During World War II, President Roosevelt said that the United States “must be the great arsenal of democracy.” The speech was made on December 29, 1940, nearly a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the country’s formal entry into the war.
At the time, Roosevelt was referring to the military equipment and supplies that America needed produce and send oversees to the United Kingdom to combat Nazi Germany. The country actually took a similar role in the previous war, which resulted in an attack on an expected place: the Statue of Liberty.
For the European powers who started it, World War I began in 1914. Although the United States remained officially neutral until 1917, it sold materials and equipment to the Allied nations of the Triple Entente—Russia, France, and Britain—to aid their war effort. Naturally, this did not sit well with the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. While the Central Powers were prohibited from attacking America directly, the war material being sold to the Allies was seen as fair game.
One such shipment was assembled at the Black Tom railroad yard, now part of Liberty State Park, in New York Harbor. There, train cars were packed with 2 million tons of war material ready to be shipped to England. But in the early morning darkness of Sunday, July 30, 1916, the entire shipment exploded in an incredible blast.
(National Archives)
The explosion shattered windows all across lower Manhattan and Jersey City and peppered the Statue of Liberty with shrapnel. Three men and an infant were killed by the sheer explosive energy, with more than 100 other people wounded. The crater left by the blast measured 175 feet by 375 feet. Total damage was calculated at $45 million ($1.127 trillion in 2021), with damage to Lady Liberty costing $100,000 ($2.5 million in 2021) alone. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
This heinous attack was the handiwork of German agents who had infiltrated the United States to sabotage its support of the Allies. At the time, America’s national security and intelligence networks were practically nonexistent, so the most capable investigators on the case were the NYPD’s Bomb Squad, and even they were unable to identify the German saboteurs at the time.
Congress responded with the Espionage Act, which outlawed a variety of crimes associated with the German agents, along with other wartime laws. The following year, Congress enacted the Sabotage Act. These laws granted the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the FBI, the power and jurisdiction to conduct a wide range of national security investigations. It proved effective, as German intrigues on American soil practically disappeared.
Along with other government agencies, the Bureau pursued the Black Tom bombing case after the war and identified the German agents. In the end, Germany was made to pay reparations for the attack against a neutral country.
The Black Tom bombing, along with Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram, eventually led to America’s entry into World War I. During World War II, the Espionage and Sabotage Acts, along with the specific case of the Black Tom bombing, were used by Roosevelt as justification for the internment of Japanese Americans.
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