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By 1907 there were two major defense alliances in Europe.
The Triple Entente, later known as the Allies, consisted of France, Britain, and Russia. The Triple Alliance consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ital -
Germany and Austria-Hungary, together with the Ottoman Empire—an empire of
mostly Middle Eastern lands controlled by the Turks—were later known as the
Central Powers. -
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to
the Austrian throne, visited the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. As
the royal entourage drove through the city, Serbian nationalist
Gavrilo Princip stepped from the crowd and shot the
Archduke and his wife Sophie. -
This plan called
for a holding action against Russia, combined with a quick
drive through Belgium to Paris; after France had fallen, the
two German armies would defeat Russia. -
One of the worst disasters occurred on May 7, 1915, when a U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. Of the 1,198 persons lost, 128 were Americans.
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in August 1915, a U-boat sank another British liner, the Arabic, drowning two Americans.
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in March 1916 Germany broke its promise and torpedoed an unarmed French passenger steamer, the Sussex. The Sussex sank, and about 80 passengers, including Americans, were killed or injured.
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During the First Battle of the Somme—
which began on July 1, 1916, and lasted until mid-November—the British suffered
60,000 casualties the first day alone. -
, a telegram from
the German foreign minister to the
German ambassador in Mexico that was
intercepted by British agents. The
telegram proposed an alliance between
Mexico and Germany and promised
that if war with the United States broke
out, Germany would support Mexico in
recovering “lost territory in Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona.” -
to popularize the war, the government set up the nation’s first propaganda agency, the Committee on Public
Information (CPI). -
To meet the government’s need for more
fighting power, Congress passed the Selective Service Act in
May 1917. The act required men to register with the government
in order to be randomly selected for military service. -
in June 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act, and in May 1918 it passed the Sedition Act. Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts a person could be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for interfering with the war effort or for saying anything disloyal, pro-fane, or abusive about the government or the war effort.
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In July and August, they helped win the Second Battle of the Marne. The tide had turned against the Central Powers.
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American Vice Admiral William S. Sims convinced the
British to try the convoy system, in which a heavy guard of destroyers escorted merchant ships back and forth across the Atlantic in groups. By fall of 1917, shipping losses had been cut in half -
The board encouraged companies to use mass-production techniques to increase efficiency. It also urged them to eliminate waste by standardizing products—for instance, by making only 5 colors of typewriter ribbons instead of 150. The WIB set production quotas and allocated raw materials.
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Wages in most industries rose during the war years. Hourly wages for blue-collar workers—those in the metal trades, shipbuilding, and meatpacking, for example—rose by about 20 percent. A household’s income, however, was largely undercut by rising food prices and housing costs.
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On November 3, 1918, AustriaHungary surrendered to the Allies.
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So at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, in the eleventh month of 1918, Germany agreed to a cease-fire and signed the armistice, or truce,
that ended the war. -
On November 9, socialist leaders in the capital,
Berlin, established a German republic. The kaiser gave up the throne. -
Instead of rationing food, he called on people to follow the
“gospel of the clean plate.” He declared one day a week “meatless,” another “sweetless,” two days “wheatless,” and two other days “porkless.”
