US Enters WWI: Wilson Declares War on Germany

Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, by a vote of 82 to 6 in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House, transforming the United States from a neutral observer into a belligerent in the largest conflict the world had yet seen. President Woodrow Wilson had asked for the declaration four days earlier, framing American entry as a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy." The vote was not unanimous. Fifty-six members of Congress dissented, including Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman ever elected to the body, who wept as she cast her no vote. The path to war had been building for two years. Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, declared in February 1917, meant that any ship entering designated war zones would be torpedoed without warning. American merchant vessels and passenger ships had been struck repeatedly since the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which killed 1,198 people including 128 Americans. The Zimmermann Telegram, intercepted by British intelligence and published on March 1, 1917, revealed a German proposal to Mexico offering American territory in exchange for a military alliance. Public opinion shifted decisively toward intervention. The United States was spectacularly unprepared for war. The regular Army numbered only 127,588 men. Wilson signed the Selective Service Act in May 1917, and by war's end nearly 4.8 million Americans had served, 2.8 million of them draftees. General John J. Pershing took command of the American Expeditionary Forces and insisted on fielding an independent American army rather than distributing troops as replacements into depleted British and French units, a decision that delayed American combat involvement but preserved national military identity. American soldiers began arriving in France in June 1917 but did not enter combat in significant numbers until spring 1918. Their contribution was decisive not because of battlefield experience, which they largely lacked, but because of numbers and timing. Germany's spring offensive in 1918 had exhausted its reserves. Fresh American divisions, arriving at the rate of 250,000 men per month, tipped the balance irrevocably. The armistice came on November 11, 1918. American combat deaths totaled 53,402, with another 63,114 killed by disease, mainly the 1918 influenza pandemic.