The entry of the United States into World War I was a major turning point in the history of the twentieth century, for it assured the victory of the Allies over Imperial Germany in November 1918. In this stirring and scrupulously researched new volume in The New American Nation Series, Robert Ferrell has illuminated the crucial role of Woodrow Wilson as a wartime President and his tragic inability to gain passage in the Senate for the Treaty of Versailles—and thereby U.S. entry into the League of Nations. The United States sent two million men to fight in France, in a tremendous nationalist fervor that gripped both the soldiers and the unprecedented civilian support system that grew up almost overnight. American industry mobilized to produce the necessary ships, tanks, and planes, although without the effectiveness of the buildup in World War II. The American fighting men were untested and in part poorly trained, but they prevailed by sheer numbers and in a year and a half the war was over. Upon return from the Peace Conference, President Wilson was virtually immobilized by a crippling stroke and isolated from the battle in the Senate over the treaty and the League. The country was almost leaderless for months until the Democratic party's defeat in the election of 1920. Woodrow Wilson and World War I is an account of great military accomplishment and—alas—of great political failure, in which the country showed it was not ready to accept its pivotal role in world affairs.
Author
Robert Hugh Ferrell was an American historian and author of several books on Harry S. Truman and the diplomatic history of the United States. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War and was an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. He received a B.S. in Education from Bowling Green State University in 1946 and a PhD from Yale University in 1951, where he worked under the direction of Samuel Flagg Bemis and his dissertation won the John Addison Porter Prize. He went on to win the 1952 Beer Prize for his first book, Peace In Their Time, a study of the making of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He taught for many years at Indiana University in Bloomington, starting as an Assistant Professor in 1953 and rising to Distinguished Professor of History in 1974. He has held several notable visiting professorships, including Yale University in 1955 and the Naval War College in 1974.
