America And World War 1 Essay

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America and World War I Michael Lackey HIS/125 May 27, 2012 Doreen Pauley America and World War I The United States of America had originally hesitated on the notion of entering World War 1. Then President Wilson and most Americans had a policy of being neutral when it came to the First World War. England was at war with German and enacted a naval blockade of Germany. Germany retaliated by using U boats or as they are known today as submarines. A submarine is an underwater vessel that can stay submerged for a long period of time. The Germans sank the British Cruise ship Lusitanian off the coast of England on May 7th, 1915. There were nearly 2,000 passengers aboard the Lusitanian and out of that total there were 128 Americans…show more content…
But the war created a 44 month economic recovery for the United States from 1914 until 1918. The United States had taken a neutral approach to World War I. This allowed the Europeans to purchase goods from the United States for the war. When the United States entered the war in 1917 it set off a massive federal spending spree. This meant that production of goods for civilians would be then shifted to war goods. During this period the unemployment rate went from 7.9 percent to 1.4 percent for two reasons. The first being that there were new manufacturing jobs and second being the many young men were either enlisted or drafted into the military (The National Bureau of Economic Research,…show more content…
Men often died during their first day in the trenches due to sniper fire. The trenches were heavily infested with rats. There were brown and black rats. The brown rats were the ones that were feared most by the troops. The dined on human remains. One rat could produce up to 900 offspring per year. Other problems in the trenches were lice and frogs. Lice were a problem that would not go away. They would lay eggs in the seams of the uniforms and the body heat from the soldiers was causing the eggs to hatch. Lice caused trench fever which was a painful disease that began with pain and followed by high fever. This took weeks to cure as long as you did not remain in the trenches (Duffy,
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