In February 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, targeting all ships—including neutral ones—in the Atlantic to starve Britain into submission. This aggressive naval strategy escalated tensions and helped draw the United States into World War I. The campaign influenced war poetry by highlighting technological terror at sea and the human cost of total war strategies.

The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 intensified themes of naval terror in poetry and propaganda literature. Poets like T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden addressed the anxieties of wartime, using their verses to critique the brutality of conflict and its impact on society.