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Negotiations reached a breaking point in February 1918 when, after persistent Soviet stalling, the Germans lost patience. They launched an offensive which culminated with the delivery of new, non-negotiable peace terms arriving in Petrograd on February 23rd. Aware that the Bolsheviks possessed no financial resources to pay indemnities, the German government decided to extract its pound of flesh in the form of territorial annexations. The Germans demanded that the Soviets to cede the following territories: Finland, Russian Poland, Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Bessarabia. In addition, the Bolsheviks were expected to the provinces of Ardaham, Kars, and Batumi to the Ottoman Empire. http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/international/brest.shtml

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The loss of territory meant an effacement of the German empire that Otto von Bismarck had established under the Prussian Monarchy. The reality of defeat and the fragmentation of the German empire were humiliating to the Germans. Germany lost 13.5 % of its territory under the terms of the treaty. Close to seven million German citizens were placed under the jurisdiction of a foreign nation:
France took Alsace and Lorraine and the German coal mines in the Saar Region for fifteen years. The Saar region was a highly industrialized region.Poland: the state of Poland was recreated. Poland took most of West Prussia and much of the Posen province. Upper Silesia was ceded to Poland, but later returned to Germany under a plebiscite. The Polish Corridor was made of land that belonged to Germany before WWI.Belgium: Small areas of Eupen, Malmèdy, Moresńet, St. VithDenmark: Northern Schelswig was ceded to Denmark under article 27 of treaty.Czechoslovakia: border area near Troppau (present day Opava)http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/1920s/CarlosTreaty.htm

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The political changes effected by World War I were reflected best in the decline of the empires. While the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary completely collapsed, the Great War also sounded the death knell for monarchies in Germany and Russia, which became republics. World War I was also the cause for a rise in nationalistic tendencies leading to the demand for independence in many British colonies of outside Europe. http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-war-i/effects.html

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Border changes

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Wilson, however, would not lose on the issue of the draft. With the aid of Newton Baker, his secretary of war, Wilson brought about passage of the act, which allowed him to raise all branches of the armed forces to a level that could compete with the Axis powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. All males aged twenty-one to thirty were required to register at local polling stations. The age limits were later changed to include all men from ages eighteen to forty-five. The drafts carried out during World War I led to the successful registration of almost 24 million American men. Because of a concerted effort to invoke a sense of patriotism in all Americans, the U.S. enlisted many to fight against the Axis powers. Less than 350,000 men "dodged" the World War I draft.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/military-affairs-nonnaval/selective

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U.S. Declaration of War

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http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-was-the-zimmermann-telegram

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It did not surprise Page that the Germans intended to resume sinking merchant ships. He knew the Germans were contemplating such a move and that the United States Congress was even then debating a bill to arm merchant ships in response. The shocking parts of the telegram involved Mexico and Japan. Germany was effectively proposing an alliance to tear the United States apart in the event of American belligerence. The telegram was therefore an act of war. It was also so obviously in Britain’s interests to share it with him that Page knew his countrymen would suspect it was a forgery or a British trick.https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/world-war-i/essays/zimmermann-telegram-and-american-entry-world-war-i

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Zimmerman Telegram

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Gerard’s words proved accurate, as on February 1, 1917, Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. Two days later, Wilson announced a break in diplomatic relations with the German government, and on April 6, 1917, the United States formally entered World War I on the side of the Allies. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-agrees-to-limit-its-submarine-warfare

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Germany defends themselves and bitterly accepts the U.S. ultimatium
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/uboat1916_jagowresponse.htm

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Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856-1921) issued the Sussex Pledge on 4 May 1916. Germany promised to no longer attack any passenger ships, expanding the promise made in the Arabic Pledge. Merchant vessels would only be sunk if war material was aboard but only after all passengers, including the crew, had left the ship. This policy of appeasing the United States aided the German war effort. German submarines effectively sunk large amounts of purely military shipping in the following six months and successfully avoided any showdown with the United States until it resumed unconditional submarine warfare in January 1917.http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/sussex_pledge

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Germany's response to U.S. Ultimatium

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Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and that men, women, and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/lusitania_2ndusprotest.htm

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Third U.S. Protest

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In view of the admission of illegality made by the Imperial Government when it pleaded the right of retaliation in defense of its acts, and in view of the manifest possibility of conforming to the established rules of naval warfare, the Government of the United States can not believe that the Imperial Government will longer refrain from disavowing the wanton act of its naval commander in sinking the "Lusitania" or from offering reparation for the American lives lost, so far as reparation can be made for a needless destruction of human life by an illegal act.
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/wwlus.htm

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Theodore Roosevelt responds to sinking of Lusitania 

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Theodore Roosevelt responds to sinking of Lusitania 

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Germany must have gone mad

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his alarming death toll prompted a wave of grief and introspection across Europe, as governments sought to commemorate the dead and mothers, wives and families sought to mourn them. Years of sadness fell on European society after the armistice; as historian Jay Winter put it, the people of Europe imagined themselves “as survivors, perched on a mountain of corpses”. Governments sought to heal the wounds with tokens and shows of commemoration. Huge war memorials were commissioned in major cities to honour the dead.
http://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/human-cost/

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http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/world-war-one-and-casualties/first-world-war-casualties/

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Deaths in WWI

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The insistence of the United States on her trading rights was also important. Soon after the war began Britain, France, and their allies set up a naval blockade of Germany and Austria. Even food was contraband. The Wilson Administration complained bitterly that the blockade violated international law. U.S. firms took to using European neutrals, such as Sweden, as intermediaries. Surely, the Americans argued, international law protected the right of one neutral to trade with another. Britain and France responded by extending the blockade to include the Baltic neutrals. The situation was similar to the difficulties the United States experienced during the Napoleonic wars, which drove the United States into a quasi-war against France, and to war against Britain.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/u-s-economy-in-world-war-i/

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When the war began, the U.S. economy was in recession. But a 44-month economic boom ensued from 1914 to 1918, first as Europeans began purchasing U.S. goods for the war and later as the United States itself joined the battle. "The long period of U.S. neutrality made the ultimate conversion of the economy to a wartime basis easier than it otherwise would have been," writes Rockoff. "Real plant and equipment were added, and because they were added in response to demands from other countries already at war, they were added precisely in those sectors where they would be needed once the U.S. entered the war."
http://www.nber.org/digest/jan05/w10580.html

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The Role of Economics in the War

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American is prompted by German aggression to assist the allies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0RUebcUZIk

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A neutral nation cannot impose an embargo on one side and continue trade with the other and retain its neutral status. In addition, United States merchants and manufacturers feared that a boycott would cripple the American economy. Great Britain, with its powerful navy, had different ideas. A major part of the British strategy was to impose a blockade on Germany. American trade with the Central Powers simply could not be permitted. The results of the blockade were astonishing. Trade with England and France more than tripled between 1914 and 1916, while trade with Germany was cut by over ninety percent. It was this situation that prompted submarine warfare by the Germans against Americans at sea.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/45.asp

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Exports and imports

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Germans were called "Huns." In the name of patriotism, musicians no longer played Bach and Beethoven, and schools stopped teaching the German language. Americans renamed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"; dachshunds "liberty hounds"; and German measles "liberty measles." Cincinnati, with its large German American population, even removed pretzels from the free lunch counters in saloons.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3478

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Destroy this Mad Brute

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During their advance through Belgium, the German Army is committing atrocities against Belgian civilians - justified as response to resistance and sabotage against their advancement. The Austro-Hungarian Army is perpetrating massacres against the Serbian civilian population to retaliate against Serbian guerrilla warfare. At the Eastern Front, German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff succeed in one of the most important battles of World War I: The Battle of Tannenberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THRNohrfAiI

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German atrocities in Belgium

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Despite their differences, most Germans had one thing in common – a love for and an ongoing commitment to the German language. German-Americans may have come from different parts of Germany, but most of them felt united by a common conception of cultural “Germanness.” In summary, one could argue that before 1914, the vast majority German-Americans had a nostalgic love for their ethnic heritage, yet no sense of political loyalty toward Imperial Germany.
http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=214

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Sinking of the Lusitania by German u-boats

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American sympathies in the war