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Two factors that would change the course of WWI

1. Russian Revolution

• Russian economy not strong enough to supply prolonged war

• Government still ruled by czar (people had no say…remember French Revolution?)

• People had been unhappy with government and czar and were eager for change!

• March 1917 revolution erupted and Czar Nicholas II was overthrown

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk• October 1917 - Russia’snew leader, V.I. Lenin,promised to pull Russia out ofthe war

• signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, withdrawing Russia from the war in March 1918

• Gave the CentralPowers the boost they hadbeen waiting for

2. America Joins the Allies

• When war began in 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson kept America neutral

• American sympathies were with Great Britain and France– Made armament and equipment deals– Reprinted British propaganda about Germans in

Belgium

• Factors between 1915 and 1917 would effect America’s entrance into the war

Factor #1: Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

• 1914 Great Britain made a naval blockade of Germany to stop food and raw materials being imported

• 1915 Germany responded by declaring seas around Britain a warzone

• All Allied shipping could be sunk by German U-boats without warning

Allied ships sunk by U-Boats between September 1916 and April 1917

Factor #2: Sinking of the Lusitania

• May 1915 - Lusitania, British passenger liner, was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine

• Germany claimed ship was being used to ship war cargo and munitions

• 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans

Factor #3: Zimmerman Telegram

• February 1917 a telegram to Germany’s ambassador to Mexico was intercepted by British code breakers

• If Mexico fought with Germany against the Allies, Germany promised to help with the invasion of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (territories taken in the Mexican American War, 1846)

U.S. Declares War on Germany

• On April 2nd, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, “to make the world safe for democracy”

• By mid 1918 about 2 million U.S. troops joined the Allies at the Western Front