Why the USA declared war on Germany in 1917

Authors Avatar
There were many reasons the United States of America decided to declare war upon Germany in 1917. Firstly, although America formally joined the allies at that time, they were involved on a financial level in terms of loaning money. In addition to this, Germany was sinking America’s boats in the Atlantic Ocean, of which the most famous case was the torpedoed Lusitania. This spread anti-German feeling across America. Although they cut back for a year, the Germans began to get desperate for quick victory. They began unrestricted submarine warfare which entailed that they sink any ship of any nationality sailing on British waters. During this
Join now!
process they sunk 8 American ships. These were the long term causes. The short-term cause was the Zimmerman telegram. Zimmerman, the German foreign minister sent a telegram to his agents in Mexico telling them that should America join the war then Mexico should fight America’s southern cities. It was intercepted and published in the press and it was this that lead America to join the war on the side of the allies. In my opinion it was Germany that lost the war. This is so since Germany’s final major plan was “The Ludendorff Offensive”, in which they gambled their armies ...

This is a preview of the whole essay