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N0KFQ > TODAY 06.04.17 12:57l 64 Lines 2941 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 28527_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Apr 6
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N9PMO<NS2B<N0KFQ
Sent: 170406/1146Z 28527@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1917
America enters World War I
Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war
against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the
declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters
World War I.
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson
pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the
vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of
America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose
between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted
quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to
Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February
1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships,
neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.
One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk
the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson
was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the
attack an unfortunate mistake.
On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed
without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959
passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The
German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying
munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German
attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August,
Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking
unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without
warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these
attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn
irrevocably against Germany.
In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against
the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in
war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke
diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the
American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On
February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations
bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late
March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2
President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a
declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request
was granted.
On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in
France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody
stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's
well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning
point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war
finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million
American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western
Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
Winlink: n0kfq@winlink.org
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