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There was also debate over how the AEF would be deployed. Pershing, arrived in France in June 1917, but they lacked the numbers and training to be committed to combat. The first elements of the American Expeditionary Forces, under the command of General John J. The outcome of the war would turn on whether Germany could defeat Britain and France before the Americans arrived in force. The British were running out of men, almost half of the French army had mutinied, and the Russian Revolution in 1917 would lead to Russia’s withdrawal from the war, allowing Germany to shift troops to the Western Front.Īlthough the first American soldiers landed in France in June 1917, it would take a year to create, train and equip an army and ship it across the Atlantic. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson won re-election on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” But in April 1917, Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, along with its offer to help Mexico recover territories lost to the United States in 1848, led Wilson to ask Congress to declare war on Germany. But reports of German atrocities and submarine attacks on shipping bound for Britain and France – most infamously the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, which killed 128 Americans – began to change American opinion. The United States initially remained neutral. By 1917 both sides were nearing exhaustion.
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In 1916 the Battle of Somme Island lasted 140 days with more than a million casualties and moved the front lines six miles, while the German assault on Verdun yielded little gain at a cost of 700,000 dead and wounded.
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Over the next three years, a series of bloody offensives failed to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare. By the end of 1914, 400 miles of trench lines – the Western Front – stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea.
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Germany planned to quickly defeat the British and French to the west before turning its full force east to Russia, but its initial thrusts into Belgium and northern France were checked. By the war’s end in 1918, the war would span the globe, claim more than 16 million lives, and change the world forever. The names of over nine hundred are inscribed on the cemetery’s wall of the missing.In the summer of 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ignited a continental war between the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of France, Great Britain, Russia, and Italy. Of those brave Americans who fell during the campaign fourteen thousand two hundred forty six were laid to rest at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in eastern France. …over twenty six thousand Americans lost their lives, and nearly one hundred thousand were wounded. Nevertheless, the determined American offensive forced the Germans to continuiously withdraw northward, before the armistice abruptly ended the campaign and the war. The Americans faced a formidable adversary whose guns would not be silenced with ease. The rolling hills and densely wooded forests of the region provided the Germans with ideal defensive positions on which to unleash devastating machine gun and artillery fire upon the advancing American forces. With four years of combat experience, the Germans were well prepared for the engagment. The German Army would hold out at all costs. It linked their communications along the extensive four hundred mile front, and protected railways vital for transporting troops. The region was of great strategic importance to the German Army. In the Meuse-Argonne, the Americans faced their greatest challenge since arriving in theatre. The campaign supported the entire Allied offensive that would extend from Verdun, France, through Belgium all the way to the English Channel. More than one point two million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces engaged in this critical battle that lasted until Armstice Day. Army launched one of the largest offensives in American Military history, the Meuse-Argonne Campaign of the First World War.
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On this day in history… September 26 th, 1918…