The American entry into the Great war.

The American entry into the war.

When World War one began in 1914, the American president of the time Woodrow Wilson decided to keep America out of Europe’s troubles, and remain neutral. However America appeared to be a one-sided neutral country, as they supplied Britain and France with loans, weapons and food. Historians also believe that America would have helped Germany, but the British navy prevented that. Perhaps, American public opinion was divided, as many Germans and German-speaking people were a considerable part of the population. They would have agreed with Woodrow Wilson’s decision to not involve the United States in the war in Europe. But eventually because of a variety of reasons America joined the allies in the ‘Great War’. It was to be a short involvement as, for whatever reasons the war ended a number of months later. So did American entry into the war precipitate to the end of the three-year stalemate of the Western Front?

The American public opinion turned against Germany after the Lusitania was sunk in 1915. The RMS Lusitania was a controversial ship, believed to be carrying weapons or ammunition to Britain but roughly 2000 civilians were on board and 100 of the drowned people were American. This feeling strengthened after the German U-boats against put unrestricted submarine warfare into action in 1917. This meant that all ships heading towards the British coastline or believed to be helping the British were sunk. While this did not directly influence the American government to enter the war against the Germans it reinforced Congresses view that the United States should not ally with Germany.

In spite of this during 1917, a swift victory for the Germans was essential as food supplies were running out at home and soon there would not be many boys/men who would be able to join the army. The Kaiser knew that unrestricted submarine warfare and consequently the unavoidable sinking of US civilian ships would almost certainly provoke America into declaring war on Germany. Bearing this in mind, he needed to force an Allied surrender before America could mobilise its troops and make an impact on the Western front. But eventually he was convinced that a swift victory could ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Arthur Zimmermann became German foreign secretary in November 1916 after serving in diplomatic service in China. The United States raised its hopes of the war ending soon when this was learnt, as they believed Zimmermann to be peaceful. However they were proved drastically wrong… The Zimmermann telegram was sent from Germany to Mexico during January 1917. It promised Mexico parts of the United States as spoils of war if Mexico would declare war on the United States to keep the U.S. from committing troops and material to the war in Europe. Zimmermann's main motive was to pose America such problems at home that it could not afford to send troops to Europe. This would be achieved (he hoped) by Germany posing a threat to America's east coast, while Japan attacked from the west and Mexico invaded from the south. The telegram had been encrypted (put into a code which made it nonsense). However British cryptologists in Admiralty ‘Room 15’ decrypted the telegram and alerted the American president on the 24th February. This was a large blow to Germany when they found out that telegram had been revealed by (they believed) someone in the Mexican telegraph office, as MI5 had one of their agents ‘H’ retrieve the telegram from there and that version was revealed to the press, this made sure that the Germans didn’t alter their codes, which would make the British cryptologists job a lot harder.

Had the Zimmermann telegraph worked there would have been a large knock-on effect on the Western Front. The Germans would be supporting the Mexicans and would need to devote resources to that. The Allies would have loose morale, as they had been expecting the Americans to join them. America would, probably defeat the Mexicans, however if in the meantime Germany won the war in Europe more battle-experienced troops would be able to join against the Americans. However the expertise of the cryptologists in the British admiralty prevented this.

The Germans were now against the Americans and time however America still had to train up its armed forces before sending them across the Atlantic. A division was sent immediately though more troops would only arrive in May 1918. So the German offensive of March 1918 was their last chance of winning the war before America joined the war against them. The campaign was a considerable success with German troops getting as close as 50 miles of Paris. There were two major failings of the German advance that enabled the allies to stop them these were, the supply lines could not keep up with the troops, and those troops traveled in a single large group, which enabled the Allies to attack the flanks. A couple of thousand American soldiers were also now against the Germans.

When eventually America did join the war Wilson said that he made the decision “with the keenest regret” so even after the Zimmermann telegraph had been received, America still wanted to abstain from being involved in the ‘Great War’. The sinking of the Lusitania, unrestricted submarine warfare, Zimmermann’s telegraph, all these must have been going through Woodrow Wilson’s mind when he said those words, taking the United States into the war.

However as mentioned above, American troops didn’t arrive until May 1918 and the war ended in November. That is only 5 months of action, although losses of American troops were still quite high, but it could be debated whether they did actually have an effect on the war or not. On one hand, you have a rather large number of losses, and the fact that the German campaign almost succeeded but the advance was halted around the same time that the Americans began to arrive, while on the other side the Luddendorf offensive was the Germans last gap effort as the Americans were about to arrive.

Laurence Oglesby

10M5

07/05/07

Page of