Michael Digby on Germany's Sabotage and Terror Campaign in the US, 1914-1917

I am going to take short break from the Lost Mills and RI History to examine World War I. Today's post is a link to a talk from July 7, 2022 hosted by historycamp.org. 

The standard take on the WWI era start with the efforts by the US government to promote neutrality in 1914, then a hard pivot upon entering the war in  April 1917 to a massive mobilization effort for the war that included a propaganda campaign, clamping down on any dissent against the war effort, and  another 10k boots on the ground every day by summer 1918. 

Also well known were the efforts by the British to sway public opinion in the United States against the Central Powers while trying to get the Americans to join support the Allies with money and matériel, which American businesses and the Wilson Administration enthusiastically provided (more on that topic tomorrow). But the Germans did not sit idly by as the British manipulated the Americans into siding with them. While the effects of the Kaiser's unrestricted submarine warfare and overtures to Mexico to invade the United States in the Zimmerman affair are also well-known chapters in this history, historian Michael Digby explores Germany's simultaneous efforts to spread fear and terror, and wage 

"a secret war fought in America; on remote railway bridges and waterways linking the United States and Canada; aboard burning and exploding ships in the Atlantic Ocean; in the smoldering ruins of America’s bombed and burned-out factories, munitions plants, and railway centers; and waged in carefully disguised clandestine workshops where improvised explosive devices and deadly toxins were designed and manufactured. It was irregular warfare on a scale that caught the United States woefully unprepared."

Digby's book, Burn, Bomb, Destroy: The German Sabotage Campaign in North America, 1914–1917 (published September 2021), describes how German agents "engaged in a campaign of subversion and terror in the United States before and during World War I." History Camp director Lee Wright interviewed Digby on July 7. The video can be watched here.