The United States in World War I

An Analysis of Historians’ Reasons for America’s Entry into the War

Daniel K. TracyHistoriography 400Fall Semester 2011

Valley City State University

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Few events in American history surpass the significance of America’s entry into the First

World War. Just as after the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the

Spanish American War, America’s role in world affairs after the First World War changed

dramatically. And, just as historians carefully examined the reasons why America entered the

latter conflicts they too analyzed why America entered World War I. This essay is an attempt to

discover why American historians believed the United States entered the First World War. With

such insight, we might appreciate, or at least recognize, why historians singled out a particular

cause, or causes, for significance.

Historians considered causation immediately after the war. Charles Seymour’s Woodrow

Wilson and the World War (1921) was one of the first publications to address causation.

Seymour’s contribution was notable on account of his inclusion in President Woodrow Wilson’s

Peace Delegation at Paris after the war. Of the president, Seymour discerned that before the war,

“Wilson . . . imagined the war as a crusade, the sort of crusade for American ideals which Clay

and Webster once imagined. [However,] he was in truth originating nothing, but rather

resuscitating the generous dreams which had once inspired those statesmen.”1 Rather than

embark upon a crusade, Seymour indicated that Americans bluntly wanted the inconveniences in

America caused by the war in Europe to stop. In other words, “Most Americans entered the

struggle . . . with a sober gladness, based partly on emotional, partly on quixotic, and partly on

self grounds. But nearly all fought rather to beat Germany than to secure international order.”2

Before the U.S. entered the war, Americans attributed almost anything German with the

destruction caused by submarine warfare. In January 1917 after Germany announced it would

1 Charles Seymour, Woodrow Wilson and the World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), 113.

2 Seymour, 114.

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deliberately attack all Allied vessels, Americans decided they could no longer sit on the side

lines. For Seymour, American emotions against German naval tactics provoked the nation into

war. Of Wilson, the American people were either indifferent towards his “crusade,” or they did

not care. Americans either way aimed to defeat Germany. When the public learned of Wilson’s

agenda after the war, Americans then started to develop suspicions for exactly why Wilson led

the nation to war. Historians of future generations classified Seymour’s theory as the Wilsonian

Answer for why America entered the war.3 Scholars also offered an opposing theory referred to

as Revisionism. Revisionists contemplated the impact of American behavior on Germany’s

decision to provocatively alter its naval policy in the Atlantic. Had the American people and their

government followed a more neutral course prior to Wilson’s declaration of war, Revisionists

contended that Germany might have acted differently.4

Revisionism was a by-product of the 1930s, a decade of cynicism over America’s

involvement in the war and the Great Depression. Revisionists blamed America’s financial

industry for involving the nation in the Great War, for ineffectively handling the War’s

aftermath, and for causing the Great Depression. Moreover, Revisionists questioned the nature

of America’s real relationship with the Allies before and after the war, particularly with Britain.

Because of Wilson’s Anglo-Saxon background, his intellectual character, the pro-Ally

sympathies of Wilson’s advisors, and the impact of British propaganda on American perceptions,

Revisionists put forward that the U.S. was predisposed to support the Allies and fight Germany.

Once it became apparent that the Allies might lose the war in 1917, American investors impacted

public opinion and Wilson’s administration in ways that favored intervention.5 3 Herbert J. Bass, editor of America’s Entry into World War I (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.,

1964), 1.

4 Bass, 1-2.

5 Bass, 2, 4.

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Wilson’s loose interpretation of international trade law certainly contributed to America’s

intervention on the side of the Allies according to Samuel Flagg Bemis, the author of A

Diplomatic History of the United States (1936). Because international trade law was so

ambiguous before the war, Wilson aimed to create trade policy that favored American interests.

For Bemis, Wilson’s “benevolent neutrality” in effect strengthened economic bonds between the

Allies and America’s manufacturing and merchant sectors. The Revisionist in Bemis believed

that “as one looks back upon the First World War it becomes increasing clear that it was

Woodrow Wilson’s choice of neutrality policy that brought his county into war.” Germany’s

indiscriminate U-boat activity was significant, but only as “. . . the last reagent necessary to

precipitate war . . .”6

Not all of Bemis’s contemporaries subscribed to Revisionism, or accepted the Wilsonian

answer for why the U.S. entered World War I. Neither theory for Harley Notter in his The

Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson (1937) fully considered the impact of public

opinion on Wilson’s decision. Furthermore, neither Wilson’s idealism nor his predisposition

towards anything English solely determined his choice. For Notter, Wilson’s choice reflected

what the public and the American system demanded.

The chief considerations involved in the question were the thought and emotion of the American people and of the President. No decision for war was desirable, nor was a decision for war possible to carry into effect, unless the people sustained it. [He added], Concerning the question whether to go to war, any search for singleness of motive of reason in this most complex decision of American national history is doomed to futility: the decision was the result of an accumulation of experience and a set of mind fashioned out of implications as well as out of facts, out of hopes and fears and moral convictions as well as out of interests.7

6 Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 5th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965), 603, 607, 615.

7 Harry Notter, The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1937), 636.

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Notter’s research was prospective; it reflected post-World War II scholarship about causation.

After the 1930s a number of factors caused historians to rethink Revisionist theories, especially

as unreleased information surfaced.

First, historians were granted access to Wilson’s personal papers. Too, after Hitler’s

regime perished, German historians released information which refuted Revisionism. For

example, it seemed that just as Wilson followed public opinion so did the German High

Command in early 1917. It faced strong public criticism for not acting more boldly in its posture

towards the U. S. government. With the latter in mind, post-WWII scholars, or Realists, started

to ask “even if the U.S. had interpreted its neutral obligations differently, would the Germans,

short of achieving a ‘defacto’ alliance with the U.S., have foregone the fullest use of a weapon

which by 1917 seemed to most of them to hold the promise of quick victory?”8 To be sure, the

character of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic played a significant part in leading the

U. S. to war.

By the 1950s the role of public opinion for post-WWII Realist scholars was more

impactful on causation than Wilsonians or Revisionists might have imagined. Realists considered

the weight of two movements, which in their own right largely determined the course of

American domestic and foreign policy in America before, during, and after the war. On domestic

affairs, Arthur S. Link’s Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (1954) identified

“extreme forces” within the Progressive movement that affected Wilson’s war-time decision

process. On foreign affairs, Foster Rhea Dulles’s America’s Rise to World Power: 1898-1954

(1954) considered the state of America’s “national honor.” Isolationists and “responsible

interventionists” each claimed their movement captured it for Americans in 1917.

8 Bass, 4-6. This citation covers the content of the entire paragraph, aside from what I speculate at the end.

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The extent of Progressivism on causation was widespread according to Link. In total,

“the events, forces, and developments from 1914-1917 were too complex to permit any simple

generalization on the causes of American intervention.” Moreover, “American policy was

determined by the President and public opinion, which had a great, if unconscious, influence

upon him.” Link rejected Revisionism, particularly how it blamed bankers and businessmen for

leading America to war. Instead, “because [bankers and businessmen] furnished deadly

ammunition to the Progressives and Pacifists, the support that bankers and munitions-makers

gave the preparedness and intervention movements was a great obstacle to the success of those

movements.” Link also questioned the degree to which British propaganda influenced Wilson’s

decision process for contemplating intervention. Link characterized the impact of British

propaganda as “overrated.”9

Dulles augmented Link’s usage of Progressivism by considering the reasons why

Progressives ultimately disregarded isolationism for intervention. By 1917 most Americans

started to feel—or at least see (propaganda)—the impact of war in Europe on American

commerce, immigration, shipping, and trade.10 This was consequential for Dulles on two

accounts. First, “. . . Progressives and Liberals who had earlier reflected isolationist views, there

were now many who were ready to accept the call to defend liberty and justice in a wider sphere.

Their Progressivism took on international overtones.”11 Second, with respect to the condition of

Progressivism, “the great goal of enduring peace would be finally achieved with the overthrow

of German tyranny. The confidence in continuing social progress and the unlimited faith on a 9 Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,

Inc., 1963), 278-80.

10 Foster Rhea Dulles, America’s Rise to World Power: 1898-1954, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1963), 91-98.

11 Dulles, 103.

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beneficent future that had characterized the Progressive Era were given a global scope.”12

Throughout his career Wilson undoubtedly defended Progressive ideals; his name is often

synonymous with the movement. For Dulles then, Wilson entered the war to safeguard

Progressivism, which, as a movement, might define the president’s legacy to some extent.

If Wilson needed a smoking gun with which he could use to incriminate Germany and

thereby save Progressivism as Dulles led us to believe, Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmerman

Telegram: The Astounding Historic Espionage Operation that Propelled America into World

War I (1958) provided such a weapon. In January 1917 Wilson’s administration discovered that

Germany’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmerman, engaged the Mexican government to consider

strengthening German-Mexican relations; British intelligence provided the information. After the

American public heard of the affair, waves of alarm reverberated across the nation. For

Tuchman, unlike other causes, the Zimmerman Affair simplified what America faced if Germany

was victorious in Europe. In Tuchman’s vernacular, the episode “. . . was clear as a knife in the

back and near as next door.”13 The Affair certainly impacted Wilson. Of the telegram, Tuchman

said that it “. . . is not to say that Wilson wanted neutrality the day before the Telegram, and

belligerency the day after . . . it was, rather, the last drop that emptied his cup of neutrality.”14

S.L.A. Marshall in his World War I (1964) concurred with Tuchman about the

significance of the Zimmerman Affair. However, for Marshall, two drops—not one—emptied

Wilson’s “cup of neutrality.” Eight days before Wilson learned of the Zimmerman telegram,

Germany declared its intent to strike all Allied vessels in the Atlantic. In effect, according to

Marshall, “imperial Germany planted two time bombs destined to explode America out of frigid 12 Dulles, 107.

13 Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram: The Astounding Historic Espionage Operation that Propelled America into World War I, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company Inc., 1979), 179-180.

14 Tuchman, 193.

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neutrality into full-scale belligerency.”15 Taken together, Tuchman’s and Marshall’s conclusions

for what led Wilson to war were not ground-breaking. Instead, their thoughts reflected how

historians after the 1950s generally communicated their reasons why the U.S. entered World War

I. It is more difficult to classify Tuchman or Marshall as a Wilsonian, Revisionist, or a Post-

WWII Realist because their conclusions fit a particular narrative. Causation for Tuchman

originated through the story of the Zimmerman Affair; for Marshall through the course of World

War I History in its entirety. Their contemporaries repeated this pattern by addressing causation

in alternative narratives. For example, Samuel Eliot Morrison illustrated causation through the

narrative of American History. In his The Oxford History of the United States (1965) Morrison

proportionally compared Wilson’s dilemma to enter the war with Thomas Jefferson’s quandary

over the degree to which America should participate in the Napoleonic conflicts of the early

1800s. Morrison also measured how Wilson handled trade policy with Europe against how

Abraham Lincoln and FDR handled trade policy in their well-known times of crises.

In contrast to Morrison’s broad narrative, Ross Gregory’s The Origins of American

Intervention in the First World War (1971) focused on causation through a considerably

narrower storyline. Writing at a time when American soldiers were dying in parts of Southeast

Asia, Gregory considered what ultimately caused American doughboys to perish in Europe

starting in late 1917. Able to utilize a wide range of available primary information and tested

secondary sources, Gregory amalgamated what the author of this essay believes is one of the

more comprehensive thesis for why America entered the war. “The most important influence on

the fate of the U.S. in 1914-1917 was the nation’s world position. National need and interests

were such that it was nearly impossible to avoid the problems which led the nation into war.”16

15 S.L.A. Marshall, World War I, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 275.16 Ross Gregory, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War (New York, London: W. W.

Norton & Company, Inc., 1971), 133.

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Gregory was not the last historian to consider the state of America’s national interests as they

related to why the U.S. entered World War I.

David Fromkin in his A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the

Creation of the Modern Middle East (1989) emphasized a significant fact that rarely receives

consideration among historians: Wilson did not declare war against the other Central Powers, the

Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. To the author, these regions—especially the Middle

East—were places where Wilson envisioned “autonomous development” for indigenous people

and their surrounding localities; and, if American missionaries played a significant part in this

development process, then Wilson could not be more pleased.17 Fromkin indicated that, for

Wilson, promoting moralism served America’s national interest in the region. Wilson hoped

moralistic values might guide the process by which nations became self-determined. In total,

Wilson aimed to achieve stability throughout the Middle East by entering the war.

For Fromkin, to be sure in the Middle East, moralism caused Wilson to act. In Europe,

however, according to Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells in America and the Great War,

1914-1920 (1998), commerce as a national interest determined the reasons why Wilson entered

the war. For the authors, America’s pre-war economic strength stemmed from pre-war traditional

American economic policies and Wilson’s pro-Ally trade measures. Moreover, it was unusual

that Wilson only referred to the Zimmerman Affair and Germany’s submarine activity in his

declaration of war speech to Congress, which for James and Wells were merely ancillary causes.

They determined that Wilson declared war because of the “. . . economic and financial links with

the Allies, the security threat to the nation, the impact of Allied propaganda, the pro-British bias

of Wilson and the majority of Americans, and the ideological aspect of democracy battling

17 David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the

Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1989), 256, 258.

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autocracy.”18 Revisionist scholars of the 1930s would not have agreed more, which brings to

mind a question: Just as scholars in the 1930s determined causation with a bias against the

prosperous bankers and businessmen of the roaring 1920s, did scholars in the 1990s determine

causation with the same bias against successful bankers and businessmen of the deregulatory

1980s?

In his The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (2003), Thomas Fleming

considered the impact of propaganda on America’s state of mind in 1917. His determinations

bring to mind an additional question to be addressed shortly. First, Fleming described how the

Telconia—a British ship—severed Germany’s underwater communication cables before the war

even started. In consequence, the Allied powers from the inception of the war controlled

information flowing between the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Fleming cited an Austrian

diplomat who characterized the significance of the incident this way: “The cutting of that cable

may do us great injury, if only one side of the case is given . . . prejudice will be against us.”

Prejudice was also against them because the German government failed to develop an effective

counter-propaganda offensive. With such, Fleming believed Germany may have been able to

persuade America’s 8.3 million German-Americans and anti-English Irishmen to act

accordingly.19

Whether he intended it to or not, Fleming’s use of the role of propaganda in persuading a

populace to support a particular cause for war reflected a debate raging across America in the

years following September 11th, 2001, but before March 2003. When considering how the

18 Clayton D. James & Anne Sharp Wells, America and the Great War, 1914-1920 (Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1998), 27.

19 Thomas Fleming, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 43-45, 59, 62.

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British government manipulated information to coax America into war, was Fleming bearing in

mind how George W. Bush’s administration in 2001-03 used information to convince the

American public that it was worth the effort to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq? In the least, it is an

eye-catching coincidence. Likewise, the concurrence is useful for appreciating, or at least

recognizing, why Fleming may have singled this particular cause for significance.

Such an inference is true of all the historians and their published work mentioned in this

essay. To be certain, other conclusions aside from historical coincidences contributed to

answering what may have caused America to enter the First World War. Generalizing each

theory, Wilsonians believed Wilson unilaterally took the nation to war. Revisionists alleged that

Wilson and a majority of the public bilaterally led America to war. Realists contended that

Wilson put aside any bias which favored or rejected entering the war; Wilson determined the

public wanted to go to war for reasons he certainly accepted. Finally, Post Realist Scholars

focused on specific causes that ultimately affected, or determined, America’s national interest.

Neither of these theories completes the statement, “The U.S. entered World War I

because . . . .” They, rather, collectively contribute to answering why it is difficult for historians

to address causation in the field of history.20 These historians and their theories may not

conclusively tell us why America entered World War I, or reduce the problems associated with

contemplating causation in history. However, they do make reference to one final thought that all

nations and their leaders most likely consider before going to war: “The fact is that every nation

is caught in the moral paradox of refusing to go to war unless it can be proven that the National

20 Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall Inc., 2010), 78-80. There are four types of “causes:” material, efficient, formal, and final. Because of this essay’s length restriction, the author could not correlate these categories with why America entered World War I.

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interest is imperiled, and in continuing in the war only by proving that something much more

than the national interest is at stake.”21 I could not agree more.

Bibliography

Bass, Herbert J. America’s Entry Into World War I. Editor. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964.

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. A Diplomatic History of the United States. 5th ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965.

Dulles, Foster Rhea. America’s Rise to World Power: 1898-1954. 2nd ed. New York: Harper& Row, Publishers, Inc., 1963.

Fleming, Thomas. The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. New York: Basic Books, 2003.

21 Dulles, America’s Rise to World Power, 107. This quote is actually by Reinhold Niebuhr from his The Irony of American History (New York, 1952), 36. Dulles used it on page 107 in a footnote to emphasize how important it was that Progressives entered the war to preserve their legacy. I used it because it fully captures the reasons why I believe America entered World War I. Niebuhr’s contention dovetails nicely with what Ross Gregory concluded on page 9 of this essay.

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Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1989.

Gilderhus, Mark T. History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction, 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall Inc., 2010.

Gregory, Ross. The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971.

James, Clayton D., Anne Sharp Wells. America and the Great War, 1914-1920. Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1998.

Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1963.

Marshall, S.L.A. World War I. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

Morrison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Notter, Harley. The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1937.

Seymour, Charles. Woodrow Wilson and the World War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmerman Telegram: The Astounding Historic Espionage Operation that Propelled America into World War I. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company Inc., 1979.

Selected Annotated Bibliography

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. A Diplomatic History of the United States. 5th ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965. [Bemis is a recognized authority on American diplomatic history from its inception to the 1950s. As for his work in this publication, Bemis analyzed the foundations, expansion, and uniformity of American foreign policy from the colonial period to the height of the atomic age. Bemis used personal correspondence papers, official American government documents, credible secondary sources, including his own published research. His work is not for novices in the field of American history, but instead for learned and inquisitive students and teachers of the subject. Bemis’s work is thorough and successfully contributes to any aspect of

America’s foreign policy history. For Bemis, how nations deal with “change,” as an inevitability, determines the course by which nations act among each other.]

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Dulles, Foster Rhea. America’s Rise to World Power: 1898-1954. 2nd ed. New York: Harper& Row, Publishers, Inc., 1963. [Dulles has written extensively about American Foreign Policy in the early 20th century. In this account, he describes the course of American activities in foreign lands from the Spanish-American War to the conflict onthe Korean Peninsula after World War II. A considerable amount of Dulles’s research

comes from Hunter Miller’s eight volumes of Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America. He consulted official and unofficial State Department records, Presidential Papers, the Congressional Record, Foreign Affairs publications, and New York Times articles. Dulles also consulted works from Samuel Flagg Bemis and Dexter Perkins. Dulles strongly considered the role of “emotion” as it related to

American isolationism, Progressivism, and eventually interventionism. His work for the study of international relations emphasizes the importance of domestic policy on America’s traditional foreign strategies.]

Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1963. [Many historians admire Link for his command over Progressive history and knowledge of Woodrow Wilson. In this publication, Link highlights the important political and diplomatic events of the Progressive Era, particularly how President Wilson’s policies impacted such development. Link consulted a long list of tested secondary information in addition to manuscripts, published letters and writings, newspapers, periodicals, and selected memoirs. Link researched with the intent of furthering students’ and teachers’ understanding of what he considered to be a very critical time period in American history. To Link, just as Jeffersonian principles guided the early 19th century, so did Wilsonian principles guide the early 20th century.]

Seymour, Charles. Woodrow Wilson and the World War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921. [Charles Seymour is recognized for his extensive written work aboutAmerican diplomacy before, during and after World War I. A professor of history at Yale, and later president of Yale University in 1937, Seymour also served on President Wilson’s delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in France in 1919. Woodrow Wilson and the World War describes how contemporary circumstances from 1913-1919 impacted President Wilson and his decisions which ushered America into the war and through its aftermath. For analyzing Wilson, Seymour relied heavily on President Wilson’s published writings before 1919. Seymour also reviewed the personal papers of colleagues he worked with at Paris in 1919. Interestingly, for secondary accounts, Seymour’s Biographical Note does not contain a single source older than 1921—the same year he published Woodrow Wilson and the World War. For Seymour, his book is intended “to broaden opportunities for study in American history and government.” Moreover, Seymour aimed to describe how one man’s ideals can affect the foreign policy for a whole nation. Seymour maintains that Wilson himself, more than the circumstances which surrounded him, encouraged the President to support America’s declaration of war against Germany in April 1917. Woodrow Wilson and the World War is one of the first early significant publications about President Wilson’s role in shaping American foreign policy before, during, and after the Great War.]

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Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmerman Telegram: The Astounding Historic Espionage Operation that Propelled America into World War I. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company Inc., 1979. [Tuchman is widely recognized for writing about popular European and American history in the late 19th century and early 20th century. She has written exclusively about World War I. This publication is an hour-by-hour account of how America learned of secret correspondence between Germany and Mexico. Tuchman utilized the National Archive’s collection of papers and records pertaining to diplomatic discourse among the Mexican, Japanese, German, British, and American governments. She veered into an exclusive list of biographies, memoirs, and personal papers. Tuchman’s use of secondary information was limited. The Zimmerman Telegram is popular history at its best. It successfully illuminates the importance of an Affair that many historians suggest led America to war rather than ambiguous details pertaining to international trade law or propaganda.]

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