WWI When World War I

¶ … WWI When World War I first broke out in August of 1914, in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg and London, people cheered and showed their huge support for the war. Thousands of reservists went off eagerly, many afraid that the war would be over before they even had an opportunity to become involved. Everyone thought there would be a few battles and all would be home for Christmas. Few expected that it would go on for four years and millions of people would be injured and killed.

With hindsight, it is known that no one was prepared for entering this war throughout Europe and the United States joined for still questionable reasons, according to some historians. As Zinn (359) states: "And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life. The rhetoric of the socialists, that it was an 'imperialist war,' now seems moderate and hardly arguable.

The advanced capitalist countries of Europe were fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of influence; they were competing for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, African, the Middle East." Johnson (642) adds: "The Great War of 1914-18 was the primal tragedy of modern world civilization, the main reason why the 20th century turned into such a disastrous epoch for mankind." When people in the United States heard that war had been declared in Europe, they were amazed. As one person in North Carolina wrote: "as lightening out of a sky" (Tindall & Ash 947).

Since the fall of Napoleon in 1815, Europe had local wars, but there was a general peace and sense of prosperity. However, all this changed when the Archduke of Austria Joseph Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. Austria's immediate desire to punish Serbia led to the mobilization of Russia in sympathy with the Slavs. This snowballed into a European Triple Alliance or Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and Italy, and the Triple Entente of France, Great Britain and Russia.

When Russia refused to stop its mobilization, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, and on France two days later. Germany then invaded Belgium to get at France, which brought Great Britain into the war on August 4. Japan, interested in seizing German holdings in the Pacific, declared war a couple of weeks later, and Turkey entered on the side of the Central Powers the next week (Tindall & Shi 947). The United States at first did not plan on entering the war.

When it first began, according to Johnson (644), Wilson issued a proclamation of neutrality. Two weeks later, he urged Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as in action." He even considered himself a pacifist at this point, stating "Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there was ever such as thing as tolerance...the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter itn every fiber of our national life" (Johnson 643). Staying out, states Tindall & Shi 948), was "more easily said than done, not least for Wilson himself.

Americans might want to stay out of the war, but most of them cared which side won. Ironically, because there were so many first- or second-generation immigrants from Germany and Ireland, the leaning was toward the Central Powers. However, "old-line Americans" mostly of British descent were sympathetic to the Allies. Yet actions were to occur that made the final decision. In 1915, the Germans sank the British Cunard liner Lusitania with 128 Americans on board. The Americans were outraged and sent letters to no avail.

Then U-boats sank a number of American ships and finally, the press published a secret telegram from the German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to the Mexican government proposing a German-Mexican offensive alliance against the U.S., where Texas and other territories would be given back to Mexico. The decision was made to enter the war. World War I made a major impact on the world, that is still felt today. During and after the war, Japanese-American relationships grew increasingly strained.

Also, the war debts and reparations heightened American isolationism, or anti-American feeling in Europe. When in 1917 the Allies had begun to exhaust private credit in the United States, the government then advanced them funds first for the war effort and then for postwar reconstruction. It was extremely difficult for Britain to pay back the funds and they wanted.