|
By April 1917, people were already calling the war between the
Allied Powers and the Central Powers the Great War, and they were
right to do so.
Millions of soldiers confronted each other on
the battlefields of France and Russia with thousands dying each day,
even when there were no big offensives.
And on April 6, 1917,
the United States declared war on the German Empire, joining France,
Great Britain, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
and Italy. They were arrayed against Germany, Austria-Hungary, the
Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.
|
President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany, April 2, 1917.
(Library of Congress photo)
|
Both sides expected a quick and relatively bloodless victory when
the war started in 1914. By the time the U.S. joined the fight, the
population of whole nations had dedicated themselves to winning the
war. Millions of men were growing ever more proficient at using new
technologies to kill each other.
The names of the bloody
battles in Europe were already well known to Americans, as a corps
of outstanding war reporters from the major newspapers covered
combat and sent back daily reports. The Somme, Verdun and Tannenberg
resonated in the United States, just as they did in Europe.
France had a long scar running across it where millions of German,
Austrian, French and British soldiers lost hundreds of thousands of
soldiers for gains measured in yards. Russian soldiers, tired of the
war, were joining revolutionaries calling for the end of the war.
Russia’s Czar Nicholas II had abdicated in March, and while Russia
continued to fight, it was half-hearted. Fighting was ongoing in
Italy, the Balkans, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Palestine and Africa.
Such was the situation on April 6, 1917, when the United States
formally declared war on the German Empire and joined the Allied
camp.
Zimmerman Telegram
President Woodrow Wilson had
campaigned and won re-election under the slogan “He Kept Us Out of
War.” He was sworn in for his second term on March 5, 1917, but
already the man who was “too proud to fight,” was revising his
thinking.
“Wilson truly wanted to stay out of the war,” said
Brian F. Neumann, a historian with the Army’s Center of Military
History and the editor of the service’s series on the war. “To his
thinking, if the United States had to enter the war, then it had to
be for more than just maintaining the status quo.”
Diplomats
in Europe called the United States “The Great Neutral” and U.S.
envoys worked to affect a peace on the continent. But on Jan. 31,
the German ambassador to the United States delivered a note to
American officials stating that Germany will begin unrestricted
submarine warfare. This meant Germany would sink without prior
warning any ship sailing near Great Britain, France, Italy and in
the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
“This is not as shocking today
as it was a century ago,” Neumann said. “The Germans were scraping
the bottom of their manpower barrel and they saw isolating Great
Britain as their best chance of knocking the country out of the war.
Americans regarded this as another example of German brutality and
their desire to make war on civilians.”
Wilson was gobsmacked,
and the next day he severed diplomatic relations with the German
Empire, but stopped short of seeking a declaration of war.
At
the end of February, Wilson learned of the Zimmermann Telegram. This
is a telegram intercepted by the British from German Foreign
Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador in Mexico City.
The telegram instructs the ambassador to offer the president of
Mexico -- with whom the United States had a strained relationship --
Texas, Arizona and New Mexico if his country declares war on the
United States.
U.S. officials confirmed the telegram was
authentic and released it to the press on Feb. 28. The American
people were enraged, and Wilson ordered merchant steamers to be
armed.
‘No Selfish Ends to Serve’
In the next few
weeks the German U-boat campaign sank three U.S-flagged ships and
that campaign was intensifying. Wilson called for a special session
of Congress to meet on April 2. On that date, Wilson asked Congress
to declare war on Germany.
“Woodrow Wilson was a very
reluctant warrior,” Neumann said. “[He thought] if Americans are
going to get involved in the quarrels of Europe, it had better be
for a greater good.”
The president saw the war leading to the
dissolution of empires, and leading to self-government.
“The
world must be made safe for democracy,” Wilson said in his address
to Congress. “Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations
of political liberty.
“We have no selfish ends to serve,” he
continued. “We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no
indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of
the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have
been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make
them.”
Four days later, Congress sent the declaration of war
to Wilson for his signature.
A Different America
Both
the Allied and Central Powers realized the power the United States
could bring to the war. The population of the United States in 1917
was roughly 103.3 million. Of those, about 15 million were
foreign-born and there was great concern that these “new Americans”
wouldn’t fight for the nation. There were, after all, hundreds of
German-language newspapers in the United States, serving more than 2
million people who had been born in the German Empire.
|
U.S. Army mounted cavalry and equipment form up at Camp Meade, Md., circa 1918. (Library of Congress courtesy photo)
|
Most Americans -- 55 percent -- lived and worked in rural areas.
Farms had little mechanized assistance. There were still good
careers for farriers, smithies and farm laborers, as horses and
mules still supplied much of the motive power in and around the
United States.
Highways were small and any long-distance trip
was on a rail car pulled by a steam engine. Aircraft were still so
new that people would come from miles around if one landed in a
nearby town.
Telegrams were how most people got news from
relatives far away, but telephone lines were growing. Radio -- then
called wireless telegraphy -- was a promising new technology. Moving
pictures -- movies -- were discounted by many as a passing fad.
By law, women could not vote. By practice, in many places
neither could African-Americans or other people of color.
And
there were divergent opinions on the war itself, Neumann said. The
United States had a large number of Irish immigrants with little
love for Great Britain.
“Millions more from Eastern and
Southern Europe had come to the United States to get away from the
arbitrary rules of aristocracies,” he said. “But still, by 1917, a
good-sized majority of Americans saw the need to enter the war on
the Allied Powers side.”
American Might
The United
States was a game-changer. America was an industrial colossus. In
1900, the U.S. Steel Corporation alone, made more steel products
than all of Great Britain. Henry Ford’s Model T and his assembly
line efficiencies meant the day of the horse and buggy were fast
becoming a thing of the past. Industrialization of agricultural
processes would mean fewer laborers needed on farms and more needed
in factories.
The United States had a literate and growing
workforce and that combined with the mass production of things and
the means to transport those things were revolutionizing America.
The United States, in short, was a country of tremendous
potential, and so was its military.
|
U.S. Soldiers leave the docks of Le Havre, France, for the Western Front in July 1918. (U.S. Army photo photo)
|
The Great War was conflict on an industrial scale. Men were as
interchangeable as cogs in a machine. Millions manned the trenches
and millions more behind the lines supplied them and still millions
more made the instruments of death.
The U.S. military wasn’t
even remotely to that kind of level. The U.S. Army had a grand total
of 121,797 enlisted men and 5,791 officers on April 6, 1917. The
Army was spread at posts around the American West and on
constabulary duties in the Philippines, Puerto Rica, Cuba and
Panama.
The Army had few machine guns, no heavy artillery,
few planes, no tanks, little munitions, few trucks and vehicles.
The National Guard had a grand total of 181,620 personnel and
they were cursed with uneven training and even older equipment than
the active force.
The Army had not organized into divisions
since the Civil War and most officers knew little or nothing about
moving and fighting large formations.
The Navy was little
better with about 300 ships and 60,000 sailors, but the Royal Navy
really did rule the waves then and the need for U.S. seapower was
not as critical.
On April 6, 1917, few could guess what role
the American military would play in The Great War. But the
declaration of war itself, marked America’s long stride to the
center of human events. America and Americans were unprepared, but
willing to make the sacrifices.
It would take time for
American military power to grow, learn and mature, but it would be
decisive in The Great War.
By Jim Garamone
DOD News
Copyright 2017
Comment on this article |
