1. America and the Great War
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2009

2. Collapse of European Peace
Competing alliances
Anglo-German rivalry
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

3. Wilson’s Neutrality
Remain “neutral in thought as well as deed.”-Wilson
Impossible
Split sympathies
Reports of German atrocities
Economic ties to Britain
Submarine warfare
Sinking of Lusitania (1916)
Sussex attacked
Germans relent
1198 people, 128 Americans killed when Lusitania sank

6. Preparedness vs. Pacifism
Pressure from fellow progressives
Ethnic pressures
1916 election
“What did we do? What did we do?...We didn’t go to war!”
“He kept us out of war.”
TR for war
Bryan and Lafollette, German and Irish-Americans against war

8. A War for Democracy Wilson calls for “peace without victory”
Zimmermann Telegram (Feb. 1917)
Russian Revolution topples Czar (March 1917)
Germans torpedo 3 American ships
War declared April 6, 1917
“a war to end all wars”
“a concert of free peoples…shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”

9. The American Expeditionary Force
Selective Service Act
Led by John J. Pershing
Trench warfare in France
Assist French in repelling German assaults
Château-Thierry
Rheims
Meuse-Argonne Offensive
Germans surrender November 11, 1918
Armistice Day
War at a stalemate
British losing 1 of 4 ships
American and British navy escorts reduce toll
Only 120,000 active soldiers/80,000 in National Guard
Selective Service brings almost 3 million into army, 2 million volunteer
Women in navy and marines
400,000 blacks enlisted or drafted into army and navy
More ammunition used in 7 weeks of Meuse-Argonne offensive than in entire Civil War

10. Gen. Pershing Inspects the Troops at Chaumont Accompanied by Capt
Gen. Pershing Inspects the Troops at Chaumont Accompanied by Capt. George S. Patton

12. New Technology of Warfare
Machine guns
Higher-powered artillery
Tanks
Flame throwers
Chemical weapons
Mustard gas
Gas masks required
Motorized vehicles
Airplanes
Zeppelins
New battleships
Torpedoes
High casualty rates

14. Americas first ace: Capt
Americas first ace: Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker shot down 26 enemy aircraft in World War I and earned the Medal of Honor for his actions. His feats, and those of other Allied fliers, ushered in an era of air-to-air combat that changed the role of aircraft in military operations forever, and helped establish the need for control of the air during wartime.

15. High Casualty Rates British Empire 1,000,000 France 1,700,000
Germany 2,000,000
Austro-Hungarian 1,500,000
Russia 1,700,000
Italy ,000
United States ,000
Half of US dead from flu

16. America and the Great War
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2009