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No we've talked france and germany We've talked the balkans

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We've talked russia Time to talk about that Good all

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yusa also known as the country that didn't get pulled

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in a world war one until the last possible second

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we assume they were just being fashionably late Well when

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summer of nineteen fourteen rolled around and europe went up

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in smoke the us stayed neutral The man leading the

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charge for neutrality was none other than the american president

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woodrow wilson go would he will He struck to his

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figurative guns all the way through the presidential campaign of

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nineteen sixteen and the beginning of a second term on

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the american people were thrilled Neutrality just made sense to

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most americans there were several reasons for it Well first

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it's hard to get up in arms about a war

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started by a bunch of warmongers on the opposite side

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of the ocean Second americans saw world war as an

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economic opportunity Sure that sounds cold but as a neutral

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nation the u s would be able to sell supplies

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and weapons to both the allied and the central powers

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instead of raining men It's rated man you like that

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Song or at least pieces of men like it wasn't

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france It'd be raining mullah in america Yeah well good

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Third The us was an extremely diverse place and different

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people were rooting for different teams German americans austrian americans

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and irish americans all wanted the central powers to win

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Everybody else was on the side of the allies So

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better to stay neutral right And finally the us didn't

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have a military Okay Well that's an exaggeration but it

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only had about one hundred thousand soldiers and a couple

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of bathtubs It called ships But other than that it's

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fighting force is kind of a joke Clearly president wilson

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had a lot of cause to say nuke to the

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war But it sometimes happens in life Things change Well

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in this case the war came to the americans Now

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there were several events that occurred that eventually led the

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u s to decide to enter world war But the

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numeral uno grande a reason for going to war was

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the sinking of the lusitania When the war began the

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british blockaded the north sea to keep germans from getting

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supplies into and out of the country This block a

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was incredibly effective in the germans had to come up

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with a way to get around it or lose the

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war They're solution the u boat By early nineteen fifteen

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u boats were prowling the oceans and particularly the waters

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around great britain which germany had declared a war zone

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Furthermore while u boats technically weren't supposed to sink a

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merchant ship unless there was something suspicious about this ship

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many german u boat captains believed it their duty to

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put us many ships as possible on the bottom of

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the ocean on the war was on uh and so

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through a series of unfortunate events the lusitania was sunk

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Hundreds of americans who've been travelling a great britain for

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business or pleasure died and many of the dead were

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children Well the u boats sank other ships more americans

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died or were injured By this time us had had

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it up to here with freaking underwater warfare So the

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germans promised to stop sinking everything inside if the u

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s would just talk great britain into ending the blockade

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But guess what Within six months the u boats were

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up to their old tricks And by january nineteen seventeen

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germany had re declared unrestricted submarine warfare President wilson promptly

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broke off diplomatic relations with germany and on april second

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nineteen seventeen he made a speech to a joint session

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of congress U boats were killing americans he said and

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those same u boats were keeping the us from making

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money through free trade More importantly peace and democracy were

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awesome Germany was killing both It was time for the

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u s to go to bat and save the world

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most of the u s senate and house of representatives

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agreed with wilson Nearly three years after world war one

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started america finally entered the conflict destroyed cities couldn't bring

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us in Millions of people killed or wounded couldn't either

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but mess with trade from the good old u s

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of a and lady liberty you'll get mad and trust

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us You don't want to make her mad She has 00:04:10.432 --> [endTime] a black belt in karate Huh

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