What you’ll learn to do: explain the events that led to WWI and the impetus for American involvement in the war

Figure 1. A news article announcing President Wilson’s decision to join the war.

President Wilson had no desire to embroil the United States in the bloody and lengthy war that was devastating Europe. His foreign policy through his first term and his campaign for reelection focused on involving the country in international affairs only when there was a moral imperative to do so. After his 1916 reelection, however, the free trade associated with neutrality proved impossible to secure against the total war strategies of the belligerents, particularly Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare. American immigrants’ ethnic ties to Europe meant that much of the general public was more than happy to remain neutral. Wilson’s reluctance to go to war was mirrored in Congress, where fifty-six voted against the war resolution. The measure still passed, however, and the United States went to war against the wishes of many of its citizens.

In spite of this general unwillingness to join the war, the American public by and large stepped up to support their nation and its allies. While 2.8 million men were drafted into the U.S. Army, two million more volunteered for military service, alongside almost 22,000 women who served as Army and Navy nurses, 11,000 women who served non-combat roles in the Navy, and eight million women who volunteered for the Red Cross.