The United States in the First World War

The United States entered the war against Germany on 6 April 1917, after almost three years of neutrality, when Berlin resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. A country that had almost no land army sent more than 2 million soldiers to France. In the autumn of 1918 the American army fought the Meuse–Argonne Offensive, the largest battle in the history of the United States. President Woodrow Wilson brought about the creation of the League of Nations in Paris, but his own country rejected the Treaty of Versailles.

Neutrality

When war broke out in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson declared neutrality. In practice America traded above all with the Allies: the British blockade cut Germany off from its goods, and American banks made huge loans to Britain and France, which were spent in the United States on munitions, raw materials and food. Washington protested against the British contraband lists and the detention of ships, but London defended the blockade, and the dispute never went beyond an exchange of notes.

German submarine warfare was far more dangerous. On 7 May 1915 U-20 torpedoed the liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, and nearly 1,200 people died, among them more than a hundred Americans. After the sinking of the Arabic Germany gave way, and after the torpedoing of the Sussex Washington threatened to break off relations and Berlin again restricted its attacks.

In 1916 Wilson and the Democrats campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war!”, and on 7 November the President won the election. In a note of December 1916 he asked the warring states to state their peace terms, and on 22 January 1917 he called in the Senate for “peace without victory”.

Entry into the war

On 31 January 1917 Germany informed Washington that from the following day its submarines would sink without warning all ships around the British Isles. The German high command reckoned with war with America, but believed the Americans would not manage to ship a significant army across the ocean in time. On 3 February Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Public opinion was inflamed by the Zimmermann Telegram, in which the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, offered Mexico an alliance against the United States. British naval intelligence intercepted the message, and on 28 February the State Department gave its text to the press.

On 2 April Wilson asked Congress to recognise a state of war. The Senate passed the resolution by 82 votes to 6 and the House of Representatives by 373 to 50, and on 6 April 1917 the President signed it.

The United States did not conclude an alliance with the Entente: Wilson called his country an “associated power” and wanted to keep a free hand over the peace terms. It declared war on Austria-Hungary only on 7 December 1917, and it was never at war with the Ottoman Empire, which broke off relations with it, or with Bulgaria.

A conscript army

At the beginning of April 1917 the regular army numbered about 128,000 soldiers, and there were another 80,000 or so National Guardsmen in federal service. It did not have a single division in the European sense, and had almost no heavy artillery or modern aircraft. On 28 April Congress passed conscription, and according to US government figures between 4.27 and 4.36 million men were mobilised during the war.

General John Pershing, chosen by Wilson in May, took command of the American Expeditionary Forces. On 26 June 1917 the first soldiers of the 1st Division landed at Saint-Nazaire, and on 3 November the first Americans were killed in action.

Pershing wanted an independent army with its own sector of the front in Lorraine. In the first months troops arrived slowly, but in the summer of 1918, 10,000 American soldiers were arriving in France every day. By then there were already about 2 million of them there, and roughly half of them went to the front.

At sea

The navy went into action first. Rear Admiral William Sims reached Britain in April, and on 4 May 1917 six destroyers arrived at Queenstown in Ireland, the first US Navy warships sent to fight the U-boats off the coasts of Europe. American warships escorted the convoys that turned the tide of the submarine war, and on 7 December 1917 four dreadnoughts under Rear Admiral Rodman joined the British Grand Fleet as the 6th Battle Squadron.

On the Western Front

American divisions entered the fighting during the great German offensives of spring 1918. On 28 May the 1st Division took Cantigny, and in June the 2nd Division with its Marine brigade stopped the Germans near Château-Thierry and took Belleau Wood, losing, according to the most often quoted figures, 9,777 men. In the summer the Americans fought in the Second Battle of the Marne, in which the Allies went over to the counter-offensive.

On 12–16 September 1918 the American First Army, together with the French II Colonial Corps, eliminated the German salient at Saint-Mihiel, held since 1914. On 26 September it attacked between the Meuse and the Argonne in an offensive that lasted 47 days, until the armistice. It cost the First Army about 117,000 killed and wounded and was the largest battle in the history of the United States. Smaller American forces also fought in Italy and in northern Russia, where about 4,500 soldiers landed at Archangel.

The home front

The war changed the state and society. The government set up George Creel’s Committee on Public Information, which handled propaganda, and the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 made it possible to punish even the expression of doubt about America’s part in the war. The war was largely financed with Liberty Bonds: $21 billion worth were sold. The Treasury also made $10 billion of long-term loans to the Allies.

Hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the South for the war factories of the North, and women for the first time took men’s jobs on a large scale. On 4 March 1918 the first recorded case of the influenza pandemic was noted at Camp Funston in Kansas; in the autumn, in its second wave, the flu swept through the army camps and the whole world.

The United States and the Polish question

The largest Polish community outside the Polish lands lived across the ocean. In America the Polish cause was championed by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and in his address of 22 January 1917 Wilson came out for a united and independent Poland. On 10 November 1917 the United States recognised the Polish National Committee, which Paderewski himself represented in America.

On 8 January 1918 Wilson included among his Fourteen Points an independent Polish state with free access to the sea. With the consent of the American authorities, Polish Americans recruited volunteers for the Polish army in France. More than 20,000 men passed through the training camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada.

The end of the war and the cost

In October 1918 Germany asked Wilson for an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points. The President asked whether Berlin accepted them, and on 23 October handed the matter over to the Allies, warning that with Germany’s old rulers he could discuss only surrender. After the armistice the American Third Army occupied Koblenz in the Rhineland.

The United States lost between 116,516 and 116,708 soldiers, including 53,400 killed in action and 63,100 who died of other causes. Fully two-thirds of all deaths came in the last three months of the war, when the influenza pandemic raged and the Meuse–Argonne Offensive was being fought.

On 13 December 1918 Wilson arrived in France as the first sitting US president to visit Europe. In Paris he brought about the creation of the League of Nations, but the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles in November 1919 and finally in March 1920. The United States never joined the League, and it made peace with Germany by a separate treaty in 1921.