S. and Germany, resulting in the starvation of thousands of Germans through the lack of foodstuff and fertilizer from America. Germany's response to the British blockade was the use of submarines as a counter blockade. Those submarines would sink any British or Allied ship in the sea surrounding Britain. This however soon outraged American public opinion (Danzer 584), when a German submarine sank the British liner Lusitania which also carried Americans. Even after two more sinking ships, resulting in the loss of American lives, the U.S. didn't interfere in the war, but warned Germany to stop sinking ships. Germany agreed under the condition to remove the British blockade. When this failed, Germany declared to sink all ships in British waters, "hostile or neutral," on sight (Danzer 585). Wilson, president of the United States at this time, was shocked but said that he would wait for "actual overt acts" (Danzer 585), and those came in form of the change of the Russian monarchy to a representative government, which made this war now to a fight between democracies and monarchies, and the Zimmermann Note, which proposed an alliance between Mexico and Germany (Danzer 585).
I think that the United States should have joined the war sooner. Even if I can see the reasons behind their hesitation as to not interfere in a war that is mainly happening on Eastern soil and among European nations, I think that an earlier intervention on the American part could have saved a lot of lives. The German and French soldiers had already fought for almost three years when the U.S. decided to join the fight and a lot of lives had been lost on the battlefield. For sure there would have been a greater loss of lives of American soldiers but all in all maybe fewer people would have died. With American intervention at an earlier time, the Germans could have been defeated earlier and the war wouldn't have lasted that long.
