On January 22, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson told a joint session of Congress that the United States must remain neutral in World War I to ensure “peace without victory.” Eleven weeks later, he returned to Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. The rapid turn of events was brought on by a series of German actions that some historians believe left Wilson with little choice but to finally enter the war in Europe. Scores of American civilians had already been killed by German U-boats since the beginning of the war, including 128 in the 1915 sinking of RMS Lusitania. For two years, Wilson repeatedly warned the Germans against a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, which he considered a violation of international law and a pretext to a break in diplomatic relations. “Germany made the decision for reasons dealing with internal politics in January 1917 to go to unrestricted submarine warfare in defiance of the threats,” says historian Ross Kennedy, a professor at Illinois State University and author of “The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security.” “Wilson had no choice but to break relations or he would have lost diplomatic credibility.” Plenty of Americans shared the same sentiment in April 1917. The country was hardly united in the decision to declare war on Imperial Germany, as the 56 votes against the measure in Congress attested.
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