Posted on 04/02/2014 4:57:19 AM PDT by Master Zinja
On this date in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked the United States Congress to declare war on Germany, following the publication of the Zimmerman Telegram (in which Germany offered to finance Mexico's entry into the war on their side and for Mexico to attempt to reconquer Texas, New Mexico and Arizona) and Germany's resumption of submarine attacks on American ships. Congress would declare war on April 6th.
You have to remember...at this point, the war had been going on for almost three years (August 1914). The Russians had lost control of their government at this stage. The French and British had wasted tens of thousands lives with no advancements and morale rapidly declining to a point of anarchy among the troops. And the belief by the Germans of a short one-year war had dissolved away public trust in the Prussian military and the Kaiser.
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