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On April 2, 1917, President of the United States Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request America to enter World War I. President requested a declaration of war against Germany.
Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war.
On April 6, 1917, The U.S. House of Representatives approves the declaration of war against Germany by a vote of 373 to 50, and America officially enters World War I two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to do so.
President Woodrow Wilson promised neutrality for the United States when World War I started in 1914, a stance that was supported overwhelmingly by the majority of Americans. However, because Germany tried to quarantine the British Isles despite the fact that Britain was one of America’s closest trading partners, tension quickly developed between the two countries.
Germany declared unrestricted combat against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain in February 1915 after several U.S. ships headed to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines. A month later, Germany declared that a German cruiser had destroyed the American private ship, William P. Frye. The German government apologized and described the assault as an unfortunate error, which infuriated President Wilson.
On May 7, a torpedo struck the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner off the shore of Ireland without prior notice. 128 Americans were among the 1,198 fatalities out of the 1,959 people. The United States demanded compensation and an end to German assaults on passenger and merchant ships that were not armed, despite the German government’s insistence that the Lusitania was carrying weapons. Germany promised in August to ensure passenger safety before destroying unarmed ships, but in November it unexpectedly sank an Italian liner, murdering 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these assaults, American public opinion started to irreversibly shift against Germany.
Germany declared the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters in 1917, resolved to win its attrition war against the Allies. Three days later, the United States severed formal ties with Germany, and just hours later, a German U-boat sank the American liner Housatonic. On February 22, Congress approved a $250 million appropriations bill for arms that were designed to prepare the US for conflict. Germany sank four more American merchant ships in late March, and on April 2, President Wilson testified before Congress and urged Congress to declare war on Germany. His request was approved four days later.
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14,000 American rifle soldiers arrived in France for their initial training mission on June 26. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, America’s well-equipped forces’ entry into the conflict marked a significant turning moment in the war and assisted the Allies in winning. On November 11, 1918, when the war was ultimately over, there were more than two million American soldiers fighting in Western Europe, and about 50,000 of them had perished.
Source: Office of the Historian.
