THE 1918 SHOTGUN PROTEST
Millions of combatants in World War I were killed by all manner of weapons, including aerial bombs, artillery, bayonets, hand grenades, pistols, revolvers, and rifles. The machine gun, the war’s most prolific killer, slaughtered untold thousands. Poison gas brought its own horrific casualties. Yet only one weapon—the pump shotgun American troops used beginning in 1918—led to a diplomatic protest. Ironically, the protest came from Germany, which during World War I had unleashed on its enemies such instruments of killing as the Zeppelin airship bomber, the Maxim MG-08 machine gun, the Type 93 U-boat, the Big Bertha howitzer, the Paris Gun, and, of course, chlorine gas.
On July 21, 1918, German soldiers captured a U.S. soldier from the 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, near Baccarat, France. He was carrying a weapon they had never seen: a Winchester Model 97 pump-action shotgun. On September 11, near Villers-en-Haye, the Germans captured a U.S. soldier from the 6th Infantry Regiment, 5th Division, who was also carrying a Winchester Model 97.
The weapon gave American troops an important edge in close combat.
On September 15, 1918, the German government—an unsigned diplomatic note—transmitted to the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, then to the Swiss Embassy, and eventually to the American legation in Berne, Switzerland. The note asserted that the use of shotguns by U.S. forces violated Article 23(e) of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions and warned that any American captured with a shotgun or shotgun ammunition would be executed.
