## Metadata - Author: [[Erik Larson]] - Full Title: Dead Wake - Category: #books ## Highlights - The western front had become a reciprocating engine of blood and gore, each side advancing then retreating across a no-man’s-land laced with barbed wire, gouged with shell holes, and mounded with dead men. ([Location 1923](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N6PD3GE&location=1923)) - GERMANY’S U-BOAT campaign waxed and waned, in step with the rising and falling influence of factions within its government that favored and opposed submarine warfare against merchant ships. Kaiser Wilhelm himself expressed a certain repugnance for attacks on passenger liners. In February 1916, he told fleet commander Admiral Scheer, “Were I the Captain of a U-boat I would never torpedo a ship if I knew that women and children were aboard.” The next month, Germany’s most senior advocate of unrestricted warfare, State Secretary Alfred von Tirpitz, resigned, in frustration. This brought a sympathy note from an odd quarter—Britain’s former First Sea Lord, Jacky Fisher. “Dear Old Tirps,” he wrote. He urged Tirpitz to “cheer up” and told him, “You’re the one German sailor who understands War! Kill your enemy without being killed yourself. I don’t blame you for the ([Location 5006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N6PD3GE&location=5006)) - submarine business. I’d have done the same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn’t believe it when I told ’em. Well! So long! ([Location 5014](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N6PD3GE&location=5014))