tell you a good story about that. But, but, but, so it's the Arab Spring refugees from Tunisia and Libya are fleeing Africa. They're ending at the southern Italian islands. Berlusconi commandeers a cruise ship and they start, you know, bringing refugees to the mainland of Italy and to Europe. And on that cruise ship, a short African guy from Niger approaches a guard and says he wants water. The guard notices he has a bullet hole in his arm or a bullet scar. He asks him where he got it and the guy says, well, I got it fighting Americans in Afghanistan. I'm with Al Qaeda. And the Italian guard, they take him to a room. They hear more about his story.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  They take him into custody and they call the Americans and they say, this guy says his name is Spin Ghoul and he's killed Americans. Have you heard of him? And the Americans have heard of him, even if you and I haven't. And the Italians are like, great, take him. We don't want him. We can't hold him.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Why did he, why did he identify himself to the Italians? Did he just think there was?

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Proud of it.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  He didn't belong with the riffraff, the refugees.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Okay, got it.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  And also he had just gotten out of a Libyan prison. You remember, remember when the? Libya was just completely falling apart.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  And Gaddafi and his thugs emptied the prisons and like they sent like Islamic extremists to Europe to wreak havoc. That's, that's what, so he had been in a prison for a long time. He'd been tortured. He wasn't all there, but also he was a very proud member of Al Qaeda. A lot of these guys are just very proud of their work. Anyway, the Americans now have a ticking clock because the Italians are like, we don't want him. We can't hold him for much longer than a month or two. Please take him. And the Americans, because it's during the Obama years, they can't just fly him off to Gitmo and just hold him indefinitely. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I'm just saying like, that's the reality. Obama wants to prosecute all these guys in criminal courts. The Americans now have a ticking clock to prove a case against this Al Qaeda operative.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  A guy who says he's killed Americans, has tried to blow up a US embassy and wants to kill as many Americans as possible. So it is this race against terror. They, they can't, they have to prove a case against him through sleuthing, finding evidence, finding fingerprints, finding witness testimony, et cetera, figuring out who he killed, et cetera, before the Italians free him or put him in a refugee camp where he can just escape. And that's, it's just a true story that I happened upon. So anyway, we've talked enough about the book and I appreciate it and I'm going to send you a copy, but I will tell you that it's getting good reviews and I think people will like it.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Excellent. Well, I can't wait and I really appreciate that. Jake, thank you so much for coming on to Snafu.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  This is so much fun. Can I do this every week?

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, hell yes. Let's do it. You can be my co-host.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  This was so interesting because I, I knew vaguely of the Lusitania, but I, now I know much, now I'm like basically a world authority.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Now you can just go and, and regale your staff.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Captain Turner.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. My free guy. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post-production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa. Martino and Tori Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Etor. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition: Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

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• 52:24Speaker 01

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.