Black Tom explosion August 1916

The explosion at a munitions depot on Black Tom island in New York Harbor (wiki article here) is of some relevance in explaining the United States’ entry into World War One. It is also, then, part of the development of Anglo-American relations. Although the US fought in WW1 for very different reasons to the British, it has still become part of the ‘Anglo-American story’ – the romanticised image which has, on occasion, had major bearing on bilateral relations. It was a public relations disaster for the Central Powers, much like the Zimmermann telegram (for another post), and hardened attitudes to the Germans in both public and political circles.

A little context:

Franz von Papen, the German military attaché in the US in the period before the Americans entered the war, was part of a group of German agents aiming primarily to disrupt US trade with the Entente. He, for example, founded a phony business – the Bridgeport Projectile Co. – to purchase armaments that might otherwise have gone to Britain.1 He and other German agents in the US were thought to be responsible for the blast at Black Tom, which measured around 5 on the Richter Scale and – perhaps tellingly – damaged the Statue of Liberty. Franz von Rintelin is another figure in German espionage circles worth reading about ^.

Read about the aftermath on the New Jersey City University website here. I’ve extracted the following section:

“After World War I, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who owned Black Tom, and others, brought charges of German sabotage before the Mixed Claims Commission under the 1921 Treaty of Berlin between the United States and Germany. The commission questioned the origins of the Black Tom explosion. Had the fire begun as a result of “spontaneous combustion,” carelessness of one of the employees or guards, or German sabotage?
A suspect in the incident was Michael Kristoff, a 23-year old immigrant living with relatives in nearby Bayonne and a former employer at the Tidewater Oil Company. Kristoff is said to have started the fires at Black Tom with incendiary devices in exchange for five hundred dollars. Kristoff died in a Staten Island hospital in 1928. On one side, officials at Black Tom were charged with “criminal and gross negligence” and on the other, documentation was found regarding German espionage at the time, but no one was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In 1939 after seventeen years of deliberation, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission claimed Germany responsible of sabotage. Germany was ordered to pay reparations of $50 million to all claimants.”

Whilst the sea-change in public opinion against the Central Powers brought about by events such as the Black Tom incident, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the execution of American nurse Edith Cavell did not provoke the US to fight alongside the British they did smooth the course to war. Unrestricted submarine warfare which threatened US shipping and US lives was the casus belli. The simple fact that Britain depended upon US exports of food and war materials to prosecute her war made the German decision to threated this supply route almost inevitable and in turn the US administration felt compelled to act. Despite winning the 1916 Presidential election on an isolationist platform (slogan: ‘He Kept us out of the War!’) Wilson recognised that US national interest was at stake when the Germans returned to unrestricted submarine warfare after a brief hiatus in 1916 and duly went to war the following year.

Other information:

Modern aerial view.

Footnotes:

1. Karl Hoover, ‘The Hindu Conspiracy in California, 1913-1918′, German Studies Review, Vol. 8, No. 2. (May, 1985), pp. 245.