The blame for the sinking of the Lusitania should be shared equally between the Germans, the British and the USA. To what extent is this justified?

prohibited from sinking boats not in government service, as apparently the Lusitania was, and therefore, by sinking it they were not committing an act of war but just killing innocent lives. Also historians can place the blame on the Germans for the sinking purely because it was a German torpedo that hit the ship, whether it was justifiable or not. Secondly the British are to blame for the sinking of the Lusitania. This is because the Britain’s wanted the boat to be sunk and consequently made no effort to defend the ship when it crossed U-boat inhabited waters. The British had a very good motive for doing this, which was to try and persuade the USA to join their side in the war. At this point, the USA were considering joining either side, but the British saw this as an opportunity to force the Germans to anger the US by sinking one of their ships. The British will have known about these U-boats but the fact they made no effort to stop or defend the Lusitania, means they are responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania as well. Finally, why the USA should be blamed. The Germans, were in need of help from the USA in the war, and would not try to anger them in anyway. Therefore, it must have meant that they had a good reason to destroy the Lusitania, i.e. it was carrying explosives and ammunition. The USA should therefore be blamed for sending a fully equipped boat across dangerous waters, where the Germans are obviously going to attack it in a form of defence.         However there are historians that would say that the USA, British or Germans were not responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania. Firstly, the Germans may be excused the blame if the Lusitania was indeed fully armed and they viewed its sinking as an act of war. Also historians may say that the British were not to be blamed. Historians may claim that their plan was too risky in that it may back fire in the USA becoming angry at them for not protecting them against the U-boats, and therefore they would not have undergone this plan, suggesting that they had no idea that the Lusitania was going to be torpedoed. Finally, the USA may escape the blame, because if the British had set out with their plan, then the Americans may have been expecting defence from the British and could have done nothing when the ship was attached.         In conclusion, having looked at both sides of this argument, ‘the blame for the sinking of the Lusitania should be shared equally between the Germans, the British and the USA’, is justifiable. A fitting summary would be that an American boat sent foolishly across the dangerous seas, was attacked by a German U-boat, even though the boat may not have been in government service, but was not defended by the British who were trying to create hate between the USA and the Germans. By James Scott