Exploring Why America Tried To Join World War One

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In the early 20th century the Balkan region of Europe was a powder keg about to explode, and alliance systems crossed Europe. The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian archduke, Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian was the spark that set it all off. Austria-Hungary soon declared war on Serbia, and thanks to the systems of alliances, most of Europe was soon embroiled in the Great War. WWI was a war that America desired neutrality from, resulted in terrible losses and destruction, and ended in a faulty peace.
At the beginning of the war America desired neutrality but they were soon provoked to enter the war. The first reason America felt it necessary to enter the war was Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Traditionally passenger ships and the ships of neutral nations were not subject to attacks during war. Britain had begun the practice of using the flags of neutral nations to disguise their ships from German attacks which led Germany to declare that ships flying neutral flags could no longer be guaranteed protection from U-boat attacks. President Wilson strongly warned Germany
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The western front of the war consisted of 475 miles of trenches across France and Belgium, separated by a no man’s land in between the opposing armies. In trench warfare the armies would lose thousands of lives just to gain feet of land. The conditions in the trenches were also appalling and many soldiers also lost their lives to the unsanitary conditions. In addition to trench warfare, the invention of new military technology such as poison gas, machine guns, land mines, tanks, and aerial bombings also added to the death toll and destruction of the war. Over four years of fighting, over 9 million soldiers died in the