Despite the fact that Wilson
had just won reelection in 1916 based on a platform of keeping
the United States out of war, by April of 1917,
the administration had decided that Germany
had gone too far. And in particular,
had gone too far with the unrestricted
submarine warfare. So this right over
here is a picture of President Wilson on
April 2, 1917, giving a war message to Congress
as to why the US needs to declare war on Germany. And April 4, Congress passes
the resolution to declare war. And then the President
approves it on April 6. So by early April, the United
States was at war with Germany. Which is a good time to
start thinking about, why did all of this happen. Now, the things
that are typically cited, and these
are the things that are inflamed public opinion in
the US and that many of which were cited by President
Woodrow Wilson. And in this tutorial
that this is part of on
khanacademy.org, I put the entire text of his speech,
which I highly recommend reading to see all of the
things the President Wilson cited in his speech. But just as a summary of that,
the things that tend to get cited most often are the
unrestricted submarine warfare on the part of Germany. And particular cases
or the most cited example of that is the
sinking of the Lusitania. The Germans had stopped
doing that for a little under two years. But then, as we enter into
1917, they began doing it again. And it also made the
Americans quite angry to realize that the
Germans were trying to incite the
Mexicans against them. So you have the
Zimmerman telegram. Zimmerman telegram
is also a reason that the Wilson administration,
and why people in general, were fairly angry about things. Now, on top of that,
there were atrocities committed by the
Germans in their march through Belgium as
they were trying to execute on the
Schlieffen Plan. So Belgian atrocities. And these were earlier in the
war in 1914, which immediately made many Americans not
like what's going on. Belgian atrocities. And to put on top
of that, the British were able to leverage the
Belgian atrocities to fairly, to execute a fairly effective
propaganda campaign in America. Now on top of that--
and this is something that Wilson speaks very
strongly about in his speech-- is the notion of
fighting for democracy. And what you have here, in the
First World War, the Central Powers. You're talking about
the German Empire, you're talking about
the Austro-Hungarians. These are monarchies. These are emperors who
are controlling it. And even though the
UK, the United Kingdom, was nominally a kingdom,
it was really a democracy. At least for those
who could vote. We're not talking about
the entire British Empire. So UK is functionally a
democracy, democratic. And so was the Third
French Republic. And so was France. So there's this
argument that the US is fighting for the
representation of people. Now, there is a more
cynical argument that some people have made. And I think it's reasonable
to give that to due time. And one of the
cynical arguments, or more cynical
arguments, is that the US had close financial and
trade ties to Britain, not to mention cultural ties. Financial ties to the British. On top of that, you had very
successful British propaganda. One, talking about the
atrocities in Belgium, which did actually happen. But the British
were able to exploit this as a propaganda machine. Successful propaganda. But they also spread rumors
that after the sinking of the Lusitania
that the Germans had their school
children celebrating. And these were all
made up propaganda. And then, more
cynical view of why the US entered the
war-- and this is true of probably most
wars-- is that there was a lot of lobbying on
the part of war profiteers. In fact, in "Little Orphan
Annie," Daddy Warbucks, the name, the reason why
his last name is Warbucks is because he made his
fortune as a war profiteer during World War I.
And war profiteers, these are people who might be
selling arms to the Allies. Or who might sell arms
to the US government if the US were to get into
a war that might somehow supply the troops. And it includes, potentially,
folks on Wall Street. There were significant
lending to the Allies, and mainly the Allies,
not the Central Power. And so the view is
if the Allies win, those loans are going
to be made good. And I had the entire
text of the speech from Senator George Norris
who was one of five senators, or sorry, one of six senators
to vote against the resolution to go to war. There were 50 representatives
who also voted against it. This is a little excerpt
but also in this tutorial, I have the full
text of his speech. And I highly, highly, highly
recommend reading that along with Wilson's text of his
speech to Congress in his war message. But I'll just read this part
because it does, I think, point out that the US,
from the beginning, did have biases that
were more pro-British. And so this is
part of his speech. "The reason given
by the President in asking Congress to
declare war against Germany is that the German government
has declared certain war zones, within which by the
use of submarines, she sinks, without
notice, American ships and destroys American lives. The first war zone was
declared by Great Britain. She gave us and the
world notice of it on the 4th day of November 1914. The zone became effective
November 5, 1914. This zone, so declared
by Great Britain, covered the whole
of the North Sea. The first German war
zone was declared on the 4th day of
February, 1915, just three months after the
British war zone was declared. Germany gave 15 days
notice of the establishment of her zone, which
became effective on the 18th day
of February, 1915. The German war zone
cover the English Channel and the high seawaters
around the British Isles. It is unnecessary
to cite authority to show that both of these
orders declaring military zones were illegal and contrary
to international law. It is sufficient to say that
our government has officially declared both of
them to be illegal and has officially protested
against both of them. The only difference is
that, in the case of Germany we have persisted
in our protest, while in the case of
England, we have submitted." And I encourage you,
once again, to read the text of both Wilson's speech
and Senator Norris' speech and come up to your,
with your own decisions. And it might be a
little bit of both.