916 Ch. 22 • The Great War
Zimmermann, to his ambassador to Mexico. The “Zimmermann telegram”
brazenly offered Mexico German help in taking back the states of Texas,
Arizona, and New Mexico if it would go to war against its powerful north
ern neighbor. With more Americans killed in submarine attacks, Wilson
used the telegram to bolster support for a declaration of war on April 6,
- Wilson promised a war that would “make the world safe for democ
racy.” The United States turned its industrial might toward wartime pro
duction and drafted and trained an army that reached 4 million, of which
half was in France by November 1918. The entry of the United States into
the war tipped the balance fatally against Germany.
During 1917, German submarines sank one-fourth of all ships sailing to
Britain. Half a million tons of shipping were sunk in February, three
quarters of a million in March, and nearly 1 million tons in April, when 350
British ships were sunk. But in the midst of despair, the British admiralty
discovered that heavily escorted convoys could get through. Submerged
mines at the entrances to the Channel also helped reduce the German
U-boat threat. Within a few months, the first American troops reached
the continent, along with a steady stream of military supplies.
Russia Withdraws from the War
The second remarkable event of 1917 was the Russian Revolution. The
eastern front had stabilized following the Russian offensive at the end of
1916, as the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies were depleted and
exhausted. The Russian home front seemed on the verge of collapse. In Feb
ruary 1917, amid a chorus of demands for political reform, strikes and bread
riots in Petrograd spread rapidly. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15.
The head of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky (1881 — 1970),
had no intention of abandoning the war effort, and he ordered the comman
der in chief to launch another offensive on July 1. But “peace, land, and
bread” became the motto of the soldiers. Many deserted or refused to obey
their officers. Within a matter of weeks, a German counterattack pushed the
Russians back nearly 100 miles.
As the Russian provisional government faced opposition from many sides,
the Bolsheviks aimed to seize power and then take Russia out of the war as
quickly as possible. They expected revolutions to break out in other coun
tries as well, beginning with Germany. The German government desperately
wanted to force the Russian provisional government to make peace as soon
as possible, so that the German high command could turn its full attention
to the western front before the American entry into the war could turn the
tide. With this in mind, they allowed exiled Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
(1870—1924) to return to Russia from neutral Switzerland through Ger
many and Finland.
On November 6 (October 24 by the Old Russian calendar), the Bolshe
viks overthrew the provisional government. The German army, facing little