Defining Moments World War I and the Age of modern warfare Kevin Hillstrom 155 W. Congress, Suite 200 Detroit, MI 48226 Chapter Five The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out 5 Perhaps it will not be long before we will read each day long lists of American boys killed or wounded in the trenches of France. There will be boys in those lists that you know, boys that I know. And as our eyes film over with tears it will be at least some comfort to us to be able to say, “I am helping too. I am saving food for the boys who are fighting.” —Herbert Hoover, director of the World War I-era U.S. Food Administration ith each passing month of 1917, the Great War continued to devour the lives of hundreds of thousands of European soldiers and civilians. WThis slaughter—and the apparent military and political stalemate that was driving it—was a source of great and mounting despair to the peoples of both the Central Powers and the Allies. In reality, however, the war underwent momentous shifts during these grim months of bloodshed and heartache. Rus- sia withdrew from the war after long-threatened political convulsions finally swept Tsar Nicholas II from power in March 1917. Russia’s decision to end the war via a separate peace treaty with Germany might, under ordinary circum- stances, have been a death blow to the Allied cause. But Britain and France and their partners were able to absorb this shock thanks to the Americans, who in April 1917 finally cast aside their neutrality and took up arms against Germany. America’s Early Stance of Neutrality When World War I had exploded across the European continent in 1914, the United States had resolutely adopted a policy of neutrality. The adminis- 73 Defining Moments: World War I and the Age of Modern Warfare tration of President Woodrow Wilson (see biography, p. 153) maintained this stance throughout 1915 and 1916. It did so despite calls for U.S. military intervention from former president Theodore Roosevelt and other observers who saw Germany’s invasions of Luxembourg, Belgium, and France as evil acts—and the Germans’ quest to dominate Europe as a potential long-term threat to Amer- ica’s economic interests. Some Americans, in fact, became so upset by U.S. neutrality in the war that they traveled to Europe at their own expense to aid the Allied cause. “A mixed and eccentric collection joined the French Foreign Legion,” noted historians Meirion and Susie Harries. “Among them Bob Scanlon, a black New York boxer; big-game U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 in part because “He hunter René Phélizot of Chicago; Algernon kept us out of war.” Satoris, grandson of General Ulysses S. Grant; retired butcher Eugene Jacobs of Pawtucket; Frederick Capdeville, son of a West Point fencing master; and Alan Seeger, a poet.” 1 Americans also fought in the trenches as part of British or Canadian mil- itary units, while other men and women bravely served in war zones as nurs- es, doctors, and ambulance drivers. “Despite the picture painted by the most famous of the drivers, [author] Ernest Hemingway, who was serving in Italy, the ambulance services were not playing at war or indulging in heroics. Their task was to evacuate the wounded from the front over ruined roads, from shell holes, through mud and gas clouds, almost always under fire.” 2 Americans who were involved in the early years of the war—as many as 15,000 by some estimates—were the exception, though. Most of their fellow Americans remained staunchly “isolationist”—opposed to U.S. involvement in the affairs of other nations—and news reports in 1915 and 1916 about the spi- raling slaughter on the Western and Eastern fronts actually deepened their anti- war feelings. They felt that sacrificing their own men to the war raging across the ocean made no sense. In 1916, in fact, Wilson’s successful presidential re- election campaign over Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hugh- es was based in large part on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.” 74 Chapter Five: The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out During these same years, however, the United States’ sympathy for the Allied cause—and its growing disgust with Germany—became more and more evident. Many Americans identified closely with British people who spoke the same language and shared many of their cultural traditions, and they felt badly for Belgian and French families whose peaceful existence had been obliterat- ed by Germany’s invading military machine. The war also developed in ways that gave the United States significant eco- nomic incentives to side with the Allies over Germany and the other Central Powers. When British naval forces imposed a blockade that shut down all ship- ping into and out of German ports, the Allies became the only available transat- lantic buyers of American crops and military supplies. These arrangements became an important source of revenue for American farmers, manufacturers, and other businesses. Finally, American lawmakers, officials, and bankers knew that the governments in London and Paris were using credit to pay for aircraft, rifles, trucks, artillery shells, blankets, wheat, oil, and other materials they needed to supply their troops and keep their cities running in wartime. If Ger- many won the Great War, those debts incurred by the British and French—more than $2 billion, by some estimates—would probably never be paid. German U-Boat Attacks Push America Toward War Despite the Americans’ gradual drift into a posture that was sympathetic to the Allies, however, the United States might have remained on the sidelines were it not for a series of German actions and strategies that horrified Ameri- cans. Over the course of the war’s opening weeks, German military forces had rolled over Belgium in brutal fashion, turning historic cathedrals, museums, and neighborhoods into rubble and ashes. And within a year of the war’s opening salvos, German troops on the Western Front had unleashed flamethrowers, poi- son gas, and other frightening new weapons of destruction. This behavior elicited angry newspaper editorials in American cities and outraged speeches in Congress, but calls to enter the war did not noticeably increase until German U-boats began terrorizing cargo ships and passenger lin- ers in the Atlantic. These submarines particularly targeted enemy navy ships and armed merchant carriers, but they also sank hundreds of unarmed merchant ships—often without warning. This “unrestricted submarine warfare” took thousands of innocent lives and elicited angry condemnations from the Wilson White House. 75 Defining Moments: World War I and the Age of Modern Warfare The U-boat attack on the Lusitania, in particular, triggered a turning point in American public opinion about getting directly involved in World War I. The HMS Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U20 off the coast of southern Ireland while en route from New York City to Liverpool, England on May 7, 1915. The ship sank with shocking speed, disappearing beneath the waves within twenty minutes. The death toll from the surprise attack was 1,201 pas- sengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Germany initially claimed that the passenger liner was a legitimate target because it was armed and carried enemy troops from Canada. Both of these claims were false; the only items on board that were of a military nature were several thousand cases of rifle cartridges. Wilson sent a series of stinging rebukes to the German government after the sinking of the Lusitania (see “The United States Protests the Sinking of the Lusitania,” p. 163) , and Kaiser Wilhem II and his top generals recognized that the incident had stirred up a hornet’s nest across the sea. Frantic to keep the United States and its manufacturing and military assets from formally joining forces with the Allies, Germany agreed in the fall of 1915 to implement mea- sures to ensure that U-boats only targeted military warships, troop transports, and supply ships. U-boat attacks continued to claim the lives of innocent civilians, though. When a German U-boat sank the French passenger ferry Sus- sex on March 24, 1916, sending 50 passengers to their deaths, the outcry from both Allies and Americans was severe. Germany subsequently issued the so- called Sussex Pledge, which further committed German submarine comman- ders to use vessel searches and other techniques to make sure they were sink- ing legitimate targets. The Sussex Pledge also included a promise that innocent passengers and crew would be safely removed from any ship that was going to be torpedoed to the bottom of the ocean. Germany honored this pledge for several months, but in late 1916 the nation’s most powerful generals and admirals were calling for a return to unre- stricted submarine warfare. “There can be no justification … for refusing any further to employ what promises to be our most effective weapon” to cripple the Allied war effort, insisted German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. “We should ruthlessly employ every weapon that is suitable for striking against England on her home ground.” 3 This attitude reflected the increasingly bleak situation faced by Germany. Neighboring Austria-Hungary’s military capacity had weakened so dramatically that its positions on the Eastern Front required heavy German support. Things were also grim for Germany’s army, which was being stretched to the breaking point by the two-front war. “By the end of 1916, the year of Ver- 76 Chapter Five: The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out Artist’s rendering of the Lusitania as it was struck by torpedoes from a German submarine.