World War 1 Dbq

World War I: The United States Break From Neutrality
At the beginning of World War I, the United States wanted to maintain neutrality. That was largely due to George Washington's previous orders that the United States would maintain an isolationist point of view. Immigrants were one of the largest supporters of maintaining neutrality, especially the Germans and Irish. For the German-Americans, it was a matter of not wanting to fight against their ancestral home. However, the Irish-Americans wanted to avoid aiding Britain in the war due to long-standing political tensions. Another reason for maintaining neutrality was due to lack of support from the progressives. The progressives believed that the United States had greatly improved during the

There was “powerful financial interest which would be connected with these loans,” meaning that by joining the war and giving other belligerent nations money the United States could make a lot of money. The United States makes major increases in their exports to both Britain and France whereas there was a sharp decline in the number of exports sent to the Germans. (Doc 2) This was partly to help protect the financial investment that the United States made to the British and French but also to increase the United States own factory production. War was also brought wealth and “prosperity to the stock gambler” which helped the United States to gain more support for the war efforts. The United States also wanted to grow in their economic status so by making people within the country more wealthy that would also help to make the government wealthier. In the end, the potential for economic loss and profit was enough to push the United States even closer to the war and out of

The Germans at this point had shown great movement towards a more aggressive standpoint in the war and this directly affected the United States lost people on boats like the Lusitania and the Laconia. Many people worried that “other laconias were certain to sink.” (Doc 7) This instilled fear into the nations and many people felt that the only way to solve this would be to get involved and take a more aggressive standpoint on the matter. The Sussex pledge was announced in place to restrict this warfare by German submarines but after violating the policy, even more, people supported a more aggressive, including President Woodrow Wilson. Just days before the United States breaking from neutrality the president stated that “German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.”(Doc 5) Submarine warfare was not the only problem that caused the United States to join World War I. In 1914, just a few years before the United States joined World War I, German attacked Belgium and slaughtered hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. Belgium had remained neutral throughout the war which made this attack on Belgium even more unjustifiable. Yet another example of Germany’s unrestricted warfare was the Zimmerman telegram. The Zimmerman telegram was a message sent by the Germans to Mexicans and stated that they were