Why Did The United States Enter World War I ?
When World War I started in the year 1914, the United States stayed neutral. The US followed an isolationist foreign policy as the government was worried that order countries would end up interfering in US policies. However, the US still ended up entering World War I and there were several reasons behind it. |
While the US maintained a neutral policy, it was flooded with propaganda. Most of the propaganda was pro British. While there was propaganda supporting the Germans, it was not too much and the public did not support it. The people thought that Germany was risky monarchy that had had autocratic militarist thinking and had a hidden agenda to destabilize the democracy in the US. Plus, there were rumors that the Germans were poisoning the water supplies in the US, indulging in industrial sabotage and resorting to espionage among the labor unions in the country. These rumors and the submarine warfare carried on by the Germans was more than enough to make the Americans distrustful of the Germans.
Before the 1915, while carrying out their submarine warfare, the German submarines would give a warning to the ships and then allow them time to evacuate the passengers. It was only then the ships were sunk. However, in the year 1915, this policy of the Germans changed. They sank a ship called Lusitania without issuing a warning and this lead to the death of 124 Americans on board the ship. Then in 1916, the Germans sank another vessel, the Sussex. This angered the American public as they felt the attacks violated their rights at sea. Then, in 1916, the US President, Woodrow Wilson, increase the size of the US military and also warned the Germans against such attacks.
This did cause the Germans to stop submarine warfare, but just temporarily. In the year 1917, the German began the warfare against ended diplomatic ties with the US. Military strategists felt that if the US would enter the war at that point, it would cause the Germans to lose. However, to prevent the US from entering the war, the German Foreign Minister, Alfred Zimmermann, tried to get Japan and Mexico to attack the US in return for financial assistance from Germany. The British were able to decode the telegram containing this message and a copy was sent to the US.
Hence, due to the ongoing submarine warfare and the telegram sent by Zimmermann, President Woodrow Wilson asked the US Congress to declare war against Germany. On 6th April 1917, the Congress did just that, and the US entered World War I.
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Just like any other war, even World War I was plagued by propaganda with each side trying to show that the enemy was bad. However, due to propaganda, the people did not find out the truth and the government made sure that the people only found out things about the war that they wanted them to find out. However, the level of propaganda used during World War I was unimaginable. 