For nearly three years, the United States watched World War I while nations like Great Britain, France, and Russia fought against Germany and the Central Powers. America maintained a policy of neutrality till April 6, 1917, when the U.S. officially declared war on Germany.
Staying neutral became impossible for President Woodrow Wilson due to several events that pushed the American public toward war. As Germany began using unrestricted submarine warfare, their U-boats would be able to sink any ship, including merchant and passenger vessels suspected of carrying supplies to the Allies. Many American lives were lost at sea, most notably during the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915.
In early 1917, British intelligence intercepted a secret message from Germany to Mexico. The telegram proposed a military alliance, suggesting that if the U.S. entered the war, Mexico should attack from the south to reclaim lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Moreover, American banks had made massive loans to the Allied powers. If the Allies lost the war, those debts might never be repaid, which was a threat to the U.S. economy.
When war was declared, the U.S. military was relatively small. To build a force capable of fighting in Europe, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which led to the drafting of 2.8 million men. By the summer of 1918, the American Expeditionary Force was sending roughly 10,000 troops to France every day, providing energy and resources to the exhausted Allied front.
Over the next year and a half, the U.S. and its allies pushed back the Central Powers. One by one, Germany’s allies surrendered. Finally, on November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice, effectively ending the fighting.
When the war finally ended, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and around 50,000 of them had lost their lives.
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