The United States initially sent a small force to aid the Allies in World War 1, but after the US entered the war in 1917, it mobilized over 4 million troops known as the American Expeditionary Force. Over 50,000 US troops were killed in combat before an armistice was signed in November 1918. The Spanish flu pandemic, which spread among the crowded and unsanitary trench conditions, killed over 50,000 American troops and perhaps 30 million people worldwide. Advanced weapons, tanks, and aircraft increased casualties and changed the nature of modern warfare.

1. Chapter 12.3 (pp. 425-431)

3.  Congress sent the Allies:
 Naval support
 Supplies/arms
 $3 billion in loans
 Token force of 14,500 led by Pershing
 Pershing realized this was not enough men
 Asked for 1 million men by 1918 & 3 million by 1919

4. Pershing in France
in 1918

5.  Selective Service Act
implemented in May of
1917
 Authorized a draft
 24 million were
registered
 3 million selected
 At first ages 21-30; later
ages 18-45

6.  Volunteers & National Guardsmen also served
 4.7 million served in total
 2 million saw time in the trenches
 Collectively known as the American Expeditionary
Force (AEF)
 Nicknamed “Doughboys”
 Sustained 320k casualties
 53k combat deaths, 63 non-combat deaths (influenza
pandemic of 1918), 204k wounded
 350k African Americans served
 Segregated units led by white officers

7. American
troops pass
Buckingham
Palace in
London, 1917

8. 369th Infantry
Regiment of New
York; nicknamed
the Harlem
Hellfighters

9.  11k women served in
uniform in various roles
 Nurses, drivers, clerks,
telephone operators
 14k others served abroad
as civilians working for
the government or for
private agencies

10.  Learned how to:
 Use a bayonet & rifle
 Dig a trench
 Put on a gas mask
 Throw a grenade
 Training was sometimes cut short due to urgency

11. Stateside training camps

12.  Concern for transporting troops safely
 In April 1917 alone, U-boats had sunk 400+ Allied &
neutral ships
 Starting in May 1917, all merchant & troop ships traveled
in a convoy
 Group of unarmed ships surrounded by a ring of destroyers,
torpedo boats, & other armed naval vessels
 Numbers of ships sunk soon slowed
 U-boats did not sink a single U.S. troopship traveling to
Europe

14.  Pershing hoped to keep
Americans separate from
the Allies
 In his view, the Allies were
too accustomed to
defensive moves
 Americans were ready for
offensive moves
 They resembled the fresh
European troops of 1914
 Most black soldiers never
saw combat
 Marines refused to accept
African Americans
altogether
 369th/Harlem Hellfighters
convinced their white
officers to loan them to the
French army
 They earned France’s
highest honor: Croix de
Guerre (Cross of War)

15.  V.I. Lenin & the Bolsheviks violently overthrew Russia’s
republican gov’t in November of 1918
 Lenin signed a truce w/ Germany in December
 A final peace treaty was signed in March
 Germany gained vast territories from western Russia
 Germany no longer had to fight a two-front war
 Hundreds of thousands were sent to the Western Front
 From March through May of 1918, German forces turned all
energy toward pounding the French/British lines
 Successfully broke through trenches & advanced deep into Allied
territory
 By May of 1918, they were only 50 miles from Paris
 Known as the “Spring Offensive”

17.  Allied Victories Aided by the Americans:
 Re-captured village of Cantigny in late May of 1918
 Early June, American forces at Chateau-Thierry helped
the French repel a German offensive
 Likewise at Belleau Wood at the end of June
 In July, American troops turned away another assault at
Rheims, farther south
 By the end of July, the Allies had halted the German
advance
 The Allies would now begin their own offensive
 Meuse-Argonne Offensive

19. A Marine bulldog chases
a German dachshund;
American Marines had
been nicknamed “Devil
Dogs” after fighting at
Belleau Wood
Chateau-Thierry postcard, 1919

20.  250K new American soldiers were arriving in France
during each month during summer of 1918
 Additionally, tanks could plow through barbed wire &
make it through “no man’s land”
 On August 8, at the Battle of Amiens, German
advanced was stopped & German gains were lost
 General von Ludendorff called it “the black day of the
German army”
 He advised the Kaiser to seek peace
 The Allies insisted on total surrender

21.  The final Allied assault, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive,
began on September 26, 1918
 It included more than 1 million AEF troops
 Soon the German army was in full retreat from the Argonne
Forest & the Meuse River region
 Germans were forced back to their own border by November
 Pershing wanted to push into Germany
 Other Allied leaders accepted Germany’s armistice
 The war ended on November 11, 1918

22.  Central Powers collapsed, one by one, in the face of
Allied attacks & domestic revolutions
 Bulgaria dropped in Sept. 1918
 Ottoman Empire in Oct. 1918
 Austria-Hungary splintered in Oct. 1918
 German commanders begged for peace before the
fighting spilled onto German soil
 Allies refused
 Mutiny spread across Germany by the end of Oct.
 By November 10, the Kaiser had fled to Holland
 Armistice signed on French RR car on 11/11/1918

23.  American troops arriving in France in spring of 1918
carried a new strain of the flu virus
 Quickly spread across the Western Front
 Disabled 500K German troops at the peak of their offensive
 Second wave followed in the fall
 Third wave in the winter
 Struck people of all ages
 Could kill w/in a few days
 Spread easily in crowded, unsanitary conditions

24.  A doctor at Ft. Devens, MA:
 “…very rapidly develop the most viscous type of
pneumonia that has ever been seen….It is only a matter
of a few hours then until death comes, it is simply a
struggle for air until they suffocate. It is horrible.”
 Over ½ a million Americans died from it
 Perhaps 30 million people worldwide

26.  Planes, Tanks, Flamethrowers, Zeppelins, Aircraft
Carriers, Gas Masks, Armored Vehicles, Motorcycles,
Field Telephones, Etc.
 New weaponry=more deaths
 Fighting took to the skies
 “Dog Fights”
 #1 American pilot=Eddie Rickenbacker
 Downed 26 enemies

28.  In the USA:
 50K+ Americans died in battle
 More died from disease, esp. influenza
 “Hundreds of bodies of our brave boys lie on Hill 212,
captured with such a great loss of blood. We will never
be able to explain war to our loved ones back home even
if we….live and return.”—Corporal Elmer Sherwood

29.  Globally:
 8-10 million soldiers, sailors, flyers died
 5K+ soldiers/day
 60K Brits lost in one day at the Battle of the Somme in 1916
 5 million more civilians
 Ottoman forces organized the mass killing of Armenians,
whom they suspected of disloyalty
 Millions were wounded, crippled
 “Trench foot,” blindness from poison gas
 Cost more money & involved more countries than any
previous war in history
 Survivors sensed the war had destroyed a whole
generation of young men

30.  Globally:
 Downfall of four monarchies:
 1. Russia, 1917
 Bolsheviks
 2. Austria-Hungary, 1918
 3. Germany, 1918
 4. Turkey, 1922
 Fascism in Italy, 1922
 Disillusionment & bitterness
 The “War to End All Wars”?????
 Both would contribute to WWII only 21 yrs. later
 Poem—MCMXIV (1914)