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Mr. Schaber - US History - Ch. 20 Class Notes (The World War I Era)
*Section 1 - The Road to War
-On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie made a visit to
Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia
- Ferdinand was the successor to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Bosnia
was now a new province of the empire
- That morning a bomb was thrown by a terrorist as the motorcade rode through the
streets - it had bounced off the car and exploded, injuring two officers in another car
- The Archduke was unfazed by this, and then attended a state ceremony and then rode
off to the hospital to visit the wounded officers - as he rode, Gavrilo Princip, another
terrorist who was determined to hurt or kill the Archduke, happened to see the car as it
moved slowly down the street
- The car stopped right in front of the café where Princip was, so he pulled his pistol and
fired off two shots - one shot hit the Archduke’s wife, and the second shot his the
Archduke - both died
- Princip, a Bosnian nationalist, believed Austria-Hungary had no right to rule Bosnia
- The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand ignited what was called the Great
War, later known as World War I - but the main causes of the war existed well before
1914
- Four main things that led to World War I:
1) Imperialism - European countries vied against one another to create overseas empires this caused animosity
2) Militarism - European countries began to really build up their military - this put
everyone on edge
3) Nationalism - Countries wanted to act in their own interest, so this created arguments
and conflict between them
4) Alliances - A complicated system of alliances between countries emerged - this bound
the great powers to each other and assured they would come to each others’ aid in case of
trouble
- Convinced that the country of Serbia, and not just a few terrorists, was behind the
assassination, Austria-Hungary used the event as an excuse to crush its small enemy - on
July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia
- This declaration of war set off a chain reaction that worked its way through Europe’s
complex web of alliances
- Countries began to mobilize (ready their troops for war) in the frenzy that swept
through Europe
- On August 1, Germany, Austria-Hungary’s chief ally, declared war on Russia, ally and
protector of Serbia
- Germany lays between France and Russia, so to avoid being trapped by enemy armies,
Germany developed a first-strike strategy
- Known as the Schlieffen Plan, it called for a quick sweep through France to knock the
French out of the war - then, the German army would concentrate on Russia
- Germany put the plan into action - to reach France as fast as possible, the German army
had to pass through Belgium - this brought Great Britain, Belgium’s protector, into the
conflict as well
- One week after the war started, all the great powers of Europe had been drawn into it - 2
sides formed
- Germany and Austria-Hungary made up the Central Powers
- Russia, France, Serbia, and Great Britain were called the Allies
- Each side felt confident of swift victory - the experts said it would all be over in 6
weeks - the experts were wrong
- The two sides quickly reached a bloody stalemate (a situation in which neither side is
able to gain an advantage)
- In this war, defensive forces, rather than offensive ones, could take over
- Forces such as machine guns and long-range artillery, stopped advances dead in their
tracks
- In September 1914 the German army, following the Schlieffen Plan, advanced to within
30 miles of Paris
- There, at the river Marne, a combined French and British force stopped their progress both sides then dug in
- Holed up in lines of muddy, rat-infested trenches, the two sides faced each other across
an empty “no-man’s land” - TRENCH WARFARE
- Neither side was able to gain more than a few miles, and that only at appalling human
cost to both sides
- At the end of 1914, the Ottoman Empire, centered in what is now Turkey, entered the
war on the side of the Central Powers
- In the spring of 1915, Italy joined the Allies
- In 1914 the youth of Europe had marched off to fight, eager for a chance to be heroic
- They came up against new killing machines of amazing efficiency - ripped apart by
machine guns, hand grenades, or artillery shells, and choked by poison gases,
soldiers found that heroism came at a ghastly price
- If soldiers charging across no-man’s land toward the enemy survived the artillery shells
that rained down upon them, the enemy’s machine guns, firing 450 rounds a minute,
mowed them down
- The generals, unaccustomed to the new weaponry, repeatedly gave the order to attack
- In the Battle of the Somme in 1916, for example, the British suffered some 20,000
deaths in a single day of combat - there were about 60,000 dead from all sides in the
battle
- Morale sank - desperate, armies began using any tactic possible
- Erasing the distinction between civilian and soldier, they burned fields, killed livestock,
and poisoned wells
- They tunneled under the no-man’s land to plant bombs below the enemy trenches
- German submarines torpedoed any ship they believed to be carrying arms to the Allies
- A British naval blockade slowly starved the German people - none of these tactics
brought a quick end to the war
- Americans read the news of war with mounting alarm- how could all these great
countries of beauty and culture be at war with one another?
- Some Americans felt personally involved - more than a third of the nation’s 92 million
people were first- or second-generation immigrants - they still identified with their old
countries
- About a quarter of these were German American, and another eighth were Irish
American - these groups felt hostility toward Great Britain because of past conflicts and
the current war in Europe
- For this reason, they favored the Central Powers over the Allies
- Most Americans, however, opposed the Central Powers - one reason was Kaiser
Wilhelm, who was an autocrat (a ruler with unlimited power)
- Americans saw the Germans as a people of frightening militarism and cold-blooded
efficiency
- Trade strongly influenced the American position on the war
- Between 1897 and 1914 the US commercial investments overseas had increased
fivefold
- Now German submarines and a British naval blockade of the North Sea were putting
those investments at risk
- President Wilson on August 4, 1914, officially proclaimed the US a neutral country
- The American government tried to act as a peacemaker
- American business leaders welcomed the proclamation of neutrality - still, they urged
that the US be ready
- Their watchword was “preparedness” - in December 1914 preparedness supporters
organized a National Security League to “promote patriotic education and national
sentiment and service among people of the United States”
- By the late summer of 1915, the movement’s leaders had persuaded the government to
set up camps to train American men for combat - by the summer of 1916, Wilson had
worked out an agreement with Congress for large increases in the armed forces
- When World War I broke out, a peace movement also swung into gear - many women
were very active in this
- Congress also included some peace advocates - they insisted on paying for preparedness
through a tax on the makers of arms and through higher income taxes
- Congress did increase taxes, but the preparedness movement remained strong
*Section 2 - The United States Declares War
- From 1915 to 1917 friction between the US and Germany increased - the preparedness
movement continued to gain support in the US, and the pressure to join the war
intensified
- Ultimately, actions by the Central Powers pushed Congress and the President into
entering the war on the side of the Allies
- One action that provoked angry calls for war in the US was the German use of
submarine warfare
- The German U-boat, short for Unterseeboot, or submarine, was a terrifying new
weapon that changed the rules of naval warfare
- U-boats issued no warning to their targets - many Americans saw this as uncivilized
- Shortly after the war began, the British cut the transatlantic cable connecting Germany
and the US
- All news of the European front henceforth flowed through London - its pro-Allied bias
helped shape the opinion of the people in the US in favor of punishing Germany for its
use of the submarine
- American public opinion of the Germans sank even lower on May 7, 1915, when a Uboat sighted the Lusitania, a British passenger liner in the Irish Sea
- Suspecting correctly that the ship carried weapons for the Allies, the U-boat fired on the
liner
- 18 minutes later the Lusitania sunk along with its almost 1,200 passengers - included
among the dead were 128 Americans, who had boarded the Lusitania in spite of German
warnings to stay off British ships
- Nevertheless, the American press went wild over what they called Germany’s act of
“barbarism”
- President Wilson urged patience - he demanded that Germany stop its submarine
warfare
- Then, Wilson sent a second, stronger note of protest - in response, Germany promised to
stop sinking passenger ships without warning, as long as the ship’s crew offered no
resistance to German search and seizure
- Still, U-boats continued to torpedo Allied ships - on March 24, 1916, a German
submarine sank the Sussex, a French passenger steamship
- The US threatened to cut diplomatic ties to Germany - in what came to be called the
Sussex pledge, the German government again promised that U-boats would warn ships
before attacking
- The series of demands and broken promises that led up to the Sussex pledge frustrated
Wilson
- American neutrality was beginning to weaken at this time
- In the presidential election of 1916, Wilson ran on the slogan “He kept us out of war”
- American voters gave Wilson a narrow victory in the election
- On February 1, 1917, Germany violated the Sussex pledge by resuming unrestricted
submarine warfare
- German strategists knew that it might bring the US into the war, but they felt fairly
confident that they could defeat Britain and win the war before American entry could
make a difference
- On February 3 the US broke off diplomatic relations with Germany
- In the Senate, a group of antiwar senators tried to prevent action on Wilson’s request by
using a filibuster (a tactic in which senators take the floor, begin talking, and refuse to
stop talking to prevent a vote on a measure)
- At this time, the British revealed the contents of an intercepted German telegram - in the
note Arthur Zimmermann, Germany’s foreign secretary, made a secret offer to Mexico (if
Mexico helped Germany in the war, Mexico would get back Texas, New Mexico, and
Arizona)
- Neither Wilson nor Mexico took the Zimmermann note very seriously, but its release
scored another public relations victory for Great Britain - the US public was upset, and
the US edged closer to war
- By early 1917 Russia already had suffered enormous casualties in the war: 1.8 million
killed, 2.4 million taken prisoner, and 2.8 million sick or wounded
- Then, in March 1917, Czar Nicholas II, Russia’s autocratic leader, was forced to give
up power - the Russian monarchy was replaced with a republican government
- This Russian Revolution elated the prowar faction in the US - the fall of the czar
removed the last stumbling block to a full American commitment to the Allies
- Between March 16 and March 18, Germany sank the US ships City of Memphis,
Illinois, and Vigilancia
- On March 20, 1917, Wilson’s cabinet voted unanimously for war
- Wilson told Congress on April 2 that “the world must be made safe for democracy”
- A war resolution passed 82 to 6 in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House - on April 6,
1917, the President signed it, and the US was officially involved in WWI
*Section 3 - Americans on the European Front
- By the time the US entered the war in April 1917, the Allies desperately needed
replacement troops
- Wilson agreed to send a small force to Europe under the command of General John J.
Pershing, who was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and he’d also taught for a
time at West Point
- Despite the success of the preparedness movement, in April 1917 the US was far from
ready to send an army to the European front
- Instead, a cautious Congress sent naval support, supplies, arms, and $3 billion in loans
- The token force of 14,500 men led by General Pershing served mainly to boost Allied
morale
- Pershing recommended that the army should number 1million men by 1918 and 3
million by 1919
-When the US entered WWI, the armed forces had only 120,000 enlisted men and 80,000
National Guardsmen
- In May 1917 Congress passed a Selective Service Act, authorizing a draft of young
men for military service
- The general feeling that this would be the “war to end all wars” resulted in wide
acceptance of the program
- By November 1918 more than 24 million men had registered for the draft - from those,
a lottery picked 3 million draftees to serve in the war
- Volunteers and National Guardsmen made up the remainder of what was called the
American Expeditionary Force (AEF)
- Among the Americans who served their country were thousands of women - Some
11,000 women volunteered to serve in uniform as nurses, drivers, and clerks - another
14,000 women served abroad, as civilians working for the government or for private
agencies
- The War Department had to worry about transporting its troops overseas
- In April 1917 alone, German U-boats had sunk 430 Allied and neutral ships
- Starting in May 1917 all merchant and troop ships traveled in convoy
- Between April and December 1917, merchant marine losses dropped by half
- From the time the AEF arrived in France in June 1917, Pershing kept them independent
of the Allied armies
- (American infantrymen were called doughboys - the term originated during the Civil
War in reference to the dumpling-shaped buttons on Union infantry uniforms)
- The more than 300,000 African Americans who volunteered or were drafted into service
were kept apart from white troops
- Though many African Americans fought with distinction and nearly 4,000 died or were
wounded, most never saw combat - most were used for minor tasks and manual labor
only
- These assignments distressed many African Americans - the 369th Infantry Regiment,
who came to be known as the Harlem Hell Fighters, was especially eager to fight
- Its members persuaded their white officers to loan the regiment to the French, who
integrated the regiment into the French army
- Because of its valiant service, the whole regiment received France’s highest combat
medal, the Croix de Guerre
- In November 1917 followers of Vladimir Lenin, called Bolsheviks, violently
overthrew Russia’s government
- Lenin had promised to make peace with Germany if he ever gained control of Russia, so
Germany had helped arrange his return to Russia in April 1917
- Lenin made peace with Germany on March 3, 1918 - Russia’s exit from the war freed
the Germans from the two-front war they had been forced to fight
- From March through May 1918, German forces turned all their energies toward
pounding the French and British
- They finally broke through the lines, and by June 3 were about 50 miles from Paris
- American forces came to the rescue - marching out of Paris, the men received this word
from their leader, Brigadier General James G. Harbord: “We dig no trenches to fall back
on. The Marines will hold where they stand.”
- At the battle of Chateau-Thierry they did just that - at a loss of over half of their
troops, they helped the French save Paris, blunted the edge of the German advance, and
began to turn the tide of the war
- After turning back the Germans outside Paris, the Allies took heart
- Using a new weapon, the tank, they began to break the German lines
- On August 8 at the battle of Amiens, the Allied armies stopped the German advance
once and for all
- On August 11, German general Erich von Ludendorff sensed that the end was near
- He advised Kaiser Wilhelm to seek a peace settlement
- The Allies, however, insisted on total surrender
- In September some 500,000 American troops, assisted by 100,000 French, began to hit
the final German strongholds
- The Allies also began to use airplanes to drop bombs
- Aerial dogfights had already taken place, and each side had its “aces,” such as
American captain Eddie Rickenbacker, who downed 26 enemy fighters
- The final Allied assault, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, began on September 26, 1918
- Over a million AEF troops began the drive to expel the Germans from France and cut
their supply lines
- The Allies pressed on against their enemy - the Germans commanders begged for peace,
still hoping to dictate some terms - the Allies refused
- By the time the armistice, or cease-fire, came, the Kaiser had fled to Holland
- On November 11, 1918, the guns finally fell silent
- More than 50,000 American soldiers died in battle, and many more died of disease,
mainly influenza
- The physical and mental scars of the war ran deep
- American losses were tiny compared with those suffered by the Europeans - the total
death toll of 8 million soldiers and sailors is only an estimate
- Still, this figure averages out to more than 5,000 soldiers killed on each day of the
war
- The terrible slaughter extended beyond the battlefields - millions of civilians died
during and immediately after the fighting, from starvation, disease, or war-related injuries
*Section 4 - On The Home Front
- Waging war required many sacrifices at home
- In this era, war required huge amounts of money and personnel - as President Wilson
explained, now “there are no armies...; there are entire nations armed.”
- The government launched a vigorous campaign to raise money from the American
people - it started offering Liberty Bonds (special war bonds sold to support the Allied
cause)
- These could later be redeemed for the original value of the bonds plus interest
- By selling war bonds to enthusiastic Americans, the Secretary of the Treasury raised
more than $20 billion
- This allowed the US to loan more than $10 billion to the Allies during and just after the
war
- Also, an army of 75,000 “four-minute men” gave brief (four minute) speeches before
movies, plays, and school or union meetings to persuade audiences to buy bonds
- The government also called on industry to convert to the production of war goods
- In 1918 Wilson won authority to set up a huge bureaucracy to manage this process
- A War Industries Board oversaw the nation’s war-related production - the board had
far-reaching powers
- It doled out raw materials, told manufacturers what and how much to produce, and even
fixed prices
- A War Trade Board licensed foreign trade and punished firms suspected of dealing with
the enemy
- Labor leader Samuel Gompers promised to limit labor strife in war-production
industries
- A separate War Labor Policies Board, headed by Harvard law professor Felix
Frankfurter, set standard wages, hours, and working conditions in the war industries
- In August 1917 Congress passed the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act - this gave the
President the power to manage the production and distribution of food and fuels vital to
the war effort
- Using the slogan “food will win the war” the government began regulating food
consumption
- The Food Administration worked to increase agricultural output and reduce waste
- Future President Herbert Hoover had the power to impose price controls (a system of
pricing determined by the government) on food
- He also could have begun a system of rationing (distributing goods to consumers in a
fixed amount)
- But he opposed both of these approaches - he hoped voluntary restraint on peoples’ part
would regulate use
- Women played a key role in Hoover’s program
- Hoover said, “The American woman and the American home can bring to a successful
end the greatest national task that has ever been accepted by the American people”
- The Lever Food and Fuel Control Act also created an agency called the Fuel
Administration - it sponsored gasless days to save fuel
- This agency also began the practice of daylight saving time (turning clocks ahead one
hour for the summer) - this new policy increased the number of daylight hours available
for activities - in this way daylight saving time lessened the need for artificial light, which
lowered fuel consumption
- Thanks to the war, some hopes of progressive-era reformers had come to pass government now regulated American economic life to an extent most progressives had
never dreamed possible
- Indeed, during the war the influence of business leaders grew and corporate profits
tripled
- News and information also came under federal control during WWI
- The government imposed censorship on the press and banned some publications from
the mails
- As in all wars, the fear of espionage, or spying, was widespread
- A few months after the sinking of the Lusitania, a staff member of the German embassy
left his briefcase on an American train - in it were plans for weakening pro-Allied
sentiment and disrupting the American economy
- The government feared that secret agents might try to undermine the war effort by
destroying transportation or communication networks - also, restrictions on immigration
were imposed
- The National Security League began to preach “100 Percent Americanism”
- Early in 1917 the League got Congress to pass a literacy test for immigrants - the test
set the stage for a vigorous revival of nativism
- Once the US declared war, alertness for spies approached hysteria - the war also
spurred a general hostility toward Germans - people began calling them Huns, in
reference to the Asiatic people who brutally invaded Europe in the fourth and fifth
centuries
- German composers and musicians were banned from symphony concerts, and a
hamburger (which was named after Hamburg, a German city) became a “liberty
sandwich”
- In his message to Congress in 1917, Wilson had claimed that the US would be fighting
for liberty and democracy
- His claim offended those who suffered from wartime restrictions on their civil liberties
- Congress in 1917 passed the Espionage Act, which made it illegal to interfered with
the draft
- The Espionage Act was amended in 1918 by the Sedition Act, which made it illegal
to obstruct the sale of Liberty Bonds or to discuss anything “disloyal, profane, scurrilous,
or abusive” about the American form of government, the Constitution, or the army and
navy
- Socialists such as Eugene Debs argued that the war was merely a quarrel among
imperialist capitalists
- This view became a rallying point for antiwar sentiment - American patriotism and war
fever made military styles and activities more acceptable at home - Military drill became
part of many school programs
- By the summer of 1918, all able-bodied males in colleges and universities became army
privates, subject to military discipline
- Americans turned away from military styles and activities after the war - the war cut off
the flow of immigrants from Europe, and the armed forces took many young men out of
the labor force
- Businesses, especially war-related industries, suddenly needed workers
- These wartime conditions propelled some people into higher paying jobs
- Factories that used to discriminate against African Americans and Mexican Americans
now recruited them
- The African Americans who left the South to work in northern factories added to a
stream of migrants that turned into a flood during the war, when some 500,000 African
Americans joined what came to be called the Great Migration
- As a result of the war, about 400,000 women joined the industrial work force for the
first time
- In 1917 Congress proposed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
made it illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport, alcoholic beverages in the United States
- The production of alcohol used a lot of grain, which was now needed to make the bread
to feed people at home and overseas - the states ratified the Prohibition Amendment in
1919
*Section 5 - Global Peacemaker
- On January 8, 1918, President Wilson stood before the Congress of the United States he hoped that the world could “be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like
our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice
and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression.”
- Wilson’s program for reaching these goals came to be called the Fourteen Points, for
the number of its provisions
- It encompassed everything from an end to entangling alliances to keeping the peace
after the war
- Wilson hoped that his Fourteen Points would form the basis of peace negotiations Germany assumed they would
- At first, the Allies appeared to cooperate - but it soon became obvious that Wilson’s
colleagues did not share his idealism - after a while, the Fourteen Points began to unravel
- In January 1919 an international peace conference was held in Paris - Wilson decided to
head the US delegation
- When Wilson arrived in Paris, the Parisians threw flowers in his path and greeted the
American President as a conquering hero
- Wilson claimed neither he nor the US was interested in the spoils, or rewards, of war
- His only goal was to establish a permanent agency to guarantee international
stability
- All would not go Wilson’s way - first, the Allies were interested in spoils - they wanted
to divide up Germany’s colonies among themselves - the French also pressed for the
total humiliation if not destruction of Germany
- Russia was also on everyone’s mind - British, French, and American forces had become
involved in the civil war on the side of Lenin’s opponents, but Lenin’s new government
held on to power, and refused to claim war spoils
- Russia would, in fact, sign a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Germany in
1922
- From the start of the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson was forced to compromise on the
principles outlined in the Fourteen Points
- Wilson did, however, convince the other powers to postpone further discussion of
Germany’s fate and move directly to his ideas for global security
- After 10 days of hard work, he produced a plan for the League of Nations (an
organization in which the nations of the world would join together to ensure security and
peace for all its members)
- Wilson then left for home, hoping to persuade Congress and the nation to accept his
plan
- For Wilson, the heart of his proposal for the League of Nations was Article 10 of the
plan - this provision pledged members of the League to regard an attack on one as an
attack on all
- In March 1919 Wilson returned to the peace conference - the Big Four (Britain, France,
Italy, and the US) dominated the proceedings
- Though the Allies accepted Wilson’s plan for the League of Nations, opposition to the
League from Congress and many Americans had weakened Wilson’s position at the
conference
- French premier Georges Clemenceau demanded harsh penalties against Germany
- Wilson feared that these demands would lead to future wars, but he could not get
Clemenceau to budge
- The conference did create the new nations of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - their
borders were drawn with the ethnic population of the region in mind
- Wilson met his greatest defeat when he gave in to the French insistence on German war
guilt and financial responsibility - the French wanted to totally cripple Germany
- The demands of the British, led by David Lloyd George, supported the French goal
- They insisted on billing Germany for reparations (payment from an enemy for
economic injury suffered in war)
- In 1921 a Reparations Commission ruled that Germany owed the Allies $33 billion, an
amount far beyond its ability to pay - as Wilson feared, Germany never forgot nor
forgave this humiliation
- The Allies presented the treaty to the Germans on May 7, 1919
- Insisting that the treaty violated the Fourteen Points, the Germans at first refused to sign
it
- They soon gave in, however, when threatened with a French invasion
- On June 28 the great powers signed the treaty at Versailles, France - it’s thus known as
the Versailles Treaty
- On July 8, treaty in hand, Wilson returned home to great acclaim
- Some senators opposed the treaty because it included American commitment to the
League of Nations - they argued that joining the League would weaken American
independence
- Other senators, called “reservationists,” wanted to impose restrictions on US
participation in the League
- Determined to win grass roots support for the League, Wilson took to the road in
September - in 23 days he delivered three dozen speeches - after this great effort, he
suffered a stroke that paralyzed one side of his body
- During his illness, Wilson grew increasingly inflexible - Congress would have to accept
the treaty and the League as he envisioned it or not at all
- The first vote in the Senate was struck down, the second vote was struck down too,
and the third time also
- On May 20, 1920, Congress voted to declare the war officially over - but, true to form,
Wilson vetoed it
- Finally, on July 2, 1921, another joint resolution to end the war passed - by that time, a
new President, Warren G. Harding, was in office, and he signed it
- The war spurred the US economy, giving a big boost to American businesses - the
US was now the world’s largest creditor nation
- In 1922 a Senate debt commission calculated that European countries owed the US
$11.5 billion
- By April 1919 about 4,000 servicemen a day were being mustered out of the armed
forces
- But, nobody had devised a plan to help the returning troops merge back into society so, jobs were scarce
- The women who had taken men’s places in factories and offices also faced readjustment
- Many artists and intellectuals in the US entered the postwar years with a sense of gloom
or disillusionment - they expressed their feelings in books, paintings, and other artistic
works
- The enthusiasm that had greeted the start of the war had faded by war’s end
- The realities of trench warfare, death, and destruction hit many people very hard
- Like white troops, black soldiers came home to a hero’s welcome, but when they went
to find jobs, the reception was different - it was back to the same ol’ situation for them
- The entire now entered on the threshold of a stormy era - the 1920s