Chapter+23+The+War

The American intervention had its most immediate effect on the conlict at sea. By the spring of 1917, Great Britain was suffereing massive losses from the German U-boats. Within weeks of joiing the war, the United States had begun to alter the balance. A fleet of American destroyers aided the British navy in its assault on the U-boats. Other American warships used the convoy system to escourt merchant vessels across the Atlantic. They also helped sow anti-submarine mines in the North Sea.

The United States did not have a large enough standing army to provide the necessary ground forces in 1917. There were only about 120,000 soldiers in the army and perhaps 80,000 more in the national guard. Neither group had any combat experience and except for the small amount of officers who had participated in the Spanish-American War two decades before and the Mexican intervention of 1916, few commanders had any experience in battle either. Wilson desided the only way to get enough men for this war was for a draft, the Selective Service Act passed in mid-May. The draft brought nearly 3 million men into the army while another 2 million joined various branches of the armed services voluntarily. Together they formed what became known as the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). The new technology along with trench warfare made the conventional frontal battles mass suicide. Instead both sides relied on heavy artilery. Life in the trenches was miserable, muddy, cold, wel, swarming with lice and rats, the trenches were places of extraordinary physical stress and discomfort. They were also places of intense boredome laced with fear. By the Time the Americans arrived, morale on both sides were low and declineing. American forces made it possible to tip the balance and finnaly break out the entrenched Germans. American and French forces repeled a German assault on Chateau-Thierry. Six weeks later, over half a million American troops were in France, that helped turn away another assault at the Rheims. By july 18, the allies had stoped the German offensive and began a successful offensive of their own. ON september 26, the American fighting force advanced against the Germans in the Argonne Forest that lasted nearly seven weeks. At the end of October, they Americans had pushed the Germans back toward their own border and had cut the enemy's major supply lines to the front. After this offensive the Germans wanted to seek an armistrice and on November 11,1918, the war ended.

World War I was a proving ground for a range of new military technology. The trench warfare that characterized the conflict was necessary because of the enormous destructive power of newly improved machine guns and high powered artillery. Sending troops out into an open battle field or even allow them to camp out in the open was no longer feasible. But soon technology overtook the trenches, as new technology entered the war such as tanks, flamethrowers, and poison gas trenches became less effective. These new forms of technology however required elaborate maintenance. Machine guns required more ammunition while vehicles required fuel, spar parts, and mechanics to repair them. WWI was the first conflict were planes played a major role. The planes served as bombers, fighters, and reconaissance aircrafts. The most modern part about the war was the navy. New battleshipes emerged that made use of the new technology such as turbine propulsion, hydraulic gun controls, electric light and pwer, wireless telegraphy, and advanced navigational aids. The new submarines were drivin by diesel engines, which had the advantage of being more compact than a steam engine and hwose fuel was less explosive than that of a gasoline engine. The diesel engine also had a much greater range than ships powered by other fuels. However, with all this increase in technology, the casualty rate was much higher.

[] [] [] General Douglas MacArthur Chapter 23 Post War Chapter 23 - Vocab and AP Parts Chapter 23 - Before the Great World War Island Hopping