The spark that ignited the war was the June 28 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia one month later. However, the root causes of the Great War, as it was soon known, were much deeper. Nationalism, militarism, and imperialism had built up tensions in Europe for years. Once the conflict began, a complex web of entangling alliances brought more and more countries into the war.
The German word for submarine is unterseeboot, which was abbreviated to U-boat. Submarines were a relatively new technology, and an especially frightening one. The thought of being attacked, and sunk, without any warning from an invisible undersea foe was unnerving. Many also considered such sneak attacks uncivilized and outside the rules of honorable warfare. But German U-boats also attacked civilian ships, which outraged public opinion. Americans were particularly upset at the sinking of the the Lusitania. Of the 1,201 people who died when the ship sank,128 were Americans.
Germany responded to Britain’s naval blockade with extensive use of its U-boats. After the U-boat sinking of the Lusitania caused such an outcry, especially in the United States, President Woodrow Wilson responded by pressuring Germany to limit its use of submarines. Germany agreed to refrain from attacking unarmed passenger ships and to allow crews of enemy merchant ships to disembark before attacking.
When the war broke out, President Woodrow Wilson stated that The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name, and that We must be impartial in thought as well as in action. Most Americans agreed, and still agreed when the election came. Wilson won reelection with the slogan He kept us out of the war. The election was close, however; Americans’ sympathy for the Allies was growing.
Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, sent the German ambassador to Mexico a coded message. The message was intercepted and decoded by the British, who shared it with American officials. The Zimmermann note, as it came to be called, revealed a German plan to persuade Mexico to go to war against the United States. The note was made public in March. Americans were enraged. The United States declared war in April.
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