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View Full Version : Good Morning...America pitches into "The War to End All Wars"



Okla-homey
4/6/2007, 06:56 AM
April 6, 1917: U.S. enters World War I

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90 years ago, on this day 1917, two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6to declare war against Germany (and the German Empire's principle allies, the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires,) the U.S. House of Representatives endorsed the decision by a vote of 373 to 50, and the United States formally entered the First World War which had already been raging for three years.

Thus, the US pitched in to help the UK, France, Italy and Russia and others defeat the evil "Hun."

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The team the US joined on this day in 1917. Note that Japan and Italy, countries which would become our enemies in Dec of 1941, were allies in WWI.

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Woodrow Wilson. The first southern Democrat elected to the White House since before the Civil War. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina. After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career.

When World War I erupted in Europe in August of 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position favored by the vast majority of Americans.

Britain, however, was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and, in February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.

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One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized, calling the attack an unfortunate mistake.

On May 7, the British-owned ocean liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the nearly 2,000 passengers aboard, 1,201 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained, correctly, that Lusitania was carrying ammunition and other war material, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships.

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In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November a U-boat sank an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

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In February 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany; the same day, the American liner SS Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat.

With war clouds looming, on February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms-appropriations bill intended to ready the United States for war. In late March, Germany sank four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2, President Wilson went before Congress to deliver his famous “war message.” Within four days, both houses of Congress had voted in favor of a declaration of war.

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Perhaps one of the most famous images in American history debuted in 1917 during WWI. A defiant Uncle Sam urging patriotic men to join their country's army to defeat the evildoers in Europe

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The inspiration for the Uncle Sam finger-pointing poster. This British poster was developed in 1914 and depicts British C-I-C Lord Kitchenor doing the finger-pointing

Despite measures taken to improve U.S. military preparedness in the previous year, Wilson was unable to offer the Allies much immediate help in the form of troops; indeed, the army was only able to muster about 100,000 men at the time of American entrance into the war. To remedy this, Wilson immediately ordered a draft.

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Allied recruiting efforts included implied cowardice by those who did not heed their country's call and were otherwise exempt from the draft

By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918 just under two years after America declared war, more than 2 million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

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Unlike the present day, American's were encouraged to make sacrifices to support the troops. These sacrifices included purchase of war bonds to help fund the war effort, conservation of food and other resources, and generally to work hard and live modestly to make sure there remained enough industrial capacity to keep the boys armed and equipped.

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Still, the most important effect of the U.S. entrance into the war was economic—by the beginning of April 1917, Britain alone was spending $75 million per week on U.S. arms and supplies, both for itself and for its allies, and had an overdraft of $358 million. The American entry into the war saved Great Britain, and by extension the rest of the Entente, from bankruptcy.

The United States also crucially reinforced the strength of the Allied naval blockade of Germany, in effect from the end of 1914 and aimed at crushing Germany economically. American naval forces reached Britain on April 9, 1917, just three days after the declaration of war.

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American commander Gen. John J. Pershing. Called "Blackjack" because he had commanded "buffalo soldiers" of the 9th and 10th Infantry Regiments when posted to Ft leavenworth and in Cuba early in his career.

By contrast, General John J. Pershing, the man appointed to command the U.S. Army in Europe, did not arrive until June 14; roughly a week later, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. Though the U.S. Army's contributions began slowly, they would eventually mark a major turning point in the war effort and help the Allies to achieve an armistice, or "cease fire" on 11/11/1918.

Unfortunately for the future of Europe, the Versailles Treaty, to which the defeated Germans were compelled to become party, dealt harshly with the Germans. Germany was required to pay billions in reparations which had the effect of making German economic recovery impossible. More than anything else, it was this aspect of the treaty that made it possible for a young Austrian sociopath to rise to political power in post-WWI Germany.

Hitler played on the indignance of Germans in the wake of WWI and the economic austerity the peace treaty imposed on Germany. His nascent Nazi party rose to power by heralding its aim to help Germany rise from the ashes and "throw off the chains" the victorious Allies had bound it with at the end of the First World War.

The national WWI memorial and museum is in Kansas City:
http://www.libertymemorialmuseum.org/

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SoonerStormchaser
4/6/2007, 07:23 AM
LET THE *** KICKING BEGIN!!!

SoonerProphet
4/6/2007, 08:19 AM
The punitive peace also spawns the Balfour Declaration...which continues to plague international relations today.