StartFragment
By 1916, Americans felt an increasing need for a military that could command respect. "The best thing about a large army and a strong navy,” one editor noted, “is that they make it so much easier to say just what we want to say in our diplomatic correspondence." Berlin thus far had backed down and apologized when Washington became angry, boosting American self-confidence and placing a focus on national rights and honor; the slogan "Peace" gave way to "Peace with Honor." The environment was ripe for increased preparations for war and, eventually, a call to battle.
Emergence of the Preparedness Movement
A strong movement had emerged in 1915 behind the argument that the U.S. needed to immediately build up strong naval and land forces for defensive purposes. Emphasizing the weak state of national defenses, the leaders of the Preparedness Movement showed that America's army, even augmented by National Guardsmen, was outnumbered 20 to one by the German army, which was drawn from a smaller population. Preparedness backers declared the War Department had no plans, no equipment, little training, no reserves, a laughable National Guard, and a wholly inadequate organization for war, all of which needed to be addressed. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, General Leonard Wood, and former Secretaries of War Elihu Root and Henry Stimson were among the driving forces behind the Preparedness Movement, along with many of the nation's most prominent bankers, industrialists, lawyers, and scions of prominent families. There was also an "Atlanticist" foreign policy establishment – influential Americans drawn primarily from upper-class Northeast lawyers, bankers, academics, and politicians – committed to a strand of Anglophile internationalism.
Several organizations were formed around the Preparedness Movement and held parades and organized opposition to President Wilson's military policies. The movement had little use for the National Guard, which it saw as politicized, overly local, poorly armed, ill trained, inclined to idealistic crusading, and lacking in an understanding of world affairs. Reform to them meant military service by all young men, called conscription. This proposal ultimately failed, but fostered the Plattsburg Movement, a series of summer training schools for reserve military officers located in Plattsburg, N.Y.
Opposition to the Preparedness Movement
The Plattsburg Movement, which hosted approximately 40,000 men in 1915 and 1916, was aimed at social elites, ignoring talented working class youths and subsequently failing to generate support among the middle class leadership in small town America. Anti-militarists and pacifists, including Protestant church members and women's groups, protested the plan in the belief it would make America resemble Germany’s system of compulsory, two-year military service. Advocates retorted that this was an essential duty of citizenship, but hostility to military service was so strong at the time that such a program was unlikely to win legislative approval.
Anti-Preparedness Protest, 1916
Many groups were opposed to the Preparedness Movement, such as the Socialist Party, seen here organizing a parade of opposition.
The Democratic Party, especially Wilson, was also opposed to the Preparedness Movement, believing it to be a political threat because Roosevelt, Root and Wood were prospective Republican presidential candidates. Democrats were also rooted in localism that appreciated the work of the National Guard, and Democratic voters were inherently hostile to the rich and powerful represented by Republicans and elitist initiatives such as the Plattsburg Movement.
Military Lack of Preparedness
Neither the Army nor the Navy, however, was ready for the war that was engulfing large parts of the globe, especially America’s close European allies. The U.S. Army appeared to pay scant attention to the flood of new tactics and weapons systems being unveiled in Europe such as trench warfare, poison gas, and tanks, and remained unfamiliar with the rapid evolution of air tactics.
The press at the time reported that the only thing the military was ready for was an enemy fleet attempting to seize New York harbor at a time when the German battle fleet was penned up by the Royal Navy. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, ignoring the nation's strategic needs and disdaining the advice of experts, suspended meetings of the Joint Army and Navy Board for two years in response to unwelcome advice. He also chopped in half the amount of new ship construction recommended by the board, reduced the authority of officers in Navy yards, and ignored administrative chaos in his department.
Proposals to send observers to Europe were blocked, leaving the Navy less informed about the success of the German submarine campaign and the measures taken to defend against it. Among these were light anti-submarine ships, which were few in number and reflected Daniels’ apparent unwillingness to maintain focus on the German sub menace that had been a key point in U.S. foreign policy for the previous two years.
The Navy's only official war strategy, the "Black Plan," assumed the British Royal Navy did not exist and that German battleships were moving freely about the Atlantic and the Caribbean, threatening the Panama Canal. Daniels' tenure would have been even less successful without the energetic efforts of Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt, who effectively ran the department.
Wilson Administration and Preparedness
Congressional Democrats tried to cut the military budget in 1915. The Preparedness Movement, however, effectively exploited the outrage over the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania by German U-boats on May 7, 1915, forcing Democrats to promise some improvements to ground and naval forces.
Wilson, less fearful of the Navy than other branches of the service, embraced a long-term building program designed to make the U.S. battleship fleet the equal of the Royal Navy by the mid-1920s. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison created his own plan, adopting many of the proposals of the Preparedness Movement leaders, which not only outraged the locally minded politicians of both parties, but also offended a strongly held belief shared by the liberal wing of the Progressive Movement that warfare always had a hidden economic motivation. Wilson took his cause to the people in a major speaking tour in early 1916, winning over the middle classes for his preparedness policies, but failing to impact the largely ethnic working classes and the deeply isolationist farmers.
Forming a Compromise
After the Lusitania sinking and Pancho Villa’s raid against Columbus, New Mexico, Wilson's opposition to the Preparedness Movement changed. Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1916 in June, authorizing an enormous increase in the size of the military. This long-term plan would double the army and increase the National Guard. Summer camps on the Plattsburg model were authorized for new officers, while the House of Representatives gutted the naval plans as well, defeating a "big navy" plan.
Preparedness supporters were downcast and the anti-war supporters were jubilant, as America would now be too weak to join the fighting. This lack of military power encouraged Germany to discount any immediate risk from America because the U.S. Army was negligible and new warships would not be at sea until 1919, by which time Germany believed it would have already won the war.
Abandoning Peace
In early 1917, Berlin forced the issue with its decision to conduct open submarine warfare and attack any ship it chose to target on the high seas. Five American merchant vessels went down in March. Wilson initially tried to maintain neutrality while fighting off submarines with armed American merchant ships, but their guns were ineffective against the underwater attacks of German U-boats. Final efforts for peace were abandoned when German Foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann approached Mexico seeking a military alliance, promising the return of lost territories in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. After the so-called Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted and decoded by British cryptographers, outraged American public opinion now overwhelmingly supported Wilson when he asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917.
Declaring War
Wilson anticipated unfortunate consequences for America in the event of a victory by Germany, which would dominate Europe and perhaps gain control of the seas. Latin America might also fall under Berlin's control, shattering the dream of spreading democracy, liberalism and independence. Additionally, if the Allies won the war without American help there was a danger they would carve up the world’s territories without regard to U.S. commercial interests. European nations were already planning to use government subsidies, tariff walls and controlled markets to counter American business competition. Wilson found a potential solution in another route he called, "peace without victory," meaning a global political and economic landscape shaped, if not totally dictated, by the United States.
The president told Congress the United States had a moral responsibility to enter the war in order to make the world safe for democracy. The future was being determined on the battlefield and American national interest demanded a voice. Wilson's definition of the situation won wide acclaim and, indeed, has formed the basis of America's role in world and military affairs ever since.
![](../../../../../../../figures.boundless-cdn.com/4684/large/d-tyskland-3-februari-1917.jpeg)
President Wilson breaks diplomatic relations with Germany
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in the official relations with Germany. February 3, 1917.