The history of America's entry into the Great War is complex and profound. It has intrinsic drama, no matter what one's attitude about the rights and wrongs of U.S. participation in the war–and there have been many.

Wartime Allied propaganda had Americans believing the Germans were solely guilty, and that the conflict was a war for democracy, when the most autocratic country in Europe, Russia, was on the Allied said. American entry, of course, was a necessity.

Revisionist history in the twenties and thirties written by Barnes, Peterson, Borchard, Millis, and other American historians seemed ironclad in making the case that the United States was not "forced" to war, that American intervention led to higher death totals and a settlement that in many ways unhinged the world. In these works, Wilson's decisions often looked misguided or plain wrong.