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America Enters the War
The United States remained neutral for the first two-and-a-half years of the European conflict. In 1916t, America re-elected President Woodrow Wilson on a platform of keeping the United States out of the war. Even so, large numbers of merchant ships carried war materiel across the Atlantic to the shores of France and England. However, after the Germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and attempted to engage Mexico in a border war, the United States declared war on the Central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey) on April 6, 1917. It took several months until American troops shipped over to northern France. More than four million soldiers were mobilized. The United States lost 116,000 men and experienced almost 325,000 total casualties. |