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Woodrow Wilson's Declaration Of Neutrality

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“Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality”.1 These are the words of President Woodrow Wilson during his “Declaration of Neutrality” on August 19, 1914. Something crazy would happen, the United States would enter The Great War a three years later. A lot of things influenced the United States to finally get to their eventual declaration of war on Germany. The two factors I thought most significant were: the United States’ economic interests favoring Great Britain and Wilson’s insatiable need to have a voice at the peace talks in Europe. At the beginning of the war in 1914, it was the big decision for Wilson to keep the United States neutral. A majority of Americans had either emigrated …show more content…

When Britain put a stop on Germany, the U.S. did nothing. The simple act of doing nothing was a sign that America favored what Britain was doing more than Germany. The U.S. began sending a lot of money and munitions to Britain to aid their cause. This is one of the reasons that the United States eventually entered the Great War. The United States could not risk, if Britain was defeated, losing all the money that they had invested into Britan. There was just too much money invested into the Allied cause that Wilson could not take a chance at losing it all. In a speech given by Senator George Norris against entry into the war he says, “We have loaned many hundreds of millions of dollars to the allies in this …show more content…

I believe the two most important factors leading up to this were the United States’ economic interests favoring Great Britain and Wilson’s insatiable need to have a voice at the peace talks in Europe. The United States had just invested too much in Britain winning that it couldn’t risk losing its investment if Britain lost the war. They had to enter to insure the victory and to insure that their money would not be lost. Also, the most important reason why the United States entered World War I was that Wilson wanted to be a part of the peace talks and he couldn’t achieve that goal unless he entered the war. This fact was made clear after years of trying to facilitate peace with no avail. Also, the American public added much pressure when the Germans started their unrestricted submarine. Woodrow Wilson forever changed the face of history and U.S. foreign policy. Without his decision to go into World War I, the U.S. may never have gotten involved in World War II and we may very well all might be speaking German today. Wilson’s ego and lust for peace might have saved

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