The Great War, or World War I, officially began in Europe in 1914, the United States would remain neutral until joining the war effort in 1917(with the war ending in 1918). This post will examine and provide details into the factors that caused the United States to enter the war and why they chose to ally with the Triple Entente.
Summary -- War broke out in Europe in July 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Due to the alliance system that existed at the time, most European nations joined the conflict while the U.S., under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, remained neutral until 1917 when the country was drawn into the war due to a series of factors.
Cultural and Ethnic Links -- Despite the U.S. as a country remaining neutral for much of the war, few Americans remained truly neutral. Some people sympathized with the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) because of familial and/or ancestral ties to those nations or because of a hatred of one or more of the nations in the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia). The majority of Americans, however, favored the Triple Entente due to long-standing connections with Britain.
Economic Links -- The U.S. links to the Triple Entente/Allied Powers were economic as well as cultural. The British would blockade the North Sea which ended the U.S.'s export trade agreements with Germany which would drop in value from $345 million in 1914 to $29 million in 1916; however, the U.S.'s trade agreements with the nations of the Triple Entente increased exponentially. American business and agriculture, particularly benefited from this trade as much of it was financed by U.S. government loans to the Allied nations, totalling more than $2 billion by 1917.
Most Americans did not believe that the trade agreements and lending of money with the Allied powers violated the nation's neutrality in the war. At this time, many of those in Wilson's cabinet were in favor of siding with the Triple Entente. Wilson's slogan for his second presidential campaign boasted this false neutrality: "He kept us out of war". Although many Americans still believed the country was neutral despite its economic ties with the Allies, the Triple Alliance (also known as the Central Powers) thought otherwise.
German Submarine Warfare -- In order to fight against the British blockade and to attempt to stop trade between the Allied Powers and the U.S., the German armed forces declared a war zone around Britain in 1915. German u-boats, or submarines, would sink enemy ships in the war zone. Germany announced that in order to avoid attack, neutral nations and their citizens should refrain from entering the war zone; this would supposedly prevent attacks done in error due to mistaken identity. At the time, the international rules for marine warfare required that a warship stop and identify itself before boarding a merchant/passenger ship, removing its crew and passengers, and finally sink it. However, Germany ignored these international laws.
Germany's indiscriminate sinking of ships in order to destroy the Britiah blockade and its sinking of ships from Allied nations was the primary reason for the U.S. entry into the Great War. President Wilson argued for the freedom of the seas, insisting that America, as a neutral nation, had the right to trade with nations at a time of war. Freedom of the seas also meant that in times of peace there should be unrestricted travel of civilians in international waters and that in times of war, citizens of neutral nations should be free to travel.
Germany's response to this would lead the U.S. into the war in 1917.
* On February 1, 1917, Germany released it's new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany warned that it would attack ships without warning the vessels that were headed for Allied ports. Germany believed, at this point, that the war was at a stalemate; they knew this policy could bring the U.S. into the war but had hoped that they could break the British blockade before the U.S. could get troops to the battlefield.
* Two days later, on February 3, the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Germany. In March, tensions between the U.S. and Germany grew with the discovery of the Zimmermann Note. This note was a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German minister to Mexico urging a German military alliance with Mexico--if the Mexicans helped the Central Powera, Germany promised to support Mexico in regaining their lost territory in the southwestern U.S.
* Five U.S. merchant ships were sunk by the Germans in March 1917.
* Also in March, the Russian Revolution overthrew Czar Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty, Russia's ruling class for 500 years before its fall. At the time, it appeared that more democratic forces would take control; if the U.S. went to war, it would attempt to make Russia an ally as the U.S. would join an alliance with other democratic nations.
With the Great War a century in our past, it's important to look back on the causes for the war and the reasons why the various nations, including our own, eca e involved in the conflict. Next time here on the blog, we're going to examine the various roles that the U.S. played in the war and in future posts we'll examine the key battles and why they were so devastating.
