Can anyone help me get more info on the subject?
Thanks. FG
The truth is that Woodrow Wilson got us into the war because he saw it as an opportunity to enact “war socialism” in the US.
I'm still trying to figure out what got the U.S. into a war with Libya? Did we have a dumba$$ for President then, too?
The U.S. got into the war because it was rumored that BP was going to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sounds like it should answer your question, since it appears that it has been asked before.
I think this portion of the article on her essays may answer your question:
"I remembered almost nothing about it. It is not, as I thought, a rather elegiac portrait of the good old days before the world tore itself apart, but a clear-eyed depiction of how the nations of the West were setting themselves up, all unwittingly, for the catastrophe to come."
The Lusitania was carrying war materiel, but it certainly had no capability to take offensive action against submarines. It was an ocean liner. The only way it could attack anything would be by ramming.
Simplest explanation is probably Mencken’s: By the late Spring and Early Summer of 1917 Germany had basically won WW-I fair and square; France, England, and Russia richly deserved to spend the next hundred years under German hegemony or dominion and WOULD have... except that Germany had exhausted herself doing it and at that point in time, Britain owed those big banks in NY too much money for Wilson to allow her to lose a major war.
This is an odd way to phrase things.
Propaganda it might have been. Or not. In any case I cannot see the word "conquered" being appropriate here. "defeated," perhaps.
Is English your first language?
We held ourselves in reserve until the Germans started threatening NY. Then we moved in to stop them.
Signed,
“Oddball”
Kelly’s Heroes
Restricted submarine [U-Boat] warfare. At the time of WWI, subs were required to give merchant ships [even armed ones] warning and a chance to abandon ship - per international accords.
Germany implemented unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915 [no warning sinkings] and was presured by the threat of war with the US into discontinuing it. The Lusitania was sunk during 1915 and was an armed merchant cruiser and was also carrying arms and ammo as well as passengers including 200+ US citizens.
The German complaints that the US was selling arms to the UK in violation of the neutrality act were ignored. The official policy was to sell to all sides but, they had to pick the weapons up in the US. The RN blockade ment that in practice only the allies could buy from the US.
After the 1915 incidents the UK intercepted a German proposal to Mexico to enter the war on the German side if the US entered the war on the Allied side. Promised to get the Mexican territories lost in the Mexican-American War back. The UK promptly gave a copy of the intercept to the USG and the press to further poisen US-German relations.
In 1917 Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Wilson asked for and got a declaration of war shortly after on the basis of “Freedom of the seas”.
Ironically, one of the first orders to the US Submarine Force Pacific in WWII [24 years later] was to implement “Unrestricted Submarine Warfare” against Japan.
Too lazy to do your own research, Bub?
I think Wellington said it best when he said: “The loser is the one that makes the last big mistake.”
WWI was full of mistakes and conflicting interests. Germany’s last big mistake was the resumption of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare in 1917 - it provided the cause bella for the US to enter. Before that, Russia was out, France had mutneys in its forces, and the UK was worn out. It was fresh US troops that carried the fight in 1918...
1. We had sold an enormouse ammount of stuff to France and England on credit. If they lost American industry wasn’t going to get paid. That bolstered the support of Amerian industry to get involved when things were looking bad for the UK and France.
2. Wilson was a socialist and a war crisis allowed him to move on progressive policies. The two most destructive being Constitutional amendments that created the direct election of Senators (thus ending the first Republic) and the institution of a progressive income tax.
The direct reasons were German unrestricted submarine warfare against all shipping around the British Isles (Lusitania) and the Zimmerman note that offered Mexico US territory if Mexico agreed to openly attack the US.
The indirect reasons were that Americans had a stronger cultural affinity for England than they did for Germany; the stupidity of the German army in carrying out atrocities in Belgium and Kaiser Wilhelm’s dunderheaded arrogance.
It had something to do with the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor.
You might really enjoy reading Ken Follett’s new book “Fall of Giants” - the first of a trilogy. It’s fiction but based on the real events of WWI, and as he says, is based on things that happened or “could have happened”. A great read.
Bookmark. I’d like to add more but WWI is not an area I’ve read a great deal on. It’s fascinating though, you feel like there were chess pieces being moved around the board setting up for something bigger.
The Balfour Declaration was dated November 2, 1917. It is real short in fact here it is in total:
November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
This statement didn't hit the American press until almost two weeks later when it was discussed in a November 14th New York Times article titled: "ZIONISTS GET TEXT OF BRITAIN'S PLEDGE; Balfour's Declaration Promises Defense of Jews' Rights in Palestine and Elsewhere."
At any rate, I'm just interested how you made the connection to your research into America's entry into the Great War.
As for resources to help with your research, I also recommend John Keegan's "The First World War" as well as Barbara Tuchman's "Guns of August". On top of that I recommend Jennifer D. Keene's "Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America". This book may not answer your question as to America's entry into the war, but it is a good work on attempting to tie the social and military aspects of that time period together. It provides a better sense of context as you look at other source material.
Germany tried its hand at disrupting many countries. It pushed genral jihad against the British. It tried to get the Irish to raise up. And it tried to get many different people's under the Russian heel to rise up.
Don't know what is wrong with your brain that you feel a need to blame Jews. Germany used ties with Germans and Irish in America to keep the US out of the war. And Central Power Jews volunteered to fight. Which is more than I can say for those in Czarist Russia. And before you play the silly Judeo-Bolshevik line, it was the German High Command that financed the Bolsheviks and helped them enter Russia.
I had a grandfather and a great-grandfather fight in this war. My father's father was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. He and his cousins volunteered out of patriotic loyalty to a government they served for generations. My maternal grandfather's father was drafted in the Czarist army to fight for a regime that persecuted him.
Just what was going on in most of February and into March, I don't know. I guess they had to set everything up for mobilization, and keep a close eye on what was going on in France and in Russia.
Other factors like the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram certainly did much to set the stage for the declaration of war. You could add Britain's cutting the German telegraphic cable, Germany's sinking other neutral ships, US loans to Britain, and the ancestry of Wilson and most other Americans as contributing factors.
But I suspect the basic answer is that Wilson wanted to get into the war to prevent unrestricted submarine warfare from putting Britain out of the war. Or perhaps he recognized that unrestricted submarine warfare would mean Germany's sinking many US ships and the alternatives were to 1) cease trade with Britain (unthinkable at the time) 2) put up with loss of American lives and cargo (likewise unthinkable) or 3) go to war.
But Wilson's speech is probably available online. You could google it and come to your own conclusion.