CHAPTER 12

AMERICA; The United States

The entry of the United States to the Great War was an event much desired by the Allied governments of Britain and France. As the war wasted resources of men and materiel, exhaustion before victory seemed a real possibility for the Allies. Additionally, by the spring of 1917 Russia had become a very uncertain partner on the military scene. The provisional government of Kerensky that followed the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II had declared an intention to the continuation of hostilities, the value of the military effort however was an unknown quantity. October 1917 saw the Bolsheviks and Lenin seize power with the declared intention of making peace for Russia independently of Britain and France. The Germans, ever ready to oblige, imposed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in February 1918.

The extent of American resources, money, materiel and above all manpower was the counterweight to the Russian withdrawal; America though had no standing army of significance and was completely without experience of the intensity of industrial scale warfare as it had developed from August 1914. To compensate, time was essential to assemble a force of sufficient strength to deal with the additional German forces that would become available from the east, time was what the Allies did not have. American reinforcement of the Allied war effort was feared by the German High Command who also knew time was at a premium. There was a circle to be squared here.

There are various questions raised concerning the attitudes and contributions of America, its government, its newspapers and its people. For the moment two of these issues can be addressed as it is my opinion that they together explain all the other considerations. We have to remember that in 1914 the United States of America had been a nation state for less than 150 years, at which time the majority of the landmass was unexplored. Texas joined the union in 1845 and after the war against Mexico in 1848 and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ceded California, other states were incorporated into the new nation; the process though was not completed for the forty-eight State nation of 1914 until Arizona and New Mexico were included in 1912. Communications across the sprawling country, despite Wells Fargo, was slow and uncertain. Even the arrival of the railways only scratched the surface of rural communications. These acquisitions followed earlier settlements with Spain and France to absorb Florida in 1818 and in 1819 by the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ the territory that forms the mid western states from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border.

America was a very young country, by comparison with the nations of Europe, it had put in place the framework of government, administration, business and commerce then went and put the whole structure at risk with the Civil War that was not resolved until 1865. As a nation the United States was unsure of its international role, unlike European nations whose borders and institutions had been taking shape for more than 2,000 years. It is from this uncertainty I believe that the almost forgotten ‘Monroe doctrine’ derived. This was the shield and shelter of American foreign policy well after the Great War and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had become history.

To summarise, the doctrine of Monroe, which takes its name from the President of that name, was established in 1823 and it amounted to this; America would look after the security of the Americas and not expect interference by, or from, European countries. In consideration of this obligation America would not take sides or commit military or naval resources to European affairs. The intent was actually to warn off the Spanish who were looking for opportunities to regain colonies in South America, lost through wars of independence. As a policy this was always one with a very suspicious validity. The presence of Canada, at that date a British colony, on the entire northern border of the United States, British, French and Dutch interests in the Caribbean, as well as central and South America were, it seems, to be of no account. In practice when the Emperor Napoleon III of France established a puppet government in Mexico under the rule of his cousin Maximilian, the United States could do nothing about it; internally the Civil War was underway! Leave it to Uncle Sam was the underlying message, we know what is best for the Americas; isolationist in concept it appears now to me as ‘arms length’ colonialism.

What the policy did provide was a ‘one size fits all’ political axe that ‘Congress’ could wield against the President to proscribe or support military activities. Hence in 1914, quite properly, the American government took the view that events in Europe should not involve intervention by the United States. That was a defensible foreign policy, provided the conflict amounted to a limited positional war, as for example 1871. No more than a few weeks were needed before the true scale of the war and the extent of German ambition became apparent. Two and a half years were to elapse however before America declared war. The ‘No Foreign War’ lobby was very powerful.

The second issue affecting the judgment of the American government was the military resources available. The American Army was tiny, about 70,000 men, 400 obsolete artillery pieces, 1,500 machine guns of four different calibres and only enough war emergency ammunition in store to sustain a three battalion attack. There was not a single divisional formation with a headquarters and supporting troops, equipped for operations; ten months was needed before the first one became available, a full year to organise two field ready divisions. The command structure was such that there were only seven major generals on the active list and the concept of ‘staff work’ as practised by European armies was unknown. America was militarily unfit to go to war; that was the second constraint on a declaration of war against, well, anybody!

To reach a political position at which point a declaration of war would became acceptable to the establishment and the people of the nation; something, other than purely political considerations, had to become part of the American awareness of German ambitions as well as the consequences of an Allied defeat in Europe. Who better to provide this impetus than the German government? No one!

Reference has been made earlier, pg 203, to the activities of the British Admiralty’s intercept and decoding achievements and the ‘Zimmerman telegram’. This was the event that changed American minds, the facts of which are in bare detail, as follows. The German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman, hatched a cunning plan. The aim was to ensure the continued neutrality of the U.S.A., this was to be achieved by diverting American attention to events in their own backyard. Zimmerman sent a diplomatic cable to the German Minister (Ambassador) in Mexico who was thus authorised to offer in secret negotiation with the President of Mexico, an alliance between the two countries in which Mexico would go to war, with German support, against the United States to recover the territories including Califonia, ceded in the 1848 treaty. The plan went further and suggested that when war between America and Mexico was certain, the Japanese could then be invited to join the fun to further their ambitions in the Philippines.

Unfortunately for the Germans, Room 40 at the British Admiralty intercepted the message, broke the code and read the details of the plan. The American President, Woodrow Wilson, was provided with access to the text by means which did not compromise the security of the intercept service. He decided to use the information to put an end to a debate in Congress on the arming of merchant ships. In this he was unsuccessful. Opinion was generally that British Intelligence had planted a clever fake. That is until Arthur Zimmerman himself stood up in class, a press conference actually, and said, “Yes, that’s my message.” The fat, as they say, was well and truly in the fire.

The President, his government and Congress could not tolerate such interference in the affairs of the United States. The telegram was the equivalent of marching a division of the German Army along Pennsylvania Avenue. On 6th April 1917 the United States of America went to war with Germany, the rest is history.

There is in the Zimmerman folly an uncanny foreshadowing of events in 1941 in the ineptitude of the German actions. In 1917 the uncertainties introduced by the commissioning of such a plan had so many possibilities for failure it should never have been given any credence in diplomatic or political terms. As a parallel, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941, precipitating war with America in the Pacific. Adolf Hitler, casually it appears, declared war on the United States when it was by no means certain that Congress would sanction a war against Germany. American participation in both wars was a direct result of German hubris and institutional insanity.

As to the military contribution of America to the eventual victory of the Allies in 1918, that is for others to tell. The US army took a long time to organise, train and equip but was in on the last act in 1918 and fought well alongside the French, albeit using a lot of borrowed equipment, in the final offensive actions in the Argonne and Champagne regions.

There is a small ingredient to add as preparation, as it were, for further thought on the contribution of the US Army. Paul Cornish of the Imperial War Museum provides the following on the preparation of the expanding American Army for the fighting. “The American Expeditionary Force arrived in France with a tactical mindset which was strongly at variance with that which three years of industrial warfare had imposed upon the armies of the Allies. The US Army was wedded to the concept of the supremacy of the infantryman, armed with rifle and bayonet. Their commander, General John Pershing, believed that the American soldier taught how to shoot, how to take advantage of terrain, and how to rely upon hasty entrenchment, retain the ability to drive the enemy from his trenches and by the same tactics, defeat him in the open”. Trench warfare he considered was a tactical aberration into which the Allies had been drawn and he looked to restore open warfare. The essential of US military doctrine was to look to self-reliant infantry, effective use of the rifle and bayonet, unlimited objectives and aggression at all levels of the combat forces.

What, I wonder, did General Pershing think each of the armies on the Western Front had been trying to achieve?

Such a military mindset does not reflect well on the responsible commanders at the stage when the Americans were preparing for battle. It might even allow a modicum of credit to the British and French commanders for the efforts they made to break the deadlock.