United States Enters the War
The United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, having been re-elected five months earlier on having kept out of it. Two things changed Woodrow Wilson's position. The first was unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany resumed it on 1 February 1917 — sinking any ship in the war zone without warning, including neutrals — on a calculation its own naval staff had made explicitly: that Britain could be starved out in about five months, and that America could not raise, train and ship an army fast enough to matter before that happened. It was a deliberate gamble on the arithmetic of time. The second was the Zimmermann Telegram. The German foreign secretary instructed his minister in Mexico to propose an alliance in the event of American entry, with the recovery of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as the inducement. British naval intelligence had broken the code, held the message for weeks while contriving a cover story for how they had got it, and gave it to Washington in late February. It was published on 1 March, and Zimmermann confirmed it publicly rather than denying it. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration on 2 April, saying the world must be made safe for democracy. The vote was 82 to 6 and 373 to 50. The army numbered about 128,000 and had to be built. Conscription began in May, and around two million men were in France by the autumn of 1918. Germany's gamble had been roughly right about the timing and wrong about the war.
- Year: 1917 CE
- Category: Political
