Richard Werner

Yes, I mean, the sinking was clearly a key factor in creating in the media in America anti-German sentiment quite successfully.

And so, yeah, the question is what happened really.

The way it's presented was, well, there's a...

passenger ship with american passengers you know just civilians traveling across the atlantic and sunk by a german submarine well that's like an act of war against america yes gotta do something about this we're gonna declare one on germany well that's not that's not a representation of the facts what really happened was there was this british plan to get america into the war

on the British side against Germany, which was very difficult because, of course, actually, you know, ethnically, a majority at the time of Americans were of German origin.

Even German speakers still, by that time, German was still widely used as a language in America.

And so to get America into war against Germany is a bit of a feat, you know, to arrange that.

Yes, it is.

So how did this happen?

And that is a good example of the extent to which the plotters that want war go.

And it's good for people to think about that because, of course, ordinary people don't want war in any country.

Most ordinary people are good people.

And that creates this problem that they just can't imagine that we're dealing today, you know, as we look at the world with such dark and evil forces that are intentionally plotting to create a world war or get countries to declare war, you know?

Yes.

So that's why... That is true.

People cannot even...

Yeah, yeah.

And that's where studying history is important because we need to know the facts of what happened in the past to understand the present and make some predictions about the future or prepare for what could happen in the future.

And the past teaches us that there are some evil elements out there and they're not really, you know, they're not people that are representative of ordinary people.

The majority of people