What got the USA into WW1? ZOT needed.

myself | various | varios

[freepguy]

I'm trying to get the facts that show why the USA got into WW1. As I can tell, Wilson was president. The US was neutral...did not want to get involved. Britian and the Allied Powers were losing the war against the Central Powers. The Balfour Declaration promised a Jewish state in Palestine. The Lusitana was armed and ordered to attack German U-boats. Propaganda was created to convince American populace that Germany needed to be conqered.

Can anyone help me get more info on the subject?

Thanks. FG

[Republican Wildcat]

More info on that:

On January 9th, 1917, Bethmann-Hollweg went to a meeting at Pless. He found the navy's and army's hierarchy against him - and they had already won over the Kaiser. The decision for unrestricted submarine warfare was made on that day and it started on February 1st 1917. Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in an effort to bring Germany to its senses. He hoped that such an action would force Germany to go back on its decision. This did not happen and relations between America and Germany became very strained when British intelligence intercepted a message from Germany to Mexico whereby Germany offered her support to Mexico if America entered the war against Germany because of unrestricted submarine warfare. By March 21st, seven American merchant ships had been sunk by the Germans. Wilson summoned Congress and on April 6th 1917, America entered the war.

Source: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/unrestricted_submarine_warfare.htm

[count-your-change]

Prez. Wilson wanted to stay out of the war but then Geman U-boats started to attack American merchant ships and Wilson asked for a declaration of war.
Soon after troops were being sent to France.

Suggest Barbara Tuchman’s “Guns of August”, outstanding history of WWI.

[jongaltsr]

It is simple.
The USSR planted people not only in the movie industry but also primarily into the news media ownership and control.
Their “plants” were also to infiltrate the labor unions (PRIMARILY) the Teachers Unions.

Know your history even if the media won’t report it for you.

[davetex]

I always thought it was the Comanche/Kiowa attack on Adobe Walls? I could be wrong about this.

/S

[going hot]

Pearl bailey got bombed in germany.

[SeeSharp]

Wilson understood that the end of the war would result in a grand new world order - similar to the so-called Concert of Europe established after the Napoleonic wars. The war hawks knew that if the US didn't join in the war then the US would have no say in the design of that new world order.

Everything said about keeping us out of the war was a lie to get reelected in 1916. Everything said in justification of entering the war was a lie also. It is true that the Germans sank the Lusitania. But where is it written that American citizens are somehow entitled to travel through a declared war zone on a vessel belonging to one of the belligerents carrying war supplies and publicly ordered to ram enemy submarines demanding surrender? As for the Zimmerman note, it is simply ridiculous to imagine that the Mexican government would have acted on it. Someone in the German foreign office was having delusions. And anyway if the US government had really believed there was a conspiracy for Mexico to invade and recapture the western United States then it isn't clear how fighting Germans in France was going to stop them. Shouldn't we have invaded Mexico?

[TomServo]

http://connect.in.com/the-onion-newspaper/photos-1-1-1-6e996fd77791f14d9866869c223eee2d.html

[4buttons]

“Suggest Barbara Tuchman’s “Guns of August”, outstanding history of WWI.”

She wrote “The Zimmerman Telegram”, also on topic.

Keegan’s “The First World War”, too.

[ZULU]

I disagree.

Wilson was a manipulative, arrogant, Anglophilic elitist who wanted us to support Great Britain against the Germans.

[rovenstinez]

I talked to soldiers who fought in WWI....and they didn’t know why.

[4buttons]

“Pearl bailey got bombed in germany.”

-most every night... pretty good with the schnapps.

[umgud]

In before “Bush’s fault.”

You all joke about something being Bush' fault, but if you were honest with yourselves, you'd know this was more likely something Cheney would do. /s

[Verginius Rufus]

Barbara Tuchman's book is well-written but incomplete--as I recall she pretty much ignores Austria-Hungary in explaining how the war came about.

When I was a student she came to the university where I was studying and gave a talk to the history graduate students--but only the women students were allowed to attend.

[arrogantsob]

It is hard to believe that America would have benefited in ANY way from a German victory.

[Aliska]

You mean somebody did a hatchet job on Photoshop? Oh wait . . .

[Happy Rain]

Both Wilson and FDR won because they promised to keep us out of the World Wars.

There's your answer—socialists lie.

Just look at our present one.

[dfwgator]

Would the Soviet Union even have existed if the Germans had won?

[Celtic Cross]

That said, U.S. ships sunk a number of U-boats, killing Germans.

In my humble opinion, there was no good reason for the US to get entangled in a european war.

George Washington had something to say about that.

[SeeSharp]

An excellent book on the First World War is The Illusion Of Victory: America In World War I by Thomas Fleming.

[drbuzzard]

I’ll go down your facts:

Wilson was president. He was a progressive, and not at all a practical man. He had stupid notions that democracy automatically makes people good rather than the converse which actually true (good people make for a good democracy). He had a clear dislike for the constitution and disparaged it frequently because it interfered with the direct democracy which he felt would support his populist/progressive programs.

The U.S. was neutral, at least the populace was. Wilson, itching to get in on the fight to be able to persecute his world view did some very questionable acts for a neutral power. He took a very clear slant towards the British. I should say it was neutral until provoked.

Britain and the Allied Powers were not losing. They were stalemated. The war went into a stalemate due to a combination of bad generalship and too many technological innovations (machine guns, rapid fire air burst artillery, barbed wire) which stymied the offense. Russia did get their butts kicked, but only withdrew from the war after the revolution (second, the first democratic one formed a government which vowed to continue the war, the Communists overthrew them without any real popular support, and signed a very unfavorable peace treaty).

I’m not familiar with the Balfour Declaration, but that sounds more like something which happened later. At this point the middle east (aside from Egypt) was mostly under control of the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman Empire sided with the Central powers (Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and after the war the Middle East was partitioned under Britain and France in a sort of trusteeship by the League of Nations (a proto-UN idea of Wilson which was just as ineffectual, though not as corrupt).

The Lusitania was not actually armed. However it was carrying a large cargo of war contraband (ammunition-millions of rounds), which the U.S. denied vehemently after it went down. Divers in recent years have demonstrated that the contraband was present.

Probably the main tipping point with the U.S. populace in favor of the war (for all the work Wilson did to try and shift public opinion) was that Germany actually tried to get the Mexicans to attack us(or act as a staging area for such an attack by the Germans). It was a completely ill considered venture since Mexico was barely stable and no threat to anyone. It’s also about impossible that Germany could have shipped over any significant troops undetected. In any case the negotiations behind this plan got out and it enraged public opinion so war ended up inevitable. There was plenty of propaganda nonsense (”make the world safe for democracy”) and such, but it really came down to the Germans making a clear (and idiotic) causus belli.