Chapter 30

When war erupted in Europe in August 1914, President Wilson declared American neutrality, urging citizens to remain impartial "in thought as well as action." Yet true neutrality proved elusive: cultural and economic ties bound the United States far more closely to Britain and France than to the Central Powers.

American banks extended enormous loans to the Allies, and U.S. trade with Britain and France soared even as British naval blockades strangled American commerce with Germany. British propaganda, exploiting German atrocity stories from occupied Belgium, further tilted American public opinion against the Central Powers.

Unable to match Britain's surface navy, Germany turned to the submarine, or U-boat, to strike back. In May 1915 a German U-boat torpedoed the British liner RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, and inflaming American public opinion.

Wilson issued strong protests, and after the sinking of the French steamer Sussex in 1916 further threatened to sever diplomatic relations, Germany issued the Sussex pledge, promising not to sink merchant and passenger ships without warning. The fragile promise would not last once Germany's military leaders concluded that unrestricted submarine warfare could win the war outright.

In January 1917, Germany announced it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, gambling that it could starve Britain into surrender before American power could be brought to bear. That same month, British intelligence intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram, in which German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann proposed a secret alliance with Mexico, promising to help Mexico reclaim Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona if it joined a war against the United States.

The telegram's publication enraged American public opinion, and after German U-boats sank several American merchant ships, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, famously proclaiming that "the world must be made safe for democracy." Congress obliged four days later.

The United States entered the war woefully unprepared for a modern conflict. The Selective Service Act (1917) instituted a military draft, eventually registering nearly 24 million men, while the War Industries Board, led by financier Bernard Baruch, coordinated industrial production for the war effort.

To rally public opinion, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, led by journalist George Creel, which flooded the nation with pro-war propaganda, posters, and speeches. Meanwhile, agencies like the Food Administration, run by Herbert Hoover, encouraged voluntary conservation through "meatless" and "wheatless" days to feed American troops and Allied civilians.

Wartime patriotism curdled into intolerance for dissent. The Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) imposed harsh penalties for criticizing the government, the war effort, or the draft, and were used to imprison hundreds of dissenters, including socialist leader Eugene V. Debs.

The Supreme Court upheld such prosecutions in Schenck v. United States (1919), with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declaring that free speech did not protect words posing a "clear and present danger." German Americans faced particular suspicion and harassment, and German-language teaching and music were widely suppressed.

General John J. Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), insisting American troops fight as an independent army rather than being folded piecemeal into depleted British and French units. Fresh American manpower arrived just in time to help halt Germany's massive spring 1918 offensive.

American forces played a decisive role at battles such as Château-Thierry and the Meuse-Argonne offensive, helping break the exhausted German army's will to continue fighting. Facing collapse on the battlefield and revolution at home, Germany agreed to an armistice that took effect on November 11, 1918, ending the fighting.

In January 1918, Wilson outlined his idealistic vision for the postwar world in the Fourteen Points, calling for open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, arms reduction, self-determination for European nationalities, and—most importantly to Wilson—a League of Nations to peacefully resolve future disputes.

Wilson personally traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, an unprecedented step for a sitting U.S. president, hoping to enshrine his vision in the final settlement. He was met with adoring crowds in Europe but faced skeptical, war-hardened Allied leaders determined to punish Germany rather than build a lasting peace of reconciliation.

At the Paris Peace Conference, French premier Georges Clemenceau and other Allied leaders forced Wilson to compromise many of his Fourteen Points in exchange for including the League of Nations Covenant in the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty imposed harsh reparations and territorial losses on Germany, sowing resentments that would fester for decades.

Back home, Senate "irreconcilables" and "reservationists," led by Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, resisted joining the League, fearing it would entangle the U.S. in future European wars. Wilson, weakened by a debilitating stroke and refusing all compromise, watched the Senate reject the Treaty of Versailles, and with it American membership in the League of Nations he had championed.