Influenza Outbreak of 1918. Could it Happen Again; World War I and How Essay

Influenza Outbreak of 1918. Could it Happen Again; World War I and How This War Impacted America. Did it Change the World Forever; Reasons Why the Stock Market Collapsed in 1929 - Essay Example The American involvement in the war is considered the result of several important factors, as follows – first and foremost, here should be mentioned the distinctive pro-American British policy and American elite’s pro-British sympathies, which became a reality after the â€Å"Great Rapprochement† between Britain and the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Buchanan, 1999, pp.193-5). Second, the widespread American dislike of militaristic Germany was â€Å"strengthened by the British propaganda†; while Americans generally sympathized with France, believing they owed it a debt (Buchanan, 1999, p.196). The immediate motive behind America’s entry into the war was the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915 (Buchanan, 1999). However, financial and commercial interests certainly stuck out – by the time of American entry into the war, US banks extended over 2 billion dollars to the Allies (Buchanan, 1999). Consequently, despite the relatively modest contribution to victory on the western front – during the hardest fighting of the war in 1918, the American Expeditionary Force captured 43 300 prisoners and some 1 400 guns – the US received recognition of their power, mainly due to their economic might, as well as the prestige and popularity of Woodrow Wilson (Strachan, 1998).