Unrestricted submarine warfare

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Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships without warning. Such surprise attacks are in violation of the 1930 First London Naval Treaty, which specifies that "...except in the case of persistent refusal to stop on being duly summoned, or of active resistance to visit or search, a warship, whether surface vessel or submarine, may not sink or render incapable of navigation a merchant vessel without having first placed passengers, crew and ship's papers in a place of safety. For this purpose the ship's boats are not regarded as a place of safety...."

However, the London Rules were obsolete before they were signed (though the Kriegsmarine based its Prize Rules on them). The use of disguised guns on auxiliary cruisers increased the risk inherent in stop-and-search rules, but the primary danger came from the wide-spread adoption of radio, which meant that a merchant could call for help as soon as a submarine appeared, even before it could issue its demands. Coupled with the rapidly-growing speed, range, and destructive power of combat aircraft, this technology ensured that complying with these rules would be suicide for any submarine.

For the first few weeks of the World War II the Kriegsmarine attempted to honour Germany's treaty obligations, but that attempt was in trouble almost immediately following the sinking of SS Athenia by U-30, and it was abandoned on October 17, 1939 with the issuing of War Order No. 154.

During the post war Nuremberg Trials, in evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules, Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war.<ref name="NT">Judgement : Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School</ref>

Since the introduction of long-range anti-ship missiles after World War II, which are able to destroy a ship from beyond the horizon, the London Rules are universally regarded as entirely moot. It is indicative that despite the rules being used in the indictment of Dönitz, and although he was found guilty of breaching the 1936 Naval Protocol, his sentence was not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare at the Nuremberg Trials.<ref name="NT"/>

There have been three major campaigns of unrestricted submarine warfare: