The United States Declares War in April 1917: Why?

The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. President Woodrow Wilson had campaigned for his reelection by promising that he would continue to keep the United States out of the war. The election was close, and decided mainly by domestic issues rather than foreign policy. Wilson won by a thin margin. His messaging had been clear: he had not pushed America into WW1, and he would continue to avoid any U.S. entry into the war.

His message was false.

Prior to his reelection in November 1916, he foresaw that America would be in the war soon. Uncertain of an electoral victory, Wilson developed a contingency plan: should he lose the election, he’d appoint the president-elect to the office of Secretary of State, and then Wilson and his vice president would resign. The winner of the election would thus take office immediately, instead of waiting for an inauguration in March 1917.

Why did Wilson want this accelerated post-election timetable?

He was certain that the United States would be at war in 1917, and wanted a faster and smoother transition of power. Wilson secretly planned on being at war as a certainty. Publicly, he pledged to avoid U.S. involvement in the war.

Once Wilson had been inaugurated in March 1917 and had safely begun his second term, he rapidly moved forward with his plan for war. The Americans had expressed overwhelmingly their desire to remain at peace, so Wilson needed excuses and a propaganda campaign to persuade them to go to war.

Wilson argued that two factors necessitated a declaration of war against Germany: the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and the German efforts to encourage Mexico to declare war on the United States.

While these two factors appear at first glance to be reasonable, they exhibit weaknesses upon closer examination.

Germany had implemented a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, paused the policy in 1916, and resumed in 1917. So 1917 was the second time that Germany carried out unrestricted submarine warfare. The first time, in 1915, Wilson did not see it as a cause for U.S. entry into the war. His stance in 1917 was inconsistent with his previous view that the U.S. should stay out of the war despite unrestricted submarine warfare.

In January 1917 the German government sent a telegram to its ambassador in Mexico with a message for the Mexican government. This message became known as the Zimmermann Telegram. Germany promised to fund a Mexican war against the United States, and at the end of that war, Mexico was to possess U.S. land. Wilson argued that Germany’s attempt to start a war between Mexico and the United States was a reason for the U.S. to declare war on Germany. The Zimmermann Telegram was not the first, and not the most significant, effort made by Germany to start a war between Mexico and the United States. In 1914, the Germans had sent a ship filled with weapons and ammunition for the Mexican government. In 1915, the Germans had given $12 million dollars to the Mexican government to fund military activity against the United States. The actions of the German government vis-a-vis Mexico in 1914 and 1915 were not seen by Wilson as reasons for declaring war, but in 1917 he presented the Zimmermann Telegram as a reason for war.

It is clear, then, that Wilson used submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram as excuses for war. They were featured in his propaganda campaign. But what were the reasons for war?

Wilson had at least two reasons for declaring war.

First, the progressive movement in the U.S., of which Wilson was a part, saw the war as an opportunity: If the U.S. were a combatant, then the U.S. would be part of crafting peace treaties at the end of the war; these treaties would shape global diplomacy for years into the future. Wilson’s progressivism hoped to create new institutions and strengthen existing institutions in order to find peaceful solutions to diplomatic tensions and thereby avoid future wars. These institutions regulate relations and trade among nations; this was part of what was meant by the slogan, “Make the world safe for democracy.”

Second, the war would also be an opportunity for the government to argue that it needed extraordinary powers to intervene in the American economy and in society at large, because the war created an “emergency” situation. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party wanted these emergency powers to accelerate activities it had already begun. Some of these could be presented as part of the war effort, such as censorship of the press and the surveillance of individuals whose political loyalty was suspect. Other actions were clearly not related to the war, but carried out using emergency powers in spite of this: increasing racial segregation, reshaping educational institutions to conform to progressive ideas, rewriting housing policies, and generally regulating society. The draft was particularly appealing to the progressives, because it affirmed the government’s power to control the individual.

In addition to these two reasons, Wilson had a strong personal hatred for the Habsburg family, the ruling dynasty of Austria. One reason for this hatred was that Wilson saw the Habsburgs as opposed in some ways to his ideology: The Habsburg realm was a diverse, multiethnic territory; Wilson wanted a homogenous nation with one uniform culture. Other reasons for Wilson’s hatred toward the Habsburgs may be less rational and more emotional. Curiously, Wilson directed much less hate toward the Hohenzollerns, the ruling dynasty of Germany, even though the U.S. declared war on Germany.

Wilson was thus equipped with excuses which hid his reasons. After winning the November 1916 election with his campaign’s anti-war rhetoric, he promptly began to lobby energetically for the war.

Prior to winning reelection, he had been quite happy to profit from the war, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

The American role in World War I derived its character less from strategic thinking in the United States than from the geopolitical notion that the future well-being of the United States depended upon the balance of power in Europe and the outcome of the war. Discarding the hallowed assumption that Europe’s affairs did not involve the United States and the security of the Western Hemisphere, the Wilson administration decided that the nation had a critical stake in an Allied victory. American involvement stemmed from economic self-interest as well as an emotional commitment to support “democracy” (France and Great Britain) against “autocracy” (Germany). After a brief economic dislocation when the war began in 1914, American bankers, farmers, industrialists, and producers of raw materials exploited British naval control of the Atlantic and Allied financial strength to make the war the biggest profit-making enterprise in the history of American exporting. Before American entry, the balance of trade, already favorable to the U.S., jumped by a factor of five; the Allies liquidated $2 billion of American assets and privately borrowed another $2.5 billion to pay for their purchases. In contrast, Germany secured only $45 million in American loans.

Because Wilson had spent the previous years proclaiming that he wanted to keep America out of the war, the U.S. military was not ready when war was declared in April 1917. By contrast, the U.S. industrial base was already partially on a war footing, because it had been producing and selling weapons, ammunition, and other war supplies to France and England.

The U.S. Navy had battleships and cruisers, but not enough destroyers. Shipping war materials and soldiers from America to Europe required destroyers to escort and protect the cargo ships. The task would be to build many destroyers quickly, as historian Russell Weigley notes:

For the kind of naval campaign in which it now found itself engaged, the United States also had built the wrong warships. The Navy should have had more destroyers. The Royal Navy had almost 300, but nearly 100 of them were busy screening the Grand Fleet. The United States had seventy, only forty-four of them relatively new oil-burning ships. It was not until early July, 1917, that as many as thirty-four American destroyers reached Queenstown to reinforce the British, and the rest of the American squadrons consisted mainly of the obsolescent types, which were retained in Western Hemisphere waters. Belatedly, battleship building was pushed aside for destroyers and smaller escort craft.

The role of the United States in WW1 was significant. Was it decisive? Responsible historians do not speculate about hypotheticals. There is no certainty in these counterfactuals, and great emphasis must be placed on the word ‘probably.’

If the United States hadn’t declared war, the war probably would have lasted significantly longer. Negotiations to end the war probably would have been more complex, because the two sides would probably have been of nearly equal strength. In reality, the Western Allies were significantly stronger after the United States declared war. It is not clear which side would have won if the U.S. had not entered the war.

The U.S. Army drafted more than four million young men in 1917. Approximately two million of them were transported to France, and approximately one million engaged in combat. Large numbers of American soldiers did not see combat until early 1918.

Aside from combat, U.S. Army engineers did significant work in laying railroad lines, building berths for ships, and setting up telephone systems.

The U.S. Navy was active, escorting convoys of ships across the Atlantic, and protecting those ships from submarine attacks.

The United States made a significant contribution to the war effort as it sold, and sometimes gave, war materials to its fellow Allies. The U.S. lent, and sometimes gave, vast sums of money to the Allies. Some of those loans were later forgiven.

In sum, the U.S. military influence on the course of the war began quite late in the course of the war, but its economic influence had been there from the beginning. The U.S. formally declared war, beginning its military participation, for reasons which were at the time not disclosed to the U.S. population.

Changes in American Attitudes Toward Alcohol and Their Unintended Consequences

Over centuries, American social thought about alcohol has developed significantly. To understand earlier phases of this process, it is first necessary to shed some stereotypes and cliches which still pervade historical images in the popular imagination.

Both the Pilgrims, who settled in southeastern Massachusetts around 1620, and the Puritans, who settled further north along the eastern coast of Massachusetts around 1630, cheerfully produced and consumed their own beer and wine. The conventional image of these two groups as opponents of alcohol is historically inaccurate.

More than a century later, George Washington oversaw the production of beer, wine, and distilled beverages, both at his home in Virginia, and at various army camps with his troops. Thomas Jefferson invested a great deal of thought and energy into growing specific breeds of grapes in order to make various types of wine. Samuel Adams was a maltster, making a key ingredient for beer.

Fermented apple cider was a popular beverage throughout North America.

In general, then, the area which was at first British colonies, and which was later the United States, had a culture which demonstrated no strong opposition to alcohol, and in which people of various social classes lost none of their respectability by consuming alcohol. This seems to have been the case for approximately two centuries.

There was very little legal regulation about who might consume alcohol, or where or when or how alcohol might be consumed. There was certainly some taxation of alcohol — hence the famous “whisky rebellion” in the early 1790s — but this taxation was for the purposes of raising revenue, and not for the purpose of changing social patterns of consumption.

This culture was also capable of clearly distinguishing between, on the one hand, the healthy and appropriate use of alcohol, and on the other hand, the excessive and unhealthy abuse of alcohol.

The fact that men who regularly enjoyed a glass of wine with supper were at the same time opposed to drunkenness was a fact so obvious that it did not need to be explained. A century later, however, that same fact was no longer obvious to many people, and required a great deal of explaining.

How and why did American society develop new attitudes toward alcohol?

One factor in this cultural shift was the distinction between various religious groups. The older and more established groups in North America were the Episcopalians (formerly Anglicans), the Lutherans, and the Roman Catholics. These groups had no objection to alcohol and forbade drunkenness.

Newer groups were represented initially and primarily by the Methodists. They argued for abstinence from alcohol in any form and in any amount. “Alcohol consumption,” writes historian Leah Rae Berk, “did not begin to decrease until the early 1830s,” indicating the era in which Methodist influence reached significant levels.

The Quakers and some branches of the Presbyterian Church also embraced the idea of abstaining from alcohol.

The anti-alcohol movement initially focused on distilled beverages, but eventually sought to eliminate all forms of alcohol.

From that point in time, it was less than a century until the passage of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibited the production, sale, and transport of almost all forms of alcohol in 1919. Leading up to that amendment was the growing Temperance Movement over the preceding century.

The goals of the Methodists and the Temperance Movement were clear: to reduce and eventually eliminate the consumption of alcohol.

Prior to the Prohibition Amendment, and after its repeal in 1933, the movement brought about incremental change in the forms of local and state laws. Such legislation limited when, where, and how alcohol could be produced, sold, or consumed, and who might consume it.

Their words and actions, however, were counterproductive. While the Temperance Movement was eventually successful in bringing about “blue laws” and finally Prohibition, it also set into motion the forbidden fruit effect.

The “forbidden fruit effect” is the desire for something which has been forbidden, precisely because it has been forbidden. In America during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, alcohol was an unremarkable part of American life. Parents and grandparents often gave children small sips, or small cups, of beer or wine. There was no legal boundary — at age 18 or at age 21 — for purchasing or consuming. Public consumption was not noteworthy. Moderate consumption was as normal a part of daily life as eating bread. A glass of wine or beer at mealtime was so common that it was uninteresting.

When the Temperance Movement began to make itself felt, through regulations and especially through social and parental attitudes, alcohol became an object of fascination, especially for young people. Alcohol became desirable in the minds of young people because they were forbidden to have it. Possessing and consuming it became a goal.

The Temperance Movement created the exact thing which it hoped to avoid: binge drinking, increased drinking among the young, and a greater attraction to alcohol.

The social dynamic, especially in the form of parental attitudes, varied significantly across the various demographic segments of America. Parents who were very diligent to ensure that their children never drank alcohol, or at least never drank it until some arbitrary age, saw their children devise every scheme to obtain alcohol secretly. Such children were more likely to drink to excess, because they had never seen adults model moderate consumption. In places where a set age was culturally or legally enforced, it became a tradition to consume to excess on one’s birthday, having finally reached that age limit. By making it into a forbidden fruit, the movement had increased the focus on, and desire for, alcohol.

By contrast, parents who resisted the legal and social pressure, and who served their children small amounts of beer or wine at mealtimes, saw their children to be less likely to consume to excess, and generally less interested in alcohol.

Looking at the social and cultural development of North America, and especially that part of North America which would become the United States, there is a clear turning point: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were times in which alcohol consumption was unremarkable and moderate. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the rise of an alcohol phobia, and an attendant effort to impose legal and cultural restrictions designed ultimately to eliminate alcohol. This effort not only failed, but produced an increased fascination with alcohol, especially among young people.