Abstract
The sinking of the Lusitania sharpened debate in Washington over whether the United States should make the defense of neutral rights a casus belli. The hard line that President Woodrow Wilson adopted regarding German violations of neutral rights caused his secretary of state to resign in protest, with the redlines established in 1915 generating a precarious neutrality that lasted less than two years. This article examines the links between Wilson’s wartime policies, the revisionist literature of the interwar period, and the Neutrality Acts of the mid-1930s. It argues that “history’s lessons” may mislead rather than inform if context is ignored.
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Cite this article
Douglas C. Peifer, “The Sinking of the Lusitania, Wilson’s Response, and Paths Not Taken: Historical Revisionism, the Nye Committee, and the Ghost of William Jennings Bryan,” The Journal of Military History 79, no. 4 (October 2015): 1025–1045.