Why did American citizens not want the United States to get involved in World War I?

There were a variety of reasons many Americans did not want the country to get involved in World War I. For one thing, the conflict was absolutely devastating, and Americans were able to get a sense of this from media coverage. By the time the United States entered the war, virtually all of the belligerent nations had suffered devastating losses, and few Americans wanted to send troops to Europe. Another reason was that the United...

There were a variety of reasons many Americans did not want the country to get involved in World War I. For one thing, the conflict was absolutely devastating, and Americans were able to get a sense of this from media coverage. By the time the United States entered the war, virtually all of the belligerent nations had suffered devastating losses, and few Americans wanted to send troops to Europe. Another reason was that the United States had, since the days of George Washington, steadfastly avoided entanglement in European conflicts--it had become a sort of article of faith that they should continue to do so. It is also important to remember that there were many German-Americans in the United States, and most of them hoped for a German victory. So too did many Irish-Americans, as their ancestral homeland was involved in a fight for independence against British rule at the same time as WWI. Many left-leaning progressives viewed the war as being fought on behalf of capital, and to further the causes of militarism and imperialism, and objected to US involvement on those grounds. Others saw it as another version of the age-old power struggle between corrupt European dynasties, one which the United States had no business getting involved in. So there were many reasons why Americans did not want to get involved in the First World War.