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WORLD WAR ONE
Considered the “GREAT WAR?” – why?
- first modern war in which such extensive harm to civilian populations
- advanced military technology – “man’s inhumanity to man”
pain of mustard gas, barbed wire
- no more romantic notions of war and violence
- loss of U.S. and world vision of human relations as cooperative, consensual
- war opens new opportunities for women, African Americans and ethnic minorities
- unites country in military victory BUT new kinds of hatred, not race based
Germans and Austrians
“Bolshevik” Reds – result from Russian Revolution, 1917
Woodrow Wilson and avoiding war; leave Europe alone
Specific Causes of War in Europe:
European politics – alliances and fragile peace
build up of Germany; military build-up, racism and militant nationalism
fragmentation of Ottoman Empire – perpetual “tinderbox” of Europe
Germany; Austria-Hungary and Italy – Triple Alliance
France and Russia – Dual Alliance
1907 – Britain joins and it becomes The Triple Entente
new military technology
EVENTS: energy/ideology of Progressives now put in World War I
1914-1918 four bloody war
barbed wire; trench warfare – violent stalemate
“no man’s land” – mowed down by artillery fire or poison gas
the Lusitania and German submarines
1916 Presidential Election in U.S. with Wilson (Democrat) as winner
Zimmerman Telegram, Feb, 1917 --- US at War
Pershing to London - Pershing leads American Expeditionary Force (AEF)
Selective Service Act, 1917
US first job in war - keep seas safe from submarines - armed convoys across the Atlantic
“doughboys” – at end of war, 2 million Americans in France
new intervention of U.S. government in lives of servicemen
- public health, service, education for mothers and soldiers –
basis for welfare state
AT HOME:
Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918
Women’s suffrage
18th Amendment – no more booze – Prohibition
Labor Unrest in US – steelworkers, Boston Police Force
The Red Scare – Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and Russian Revolution, 1917
Tsar Nicholas II out and Vladimir Ilych Lenin – Russian Marxist
“dictatorship of the proletariat” (workers)
eliminate capitalism and create classless, ideal (utopian?) society; strong KKK in 1920s
Post-War World:
Treaty of Versailles, 1919-1920
Wilson’s Fourteen Point Plan and League of Nations
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1920s
stable environment for economic expansion abroad, esp in Western Hemis
lackluster politicians
corporate capitalism [unions as un-American (Scott Paper Towels)]
Prohibition – women’s rise to power
Henry Ford – symbol of era; poor farm boy to corporate giant
“welfare capitalism” – laissez faire
economic welfare placed with private sector to limit govt interference
US money throughout Latin America and World
economic imperialism and David Ricardo’s “Comparative Advantage”
becomes world’s largest creditor nation
Foreign Policy – Isolationism and resentment w/ foreign entanglements, esp with Europe
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Summarizing Modern State and Society in the U.S., 1914-1945
development of distinctly modern, American society from:
-immigration
-economic expansion abroad
-urban culture
-industrialization
-cultural consumerism; emphasis on consumption
-gradually, “globalization” of U.S. consumerism
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BUT – by 1945, two world wars and a dozen years of
econ depression - vision of world changes forever
McKinley’s radio address to nation in 1900 to Vietnam war
protests
Government: development of an extensive, powerful and costly federal (national) government
increased power for the presidency, esp. in war
much greater sense that the federal govt has role in improving/influencing lives of
individual citizens
Diplomacy:
U.S. slow, reluctant to become world leader, but World War I changes everything
from international debtor nation to creditor
acts as arbiter in international conflicts
after WWI, the US known as very effective military power
Isolationism and World Depression
World War II
Roots of Cold War
Economy
1914-1945 U.S. industrial economy the most productive in the world
study example of the U.S. auto industry
ascendancy of mass production techniques
industrialization changes daily life for workers
tempo of production
Culture – US consumerism and consumption
emphasis on consumption and rising stand of living – considered natural by Americans
one’s identity known as much by what one owns than what one believes
Social Relations
nativism, migration and social change
slow but increasing attention by Americans to race relations
demand for women’s rights
continuation of Great Migration
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