World war one and US Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

World war one and US - Essay Example The main purpose of the war was struggling for division of the world. However, the United States wasn’t in hurry to enter the war. First of all, a conflict between the US and other countries hadn’t reached the extreme point that could lead to military actions; secondly, the majority of Americans didn’t think that interfering into European affairs (and vice versa) was a good idea. The third reason was that US army wasn’t ready for large-scale war, because it was formed on a voluntary basis and had approximately 100  000 badly trained soldiers. But in the 7th of May 1915 German submarine sank the British largest passenger liner â€Å"Luisitania†, including 128 Americans that were on board. A report about this event caused a storm of dissatisfaction in the United States. Despite multiple warnings, German repeatedly attacked American ships. President Woodrow Wilson was an advocate of nonintervention of USA into European war, but the actions of the Ger mans forced him to announce the transition to the US policy of armed neutrality (26th of February 1917), which meant a gap of diplomatic relations between the US and Germany. The further German aggression forced Wilson to enter the war (6 of April 1917) on Allies’ side, against Germany (Kennedy 46). For the first time in US history a law on conscription was passed. Losses suffered by Americans were relatively not that big (approximately 104,000 lives). For comparison, 26 million people were killed during the entire war, half of them were civilians. The war abruptly changed the balance of forces in world political arena. It provoked huge amount of revolutions: Bolsheviks came to power in Russia and formed their own government, Germany and Austria-Hungary collapsed and lost their influence. The military destruction and revolutions weakened Europe, while US entry into the war caused new rise of