Nearly two
million American “doughboys” (that is the nickname of the American soldiers)
came to help the alliance, especially to help the French because they helped
the Americans during the Revolutionary War. With their arrival, they changed
the morale of allied forces and demoralized German soldiers, who lost their
hope in winning the war. The American soldiers were inexperienced, but fresh
and eager to fight. On their way to Europe, they didn’t lose troopships and greatly reduced shipping losses because they gathered merchant ships and troop transports into groups, which are called convoys. They also saved lives when a ship was sunk because other ships in the convoy could rescue survivors when a ship went down. To protect and escort them across the Atlantic, they had warships, called destroyers. With this system they ensured that a large number of American troops arrived safely in Europe in time to help stop Germany’s last great offensive of the Western front. The Western front was the last one because Lenin got to power in Russia, after Czar Nicholas the second abdicated his throne. He decided to get out of the war and gave pieces of their land to Germany so he could focus now on bringing communism back.
Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia declared independence in spring of 1918. In Germany sailors in Kiel mutinied, groups of workers and soldiers seized power in other German towns. The revolution got spread and the German emptor stepped down. On November 9, 1918 Germany became a republic. Two days later, the government signed an armistice, an agreement to stop fighting. The war ended on November 11, 1918.
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