Though now mostly forgotten, Nazi Germany's U-boat campaign targeting the United States and its allies in the early days of World War II was Pearl Harbor-level catastrophe. U-boats operated along the Atlantic Coast, in the Caribbean and in the Gulf of Mexico and torpedoed freighters, tankers and transports with impunity. Between January and August of 1942, when the Allies were finally able to deploy effective countermeasures, the Nazis were able to sink 609 ships, destroy millions of tons of vital shipping, and claim the lives of thousands of sailors, both military and civilian. The operation also caused Mexico to enter the war on the side of the Allies.
This chron.com article about the now-almost-forgotten campaign and Galveston's role in defense against it contained this tidbit:
Rumors flew wildly, of secret German submarine bases in Mexico and crewmen coming ashore to go shopping or to the movies in Houston or New Orleans.
Which got me to thinking: if we had the same vectors of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the early 1940s as we do today - namely, social media - would the United States even had won World War II? One can only imagine the discord, disunity and chaos that Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany would have been able to sow had such technologies existed at the time.
It's unsettling to think about, especially since entities that wish to do harm to the United States are employing these exact practices today.
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