Keterlibatan Amerika Serikat dalam Perang Dunia dimulai pada bulan April 1917, dua setengah tahun setelah Presiden Woodrow Wilson menyatakan bahwa Amerika Serikat akan tetap netral sepanjang Perang Dunia I. Rakyat Amerika Serikat tidak tahu bahwa perang akan pecah di Eropa pada musim panas 1914, dan puluhan ribu wisatawan dikejutkan oleh peristiwa ini. Pemerintah A.S. di bawah kepemimpinan Wilson mengumumkan bahwa "pikiran maupun niat" Amerika Serikat tidak berpihak.[1] Selain unsur-unsur Anglofilia yang mendukung Britania, opini publik Amerika Serikat awalnya netral. Posisi netral sangat kuat di kalangan warga Irlandia Amerika, Jerman Amerika, dan Swedia Amerika,[2] serta para pemimpin gereja dan wanita. Di sisi lain, sebelum perang pecah, opini publik A.S. terhadap Jerman jauh lebih negatif dibandingkan opini mereka terhadap negara lain di Eropa.[3] Rakyat memandang Kekaisaran Jerman sebagai musuh setelah mengetahui aksi kekerasan di Belgia tahun 1914, dan penenggelaman kapal penumpang RMS Lusitania tahun 1915 yang berlawanan dengan hukum internasional. Wilson membuat semua keputusan penting dan menjalankan ekonomi secara damai, namun tetap memberi pinjaman besar kepada Britania dan Prancis. Agar Amerika Serikat tidak dianggap memiliki ancaman militer, Wilson membuat persiapan perang yang sedikit dan membentuk militer berukuran kecil meski ditekan untuk membuat persiapan besar. Namun demikian, ia justru memperbesar ukuran Angkatan Laut Amerika Serikat.
Poster-poster obligasi perang memusuhi Jerman setelah pemerintah A.S. menyatakan perang
Pada awal 1917, Jerman memutuskan untuk melanjutkan perang kapal selam total terhadap semua kapal dagang yang menuju ke Britania Raya. Keputusan ini hampir pasti berarti perang melawan Amerika Serikat. Jerman juga menawarkan persekutuan militer dengan Meksiko dalam telegram Zimmermann. Bocornya telegram tersebut dan penenggelaman kapal-kapal Amerika Serikat di Atlantik Utara oleh U-boat Jerman membuat rakyat A.S. meradang. Wilson meminta "perang untuk mengakhiri perang" yang akan "membuat demokrasi berdiri di dunia tanpa gangguan" kepada Kongres. Kongres memutuskan untuk menyatakan perang melawan Jerman pada tanggal 6 April 1917.[4] Tanggal 7 Desember 1917, Amerika Serikat menyatakan perang melawan Kekaisaran Austria-Hungaria.[5][6]
Attributed afterwards. See: "Ten Years After". Lawrence Journal World. July 28, 1924. Diakses tanggal July 24, 2012.
Original quote, "be neutral in fact as well as in name... be impartial in thought as well as in action". See: "The American People and the Great War". The Independent. August 31, 1914. Diakses tanggal July 24, 2012. and Message to Senate
Ambrosius, Lloyd E. "Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush: Historical Comparisons of Ends and Means in Their Foreign Policies," Diplomatic History, 30 (June 2006), 509–43.
Arnett, Alex Mathews. Claude Kitchin and the Wilson War Policies. 1937. OCLC1278853Kitchen was an antiwar Democrat in the House
Bassett, John Spencer. Our War with Germany: A History (1919) online edition
Clements, Kendrick A. "Woodrow Wilson and World War I," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34:1 (2004). pp 62+. online edition
Clifford, J. Garry. Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburgh Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (1972)
Costrell, Edwin. How Maine viewed the war, 1914–1917, (1940)OCLC475605726
Crighton, John C. Missouri and the World War, 1914–1917: a study in public opinion (University of Missouri, 1947) OCLC831309569
Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1998) ISBN 0-8131-0955-8OCLC38842092
Cummins, Cedric Clisten. Indiana public opinion and the World War, 1914–1917, (1945)
Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. (Oxford University Press, 1973) ISBN 0-19-501694-7OCLC714527
Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I (2011) 433 pages; comprehensive history onlineISBN 978-0-8131-3002-6OCLC682895305
Early, Frances H. A World without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I. (Syracuse University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-8156-2764-5OCLC36800616
Finnegan, John P. Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign for American Military Preparedness, 1914–1917. (1975). ISBN 0-8371-7376-0OCLC983933
Floyd, M. Ryan (2013). Abandoning American Neutrality: Woodrow Wilson and the Beginning of the Great War, August 1914-December 1915. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-33411-4OCLC836748335
Gibbs, Christopher C. The Great Silent Majority: Missouri's Resistance to World War I. 1988. ISBN 0-8262-0683-2OCLC17676727
Grubbs, Frank L. The Struggle for Labor Loyalty: Gompers, the A. F. of L., and the Pacifists, 1917–1920. 1968. OCLC640024383
Herman, Sondra. Eleven Against War: Studies in American Internationalist Thought, 1898–1921. 1969. OCLC23333
Koistinen, Paul. Mobilizing for Modern War: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1865–1919 Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-507501-3OCLC25317305
Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917. 1972.
Link, Arthur S. Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality: 1914–1915 (1960); Wilson: Confusions and Crises: 1915–1916 (1964); Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace: 1916–1917 (1965) all 3 volumes are online at ACLS e-booksDiarsipkan 2000-07-07 di Wayback Machine.
Link, Arthur S. Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957. online editionOCLC475072
Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913–1921. 1982. online edition
Livermore, Seward W. Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916–1918. 1966.
Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974. ISBN 0-87580-045-9OCLC865969
McCallum, Jack. Leonard Wood: Rough Rider, Surgeon, Architect of American Imperialism. New York: New York University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8147-5699-7OCLC60402000
McDonald, Forrest. Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon (2004)
Tucker, Robert W. Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America's Neutrality, 1914–1917. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8139-2629-2
Unger, Nancy C. Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8078-2545-XOCLC42861557
Venzon, Anne Cipriano, ed. The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia New York: Garland Pub., 1995. ISBN 0-8240-7055-0OCLC32013365
Ward, Robert D. "The Origin and Activities of the National Security League, 1914–1919." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (1960): 51–65. online at JSTOR
Witcover, Jules. Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1989. ISBN 0-912697-98-9OCLC18379558
Historiografi
Doenecke, Justus D. "Neutrality Policy and the Decision for War." in Ross Kennedy ed., A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (2013) pp: 243-69 Online; covers the historiography
The Papers of Woodrow WilsonDiarsipkan 2014-11-01 di Wayback Machine. edited by Arthur S. Link complete in 69 vol, at major academic libraries. Annotated edition of all of WW's letters, speeches and writings plus many letters written to him
