The manners in which the English and Germans could be considered to have pulled the United States into World War I were closely intertwined. The relationship between Great Britain and the United States was, of course, borne of bloody confrontations, first the American Revolutionary War and then the War of 1812. In the century between then and the onset of the Great War, the relationship between the two countries was one of constant mutual antipathy, as the growth of the United States increasingly encroached on British territory in North America. As tensions between the North and South increased, all three parties (the Union, the Confederacy, and Great Britain) engaged in complicated diplomatic maneuvering.
Enduring and bitter differences between the United States and Great Britain notwithstanding, the two countries gradually grew closer due to their shared heritage and language. Trade relations were strong, and the U.S. and British Governments recognized confluences of interest in commerce and in international relations. It was Germany, however, that forced the two into an alliance that would grow immeasurably during the Second World War.
Specific to World War I, it was Germany's policy of what was known as "unrestricted submarine warfare" against commercial and cargo shipping, as well as against military shipping, in the Atlantic Ocean that forced U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's hand and propelled the country into the war. President Wilson had advocated a policy of neutrality with respect to the war in Europe. The problem of German submarines, however, most prominently the sinking of the British ship Lusitania and the consequent deaths of 1,200 civilians, among them 128 Americans, moved popular opinion towards increased sympathy towards the British and French and against the Germans.
The other event that forced Wilson's hand was known as "the Zimmerman Telegram." A secret German diplomatic message from Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to that country's ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, included a promise to the Mexican Government that, in exchange for pledging its support for Germany, Mexico would receive former Mexican territories that were now part of the United States. The two developments--German submarine warfare and its diplomatic machinations with respect to the United States--were instrumental in pushing the United States into the war on the side of Britain and France.
The situation involving Russia is considerably more complicated and distant than that involving Britain and Germany. American-Russian relations were hardly the highest priority for Washington, D.C. The period leading up to and during World War I was one of tremendous instability in Russia. The Romanov Dynasty under Czar Nicholas II was in its final hours, revolutionary fervor having swept that nation. The czar's support for Russia's participation in the war was one of the most important issues leading to his eventual abdication and his replacement by, first, the Provisional Government and, after the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the communists led by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and others. The czar's fall from power was immediately followed by Russia's withdrawal from the war under terms with Germany that were distinctly disadvantageous for the newly emerging Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Russia's withdrawal from the war hardly presaged an era of peace for the Russian people. On the contrary, the years that followed were unrelentingly violent as civil war broke out and the rise of Joseph Stalin resulted in the deaths of millions. Additionally, the United States and Britain conspired, half-heartedly, against the Bolsheviks, including sending troops to Russia's Arctic and Far East regions. All of this, however, is beside the point. If the question is "how did Russia contribute to America's entrance into World War I," the answer is minimally if at all. U.S. involvement in the war was directly related to this country's relationships with Britain, France and Germany.
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