Commentary editor John Podhoretz linked to an interesting piece on Twitter on Thursday:
Please read this extraordinary @davidfrum essay on World War I and the lessons of history: https://t.co/vjPn9ZvGcR
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 6, 2017
Frum’s piece is definitely worth a read, but it also highlights the fact that many Americans are not really familiar with World War I. The war is in the realm of forgotten history; yet it was a war that forever changed the landscape of the globe.
Here are seven things you need to know about America’s involvement in World War I.
1. World War I stemmed from European conflicts. The war was triggered by the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by a Southern Slav nationalist who wanted to drive Austria-Hungary out of the Southern Slav region. That set off a domino effect in Europe, as it prompted Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, which resulted in Russia declaring war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declaring war on Russia and then France for refusing to pledge neutrality. The timeline looked something like this in 1914: (H/T: Britannica)
Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 5; Serbia against Germany on August 6; Montenegro against Austria-Hungary on August 7 and against Germany on August 12; France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on August 10 and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.
In other words, “the war pitted the Central Powers—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the Allies—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States,” according to Britannica. Which raises the question: why did the U.S. get involved in a warring conflict between European nations?
2. America entered the war after Germany attacked numerous American ships. America had initially remained neutral during the war; President Woodrow Wilson’s re-election slogan was “He kept us out of war,” which he rode to another term in the White House. Circumstances changed a year later when Germany launched submarine attacks against U.S ships and the discovery of the “Zimmerman Telegram,” in which intercepted German communications revealed that Germany was attempting to forge a deal with Mexico in which “Germany would help Mexico recover the territory it had ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War” in exchange for Mexico supporting Germany’s war efforts, according to the State Department’s website. These actions eventually swayed Wilson toward issuing a declaration of war against Germany; Congress subsequently approved.
3. To the surprise of the world, America’s forces won the war for the Allied forces. America’s military might was not taken seriously by Kaiser Wilhelm. In fact, when he was told that unleashing German submarines as a means of war would result in America entering the war, Wilhelm responded with a note that read, “I do not care.”
“Even if the Americans did declare war on Germany, he blustered, they were just a bunch of cowboys with an army barely worthy of the name,” wrote King’s College lecturer Nick Lloyd in a Wall Street Journal column. “What use would these weaklings be against Germany’s legions?”
America did only start the war with 130,000 troops, but the troops swelled to a whopping four million by the war’s end, according to National Public Radio. Between the draft and an influx of volunteers, the American military had reached a remarkable size to fend off the Central Powers.
Additionally, American Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing changed the war’s strategic front from trench warfare to open warfare, which brought “mobility to warfare by emphasizing American aggressiveness and marksmanship,” per the Army’s website. The change in tactics and the size of America’s forces under the command of British and French troops eventually brought Germany to request an armistice.
4. World War I transformed America into a world power. Not only because of the massive increase in the size of America’s military, but because “the military also modernized and became more professional,” per NPR.
5. However, America’s transformation came at a cost. There were 117,000 Americans killed and 202,000 wounded during the war.
6. World War I set the stage for World War II. New York Times columnist Michael Kazin argued that America’s intervention into World War I is what indirectly led to World War II:
How would the war have ended if America had not intervened? The carnage might have continued for another year or two until citizens in the warring nations, who were already protesting the endless sacrifices required, forced their leaders to reach a settlement. If the Allies, led by France and Britain, had not won a total victory, there would have been no punitive peace treaty like that completed at Versailles, no stab-in-the-back allegations by resentful Germans, and thus no rise, much less triumph, of Hitler and the Nazis. The next world war, with its 50 million deaths, would probably not have occurred.
But it was not necessarily the war itself that led to World War II; it was the vacuum left in place by America and the Allies. Lloyd noted in his column that following the Senate’s failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, America and the Allies retreated from the world stage for a time; fascism and Nazism arose in their absence. World War I also opened the door toward the Bolshevik Revolution overtaking Russia.
7. Had America not intervened in World War I, the consequences would have been dire. Frum argued in his piece that without America’s intervention, “the Kaiser’s Germany would have emerged from such an outcome as the dominant power on the continent of Europe,” meaning that “the United States would have gotten an early start on the Cold War, and maybe a second hot war, supported by fewer and weaker allies against a richer and more dangerous opponent — and one quite likely to have developed the atomic bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile first.”
Additionally, Frum noted that without America’s intervention, Germany’s imperialism would have won the day and struck a massive blow against democracy.
That is the ultimate takeaway Frum believes we should take from World War I: if America remains on the sidelines, “the aggressive and illiberal” will rise in its place and the world will move away from the freedoms that Americans hold dear.