Alan Axelrod - Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

Despite these problems and conflicts, the majority of Americans were highly relieved that, under Wilson, the United States remained safely aloof from the cataclysm that had begun in Europe on June 28, 1914. On that pretty day in early summer, the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, paid a state visit to what was then the remote and obscure Balkan capital city of Sarajevo. The couple was gunned down by a young Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princeps. AustriaHungary responded by accusing Serbia of having plotted the assassination. A tangled series of threats, ultimatums, and alliances was suddenly set into motion—mindlessly—as if some terrible machine had come to life. And between the great gears of that mindless machine, the people of Europe would be mangled.

At first, it looked as if the war would be a short one. The German armies made a spectacular drive through France, sweeping all resistance before them. Then, in a moment of strategic uncertainty, the German column turned and, about 30 miles outside Paris, dug in. For the next four years, Europe was doomed to the fruitless horrors of trench warfare. To the, grinding tattoo of machine-gun fire, the ceaseless pounding of artillery, and the strangled moans of asphyxiation by poison gas, the nations of Europe fought one another to a standstill. France, Britain, Russia, and lesser allies were on one side; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their lesser allies were on the other.

President Wilson adroitly managed to keep the American nation out of this charnel house.. Anxious to preserve the rights of American neutrality, he sternly warned Germany in February 1915, that the United States would hold it strictly accountable for the loss of American lives in the sinking of neutral or passenger ships. Just four months later, on May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,200 people, including 128 Americans.

Many in the United States—among them Theodore Roosevelt—clamored for immediate entry into the war. Wilson demurred, but he issued a strong protest to Germany, demanding reparations and the cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare. Although Germany protested that the Lusitania carried munitions (a truth that was vigorously denied by the British), officials were anxious to avoid having to face yet another enemy. Germany ordered its U-boats to give passenger ships ample warning before firing upon them. Wilson’s firmness with Germany so deeply disturbed isolationist Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that he resigned in protest. But popular sentiment was on the side of Wilson, who had retained American honor without shedding American blood. He ran successfully for a second term, propelled by the slogan “He kept us out of war.”

Although the Germans had backed down on unrestricted submarine warfare, relations between the United States and Germany deteriorated steadily after the Lusitania sinking. In February 1917, Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, and on February 3, the U.S.S. Housatonic was torpedoed and sunk without warning. In response, President Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany. In the meantime, evidence of German espionage in the U.S. mounted, and on March 1, the American public learned of the “Zimmermann Note” or “Zimmermann Telegram.” It was a coded message, sent on January 19, 1917, from German foreign secretary Alfred Zimmermann to his nation’s ambassador to Mexico outlining the terms of a proposed German-Mexican alliance against the United States. Public sentiment left Woodrow Wilson little choice. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war. The declaration was issued on April 6.

Wilson told Congress that America must go to war in order “to make the world safe for democracy.” With this statement, the nation’s role as guardian of the Western Hemisphere expanded to an assertion of the United States as a true world power.

The puny U.S. Army numbered only about 200,000 men in 1917; by the end of the war, it would swell to 4 million. President Wilson led a spectacular mobilization, creating a welter of special war agencies, effectively placing private industry entirely under federal control. In May 1917, Wilson pushed through Congress a Selective Service bill, by authority of which 2.8 million men were drafted. About half the army—some 2 million men—served in the AEF (Allied Expeditionary Forces) led by the very able General John J. Pershing. Naval forces sailed under the command of Admiral William S. Sims.

Pershing arrived in Paris on June 14, 1917, at a low point in the fortunes of the Allies. Every major French offensive had failed, and the demoralized French army was plagued by mutinies. The British had made a major push in Flanders, which ended in a costly stalemate. The Russians, fighting on the Eastern Front, had collapsed and were rushing headlong toward a revolution that would end centuries of czarist rule and introduce communism into the world. This revolution would also result in a “separate peace” between Russia and Germany, freeing up masses of German troops for service on the Western Front. Although the first AEF troops followed Pershing on June 26, it was October 21, 1917, before units were committed to battle and the spring of 1918 before masses of Americans actually made a difference in the fighting.

Pershing’s first battle was not with the Germans, but with his French and British allies, who demanded that U.S. forces be placed under their control. Backed by Wilson, Pershing resisted this demand and at last prevailed, retaining full authority over U.S. troops.

There was yet another war to fight. Although a majority of Americans supported the war effort, many objected to spilling blood in a “foreign war.” Wilson built a powerful propaganda machine, which produced hundreds of films, posters, pamphlets, and public presentations to portray the “Great War” as a titanic contest between the forces of good and evil, of civilization versus the omnivorous “Hun.” And wherever propaganda failed, the government used emergency war powers to censor the press and to silence critics of the war. Little was done to protect the rights of U.S. citizens of German ancestry, many of whom were threatened and persecuted.

As to America’s young manhood, the noblest thing one could do was to enlist. And if waiting to be drafted was considered less than patriotic, protesting or attempting to evade the draft was downright treasonous. Those who were suspected of avoiding service were branded as “slackers” and publicly humiliated.

Between June 6 and July 1, 1918, the “Yanks” recaptured for the Allies Vaux, Bouresches, and—after a particularly bitter battle-Belleau Wood. The Americans also managed to hold the critically important Allied position at Cantigny against a great German offensive during June 9-15. If ever the cliche about a “baptism by fire” was appropriate, it was now. American troops quickly came to know what the soldiers of Europe had experienced for the past four years: the results of humanity gone mad.

Between July 18 and August 6, 85,000 American troops broke the seemingly endless stalemate of the long war by decisively defeating the German’s last major offensive at the Second Battle of the Marne. Here, at last, was a battle that could be deemed a genuine turning point. The victory was followed by Allied offensives-at the Somme, Oise-Aisne, and Ypres-Lys during August.

Although Americans fought in each of the major August offensives, they acted independently—and brilliantly—against the St. Mihiel salient during September 12-16. This battle initiated a campaign involving a massive number of U.S. troops-some 1.2 million of them—who pounded then cut German supply lines between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. The campaign, which continued until the very day of armistice, November 11, 1918, was highly successful, but terribly costly. American units suffered, on average, a casualty rate of 10 percent.