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Chapter 22
America and the
Great War,
1914-1920
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The War at Home
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An Uneasy Neutrality
• Initial Reactions
• The eruption of World War I began in 1914 when a Serbian terrorist group
assassinated the crown prince of Austria. When Austria demanded they be turned
over, Russia mobilized the army to protect what it considered a sister nation. This
triggered a series of alliances that placed the Allies (Great Britain, Russia, and
France) against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy).
• A Strained Neutrality
• 30 percent of all Americans were no more than two generations away from their
mother countries, with 8 million being of German descent. Most American leaders
were pro-British from the onset.
• Both the Central Powers and the Allies looked to the United States for food and war
material. To finance their needs, France and Great Britain requested loans from the
United States. Although knowing that this violated the neutrality of the United
States, Wilson approved loans to the Allies. By the time the war ended, over $2
billion had been given to the Allies, while only $27 million had been given to
Germany.
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An Uneasy Neutrality, continued
• Neutral Rights and Submarines
• Germany would declare the area around the British Isles a war zone and warned
that any ship entering the are could be attacked by their submarines. When a
British passenger ship, the Lusitania, was sunk on its way from New York to London,
128 American lives were lost. Americans demanded war, but Wilson refused to
yield. To cool American passions, Germany ordered its subs to avoid sinking
passenger ships.
• The Debate over Preparedness
• December 1914, Wilson requested the army and navy prepare themselves for war.
Although he had no intention yet of asking for a declaration, he chose to be ready if
the need appeared. To finance this, he allowed Congress to raise the income tax to
2 percent.
• The Election of 1916
• Last Efforts for Peace
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• The Election of 1916
• Roosevelt desired to be the Republican candidate in 1916, but
because of his actions in the 1912 election, the party chose Charles
Hughes. The Democrats nominated Wilson again. Running on the
slogan “He kept us out of war,” Wilson won a second term.
• Last Efforts for Peace
• Following his reelection, Wilson yet again tried to broker a peace, to
no avail. When Germany broke its pledge to only wage restricted
submarine warfare, Wilson countered by arming merchant ships.
Then in February 1917, the Zimmerman Telegram was revealed.
Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, had instructed his
ambassador in Mexico to have him tell the Mexican government that
should it join with the Central Powers and attack the United States. In
return, Mexico would receive back all the land that had been taken
away.
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Trench Warfare
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The Great War in Europe, 1914
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Peace with Honor
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Mobilizing a Nation
• America’s Early Role
•
In March 1917, five U.S. merchant ships were sunk by German subs. Wilson asked
Congress to recognize that a state of war existed between the two nations.
Congress agreed.
• The navy’s first role was to protect shipping convoys from the United States to
Great Britain. By providing loans for the Allies, America reinvigorated the Allies in
Europe. An early detachment of troops led by John Pershing reached Paris in July
1917.
• Mobilizing a Nation
• In order to mobilize the nation, it became necessary to coordinate
different industries under government bureaucracies. These
organizations helped Americans raise the needed funds and conserve
necessary items and promoted the growing of their own crops to
prevent shortages.
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• A New Labor Force
• The closing off of immigration and the reallocation
of 4 million men to the war effort caused a shortage
of workers.
• To find replacements, recruiters went to the South
and brought back 400,000 African Americans.
Women also entered the workforce in record
numbers.
• Their contribution was so moving to Wilson that he
decided to endorse the Nineteenth Amendment,
which gave women the right to vote.
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At the Munitions Factory
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Mobilizing a Nation, continued
• War Propaganda
• Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, which was
charged with conveying the Allies’ war aims to the American people
and to the enemy as well, in an attempt to sap their morale. This
included the making of Hollywood movies as well as sending men
charged with delivering four-minute speeches across the nation to
make their case.
• Civil Liberties
• The war effort soon turned to a witch hunt against German Americans. Anything
German was considered bad: sauerkraut was now called liberty cabbage, German
measles were called liberty measles, and dachshunds were renamed liberty pups.
The Espionage and Sedition Acts resulted in over one thousand convictions of
disloyalty to the Union.
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The American Role in the War
• The Western Front
• The American forces did not play a major role until 1918. At the
Battles of Belleau Wood and Vaux, Americans gained limited ground,
but the effect on the morale of their fellow Allies was significant. At
the Second Battle of the Marne, a German attack was rolled back all
the way to Belgium. Soon the Germans were in defeat. The American
efforts had allowed the Allies to break the stalemate that had existed
up till then.
• The Bolsheviks
• Russia was part of the Allies, but in 1917, a revolution led by Vladimir
Lenin erupted and the royal family was killed. Known as Bolsheviks,
the revolutionaries followed the communist teachings of Karl Marx.
Lenin would negotiate a treaty with Germany ending the Soviets’
part in the war, and the eastern front fell silent.
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II. “Over There”
A. The Call to Arms
1. Struggle in Europe
• Russia, was in turmoil, and the Bolshevik revolutionary
government would eventually withdraw Russia from the war.
2. Raising an army
• May 18, 1917, to meet the demand for fighting men, Wilson
signed a Selective Service Act
• authorized the draft of all young men into the armed forces
• transformed a tiny volunteer armed force into a vast army and
navy
3. Black soldiers
4.8 million men under arms, 370,000 were African Americans
who had put aside their skepticism about the war to serve
• during training, black recruits suffered the same prejudices they
encountered in civilian life, facing abuse, segregation, and
assignment to labor battalions
•
4. A progressive war
• Military Draft Act of 1917 prohibited prostitution and alcohol
near training camps
• Wilson chose John “Black Jack” Pershing to command the
American Expeditionary Force
• he was confident and had a morally upstanding reputation
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American Casualties
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The Great War, the Western Front, 1918
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II. “Over There”
B. The War in France
1. Trench warfare
• AEF discovered that the three-year-old war had degenerated into a stalemate
• both the British and French armies had dug hundreds of miles of trenches across
France, where both sides suffered tremendous casualties.
•
•
•
•
•
•
2. Black troops’ success in battle
Except for the 92nd Division of black troops, which was integrated into the French
army and fought for 191 days, American troops saw almost no combat in 1917;
instead, they continued to train and explore places most of them otherwise could
never have hoped to see.
3. Americans enter combat
the Germans launched a massive offensive aimed at French ports on the Atlantic,
causing 250,000 casualties on each side;
the French agreed to General Pershing’s terms of a separate American command
and in May 1918 assigned the Americans to the central sector
4. Ending the war
the summer of 1918, the Allies launched a massive counteroffensive that would
end the war, routing German forces along the Marne River
German defenses held for six weeks; on November 11, 1918, an armistice was
signed and the adventure of the AEF was over.
5. The death toll
112,000 AEF soldiers perished from wounds and disease, while another 230,000
suffered casualties but survived; much worse for European nations: 2.2 million
Germans, 1.9 million Russians, 1.4 million French, and 900,000 Britons.
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Wilson’s Agenda
• January 8, 1918, President Wilson delivered a speech to Congress
that revealed his vision of a generous peace his Fourteen Points
provided a blueprint for a new democratic world order
• the first five points affirmed basic liberal ideas, and the next eight
supported the right to self-determination of peoples who had been
dominated by Germany.
2. A League of Nations provide “mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike”
The Paris Peace Conference
Compromised ideals -To the Allied leaders, Wilson appeared a
naïve and impractical moralist; he did not understand hard European
realities
• Wilson was forced to make drastic compromises: in return for
French moderation of territorial claims, Wilson agreed to support
an article that assigned war guilt to Germany; many Germans felt
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Self-determination
• in Asia and Africa, but the Allies who had taken
over the colonies during the war only allowed the
League of Nations a mandate to administer them.
Racial equality rejected
• peace conference refused to endorse Japan’s
proposal for a clause in the treaty proclaiming the
principle of racial equality; Wilson’s belief in the
superiority of whites and his apprehension about
how Americans would react to such a clause
led him to reject the clause.
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Armistice Night in New York (1918)
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I Crusade for Democracy at Home
C. Rally around the Flag—or Else
1. Calling for peace through victory
2. Encouraging patriotism
• he created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) under
the direction of muckraking journalist George Creel, who
cheered on America’s war effort; sent the “Four-Minute Men”
around the country to give brief pep talks.
4. Suppressing dissent
• Espionage Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and the
Sedition Act, which gave the government sweeping powers
to punish opinions or activities it considered “disloyal,
profane, scurrilous or abusive”
• contrasted sharply with the war’s aim of defending
democracy.
5. Wartime politics
• elections of 1918, Republicans won a narrow victory in both
houses of Congress, ending Democratic control, suspending
any possibility for further domestic reform, and dividing the
leadership as U.S. forces advanced toward military victory.
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The League of Nations Argument in a Nutshell
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Politics of Peace
2. Congressional opposition
• Wilson faced stiff opposition in the Senate from
“irreconcilables,” who condemned the treaty for
entangling the United States in world affairs, and from
Republicans, who feared that membership in the
League of Nations would jeopardize the nation’s
independence.
3. Lodge’s reservations
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts used his
position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to air his complaints
• out of committee hearings came several amendments,
or “reservations,” that sought to limit the consequences
of US involvement in the League
• it became clear that ratification of the treaty depended
on the acceptance of Lodge’s reservations, which the
senator had appended to the treaty; but Wilson refused
to accept the amendments.
•
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The Politics of Peace, continued
• Territory and Reparations
• France demanded Germany pay reparation for the damages the war had caused.
This would also keep Germany weak and unable economically to rise again.
Germany was divided into new nations with areas that would serve as buffer states
if they were to become aggressive again. The German delegation was not allowed
to partake in these talks but rather was presented with the finalized document.
• Wilson’s Loss at Home
• The Senate still would not ratify the treaty. Wilson decided that he would apply
pressure on the senators through their constituents, and he began a whistle-stop
tour of the nation to drum up support. Eventually, it would lead him to a stroke,
which left him paralyzed on his left side for the rest of his life.
•
A defeated treaty-before the full Senate in March 1920,
it came up six votes short of the two-thirds majority
needed for passage. nations of Europe organized the
League of Nations at Geneva,but US never became a
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Europe After the Treaty of Versailles, 1918
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Stumbling From War to Peace
• The Spanish Flu
• With the war over, society and industry had to revert to their prewar levels of
activity. But with the returning soldiers came a new problem: the Spanish flu.
Before the spring of 1918, 22 million would die globally from this virulent stain of
influenza.
• The Economic Transition
• Released from wartime constraints, workers began to strike for their
demands. The largest strike was the U.S. Steel strike in 1919, which
resulted in 340,000 workers walking off the job. Eventually, the
workers won and returned to work.
• than 3 million soldiers were released from the military,
causing the unemployment rate to soar. at the same
time, consumers went on a spending spree, causing
inflation to soar in 1919, prices rose 75 percent over
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prewar
levels.
Influenza Epidemic
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Safe, briefly
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Post-War Tensions
• Racial Friction
• The year 1919 was marked by race riots in the United States.
Whites in Longview, Texas, invaded the black side of town to
find a black man who was accused of allegedly dating a white
woman. Washington, D.C., was mobbed by white and black
gangs for four days until soldiers and a rainstorm ended it.
• The Red Scare
• The fear that what had occurred in Russia could also occur in
the United States promoted the first Red Scare. Wartime
hysteria over everything German soon found another roost in
all things communist. Militants mailed bombs to prominent
members of the government.
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Chapter 22
American and the Great War
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