New York City in Danger of Attack (1917)

JF Ptak Science Books   Overall post 5149

The New York City harbor looks pretty rough in this picture, tall whitecaps with surprising little reflected in what should be pretty choppy water, meaning that light should be reflecting everywhere, a difficult collection of reflected reflections. 

[Image source:  May 1917 issue of the uncommon magazine, Illustrated World. The entire article is reproduced below.]

 The submarine, battleship  and zeppelin menaces were real, at least in Europe or in the Atlantic--the aeroplanes far less so.  But the applications of these fears directly to American shores were still very distant things, particularly when it came to an attack on New York City--except of course that the U.S. had just declared war against Germany, finally, just a few weeks before this issue was published.

The war began for real in Europe in August, 1914, so the fighting had been going on there in fratricidal earnestness for two and half years, costing millions and millions their lives and limbs.  America had been isolationist and non-interventionist up until this point, remaining sweatily on the sidelines, until the capture of the infamous Zimmerman telegram, which was a coded message sent from Germany (the German Empire) to Mexico (and taken by the Brits as it was sent, the crypto-folks of Room 40 breaking the thing) suggesting that Mexico join in a war against the U.S.  It hit the American press on 1 March, and the story exploded--literally. This is what the beginning of war looks like, sometimes.

So perhaps there was some amount of yellow journalism involved here, and some inflationary propaganda as well, and some good-old profit-taking on a half-sci-fi story--on the other hand, the German Empire did just sink 800,000 gross tons of shipping during the 30 days of April (1917), so sub fears were in general real and palpable.  The issue of them sighting the Staten Island Ferry though was quite another matter. 

The first American soldiers would arrive for fighting in June.  The whole thing would be over in 17 months, which is well less than half of the time that the U.S. spent in WWII. 

The United States would suffer 116,000 military deaths during its part of the war--a small fraction of the overall military deaths (9 million) and a smaller part still of overall deaths including civilians (totaling 16 million).  There would be 205,000 American wounded in this conflict, a little less than 1% of all war military casualties. 

It would be interesting to see the coverage in England of the American invasion fears.

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