SS Robin Moor was a United States cargo steamship that was built in 1919 and sunk by a German U-boat in May 1941, several months before the US entered World War II.

However, the sinking of a neutral ship in an area considered until then to be relatively safe from U-boats, and the plight of her crew and passengers, caused a political incident in the United States.

The attack caused many to question the motives of U-69's commander, Jost Metzler as Hitler himself, preparing for his June 1941 invasion of Russia, had expressly ordered his Navy chief, Admiral Erich Raeder: "...in the next weeks all attacks on naval vessels in the closed area should cease..." Hitler did not wish to provoke America into joining with Britain in its fight against Germany.

[3] In May 1941 Robin Moor, crewed by nine officers and 29 men, was sailing unescorted with eight passengers and a commercial cargo from New York to Mozambique via South Africa.

[8] When Robin Moor was stopped, U-69 forbade her crew to touch their wireless, but after the sinking, U-69's captain, Jost Metzler, reportedly promised the survivors he would radio their position.

[10][12] On 13 June, two Connecticut residents independently stated they heard short-wave broadcasts from Italy that a submarine had docked at an Italian port carrying eight survivors from Robin Moor.

The occupants of the rescued lifeboat presumed that the remaining crew and passengers were lost, but the British Ellerman Lines cargo ship City of Wellington found them on 2 June.

[8] Isolationist United States Senator Gerald Nye, blaming Britain for sinking Robin Moor, said he would be "very much surprised if a German submarine had done it because it would be to their disadvantage" to torpedo the ship.

Also speaking about the Panay incident, Representative Melvin J. Maas (R-MN) said "Japan... not only failed to rescue survivors but machine-gunned them afterward and we didn't go to war."

His message concluded:In brief, we must take the sinking of the Robin Moor as a warning to the United States not to resist the Nazi movement of world conquest.

[citation needed] In Congress, isolationist Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT) claimed that 70% of the ship's cargo constituted the kind of materials meeting both German and British standards for contraband, defended the legality of Germany's right to destroy her, and characterised Roosevelt's message as an effort to bring the United States into the war.

[citation needed] In October 1941, federal prosecutors in the espionage case against a group of 33 defendants known as the "Duquesne Spy Ring" adduced testimony that Leo Waalen, one of the 14 accused men who had pled not guilty, had submitted the sailing date of the Robin Moor for radio transmission to Germany, five days before the ship began her final voyage.