“I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to announce to His Excellency the German Ambassador that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the American Ambassador at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn.”162
—President Woodrow Wilson, February 3, 1917
HOPES THAT AMERICA might avoid being dragged into Europe’s war suffered a major blow on Wednesday, January 31, 1917, when Germany declared its intention to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. In practice, this meant that German submarines were instructed to attack without warning any neutral ship, including American-flag vessels, armed or unarmed, sailing into German-defined war zones. The announcement contradicted direct promises Germany had made after the sinking of the Lusitania. It also represented the final collapse of President Woodrow Wilson’s effort to mediate the conflict. England and France had rejected his formulae of “peace without victory,” and now Germany had pledged a brutal no-holds-barred fight to the finish. “Thus begins the long-feared campaign of ruthlessness, conceived by [German military chief of staff Paul] von Hindenburg, a starvation blockade of England, the likes of which the world has never seen,” reported the Hearst-owned New York American, a war opponent up until that point, but no longer.163
Three days later, President Wilson announced his response. Appearing before the United States Congress, he declared an immediate break of diplomatic relations with Germany, stating, “This government has no alternative consistent with the dignity and honour of the United States.” Within the day, Germany’s ambassador in Washington was given his passport and told to leave the country. But Wilson still held out an olive branch. “I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do,” he told Congress. “Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.”
But that said, should Germany carry out its attacks, Wilson pledged to “use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seaman and our people.”164 Congress responded immediately by beginning the process of approving $500 million in war bonds. The path to war had begun.
These actions shook Americans as if from a stupor. From peace-loving neutrality, the country’s trajectory lurched sharply toward panic and fear. Within hours of President Wilson’s speech, a barrage of security measures reshaped the landscape of New York City. Five hundred guards armed with rifles and bayonets came out from the naval reserve station and took posts on the five bridges connecting Manhattan with Brooklyn, forcing all cars, wagons, and trolleys to stop and be searched. Tugboats began prowling the East River, stopping any vessel from approaching within fifty feet of the bridge piers. Cannon and machine gun nests appeared at the base of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge towers. Police detectives began positioning themselves at all subway stations, and police blocked entrances to all public buildings, demanding identification from anyone trying to enter.
And that wasn’t all. The Port of New York sent inspectors to seize all German steamers in the harbor, ordering that German crewmen, about two thousand of them, be confined to their ships. They boarded all five of the Hamburg-American ocean liners in port and ordered them to remain in place until officials could decide whether to impound them. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tugboat crews worked overtime to install a steel cable measuring more than a mile long and six inches in diameter to block any vessel from approaching. Three thousand New York National Guardsmen were sent to protect the city’s water supply, including its upstate reservoirs and aqueducts.
Why? What was the danger? One simple word: sabotage. That same day, a machinist mate in Philadelphia was caught trying to scuttle the torpedo boat Jacob Jones in Philadelphia Harbor by opening a water drain and flooding it. Two feet of water had already leaked into the hull before military police stopped him. All the pent-up fear over explosions at munitions plants, all the rumors about German agents, now came out. Spies, radicals, lawbreakers, troublemakers could be any place. “Tonight it has been brought unmistakably home to us that we are unprepared,” New York mayor John Purroy Mitchel announced, urging immediate, mandatory military training for all American young men. He denied directing his actions against “any group in the city.” But he added this: “We must assume the loyalty of the citizens of German birth,” recognizing the hint of character assassination that already polluted the air.
All that week, newspapers featured stories of ship sinkings by German submarines and steps to prepare for war. With subways, bridges, docks, ferries, public buildings, aqueducts, and elevated railways all now under armed guard, “all that was lacking in this city yesterday was the knowledge that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany,” declared the New York American.165 Any New Yorker who wasn’t convinced already about the threat of German subterfuge had plenty of reason to think again.
Fortunately for Woodrow Wilson, he had been given several hours’ advance warning of the initial German announcement on unrestricted submarine warfare. Aides had described the president as “incredulous” on hearing the news, insisting on seeing the official German document. They described Wilson as reading it closely that night while sitting alone in his study in the White House until after 11 PM. This gave him a few extra hours to think and sleep before having to make decisions.
The advance warning had come from a new friend. Wilson’s aide and confidante Colonel Edward House had received a tip from a young British army officer who had been gassed in Europe in 1915 and had been reassigned to New York City on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Service. The young officer seemed to have the deepest network in North America for unearthing German spies. His name was Sir William George Eden Wiseman, and he had a particular eye out for Russians.
THE DAY WILSON announced that America was breaking diplomatic relations with Germany, Trotsky scribbled out a column for Novy Mir called “A Repetition of Things Past.”166 In it he recalled living in Vienna, Austria, in August 1914, when the Great War had first broken out. Trotsky recalled the excitement, how the passions had affected people, broken the monotony of their lives and given them a sense of urgency. He recalled walking the streets and seeing a “most amazing crowd” fill Vienna’s fashionable city center, “porters, laundresses, shoemakers, apprentices and youngsters from the suburbs” who now felt themselves “masters of the situation in the Ring.”167
Trotsky also recalled from Vienna how his younger son, Sergei, barely six years old at the time, came home from school that day with a black eye and bruises. All over town, graffiti on walls and chants on the streets had shouted, “Alle Serben mussen sterben!” (All Serbs must die!) Young Sergei, to be contrary, had stood on a street and shouted back “Hoch Serbien!” (Up with Serbia!) A few tough older boys had run over, chased him down, and punched him in the face.168
Hearing that the outbreak of war might affect his legal status in Vienna, Trotsky had gone to visit the Vienna police prefect to ask what to do. The prefect, a man named Geyer, had told him that Russians and Serbs could be arrested the next morning as enemy aliens. “Then your advice is to leave?” Trotsky asked.
“The sooner, the better,” the prefect said.
“Good. I will leave with my family for Switzerland tomorrow.”
“Hm . . . I should prefer that you do it to-day.”169
By 6:10 that night, after living in Vienna the better part of eight years, Trotsky, Natalya, and the boys had become refugees, passengers on a night train leaving Austria for Zurich, Switzerland.
That was in August 1914. Now, in 1917, the world war had followed him across the ocean to New York City. America stood on the verge of following the examples of Austria and France, two countries that ultimately had forced him to flee.