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WORLD WAR I
1914-1918
Key Concepts
•  German violations of American neutrality, strong economic, and
political ties to Britain, and effective British propaganda helped
shape American public opinion about the combatants.
•  Despite a strong desire on the part of the American public to
remain neutral, the United States entered the conflict in 1917.
•  WWI affected American civil liberties as the government
suppressed dissent.
•  The punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles laid the
foundation for resentment in Germany.
•  Woodrow Wilson’s idealism, as articulated in the Fourteen
Points, including the establishment of a League of Nations, was
challenged at home.
Causes of WWI
•  While the United States entered the war fully three years
after it began, it is important for the student to identify the
major factors that brought the European powers into
conflict. All historical events involve a multiplicity of shortand long- term causes, but four primary factors led to the
onset of WWI in 1914:
•  Militarism
•  Alliances
•  Imperialism
•  Nationalism
Militarism and Alliances
•  Increased militarism:
•  The major European powers had been stockpiling military arms and
expanding the size of their armies and navies. For example, the naval
arms race between Britain and Germany exacerbated relations
between the two. Further, in France a strong sense of revenge against
the Germans for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War over
thirty years earlier was still strong. In that conflict, the French suffered
a humiliating defeat and the loss of two key provinces, Alsace and
Lorraine.
•  The formation of sometimes-secret military alliances:
•  Distrust among the rival imperialist European nations led to the
creation of antagonistic alliances. The two most important were the
Triple Alliance (later known as the Central Powers and comprising of
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire) and the Triple
Entente (later known as the Allies and comprising Great Britain,
France, and Russia). The United States, Italy, and Japan would later
side with the Allies.
Imperialism and Nationalism
•  The growth of imperialism:
•  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European powers
raced to acquire colonies-in some cases simply to prevent their rivals
from obtaining land that often had dubious benefits, as expressed in
the term, the “scramble for Africa.” This in turn led to increased
tensions and threatened military conflicts among the European imperial
powers. For example, the French and Germans nearly came to blows
over control of Morocco, and German-British competition for markets in
Africa and the Middle East increased tensions between the two. To
make matters worse, there was no permanent international
organization to settle disputes between nations.
•  The rise of nationalism:
•  Those ethnic groups that had earlier been absorbed into large
European empires sought self-determination and desired freely elected
governments that would best represent their interests. The AustroHungarian Empire is a prime example of a patchwork nation
comprising a variety of ethnic and religious groups held together by an
autocratic monarchy.
Causes of WWI
•  The stage was set for war. The spark that started it was
the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, Francis Ferdinand, by a Serb nationalist in June
1914. Tensions rose to a fever pitch when the Austrian
government blamed Serbian authorities for the
assassination. Reeling from the murder, Austrians
nonetheless saw it as an opportunity to crush Serbian
nationalism once and for all and quell Serb dissent within
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A harsh ultimatum was
given to the Serbs, who failed to meet the Austrian
demands. On July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war on
Serbia. Two days later Serbia’s ally, Russia, entered the
war, followed in short order by the other European
powers-and ultimately non-European nations as well.
American Neutrality
•  When war broke out, President Wilson was determined to keep the
US out of the conflict. He was deeply concerned that the war would
seriously interrupt international trade and, worse, that the US might
be drawn into the maelstrom. Somewhat unrealistically Wilson
believed that a neutral US could somehow mediate an end to the
dispute. But as we will see, if Wilson’s hope of mediating an end to
the war in 1914 or 1915 was nearly impossible, working out the peace
terms proved equally challenging.
•  For both the Allies and Central Powers the demands of war required
that they interrupt each other’s expansive trade relationships, which
included, of course, the US. To this end, the British blockaded
Germany in hopes of cutting off supplies to the Central Powers. In
violation of international maritime law, the British were in fact in
violation of international law, the British government claimed it was
seizing contraband obviously intended for Germany and that it was
not interfering with trade destined for neutral ports.
American Neutrality
•  To the delight of the British, German violations of neutrality
soon overshadowed their own transgressions. Early in 1915
the Germans declared that British waters would be deemed a
war zone and that all shipping in that area could be attacked by
German U-boats (submarines). From Germany’s perspective,
the loss of civilian lives could be avoided if neutrals stayed
outside this zone and refrained from sailing on Allied ships.
The very nature of submarine warfare-namely, stealth-often
required U-boat captains to attack ships without first stopping
and searching them for contraband. Not surprisingly, this led to
the sinking of neutral ships and the loss of civilian lives. For
the US, the policies of both warring sides seriously interfered
with freedom of the seas and placed American citizens in
harm’s way. The same year the British instituted their
blockade, the inevitable happened. A British passenger liner,
the Lusitania, was sunk by a German U-boat, resulting in the
loss of over a thousand passengers, including 128 Americans.
American Neutrality
•  In 1916 Wilson threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with
Germany if unrestricted submarine warfare continued to cost
the lives of Americans and jeopardize American shipping.
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest,
believing that Wilson’s rhetoric would bring the US into the war.
But when two Americans were injured after a French ship, the
Sussex, was torpedoed, Wilson threatened to break off
diplomatic relations with Germany. The Germans were at the
time fighting the war on two fronts, against the British and
French in the west and the Russians in the east. Keeping the
US out of the war was a German priority, and so the Germans
promised not to sink passenger ships carrying noncombatants
without warning and without care for the lives of the
passengers (the “Sussex pledge”). For the better part of 1916,
the Germans held true to their word.
US Relations with Britain and France,
Public Opinion, and War Propaganda
•  Prior to the war the US had experienced a recession, but
French and British military contracts helped stimulate a
recovery. By 1915 the economy had rebounded in terms of
production and business profits. Of course, the US
manufacturers wanted to ship supplies to the Germans as well
as to the Allies, but the British blockade of Germany prevented
this. Whereas between 1914 and 1917 US trade with the Allies
quadrupled, trade with Germany all but dried up, US economic
interests and the Allied war effort became even closer when US
financiers such as JP Morgan were given permission by the US
government to extend $3 billion in credit to Britain and France.
To be sure, had the Allies lost the war, that money would be lot
to US bankers, a factor that probably played a role in the
eventual decision by the US government to intervene in the
war.
US Relations with Britain and France,
Public Opinion, and War Propaganda
•  Most Americans supported the Allied war effort for noneconomic reasons,
a perspective that was shaped in part by the effectiveness of British
propaganda, which depicted Germans as modern-day Huns brutalizing
Belgians and anyone else who stood in their way. Yet support for one
side or the other depended in large part on one’s ethnicity. For example,
German Americans supported the Central Powers, whereas Italian
Americans supported the Allies after Italy entered the in 1915. Many Irish
Americans supported the Central Powers because of their hatred for the
British government. Some Americans identified with the French because
of their perceptions of a shared revolutionary past and French help during
the American Revolution. Still, even by early 1917, most Americans,
especially in the Midwest and West, were opposed to US involvement in
what they perceived as an entirely European affair. National leaders
such as former Secretary of State Bryan, social activist Jane Addams,
and Jeanette Rankin, the first women elected to Congress, gave voice to
sentiment for American neutrality, though once the US entered the war
most opposition dwindled. However, American socialists, unlike
European socialists, maintained their opposition to the war from
beginning to end and were often imprisoned for expressing their views or
refusing to serve in the military.
US Intervention
•  In early 1917 the Germans decided to resume unrestricted submarine
warfare. While probably a necessary military measure, it was one of
the primary reasons the US entered the war in November of that year.
The immediate response of the US was “armed neutrality”-that is, US
merchant ships would be armed in order to protect themselves from
the stealthy U-boats. The Germans fully realized that their
resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare would probably draw the
US into the war, but they gambled that American intervention would
come too late to effect a change in the course of the war. In February
1917 the British intercepted a diplomatic telegram written by
Germany’s foreign minister, Alfred Zimmerman, to Mexico. When the
telegram, referred to as the Zimmerman note, was published,
Americans were shocked by the offer made by Zimmerman to
Mexico: in return for Mexico’s military assistance in the event the US
entered the war, Mexico would receive most of the land it had lost in
the Mexican-American War if the Central Powers were victorious.
US Intervention
•  In March 1917 the Romanov Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was
overthrown by revolutionary democratic forces. The provisional
government kept Russia in the was until Lenin’s Bolsheviks
took power and signed a peace treaty with Germany, the Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk, in 1917. But the overthrow of the tsar
convinced Wilson that repressive regimes like Tsar Nicholas’s
and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s represented a threat to democracy and
economic liberalism. Wilson inched ever closer to the idea that
the war, and specifically US involvement in it, was a struggle “to
make the world safe for democracy.” On April 2, 1917,
President Wilson called for a special session of Congress at
which he asked for a declaration of war in order to stop
Germany’s “warfare against mankind.” On April 4 Congress
concurred; the US was at war with Germany and its allies.
WWI - Suppression of Civil Liberties and
Dissent
•  Given the nearly unanimous support in Congress for the war,
one would think that the entire nation embraced US
intervention. But the actions of the government in 1917 and
1918 indicate that it was deeply concerned with domestic
dissent. For example, the following legislation passed to
address this “problem”:
•  Espionage Act of 1917 This called for fines and imprisonment for
anyone “aiding the enemy” by obstructing the war effort. The
postmaster-general was authorized to ban the dissemination of
“treasonable literature”. Socialist leader and 1912 presidential
candidate Eugene Dens was convicted and imprisoned for violating the
act. In 1919 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the
Espionage Act in its decision Schenck v. United States , a case
involving an individual who used the mail to attempt to dissuade
draftees from reporting for induction in the military. Justic Oliver
Wendell Holmes argued that such actions presented a “clear and
present danger” to national interests and therefore First Amendment
free-speech rights could be limited by the government.
WWI - Suppression of Civil Liberties and
Dissent
•  Sedition Act of 1918 This law made it a criminal act punishable by
fine fine or imprisonment to attempt to persuade or discourage the
sale of war bonds or to in any way disparage the military, the
Constitution, or the government.
•  To complement its attack on dissenters, the government created
the Committee of Public Information (run by George Creel, who,
interestingly enough, was a progressive). In the process of
equating the government’s case for war and patriotism, the
committee’s work set of a groundswell of distrust. Immigrants and
those with foreign-sounding names were considered “unAmerican”.
The Economics of War
•  The federal government’s intervention in the economy
increased profoundly during the war was more and more
agencies and resources centralized under the government’s
control. This would serve as a foundation and precedent for
later governmental interventions (the New Deal for instance)
and as a way to resolve economic problems and organize the
expansive nature of American capitalism. The following are
representative of this centralization:
•  War Industries Board (1917) Led by Bernard Naruch, the board was
created to coordinate all aspects of industrial production and
distribution.
•  Lever Act (1917) Led by Herbert Hoover as food administrator, this act
aimed to mobilize agriculture and establish prices to encourage
production.
•  War Labor Board (1918) This board arbitrated management-labor
disputes, prevented labor strikes, and regulated wages and work
hours.
The Economics of War
•  To be sure, US economics and military intervention in the war
helped break the stalemate that he shaped warfare on the
Western Front, where the Allies and Central Powers battered
each other month after month, with neither side able to gain a
decisive advantage. For Germany, the war was sapping its
resources and public support for continuing to fight. After the
Allies launched a major offensive in the fall of 1918, it became
abundantly clear to the Germans that their nation would
ultimately be invaded. The kaiser abdicated and was replaced
by a representative government, which agreed to an armistice
in November 1918. The “war to end all wars” has ended, but
not before claiming millions of lives, of which over fifty thousand
were Americans. The war had cost over $300 billion. Four
great empires-Russian, German, Ottoman, and AustroHungarian-collapsed in the process.
Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations
•  The “Big Four” (Wilson, France’s Clemenceau, Britain’s Lloyd George,
and Italy’s Orlando), representing the victorious Allied Powers, met in
Paris and Versailles, France, in 1919 to work out the details of the
peace treaty that would be imposed on the defeated Central Powers.
Having suffered enormous losses, the European Allies sought a
punitive peace treaty. Despite Wilson’s misgivings about the harsh
punishment meted out to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, the
following provisions were adopted:
•  The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine (lost by the French in the Franco• 
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Prussian War) were returned to France.
Germany was prevented from placing troops on the western side of the Rhine
River.
The German military was dramatically reduced in size and strength.
Germany was to ship coal from occupied Saar region to France for a period of
fifteen years.
Germany lost all of its colonies.
New nations were created: Estonia, Latvia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and
Poland.
Austria-Hungary lost three-fifths of its land and three-fifths of its population.
The Central Powers were to pay crushing reparations.
Germany was branded with “war guilt” as the primary perpetrator of the war.
Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations
•  For his part, Wilson was greatly disturbed by the harshness of
the treaty, even threatening at one point to negotiate a separate
treaty with Germany. Instead, he outlined his vision for the
postwar world in a list of political and economic objectives
referred to as the Fourteen Points. They included:
•  The elimination of secret treaties, the stimulus for which was the
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Bolshevik revelation that Britain and France engaged in this diplomatic
practice prior to the war.
Open access to the seas in times of war and peace, which was
important for economic expansion and trade
Reduction of military stockpiles
Adjustment of colonial claims
Self-determination for Europeans, but not for those under colonial
control
The creation of an international assembly that would “afford mutual
guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity”
Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations
•  Wilson believed that the fourteenth point-his call for the creation of what
ultimately became the League of Nations- could be the basis for resolving
the problems associated with the first thirteen points. Open to all nations,
this international body would be the forum for resolving international
disputes and making military confrontation obsolete.
•  Wilson worked tirelessly to convince the American people and Congress
to support the Versailles Treaty. Unfortunately, the conference were all
Democrats, which angered and antagonized the most influential member
of the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson’s second political blunder was
to travel to France for the peace talks rather than mobilize support for the
treaty at home. Wilson’s emphasis on the treaty made it the most
important issue of the 1918 Senate elections. He took his appeal for its
ratification directly to the American people in an exhausting national
speaking tour, which ultimately broke his health. A stroke, in September
1919, paralyzed not only his body, but his personal crusade to see the
treaty ratified. Senator Lodge, for his part, offered certain important
reservations to the treaty that would have diminished the role and
commitment of the US to the League of Nations. With Senator Lodge
and the “irreconcilables” (those staunchly opposed to the treaty) in the
vanguard, the opponents of ratification won the day. Although the issue
of admission to the League was taken up after Wilson left the White
House, the US never became a member of that body.
The Interwar Years
•  Shocked by the enormous loss of life in the war, world
leaders grasped at ways to prevent such a thing from
happening again. The League of Nations was seen as
one method, but without US and Soviet involvement, its
potential for solving international disputes was limited.
Nevertheless, various international agreements were
made in the interwar years to limit the size of militaries
and resolve potential political disputes. Some were
practical, others, rested on naïve optimism.
•  The Five-Power Naval Treaty At the Washington “Disarmament”
Conference (1921-1922_ convened by President Harding, the US,
Britain, Japan, France, and Italy agreed to limit their capital ships to
the following ratio respectively: 5:5:3:1.7:1.7 The participants also
agreed to ban the use of certain insidious weaponry such as posion
gas and restricted submarine warfare.
The Interwar Years
•  The Four-Power Treaty At the same conference, the US, Britain,
Japan, and France agreed to respect one another’s Pacific
territorial possessions by, in part, not creating forward military
bases in the Pacific.
•  The Nine-Power Treaty Yet another product of the same
conference, this treaty reaffirmed the Open Door policy in China.
•  Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) This international agreement
outlawed war. However, it made no provision for enforcement, nor
did it provide for defensive wars.
Economic Imperatives: Intervention, WWI Debts, and Reparations
•  The interwar years were dominated by Republican presidents
whose domestic and foreign policies were designed to advance
American business interests. To this end the Coolidge
administration saw to it that a new constitution passed by
Mexico in 1917, which called for nationalizing Mexico’s
important industries, would not jeopardize American
investments in those businesses. Throughout the 1920s US
troops were sent to South America and the Caribbean to
reinforce US backed regimes and to protect US financial
interests. Of equal concern to US policymakers and financial
institutions were the billions of dollars in loans extended to the
Allies during the war. President Coolidge wanted the debts
repaid, but the Europeans balked, claiming that they were
unable to collect the billion in war reparations owed to them by
a bankrupt Germany and adding that US losses paled in
comparison to their losses. Equally troubling was the US
passage of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff. The Tariff made it
exceedingly difficult for Europeans to sell their products in the
US and make the money that could be used to pay back the
war loans.
Economic Imperatives: Intervention, WWI Debts, and Reparations
•  In response to this problem, the US offered the following
solutions:
•  The Dawes Plan This plan significantly reduced Germany’s
reparations and provided loans to Germany in a roundabout way:
the US loaned money to Germany, Germany used this to pay its
reparations to the Allies, who in turn used these funds to pay off the
interest on its war debts to the US.
•  The Young Plan This plan further reduced Germany’s payments
and established the Bank of International Settlements to assist in
the process of reparations payments.
•  Nevertheless, the collapse of national economies brought
on by the Great Depression caused most nations to
default on their debt payments to the US.
Economic Imperatives: Intervention, WWI Debts, and Reparations
•  Throughout the 1920s and will into the 1930s, the US continued to
influence the affairs of its own hemisphere as well. Time after time it
intervened in Central and Latin America in order to protect US
economic and political interests while simultaneously it attempted to
draw those nations closer to the US, especially in light of the rise of
antagonistic governments in Japan, Germany, and Italy. At the PanAmerican Conferences of 1923 and 1928, the US agreed to treat all
nations on an “equal footing.” The Clark Memorandum of 1928 took
this rapprochement one step further by repudiating the Roosevelt
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Later, in the 1930s, President FDR
would replace Dollar Diplomacy with the Good Neighbor policy, which
stated that no nation would interfere in another’s international affairs.
For the time being, this new, less hegemonic policy satisfied most
South Americans. Even in the far reaches of the American empire,
the Philippines, and the US, partially recognizing the costs of
maintaining an international empire, promised Filipino independence
by 1946(Tydings-McDuffie Act). Post-World War II international affairs,
however, would convince US administrations to pull back from these
prewar agreements and statements.
Economic Imperatives: Intervention, WWI Debts, and Reparations
•  In the two decades following the war, as the horrors of
WWI battlefields faded from public consciousness, the US
experienced an economic boom, highlighted by the
“roaring Twenties.” But the harshness of the Versailles
Treaty, the onset of the Great Depression, and the rise of
militarism and imperialism in Europe and Asia would
guarantee that the peace would not be maintained for
long. By 1939 the world was again at war. Two years
later, the US which had emerged from WWI as a major
economic and military power, would for the second time in
less than twenty-five years send its young men to fight
and die on foreign battlefields. But this time, the stakes
seemed so much higher.