America and the Great WarAmerica and the Great War

AP US HistoryEast High School

Mr. PetersonSpring 2009

Collapse of European Peace

• Competing alliances

• Anglo-German rivalry

• Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Wilson’s Neutrality

• Remain “neutral in thought as well as deed.”-Wilson

• Impossible • Split sympathies• Reports of German atrocities• Economic ties to Britain• Submarine warfare

• Sinking of Lusitania (1916)• Sussex attacked• Germans relent

Preparedness vs. Pacifism

• Pressure from fellow progressives

• Ethnic pressures

• 1916 election• “What did we do? What did we do?...We didn’t

go to war!”• “He kept us out of war.”

A War for Democracy

• Wilson calls for “peace without victory”• Zimmermann Telegram (Feb. 1917)• Russian Revolution topples Czar (March 1917) • Germans torpedo 3 American ships

• War declared April 6, 1917• “a war to end all wars”• “a concert of free peoples…shall bring peace

and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”

The American Expeditionary Force

• Selective Service Act• Led by John J. Pershing

• Trench warfare in France• Assist French in repelling German assaults

• Château-Thierry• Rheims

• Meuse-Argonne Offensive

• Germans surrender November 11, 1918• Armistice Day

New Technology of Warfare

• Machine guns• Higher-powered artillery• Tanks• Flame throwers• Chemical weapons

• Mustard gas• Gas masks required

• Motorized vehicles• Airplanes• Zeppelins • New battleships• Torpedoes

High Casualty Rates

• British Empire 1,000,000

• France 1,700,000

• Germany 2,000,000

• Austro-Hungarian 1,500,000

• Russia 1,700,000

• Italy 460,000

• United States 112,000

America and the Great WarAmerica and the Great War

AP US HistoryEast High School

Mr. PetersonSpring 2009