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U.S. Contributions to World War I

After Germany agreed to an armistice in November 1918, countries involved in World War I met in Paris to attend the peace conference.

The U.S. was part of the ‘Big Four’ with Great Britain, France and Italy. These countries were the ones with the most power and influence during the peace talks.

Use the handout provided to analyze whether the United States made enough of a contribution to the Allied victory in World War I to be included in the Big Four.

|Reasons the U.S. Should Be Included in the Big Four |Reasons the U.S. Should Not Be Included in the Big Four |

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Britain, Italy and France wanted to make sure Germany compensated their countries for the enormous damage done during the war. Their main goal was to get as much in land and wealth from Germany as possible, known as reparations.

Woodrow Wilson had a different purpose for being at the peace conference. He wanted to advance his ‘Fourteen Points’

Read Wilson’s Fourteen Points and answer the following questions:

1. What is the main goal(s) of the Fourteen Points:

2. What measures does it suggest are needed to achieve these goal(s):

Read pp. 569-570 of the text and answer the following questions:

1. What needed to be done to make the Treaty of Versailles law in the United States? What mistake did Wilson make that would make this difficult?

2. What part of the treaty frightened U.S. citizens the most and why?

3. Was the Treaty ever approved by the United States? Why or why not?

|Countries |

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|The U.S. entered the war in March 1917, but would not see any action during the year. This timeline covers all the political and military|

|events that occurred across Europe and the rest of the world during 1918. In this year the Germans launch a final desperate offensive on |

|the Western front designed to defeat the French and British. However, this is defeated which forces the Germans to seek an Armistice to |

|end World War 1. |

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|08/01/1918 |

|President Woodrow Wilson delivers his fourteen points speech to the U.S. Congress. |

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|03/03/1918 |

|A separate peace treaty is signed by Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) at Brest-Litovsk. |

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|15/03/1918 |

|Soviets ratify the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. This allows Germany to divert its entire army to fight on the Western Front in France. |

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|21/03/1918 |

|The Ludendorff Offensive begins with Germany launching its Spring push with the Battle of Picardy against the British. This will |

|eventually amount to five major offensives against Allied forces. |

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|26/03/1918 |

|Doullens Agreement gives General Ferdinand Foch "co-ordinating authority" over the Western Front. |

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|09/04/1918 |

|Germany launches second Spring offensive, the Battle of the Lys, in the British sector of Armentieres. |

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|16/05/1918 |

|Espionage Act is passed. |

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|25/05/1918 |

|German U-boats appear in US waters for first time. |

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|27/05/1918 |

|Third German Spring offensive, Third Battle of the Aisne, begins in French sector along Chemin des Dames. Germany is within 50 miles of |

|Paris. |

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|28/05/1918 |

|U.S. forces (28th Regiment of 1st Division) are victorious in their first major action, Battle of Cantigny. |

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|06/06/1918 |

|US 3rd Division captures Bouresches and southern part of Belleau Wood. |

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|09/06/1918 |

|The Germans launch the fourth Spring offensive, Battle of the Matz, in French sector between Noyan and Montdider. |

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|15/06/1918 |

|The Italians prevail against Austro-Hungarian forces at the Battle of Piave. |

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|15/07/1918 |

|The final phase of great German Spring push, the Second Battle of Marne, begins. |

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|18/07/1918 |

|The Allies counterattack against German forces, seizing initiative on the Western Front. |

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|Jul 1918 |

|The Italian Piave Offensive ends. |

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|08/08/1918 |

|Haig directs the start of a successful Amiens offensive, forcing all German troops back to the Hindenburg Line. Ludendorff calls it a |

|"black day" for the German Army. |

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|12/09/1918 |

|US forces clear the St.-Mihiel salient, during which the greatest air assault of the war is conducted by the U.S. Airforce.. |

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|19/09/1918 |

|The British begin an offensive against Turkish forces in Palestine, the Battle of Megiddo. |

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|26/09/1918 |

|The Battle of the Vardar is fought against the Bugarians by Serb, Czech, Italian, French and British forces. The Meuse-Argonne offensive |

|begins. this wll be the final Franco-American offensive of the war. |

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|27/09/1918 |

|Haig's forces storm the Hindenburg Line, breaking through at several points. |

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|28/09/1918 |

|Belgian forces launch an offensive at Ypres. |

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|29/09/1918 |

|Bulgaria concludes armistice negotiations with the Allies. |

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|03/10/1918 |

|Germany and Austria send peace notes to US President Woodrow Wilson requesting an armistice. |

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|17/10/1918 |

|The British begin their advance to the Sambre and Schledt rivers, taking many German prisoners. |

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|21/10/1918 |

|Germany ceases unrestricted submarine warfare. |

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|27/10/1918 |

|Ludendorff resigns. |

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|30/10/1918 |

|Turkey concludes an armistice with the Allies. |

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|03/11/1918 |

|The German fleet mutinies at Kiel. Trieste falls to the Allies as Austro-Hungary concludes an armistice. |

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|05/11/1918 |

|Allies accept the fourteen points. |

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|07/11/1918 |

|Germany begins negotiations for an armistice with the Allies in Ferdinand Foch's railway carriage headquarters at Compiegne. |

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|09/11/1918 |

|Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates. |

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|10/11/1918 |

|German republic founded as Kaiser Wilhelm II flees to Holland. |

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|11/11/1918 |

|Armistice day as fighting ceases at 11am - World War I ends. Central Powers are forced to annul the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. |

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President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

8 January, 1918:

President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow nor or at any other time the objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this programme does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this programme that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace- loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new world in which we now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.

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