A Brief History of the House of Windsor Read Online Free PDF Page A

danger – ‘Gothas’ were long-range German bombers that began mounting daylight raids. Their reign of terror lasted several months. In the course of one attack on London they killed 162 people, including 18 children in a primary school. This was barbarity on a scale never before experienced by the British populace, for whom wars had previously been something that went on in fardistant places.
    Equally horrifying was the principle of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’. Germany possessed a fleet of submarines that patrolled the British coast and ranged far into the Atlantic. Their purpose was to starve the country into surrender by preventing food and raw materials from getting through. The Germans were bound by international treaty – as were other countries’ navies – to give warning before sinking any merchant vessel and to allow the crew time to abandon ship. Since the surface vessels were routinely armed, the Germans felt that warning them simply invited retaliation and put their own crews at risk. They therefore reserved the right to attack without notice ships that were sailing for British ports, whether these belonged to combatant nations or not. One casualty was the liner RMS
Lusitania
, torpedoed off the Irish coast in May 1915 with the loss of over a thousand passengers. Among the dead were 128 Americans, whose country was neutral. The event caused worldwide outrage (eventhough later investigation suggested that the ship was illegally carrying huge stocks of ammunition and that the explosion of these, rather than just torpedo damage, was what sank her). It was a propaganda coup for the Allies, doing much to alienate American opinion from Germany, and led to a lull in submarine activity. In February 1917, however, after the policy had been ratified by vote in the German Parliament, unrestricted submarine warfare resumed. The enemy was back scouring the sea-lanes and as dangerous as ever. Only two months later the United States would enter the war.
    It is therefore clear that during the spring and summer of that year, several elements – fear and frustration, ‘Hun Frightfulness’ and British public outrage – built toward a crescendo. Since the beginning of the conflict there had been mass hostility toward symbols of the enemy nations – the sacking of shops and businesses with German names, the banning of performances of Beethoven and Bach, the interning of German citizens, and even the stoning of dachshunds. All of that had long since removed from sight any public reminder of Britain’s past teutonic connections – except for one: the royal family.
    In this climate of hysteria it was, in a sense, the only target still standing. As soon as the war had begun, the king had returned all enemy uniforms to which he was entitled – he was Colonel-in-Chief of a Prussian regiment – just as the kaiser had handed back his honorary British ones (this swapping of clothes among Europe’s monarchs would now cease for good), but a number of buildings still attested to the royal family’s origins, such as the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. Prince Albert’s coat-of-arms, as well as his wife’s, appeared as a motif on the arch spandrels and panels on the roadside of Westminster Bridge, and the crest was the same as that seen on the helmet-plates of some soldiers fighting against the British. In St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the home of the Order of the Garter, the personal standards of German members still hung above their stalls. The surname of Britain’sruling family remained as Germanic as ever – a continuing source of discomfort, resentment, anger. Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, ruler of a hostile power – one of the leaders of the enemy camp – even bore the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Gotha was of course also the name of the aircraft responsible for the recent massacre of civilians.
    It got worse. Two of the king’s relations were fighting for Germany while holding British titles: the Dukes of