'Probably the best general account of the American contribution to victory.' Foreign Affairs\nIn 1917 American soldiers began to arrive on the Western Front.\nThe United States of America pursued for several years a policy of non-intervention towards the war in Europe, avoiding becoming embroiled in the ongoing conflict while trying to help negotiate peace between the warring parties.\nThe sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, and the American deaths it caused, brought condemnation of German attacks from President Woodrow Wilson, but at the time America remained unwilling to enter the war.\nInstead, Germany was warned that the use of unrestricted submarine warfare would not be tolerated — and, indeed, the resumption of such actions in January 1917, in combination with an intercepted message from Germany to Mexico inviting the latter to join the war against the United States, presaged the United States declaring war on Germany in April 1917.\nSuch a declaration started a massive mobilization of military, naval, and industrial forces in the United States. In The American Reinforcement in the World War, Thomas G. Frothingham provides an extensive examination of the work that went into putting American soldiers on the ground in France.\nThough the United States’ entry into the war was late, the passing of the 1917 Selective Service Act served to draft 2.8 million men into the United States Army and enabled training to begin immediately.\nAs Frothingham explains, the French and the British were doubtful that an American Army would ever actually materialize in Europe, and argued that American units should be used as reinforcements for the battered troops already on the front lines.\nThe commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. Pershing, insisted on keeping to the plan of fielding an American Army rather than breaking up the regiments to fill in the gaps elsewhere — the main difficulty lay in transporting hundreds of thousands of men across the Atlantic Ocean.\nKeeping the American troops together highlighted one of the greatest differences between the newly formed American Army and the French and British armies — the American forces had been trained to use frontal assaults, whereas the French and British were committed to defensive rather than offensive action.\nThis approach, Frothingham suggests, proved to be key to the American contribution to the war and Germany’s ultimate defeat.

American Reinforcement in the World War

Frothingham, Thomas G

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