AP®︎ US History: Topic 7.5 Flashcards

European arms races, large standing armies, and rapid-mobilization plans that heightened tensions and helped turn the 1914 crisis into war

Europe’s division into rival blocs, whose commitments transformed the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a general European war

Intense national rivalry and ethnic demands for independence that destabilized Europe and contributed to World War I.

European rivalry over colonies, markets, and international influence that increased tensions before World War I.

Gavrilo Princip’s June 28, 1914 killing of Austria-Hungary’s heir, which triggered the diplomatic crisis that began World War I.

Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; Allies: chiefly Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and later the United States

President who moved the United States from neutrality to war, proposed the Fourteen Points, negotiated at Paris, and championed the League of Nations

Wilson’s 1914 policy of staying out of the European war while urging Americans to remain impartial in thought and action

The claimed rights of neutral Americans and ships to travel and trade without unlawful interference or attack by belligerents

British passenger liner sunk by a German U-boat in 1915, killing about 1,198 people including 128 Americans and intensifying the submarine dispute

Germany’s 1916 promise to restrict submarine attacks and protect passengers and merchant crews under specified conditions

Campaign to strengthen the U.S. armed forces so the nation could deter attack and defend its neutral rights

German policy of sinking neutral and enemy shipping without warning; its resumption in February 1917 was the immediate cause of U.S. entry

German proposal that Mexico join a war against the United States in return for help recovering lost territory; its publication intensified anti-German opinion

Overthrow of the Russian tsar, which removed an autocracy from the Allied coalition and strengthened Wilson’s democratic justification for war

April 2 address asking Congress for war against Germany to oppose submarine warfare and make the world safe for democracy

The United States’ wartime status alongside, but not formally within, the Allied alliance, preserving independent American war aims

Law requiring eligible men to register for military service, producing about 2.8 million drafted soldiers for the wartime army

Method of grouping merchant and troop ships under naval escort to reduce submarine losses while crossing the Atlantic

U.S. forces sent to Europe under John J. Pershing that fought mainly as an independent national army during 1918

General who commanded the AEF and generally insisted that American troops fight as a distinct national army

Celebrated African American unit that fought under French command because the segregated U.S. Army restricted Black combat opportunities

June 1918 fighting in which American forces helped stop the German advance threatening Paris

June 1918 battle associated especially with the U.S. Marines that became a symbol of American combat effectiveness

July–August 1918 battle in which American and Allied forces halted Germany’s final major offensive and began a sustained counterattack

September 1918 operation that reduced a German salient and was the first major offensive by an American army under American command

Largest U.S. operation of the war, involving about 1.2 million Americans and pressuring German defenses until the November 1918 armistice

Agreement that stopped World War I fighting at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918, before the later formal peace settlement

Wilson’s 1918 peace program calling for open diplomacy, freer trade and seas, reduced armaments, national adjustment, and a League of Nations

Principle that national peoples should choose their own governments and political status, applied unevenly in the postwar settlement

Principle that aggression against one nation concerns all members, who cooperate to deter or respond to the aggressor

International organization proposed by Wilson to preserve peace through collective security; the United States never joined it

1919 meeting where Wilson and the other Allied leaders negotiated the postwar settlement and drafted the Treaty of Versailles

Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Vittorio Orlando, the principal leaders at the Paris Peace Conference

1919 peace treaty that punished Germany, redrew borders, restricted German arms, required reparations, and created the League of Nations

Versailles provision assigning Germany and its allies responsibility for wartime loss and damage, providing a basis for reparations

League covenant provision pledging members to preserve one another’s territorial integrity and political independence against external aggression

Irreconcilables rejected the League under nearly all conditions; reservationists would accept the treaty only with protections for U.S. sovereignty and Congress

Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair who led reservationist opposition and demanded limits on U.S. obligations under the League

The treaty failed to win a two-thirds Senate vote, so the United States neither ratified it nor joined the League of Nations

Proposed conditions limiting League obligations and requiring congressional approval before the United States defended another nation or entered foreign conflicts