World War I

The ideas and events that led to World War I, the events during the war, and the foreign policy decisions that resulted from the First World War are crucially important. These ideas and events are today the reasons why the U.S. Government gets into so many wars in far corners of the globe.

"In a very real sense," says Mr. Maybury, "the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 was the beginning of a chain reaction—a domino effect. The Spanish-American War in 1898 led to World War I, then World War II, and America's subsequent wars. And the dominoes continue to fall."