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can you help me with my history paper on World War 1 ?

Essay should be a minimum of 5 paragraphs, but be sure to thoroughly address the prompt and provide specific examples. NO PLAGIARISM!!!! Discuss the historical context generally, but must provide clear examples from lecture/powerpoints and the reading.Below you will find the following attached to find context.

Here the main prompt:

What impact did the First World War have on the US? How did it impact business, labor, and immigration? How did it impact women? How did it affect American foreign policy? Make sure to discuss why America got involved in the war and the changes it brought to the daily lives of Americans.

Second Exam

You will write an essay and identify terms. Write your answer in a word document. You must submit the assignment by uploading the file by the due date. You will only have one chance to upload one file, so make sure you have completed the assignment fully before submitting it.

First, you will choose and answer one of the following questions. Your essay should be a minimum of 5 paragraphs and 500 words, but be sure to thoroughly address the prompt and provide specific examples. You may discuss the historical context generally, but you must provide clear examples from lecture/powerpoints and the reading. Do not use outside course materials (such as googling things or random websites). All material from the reading and sources must be properly cited, and material that is not from the reading/lectures must be in your own words.

Treat your response as an essay. Remember to include a thesis for your response with specific examples to prove your claim. Review the rubric before submitting your exam. Good responses will include the following characteristics:

· A thesis statement that clearly expresses your position.

· Consistent commentary on the significance of your examples in proving your claim and situating your arguments within the context of this course.

· Cause and effect explanations of significance.

· A satisfying conclusion. This is not a mere summary of your points.

Choose and answer one of the following questions:

1. What impact did the First World War have on the US? How did it impact business, labor, and immigration? How did it impact women? How did it affect American foreign policy? Make sure to discuss why America got involved in the war and the changes it brought to the daily lives of Americans.

2. Discuss the impact of the 1920s on American society. How did the growth of the American economy occur during this era? How did the consumerism of this era create the mass market? Why did America institute immigration reform? Who did this immigration reform favor, and who did it specifically limit from entering America? Make sure to include a discussion of the growing divisions in American society and racism in your essay.

Pick 5 of these 10 terms and define them in 30-50 word answers for each term. Number each of your answers from 1-5. Each term you define is worth five points. Your task is to define the terms with context, meaning an explanation that provides the terms significance to US history. Your answer should be written in your own words, and not be taken directly from the PowerPoint or reading.

Pick 5 Terms: 1. Red Summer, 2. Sacco and Vanzetti, 3. Committee for Public Information, 4. Triangle Fire, 5. Bonus March, 6. National Origins Act, 7. Hull House, 8. Ida Tarbell, 9. Dust Bowl, 10. Americanization.

Using and Citing Sources

Source material can be used in several ways. You have quite a few options as you decide how to construct your essays and integrate sources. This is what makes research writing both analytical and creative

Quoting

Using the author’s words verbatim inside quotation marks

· Use quotes sparingly. Use quotes that strike you.

· All quotations must be situated inside one of your own sentences – they cannot stand alone.

· Lead into your quotations with signal phrases which introduce the author or state the significance of the quoted material.

· Check your copy word by word for accuracy and record the exact page number on which you found the information.

· When should you quote?

· When language is especially vivid or expressive

· When specific wording is needed for technical accuracy

· When your source is an important authority on the topic (their words may carry more weight or significance than the average author)

· When language is pertinent to the argument, such as in historical analysis or interpretation of a primary source

Paraphrasing

Restating the source’s information, in the same amount of space, using your own words

· Paraphrasing is useful when the language of another writer is not so memorable.

· Even though you are not using the author’s words verbatim, you must acknowledge the source or author from which the ideas were derived.

· How do you write a good paraphrase?

· Read the entire passage several times.

· Choose the most important points.

· Restate the ideas in your own words.

· Go back and reread the entire original passage to make sure your passage is accurate without being repetitive.

Summarizing

Condensing the material to include only the author’s main ideas

· This strategy can save space by condensing important information into a few sentences.

· Be sure that through your summary you do not distort the meaning of the original passage.

· How do you write a good summary?

· Read the passage several times.

· Look away from it and record the main idea of the passage as you remember it.

· Reread the original passage and make sure your summary is accurate and concise.

Exam Rubric

Overall:

· The essay has at least three claims and five paragraphs in total that are on topic. This is the minimum for a passing grade.

· The essay is complete with all of the necessary parts: an introduction with a thesis, several focused body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

· The essay is on topic and answers all parts of the essay question.

Introduction:

· The introduction familiarizes the reader with the topic. It might give background information on the topic, include an explanation of what the different points of view are, give historical information, use ideas from the reading, or PowerPoint sources.

· The introduction has a clear thesis statement that is easy to identify.

· The thesis statement takes a thoughtful and analytical position on the topic that is arguable—it’s something that needs to be supported.

Body paragraphs:

· There are multiple body paragraphs that are logically organized and related to the thesis, and avoids making claims without any evidence.

· The evidence presented is from the lecture and the reading.

· Body paragraphs demonstrate a clear understanding of cause, effect, and significance of historical events.

· The evidence presented is on topic, accurate, relevant, and in scope to answer the question or questions.

Conclusion:

· The essay has a conclusion that wraps up any key points that need to be reiterated, such as the thesis or important supporting points.

· The conclusion address the “so what?” question by helping the reader see the importance of the topic.

Sentence-Level Correctness:

· The essay is generally readable, meaning that it is mostly free from distracting or confusing grammar errors, tense usage etc.

· Essay is written in a formal tone, and does not rely on conversational language.

VI. Before the Armistice | VII. The War and the Influenza Pandemic | VIII. The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations |

IX. Aftermath of World War I | X. Conclusion | XI. Primary Sources |

XII. Reference Material

21. World War I & Its Aftermath

Striking steel mill workers holding bulletins in Chicago, Illinois, September 22, 1919. ExplorePAhistory.com

*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click here to improve this chapter.*

I. Introduction

World War I (“The Great War”) toppled empires, created new nations, and sparked tensions that would explode across fu-
ture years. On the battlefield, gruesome modern weaponry wrecked an entire generation of young men. The United States
entered the conflict in 1917 and was never again the same. The war heralded to the world the United States’ potential as a
global military power, and, domestically, it advanced but then beat back American progressivism by unleashing vicious
waves of repression. The war simultaneously stoked national pride and fueled disenchantments that burst Progressive Era
hopes for the modern world. And it laid the groundwork for a global depression, a second world war, and an entire history
of national, religious, and cultural conflict around the globe.

II. Prelude to War

As the German empire rose in power and influence at the end of the nineteenth century, skilled diplomats maneuvered this
disruption of traditional powers and influences into several decades of European peace. In Germany, however, a new ambi-
tious monarch would overshadow years of tactful diplomacy. Wilhelm II rose to the German throne in 1888. He admired
the British Empire of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and envied the Royal Navy of Great Britain so much that he at-
tempted to build a rival German navy and plant colonies around the globe. The British viewed the prospect of a German
navy as a strategic threat, but, jealous of what he perceived as a lack of prestige in the world, Wilhelm II pressed Germany’s
case for access to colonies and symbols of status suitable for a world power. Wilhelm’s maneuvers and Germany’s rise
spawned a new system of alliances as rival nations warily watched Germany’s expansion.

In 1892, German posturing worried the leaders of Russia and France and prompted a defensive alliance to counter the exist-
ing triple threat between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Britain’s Queen Victoria remained unassociated with the
alliances until a series of diplomatic crises and an emerging German naval threat led to British agreements with Tsar
Nicholas II and French President Émile Loubet in the early twentieth century. (The alliance between Great Britain, France,
and Russia became known as the Triple Entente.)

The other great threat to European peace was the Ottoman Empire, in Turkey. While the leaders of the Austrian-Hungari-
an Empire showed little interest in colonies elsewhere, Turkish lands on its southern border appealed to their strategic goals.
However, Austrian-Hungarian expansion in Europe worried Tsar Nicholas II, who saw Russia as both the historic guaran-
tor of the Slavic nations in the Balkans and the competitor for territories governed by the Ottoman Empire.

By 1914, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had control of Bosnia and Herzegovina and viewed Slavic Serbia, a nation pro-
tected by Russia, as its next challenge. On June 28, 1914, after Serbian Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austrian-Hungarian
heirs to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Grand Duchess Sophie, vengeful nationalist leaders believed
the time had arrived to eliminate the rebellious ethnic Serbian threat.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States played an insignificant role in global diplomacy—it rarely forayed into
internal European politics. The federal government did not participate in international diplomatic alliances but nevertheless
championed and assisted with the expansion of the transatlantic economy. American businesses and consumers benefited
from the trade generated as the result of the extended period of European peace.

Stated American attitudes toward international affairs followed the advice given by President George Washington in his
1796 Farewell Address, 120 years before America’s entry into World War I. He had recommended that his fellow country-
men avoid “foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues” and “those overgrown military establishments which, under any
form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

A foreign policy of neutrality reflected America’s inward-looking focus on the construction and management of its new
powerful industrial economy (built in large part with foreign capital). The federal government possessed limited diplomatic
tools with which to engage in international struggles for world power. America’s small and increasingly antiquated military
precluded forceful coercion and left American diplomats to persuade by reason, appeals to justice, or economic coercion.
But in the 1880s, as Americans embarked upon empire, Congress authorized the construction of a modern navy. The army
nevertheless remained small and underfunded compared to the armies of many industrializing nations.

After the turn of the century, the army and navy faced a great deal of organizational uncertainty. New technologies—air-
planes, motor vehicles, submarines, modern artillery—stressed the capability of army and navy personnel to effectively pro-
cure and use them. The nation’s army could police Native Americans in the West and garrison recent overseas acquisitions,
but it could not sustain a full-blown conflict of any size. The Davis Act of 1908 and the National Defense Act of 1916 inau-
gurated the rise of the modern versions of the National Guard and military reserves. A system of state-administered units
available for local emergencies that received conditional federal funding for training could be activated for use in in-
ternational wars. The National Guard program encompassed individual units separated by state borders. The program sup-
plied summer training for college students as a reserve officer corps. Federal and state governments now had a long-term
strategic reserve of trained soldiers and sailors.

Border troubles in Mexico served as an important field test for modern American military forces. Revolution and chaos
threatened American business interests in Mexico. Mexican reformer Francisco Madero challenged Porfirio Diaz’s corrupt
and unpopular conservative regime. He was jailed, fled to San Antonio, and penned the Plan of San Luis Potosí, paving the
way for the Mexican Revolution and the rise of armed revolutionaries across the country.

In April 1914, President Woodrow Wilson ordered Marines to accompany a naval escort to Veracruz on the lower eastern
coast of Mexico. After a brief battle, the Marines supervised the city government and prevented shipments of German arms
to Mexican leader Victor Huerta until they departed in November 1914. The raid emphasized the continued reliance on
naval forces and the difficulty in modernizing the military during a period of European imperial influence in the Caribbean
and elsewhere. The threat of war in Europe enabled passage of the Naval Act of 1916. President Wilson declared that the
national goal was to build the Navy as “incomparably, the greatest . . . in the world.” And yet Mexico still beckoned. The
Wilson administration had withdrawn its support of Diaz but watched warily as the revolution devolved into assassinations
and deceit. In 1916, Pancho Villa, a popular revolutionary in northern Mexico, raided Columbus, New Mexico, after being
provoked by American support for his rivals. His raiders killed seventeen Americans and and burned down the town center
before American soldiers forced their retreat. In response, President Wilson commissioned Army general John “Black Jack”
Pershing to capture Villa and disperse his rebels. Motorized vehicles, reconnaissance aircraft, and the wireless telegraph aided
in the pursuit of Villa. Motorized vehicles in particular allowed General Pershing to obtain supplies without relying on rail-
roads controlled by the Mexican government. The aircraft assigned to the campaign crashed or were grounded by mechani-
cal malfunctions, but they provided invaluable lessons in their worth and use in war. Wilson used the powers of the new
National Defense Act to mobilize over one hundred thousand National Guard units across the country as a show of force in
northern Mexico.

The conflict between the United States and Mexico might have escalated into full-scale war if the international crisis in Eu-
rope had not overwhelmed the public’s attention. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, President Wilson declared
American neutrality. He insisted from the start that the United States be neutral “in fact as well as in name,” a policy the
majority of American people enthusiastically endorsed. It was unclear, however, what “neutrality” meant in a world of close
economic connections. Ties to the British and French proved strong, and those nations obtained far more loans and sup-
plies than the Germans. In October 1914, President Wilson approved commercial credit loans to the combatants, which
made it increasingly difficult for the nation to claim impartiality as war spread through Europe. Trade and financial relations
with the Allied nations ultimately drew the United States further into the conflict. In spite of mutually declared blockades
between Germany, Great Britain, and France, munitions and other war suppliers in the United States witnessed a brisk and
booming increase in business. The British naval blockades that often stopped or seized ships proved annoying and costly,
but the unrestricted and surprise torpedo attacks from German submarines were deadly. In May 1915, Germans sank the
RMS Lusitania. Over a hundred American lives were lost. The attack, coupled with other German attacks on American and
British shipping, raised the ire of the public and stoked the desire for war.

American diplomatic tradition avoided formal alliances, and the Army seemed inadequate for sustained overseas fighting.
However, the United States outdistanced the nations of Europe in one important measure of world power: by 1914, the na-
tion held the top position in the global industrial economy. The United States was producing slightly more than one third
of the world’s manufactured goods, roughly equal to the outputs of France, Great Britain, and Germany combined.

III. War Spreads through Europe

After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Grand Duchess Sophie, Austria secured the promise of aid from its Ger-
man ally and issued a list of ten ultimatums to Serbia. On July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia for failure to meet
all of the demands. Russia, determined to protect Serbia, began to mobilize its armed forces. On August 1, 1914, Germany
declared war on Russia to protect Austria after warnings directed at Tsar Nicholas II failed to stop Russian preparations for
war.

In spite of the central European focus of the initial crises, the first blow was struck against neutral Belgium in northwestern
Europe. Germany planned to take advantage of sluggish Russian mobilization by focusing the German army on France.
German military leaders recycled tactics developed earlier and activated the Schlieffen Plan, which moved German armies
rapidly by rail to march through Belgium and into France. However, this violation of Belgian neutrality also ensured that
Great Britain entered the war against Germany. On August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany for failing to
respect Belgium as a neutral nation.

A French assault on German positions. Champagne, France. 1917. National Archives.

In 1915, the European war had developed into a series of bloody trench stalemates that continued through the following
year. Offensives, largely carried out by British and French armies, achieved nothing but huge numbers of casualties. Periph-
eral campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in Turkey at Gallipoli, throughout the Middle East, and in various parts of
Africa either were unsuccessful or had little bearing on the European contest for victory. The third year of the war, however,
witnessed a coup for German military prospects: the regime of Tsar Nicholas II collapsed in Russia in March 1917. At
about the same time, the Germans again pursued unrestricted submarine warfare to deprive the Allies of replenishment sup-
plies from the United States.

The Germans, realizing that submarine warfare could spark an American intervention, hoped the European war would be
over before American soldiers could arrive in sufficient numbers to alter the balance of power. A German diplomat, Arthur
Zimmermann, planned to complicate the potential American intervention. He offered support to the Mexican government
via a desperate bid to regain Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Mexican national leaders declined the offer, but the revelation
of the Zimmermann Telegram helped usher the United States into the war.

IV. America Enters the War

By the fall of 1916 and spring of 1917, President Wilson believed an imminent German victory would drastically and dan-
gerously alter the balance of power in Europe. Submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram, meanwhile, inflamed
public opinion. Congress declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917. The nation entered a war three thousand miles away
with a small and unprepared military. The United States was unprepared in nearly every respect for modern war. Consider-
able time elapsed before an effective army and navy could be assembled, trained, equipped, and deployed to the Western
Front in Europe. The process of building the army and navy for the war proved to be different from previous conflicts. Un-
like the largest European military powers of Germany, France, and Austria-Hungary, no tradition existed in the United
States to maintain large standing armed forces or trained military reserves during peacetime. Moreover, there was no Ameri-
can counterpart to the European practice of rapidly equipping, training, and mobilizing reservists and conscripts.

The U.S. historically relied solely on traditional volunteerism to fill the ranks of the armed forces. Notions of patriotic duty
and adventure appealed to many young men who not only volunteered for wartime service but sought and paid for their
own training at army camps before the war. American labor organizations favored voluntary service over conscription. La-
bor leader Samuel Gompers argued for volunteerism in letters to the congressional committees considering the question.
“The organized labor movement,” he wrote, “has always been fundamentally opposed to compulsion.” Referring to Ameri-
can values as a role model for others, he continued, “It is the hope of organized labor to demonstrate that under voluntary
conditions and institutions the Republic of the United States can mobilize its greatest strength, resources and efficiency.”

The Boy Scouts of America charge up Fifth Avenue in New York City in a “Wake Up, America” parade to support recruitment efforts. Nearly sixty thou-
sand people attended this single parade. Wikimedia.

Despite fears of popular resistance, Congress quickly instituted a reasonably equitable and locally administered system to
draft men for the military. On May 18, 1917, Congress approved the Selective Service Act, and President Wilson signed it a
week later. The new legislation avoided the unpopular system of bonuses and substitutes used during the Civil War and was
generally received without major objection by the American people.

The conscription act initially required men from ages twenty-one to thirty to register for compulsory military service. Basic
physical fitness was the primary requirement for service. The resulting tests offered the emerging fields of social science a
range of data collection tools and new screening methods. The Army Medical Department examined the general condition
of young American men selected for service from the population. The Surgeon General compiled his findings from draft
records in the 1919 report, “Defects Found in Drafted Men,” a snapshot of the 2.5 million men examined for military ser-
vice. Of that group, 1,533,937 physical defects were recorded (often more than one per individual). More than 34 percent of
those examined were rejected for service or later discharged for neurological, psychiatric, or mental deficiencies.

To provide a basis for the neurological, psychiatric, and mental evaluations, the army used cognitive skills tests to determine
intelligence. About 1.9 million men were tested on intelligence. Soldiers who could read took the Army Alpha test. Illiter-
ates and non-English-speaking immigrants took the nonverbal equivalent, the Army Beta test, which relied on visual testing
procedures. Robert M. Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association and chairman of the Committee on the
Psychological Examination of Recruits, developed and analyzed the tests. His data argued that the actual mental age of re-
cruits was only about thirteen years. Among recent immigrants, he said, it was even lower. As a eugenicist, he interpreted the
results as roughly equivalent to a mild level of retardation and as an indication of racial deterioration. Years later, experts
agreed that the results misrepresented the levels of education for the recruits and revealed defects in the design of the tests.

The experience of service in the army expanded many individual social horizons as native-born and foreign-born soldiers
served together. Immigrants had been welcomed into Union ranks during the Civil War, including large numbers of Irish
and Germans who had joined and fought alongside native-born men. Some Germans in the Civil War fought in units where
German was the main language. Between 1917 and 1918, the army accepted immigrants with some hesitancy because of the
widespread public agitation against “hyphenated Americans.” Others were segregated.

A staged scene of two British soldiers charging a bunker with a “dead” German soldier lying in front. C. 1922. Library of Congress.

Prevailing racial attitudes among white Americans mandated the assignment of white and Black soldiers to different units.
Despite racial discrimination, many Black American leaders, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, supported the war effort and sought
a place at the front for Black soldiers. Black leaders viewed military service as an opportunity to demonstrate to white society
the willingness and ability of Black men to assume all duties and responsibilities of citizens, including wartime sacrifice. If
Black soldiers were drafted and fought and died on equal footing with white soldiers, then white Americans would see that
they deserved full citizenship. The War Department, however, barred Black troops from combat and relegated Black soldiers
to segregated service units where they worked as general laborers.

In France, the experiences of Black soldiers during training and periods of leave proved transformative. The army often re-
stricted the privileges of Black soldiers to ensure that the conditions they encountered in Europe did not lead them to ques-
tion their place in American society. However, Black soldiers were not the only ones tempted by European vices. To ensure
that American “doughboys” did not compromise their special identity as men of the new world who arrived to save the old,
several religious and progressive organizations created an extensive program designed to keep the men pure of heart, mind,
and body. With assistance from the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and other temperance organizations, the
War Department put together a program of schools, sightseeing tours, and recreational facilities to provide wholesome and
educational outlets. The soldiers welcomed most of the activities from these groups, but many still managed to find and en-
joy the traditional recreations of soldiers at war.

Women reacted to the war preparations by joining several military and civilian organizations. Their enrollment and actions
in these organizations proved to be a pioneering effort for American women in war. Military leaders authorized the perma-
nent gender transition of several occupations that gave women opportunities to don uniforms where none had existed be-
fore in history. Civilian wartime organizations, although chaired by male members of the business elite, boasted all-female
volunteer workforces. Women performed the bulk of volunteer work during the war.

The admittance of women brought considerable upheaval. The War and Navy Departments authorized the enlistment of
women to fill positions in several established administrative occupations. The gendered transition of these jobs freed more
men to join combat units. Army women served as telephone operators (Hello Girls) for the Signal Corps, navy women en-
listed as yeomen (clerical workers), and the first groups of women joined the Marine Corps in July 1918. Approximately
twenty-five thousand nurses served in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps for duty stateside and overseas, and about a hun-
dred female physicians were contracted by the army. Neither the female nurses nor the doctors served as commissioned offi-
cers in the military. The army and navy chose to appoint them instead, which left the status of professional medical women
hovering somewhere between the enlisted and officer ranks. As a result, many female nurses and doctors suffered various
physical and mental abuses at the hands of their male coworkers with no system of redress in place.

Millions of women also volunteered in civilian organizations such as the American Red Cross, the Young Men’s and
Women’s Christian Associations (YMCA/YWCA), and the Salvation Army. Most women performed their volunteer duties
in communal spaces owned by the leaders of the municipal chapters of these organizations. Women met at designated times
to roll bandages, prepare and serve meals and snacks, package and ship supplies, and organize community fund-raisers. The
variety of volunteer opportunities gave women the ability to appear in public spaces and promote charitable activities for
the war effort. Female volunteers encouraged entire communities, including children, to get involved in war work. While
most of these efforts focused on support for the home front, a small percentage of female volunteers served with the Ameri-
can Expeditionary Force in France.

Jim Crow segregation in both the military and the civilian sector stood as a barrier for Black women who wanted to give
their time to the war effort. The military prohibited Black women from serving as enlisted or appointed medical personnel.
The only avenue for Black women to wear a military uniform existed with the armies of the allied nations. A few Black fe-
male doctors and nurses joined the French Foreign Legion to escape the racism in the American army. Black female volun-
teers faced the same discrimination in civilian wartime organizations. White leaders of the American Red Cross,
YMCA/YWCA, and Salvation Army municipal chapters refused to admit Black women as equal participants. Black women
were forced to charter auxiliary units as subsidiary divisions and were given little guidance on organizing volunteers. They
turned instead to the community for support and recruited millions of women for auxiliaries that supported the nearly two
hundred thousand Black soldiers and sailors serving in the military. While most female volunteers labored to care for Black
families on the home front, three YMCA secretaries worked with the Black troops in France.

V. On the Homefront

In the early years of the war, Americans were generally detached from the events in Europe. Progressive Era reform politics
dominated the political landscape, and Americans remained most concerned with the shifting role of government at home.
However, the facts of the war could not be ignored by the public. The destruction taking place on European battlefields and
the ensuing casualty rates exposed the unprecedented brutality of modern warfare. Increasingly, a sense that the fate of the
Western world lay in the victory or defeat of the Allies took hold in the United States.

President Wilson, a committed progressive, articulated a global vision of democracy even as he embraced neutrality. As war
engulfed Europe, it seemed apparent that the United States’ economic power would shape the outcome of the conflict re-
gardless of any American military intervention. By 1916, American trade with the Allies tripled, while trade with the Cen-
tral Powers shrank to less than 1 percent of previous levels.

A membership card for the American Protective League, issued May 28, 1918. German immigrants in the United States aroused popular suspicions during
World War I and the American Protective League (APL), a group of private citizens, worked directly with the U.S. government to identify suspected German
sympathizers and to eradicate all antiwar and politically radical activities through surveillance, public shaming, and government raids. J. Edgar Hoover, the head
of the Bureau of Investigation (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI), used the APL to gather intelligence. Wikimedia.

The progression of the war in Europe generated fierce national debates about military preparedness. The Allies and the
Central Powers had quickly raised and mobilized vast armies and navies. The United States still had a small military. When
America entered the war, the mobilization of military resources and the cultivation of popular support consumed the coun-
try, generating enormous publicity and propaganda campaigns. President Wilson created the Committee on Public Infor-
mation, known as the Creel Committee, headed by Progressive George Creel, to inspire patriotism and generate support for
military adventures. Creel enlisted the help of Hollywood studios and other budding media outlets to cultivate a view of the
war that pitted democracy against imperialism and framed America as a crusading nation rescuing Western civilization from
medievalism and militarism. As war passions flared, challenges to the onrushing patriotic sentiment that America was mak-
ing the world “safe for democracy” were considered disloyal. Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act
in 1918, stripping dissenters and protesters of their rights to publicly resist the war. Critics and protesters were imprisoned.
Immigrants, labor unions, and political radicals became targets of government investigations and an ever more hostile public
culture. Meanwhile, the government insisted that individual financial contributions made a discernible difference for the
men on the Western Front. Americans lent their financial support to the war effort by purchasing war bonds or supporting
the Liberty Loan Drive. Many Americans, however, sacrificed much more than money.

VI. Before the Armistice

European powers struggled to adapt to the brutality of modern war. Until the spring of 1917, the Allies possessed few effec-
tive defensive measures against submarine attacks. German submarines sank more than a thousand ships by the time the
United States entered the war. The rapid addition of American naval escorts to the British surface fleet and the establish-
ment of a convoy system countered much of the effect of German submarines. Shipping and military losses declined rapidly,
just as the American army arrived in Europe in large numbers. Although much of the equipment still needed to make the
transatlantic passage, the physical presence of the army proved to a fatal blow to German war plans.

In July 1917, after one last disastrous offensive against the Germans, the Russian army disintegrated. The tsarist regime col-
lapsed and in November 1917 Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party came to power. Russia soon surrendered to German de-
mands and exited the war, freeing Germany to finally fight the one-front war it had desired since 1914. The German mili-
tary quickly shifted hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the eastern theater in preparation for a new series of offensives
planned for the following year in France.

In March 1918, Germany launched the Kaiserschlacht (Spring Offensive), a series of five major attacks. By the middle of
July 1918, each and every one had failed to break through the Western Front. On August 8, 1918, two million men of the
American Expeditionary Forces joined British and French armies in a series of successful counteroffensives that pushed the
disintegrating German lines back across France. German general Erich Ludendorff referred to the launch of the counterof-
fensive as the “black day of the German army.” The German offensive gamble exhausted Germany’s faltering military effort.
Defeat was inevitable. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated at the request of the German military leaders and the new democratic
government agreed to an armistice (cease-fire) on November 11, 1918. German military forces withdrew from France and
Belgium and returned to a Germany teetering on the brink of chaos.

By the end of the war, more than 4.7 million American men had served in all branches of the military: four million in the
army, six hundred thousand in the navy, and about eighty thousand in the Marine Corps. The United States lost over one
hundred thousand men (fifty-three thousand died in battle, and even more from disease). Their terrible sacrifice, however,
paled before the Europeans’. After four years of brutal stalemate, France had suffered almost a million and a half military
dead and Germany even more. Both nations lost about 4 percent of their population to the war. And death was not done.

VII. The War and the Influenza Pandemic

Even as war raged on the Western Front, a new deadly threat loomed: influenza. In the spring of 1918, a strain of the flu
virus appeared in the farm country of Haskell County, Kansas, and hit nearby Camp Funston, one of the largest army train-
ing camps in the nation. The virus spread like wildfire. The camp had brought disparate populations together, shuffled
them between bases, sent them back to their homes across the nation, and, in consecutive waves, deployed them around the
world. Between March and May 1918, fourteen of the largest American military training camps reported outbreaks of in-
fluenza. Some of the infected soldiers carried the virus on troop transports to France. By September 1918, influenza spread
to all training camps in the United States. And then it mutated.

The second wave of the virus, a mutated strain, was even deadlier than the first. It struck down those in the prime of their
lives: a disproportionate amount of influenza victims were between ages eighteen and thirty-five. In Europe, influenza hit
both sides of the Western Front. The “Spanish Influenza,” or the “Spanish Lady,” misnamed due to accounts of the disease
that first appeared in the uncensored newspapers of neutral Spain, resulted in the deaths of an estimated fifty million people
worldwide. Reports from the surgeon general of the army revealed that while 227,000 soldiers were hospitalized from
wounds received in battle, almost half a million suffered from influenza. The worst part of the epidemic struck during the
height of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918 and weakened the combat capabilities of the American and Ger-
man armies. During the war, more soldiers died from influenza than combat. The pandemic continued to spread after the
armistice before finally fading in the early 1920s. No cure was ever found.

VIII. The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations

As the flu virus wracked the world, Europe and America rejoiced at the end of hostilities. On December 4, 1918, President
Wilson became the first American president to travel overseas during his term. He intended to shape the peace. The war
brought an abrupt end to four great European imperial powers. The German, Russian, Austrian-Hungarian, and Ottoman
Empires evaporated, and the map of Europe was redrawn to accommodate new independent nations. As part of the the
armistice, Allied forces followed the retreating Germans and occupied territories in the Rhineland to prevent Germany from
reigniting war. As Germany disarmed, Wilson and the other Allied leaders gathered in France at Versailles for the Paris Peace
Conference to dictate the terms of a settlement to the war. After months of deliberation, the Treaty of Versailles officially
ended the war.

Earlier that year, on January 8, 1918, before a joint session of Congress, President Wilson offered an ambitious statement of
war aims and peace terms known as the Fourteen Points. The plan not only dealt with territorial issues but offered princi-
ples on which a long-term peace could be built. But in January 1918, Germany still anticipated a favorable verdict on the
battlefield and did not seriously consider accepting the terms of the Fourteen Points. The Allies were even more dismissive.
French prime minister Georges Clemenceau remarked, “The good Lord only had ten [points].”

President Wilson labored to realize his vision of the postwar world. The United States had entered the fray, Wilson pro-
claimed, “to make the world safe for democracy.” At the center of the plan was a novel international organization—the
League of Nations—charged with keeping a worldwide peace by preventing the kind of destruction that tore across Europe
and “affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” This
promise of collective security, that an attack on one sovereign member would be viewed as an attack on all, was a key com-
ponent of the Fourteen Points.

But the fight for peace was daunting. While President Wilson was celebrated in Europe and welcomed as the “God of
Peace,” his fellow statesmen were less enthusiastic about his plans for postwar Europe. America’s closest allies had little in-
terest in the League of Nations. Allied leaders sought to guarantee the future safety of their own nations. Unlike the United
States, the Allies endured the horrors of the war firsthand. They refused to sacrifice further. The negotiations made clear
that British prime minister David Lloyd-George was more interested in preserving Britain’s imperial domain, while French
prime minister Clemenceau sought a peace that recognized the Allies’ victory and the Central Powers’ culpability: he want-
ed reparations—severe financial penalties—and limits on Germany’s future ability to wage war. The fight for the League of
Nations was therefore largely on the shoulders of President Wilson. By June 1919, the final version of the treaty was signed
and President Wilson was able to return home. The treaty was a compromise that included demands for German repara-
tions, provisions for the League of Nations, and the promise of collective security. For President Wilson, it was an imperfect
peace, but an imperfect peace was better than none at all.

The real fight for the League of Nations was on the American home front. Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts stood as the most prominent opponent of the League of Nations. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and an influential Republican Party leader, he could block ratification of the treaty. Lodge attacked the treaty
for potentially robbing the United States of its sovereignty. Never an isolationist, Lodge demanded instead that the country
deal with its own problems in its own way, free from the collective security—and oversight—offered by the League of Na-
tions. Unable to match Lodge’s influence in the Senate, President Wilson took his case to the American people in the hopes
that ordinary voters might be convinced that the only guarantee of future world peace was the League of Nations. During
his grueling cross-country trip, however, President Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke. His opponents had the upper
hand.

President Wilson’s dream for the League of Nations died on the floor of the Senate. Lodge’s opponents successfully blocked
America’s entry into the League of Nations, an organization conceived and championed by the American president. The
League of Nations operated with fifty-eight sovereign members, but the United States refused to join, refused to lend it
American power, and refused to provide it with the power needed to fulfill its purpose.

IX. Aftermath of World War I

The war transformed the world. The Middle East, for instance, was drastically changed. For centuries the Ottoman Empire
had shaped life in the region. Before the war, the Middle East had three main centers of power: the Ottoman Empire, Egypt,
and Iran. President Wilson’s call for self-determination appealed to many under the Ottoman Empire’s rule. In the after-
math of the war, Wilson sent a commission to investigate the region to determine the conditions and aspirations of the pop-
ulace. The King-Crane Commission found that most of the inhabitants favored an independent state free of European con-
trol. However, these wishes were largely ignored, and the lands of the former Ottoman Empire were divided into mandates
through the Treaty of Sèvres at the San Remo Conference in 1920. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated into several nations,
many created by European powers with little regard to ethnic realities. These Arab provinces were ruled by Britain and
France, and the new nation of Turkey emerged from the former heartland of Anatolia. According to the League of Nations,
mandates “were inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern
world.” Though allegedly for the benefit of the people of the Middle East, the mandate system was essentially a reimagined
form of nineteenth-century imperialism. France received Syria; Britain took control of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan (Jor-
dan). The United States was asked to become a mandate power but declined. The geographical realignment of the Middle
East also included the formation of two new nations: the Kingdom of Hejaz and Yemen. (The Kingdom of Hejaz was ruled
by Sharif Hussein and only lasted until the 1920s, when it became part of Saudi Arabia.)

The 1917 Russian Revolution, meanwhile enflamed American fears of communism. The fates of Nicola Sacco and Bar-

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tolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists who were convicted of robbery and murder in 1920 epitomized a sudden
American Red Scare. Their arrest, trial, and execution, meanwhile, inspired many leftists and dissenting artists to express
their sympathy with the accused, such as in Maxwell Anderson’s Gods of the Lightning or Upton Sinclair’s Boston. The
Sacco-Vanzetti case demonstrated an exacerbated nervousness about immigrants and the potential spread of radical ideas,
especially those related to international communism.

When in March 1918 the Bolsheviks signed a separate peace treaty with Germany, the Allies planned to send troops to
northern Russia and Siberia to prevent German influence and fight the Bolshevik Revolution. Wilson agreed, and, in a little-
known foreign intervention, American troops remained in Russia as late as 1920. Although the Bolshevik rhetoric of self-
determination followed many of the ideals of Wilson’s Fourteen Points—Vladimir Lenin supported revolutions against im-
perial rule across the world—the American commitment to self-rule was hardly strong enough to overcome powerful strains
of anticommunism.

With America still at war in World War I, President Wilson sent American troops to Siberia during the Russian civil war to oppose the Bolsheviks. This August
1918 photograph shows American soldiers in Vladivostok parading before the building occupied by the staff of the Czecho-Slovaks. To the left, Japanese
marines stand to attention as the American troops march. Wikimedia.

At home, the United States grappled with harsh postwar realities. Racial tensions culminated in the Red Summer of 1919
when violence broke out in at least twenty-five cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C. The riots originated from
wartime racial tensions. Industrial war production and massive wartime service created vast labor shortages, and thousands
of Black southerners traveled to the North and Midwest to escape the traps of southern poverty. But the so-called Great Mi-
gration sparked significant racial conflict as white northerners and returning veterans fought to reclaim their jobs and their
neighborhoods from new Black migrants.

Many Black Americans, who had fled the Jim Crow South and traveled halfway around the world to fight for the United
States, would not so easily accept postwar racism. The overseas experience of Black Americans and their return triggered a
dramatic change in Black communities. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote boldly of returning soldiers: “We return. We return from
fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy!” But white Americans desired a return to the status quo, a world
that did not include social, political, or economic equality for Black people.

In 1919, America suffered through the “Red Summer.” Riots erupted across the country from April until October. The
massive bloodshed included thousands of injuries, hundreds of deaths, and vast destruction of private and public property
across the nation. The Chicago Riot, from July 27 to August 3, 1919, considered the summer’s worst, sparked a week of
mob violence, murder, and arson. Race riots had rocked the nation before, but the Red Summer was something new. Re-
cently empowered Black Americans actively defended their families and homes from hostile white rioters, often with mili-
tant force. This behavior galvanized many in Black communities, but it also shocked white Americans who alternatively in-
terpreted Black resistance as a desire for total revolution or as a new positive step in the path toward Black civil rights. In the
riots’ aftermath, James Weldon Johnson wrote, “Can’t they understand that the more Negroes they outrage, the more de-
termined the whole race becomes to secure the full rights and privileges of freemen?” Those six hot months in 1919 forever
altered American society and roused and terrified those that experienced the sudden and devastating outbreaks of
violence.

X. Conclusion

World War I decimated millions and profoundly altered the course of world history. Postwar instabilities led directly toward
a global depression and a second world war. The war sparked the Bolshevik Revolution, which led to the Soviet Union and
later the Cold War. It created Middle Eastern nations and aggravated ethnic tensions that the United States could never
overcome. And the United States had fought on the European mainland as a major power. America’s place in the world was
never the same. By whipping up nationalist passions, American attitudes toward radicalism, dissent, and immigration were
poisoned. Postwar disillusionment shattered Americans’ hopes for the progress of the modern world. The war came and
went, leaving in its place the bloody wreckage of an old world through which the United States traveled to a new and uncer-
tain future.

XI. Primary Sources

1. Woodrow Wilson Requests War (April 2, 1917)

In this speech before Congress, President Woodrow Wilson made the case for America’s entry into World War I.

2. Alan Seeger on World War I (1914; 1916)

The poet Alan Seeger, born in New York and educated at Harvard University, lived among artists and poets in Green-
wich Village, New York and Paris, France. When the Great War engulfed Europe, and before the United State entered
the fighting, Seeger joined the French Foreign Legion. He would be killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His
wartime experiences would anticipate those of his countrymen, a million of whom would be deployed to France.
Seeger’s writings were published posthumously. The first selection is excerpted from a letter Seeger wrote to the New
York Sun in 1914; the second is from his collection of poems, published in 1916.

3. The Sedition Act of 1918 (1918)

Passed by Congress in May 1918 and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, the Sedition Act of 1918 amended
the Espionage Act of 1917 to include greater limitations on war-time dissent.

4. Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917)

The Anarchist Emma Goldman was tried for conspiring to violate the Selective Service Act. The following is an excerpt
from her speech to the court, in which she explains her views on patriotism.

5. W.E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919)

In the aftermath of World War I, W.E.B. DuBois urged returning soldiers to continue fighting for democracy at home.

6. Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918)

Lutiant Van Wert, a Native American woman, volunteered as a nurse in Washington D.C. during the 1918 influenza
pandemic. Here, she writes to a former classmate still enrolled at the Haskell Institute, a government-run boarding
school for Native American students in Kansas, and describes her work as a nurse.

7. Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919)

During World War I, Woodrow Wilson set forth a vision for a new global future of democratic self-determination. The
United States had controlled the Philippines since the Spanish-American War. After World War I, the U.S. legislature
held joint hearings on a possible Philippine independence. Manuel Quezon came to Washington as part of a delegation
to make the following case for Filipino independence. It would be fifteen years until the United States acted and, in
1935, Manuel Quezon became the first president of the Philippines.

8. Boy Scout Charge (1917)

In this 1917 photograph, The Boy Scouts of America charge up Fifth Avenue in New York City in a “Wake Up, Ameri-
ca” parade to support recruitment efforts. Nearly 60,000 people attended this single parade.

9. “I Want You” (1917)

In this war poster, Uncle Sam points his finger at the viewer and says, “I want you for U.S. Army.” The poster was
printed with a blank space to attach the address of the “nearest recruiting station.” Click on the image to view the full
poster.

XII. Reference Material

This chapter was edited by Paula Fortier, with content contributions by Tizoc Chavez, Zachary W. Dresser, Blake Earle,
Morgan Deane, Paula Fortier, Larry A. Grant, Mariah Hepworth, Jun Suk Hyun, and Leah Richier.

Recommended citation: Tizoc Chavez et al., “World War I and Its Aftermath,” Paula Fortier, ed., in The American Yawp,
eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Recommended Reading

Capozzola, Christopher. Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1968.

Cooper, John Milton. Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Na-
tions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dawley, Alan. Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2003.

Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing Less than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 2011.

Freeberg, Ernest. Democracy’s Prisoners: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Gerwarth, Robert, and Erez Manela, eds. Empires at War: 1911–1923. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Greenwald, Maurine W. Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United
States. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980.
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great
Migration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Hawley, Ellis. The Great War and the Search for Modern Order. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.
Jensen, Kimberly. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War. Champaign: University of Illi-
nois Press, 2009.

Keene, Jennifer. Doughboys, The Great War, and the Remaking of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universi-
ty Press, 2001.

Kennedy, David. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press,
1980.

Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992.

MacMillan, Margaret. The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. New York: Random House, 2014.
Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Movement: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Na-
tionalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism,
1865–1925. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Murphy, Paul. World War I and the Origins of Civil Liberties in the United States. New York: Norton, 1979.
Neiberg, Michael S. The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016.

Rosenberg, Emily. Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–
19

. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Smith, Tony. Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Tuttle, William. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1970.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Sons: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Vintage
Books, 2010.

Williams, Chad L. Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Notes

1. David Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1988); David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The

First World War as Political Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

[ ]

2. George Washington, Farewell Address, Annals of Congress, 4th Congress, 2869–2870. [ ]

3. Paul Koistinen, Mobilizing for Modern War: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1865–1919 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,

1997). [ ]

4. John S. D. Eisenhower, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1917 (New York: Norton, 1995); Friedrich Katz, The

Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). [ ]

5. Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). [ ]

6. Michael S. Neiberg, Fighting the Great War: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). [ ]

7. American Federation of Labor, Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention (Washington, DC: Law Reporter, 1917), 112. [ ]

8. Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2010). [ ]

9. Albert Gallitin Love, Defects Found in Drafted Men (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1920), 73. [ ]

10. Dawley, Changing the World. [ ]

11. Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam’s Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917–1919 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-

vania Press, 2004), 2–4. [ ]

12. Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War I: They Also Served (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1997); Kimberly Jensen, Mobilizing

Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 170–172. [ ]

13. Gavin, American Women, 129–240. [ ]

14. Nikki Brown, Private Politics and Public Voices: Black Women’s Activism from World War I to the New Deal (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 2006), 66–107. [ ]

15. David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). [ ]

16. Neiberg, Fighting the Great War. [ ]

17. Ibid. [ ]

18. Ibid. [ ]

19. Ibid. [ ]

20. Nancy K. Bristow, American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Alfred W.

Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). [ ]

21. Bristow, American Pandemic; Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic. [ ]

22. Dawley, Changing the World). [ ]

23. Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). [ ]

24. John Milton Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 2001). [ ]

25. Ibid. [ ]

26. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt, 1989).

[ ]

27. Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). [ ]

28. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2011). [ ]

29. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (May 1919): 14. [ ]

30. William Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Cameron McWhirter, Red Sum-

mer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America (New York: Holt, 2011). [ ]

*
World War I (1914/17-1918)

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Themes
World War I (1914/17-1918)
What caused the war?
How the US became involved
The War’s impact on US government, economy, and society
*

Colonial Possessions 1900
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Background
Many long-term causes of war:
Nationalism
Alliance System
Rise of Germany and Italy (it upset the power balance)
Imperialism
Arms Race
“Spark:” the assassination of Franz Ferdinand; the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary
*

Archduke Franz Ferdinand
*

Gavrilo Princip
*

Serbian Nationalists on trial

Mobilizing Troops
Soldiers Celebrate Opportunity to go War
“Home by Christmas”
Large Conscription of Soldiers
First Major War in Europe in almost 50 years
Most participants thought this would be a quick war and soldiers would be “home by Christmas”
*

Germans Celebrating Declaration of War

Britons Celebrating Declaration of War

German Soldiers Going Off to War

Germans Going Off to War

Alfred Von Schlieffen

Schlieffen Plan

The Battle of the Marne – Sept. 5-12 1914
French military commanders taxis to take soldiers from Paris to the front.
Allied Victory
France and Britain able to hold off German invasion of Paris
Germans retreat northeast
Trenches dug from the English Channel all the way to Switzerland
Most people are killed by shelling
Innovations in artillery
600 rounds per minute
*

Propaganda

German Atrocities in Belgium

Trench Warfare
“No Man’s Land”

War is Hell

Sacrifices in War

The Great War
After initial German victories, the war became mired in a long stalemate of bloody and indecisive battles.
New technologies, such as submarines, airplanes, machine guns, tanks, and poison gas, produced unprecedented slaughter.
In the five-month battle of Verdun in 1916, some 600,000 French and German soldiers died:
10 million soldiers and uncounted civilians, perished in the conflict, which was immediately followed by a global influenza epidemic that killed 21 million more.
*

The Great War
The Great War inflicted a blow on the optimism and self-confidence of western civilization, whose philosophers and statesmen had long celebrated reason and progress.
The war also shocked the socialist and labor movements, which had valued international working-class solidarity over nationalism, only to see workers of different nations kill each other for their national governments
*

Americans Divided
Americans were deeply divided over the war. Many Americans sided with Britain, associating it with liberty and democracy and Germany with repressive and aristocratic government.
Others, particularly German and Irish-Americans, opposed supporting the British.
Immigrants from Russia, especially Jews, also did not want America to support Russia and its czar, and the despotic Russia’s alliance with Britain and France made it hard to believe that the war was a conflict between democracy and autocracy.
Many feminists, pacifists, and social reformers believed peace was necessary for reform at home, and they opposed American involvement.
*

WWI Alliance and Major Powers
Allies
Great Britain
France
Russia
Central Powers
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Ottoman Empire
*

U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
Goal: Keep US out of the war. Stay Neutral.
*

1916 Presidential Election
In May 1916, Wilson’s policy seemed to have worked, as Germany suspended submarine warfare against noncombatants, allowing Americans to trade and travel freely without requiring military action.
“He kept us out of the war” became Wilson’s campaign slogan in the 1916 presidential election. The Republican Party was reunited, and its candidate, Charles Evan Hughes, lost to Wilson by only a narrow margin.
*

What Events Led the US to fight?
1. German Submarine Warfare
2. Zimmerman telegram
*

Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
Germany declared the British Isles a war zone; any ships entering these waters could be attacked
The US opposed this as a violation of neutral nations
*

Road to War: Lusitania
British passenger liner; Americans were warned not to go on ship
*

Road to War: Lusitania
New York Newspapers carried warning like this from the German embassy.
*

Road to War: Lusitania
British passenger liner; American were warned not to go on ship
Torpedoed in 1915; about 1,200 died (128 Americans)
Germany pledged to stop sub-warfare
*

Zimmerman telegram (1917)
Message from Germany foreign minister to Mexican government:
1. Mexico Should attack the US
2. Germany would help Mexico defeat the US
3. Mexico would recapture land (in the American Southwest) previously lost to the US.
*

Germany’s Gamble
Germany resumed submarine warfare
On January 22, 1917, Wilson called for “peace without victory” in Europe, and expressed his vision of a world order including freedom of the seas, restrictions on armaments, and self-determination for all nations, large and small. Germany soon resumed its submarine warfare against ships sailing to or from Great Britain and sunk several American merchant ships, gambling that it could starve Britain into submission before America intervened militarily.
US declared war in April 1917
*

WWI Alliance and Major Powers
Allies
Great Britain
France
Russia
United States
Central Powers
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Ottoman Empire
*

America Enters, Russia Exits
By the spring of 1918, when American troops arrived in Europe, the communist revolution led by Vladimir Lenin in Russia the previous November had led to the withdrawal of Russia from the war.
Lenin also exposed secret treaties by which the Allies had agreed to divide conquered territory after the war, embarrassing Wilson.
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

US Contributions to War Effort
General John Pershing led US soldiers (about 2 million) in Europe
American troops saw combat in France as they helped stem German attacks
Supplies and US troops provided emotional lift
A cease-fire ending the fighting went into effect on Nov. 11th 1918
*

Celebrations at end of WWI
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Big Government
The war created a national government with unprecedented power and an increased presence in Americans’ lives.
With the Selective Service Act of May 1918, 24 million men had to register for the draft, and the army grew from 120,000 to 5 million men. New federal agencies were created to regulate industry, transportation, labor relations, and agriculture.
A War Industries Board oversaw all aspects of war production, from distributing raw materials to setting prices for manufactured goods, and it created standardized specifications for nearly everything.
*

New Government Agencies
The Railroad Administration controlled the nation’s transportation, the Fuel Agency rationed coal and oil, and the Food Administration, directed by Herbert Hoover, helped farmers increase crop yields and promoted more efficient food preparation.
*

Selective Service Act (Draft) 1917
On the eve of WWI America only had a standing army of about 120,000. Much too small for war.
The SSA was intended to increase the size of the army.
1. All males 18-45 became eligible
2. Lottery system was developed to determine if one would be required to serve
3. 1 in 5 draftees were born outside the US
*

The Espionage Act
The federal government passed laws severely restricting freedom of speech.
The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited spying, interfering with the draft, and “false statements” that might impede military success.
The postmaster general banned from the mails radical and socialist newspapers and other publications critical of the war and the draft.
The Sedition Act, passed in 1918, made it a crime to make spoken or written statements intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the “form of government” or advocate disruption of the war effort.
*

Immigrants and “Americanization”
Immigrants were “encouraged” to learn English; The “language of America” and “citizenship”
This poster from the Cleveland Board of Education was printed in six languages
*

Recruiting Soldiers
*

How to Pay for WWI
Cost of war: $35.5 billion
William McAdo (Secretary of Treasury) led the effort to raise money
Income Tax Rates were raised (top tax rate rose to 63%)
War Bonds were sold; 2/3 of funds were borrowed
*

Committee for Public Information
Establish in 1917 and headed by George Creel (a former Progressive reformer and journalist)
A government-sponsored propaganda agency designed to promote support for American involvement in the war
*

Committee for Public Information
(Advertisements to Promote the War)
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Economy
Economic Boom
Manufacturing Increased 33%
Real wages increased 20%
*

Farmers Prospered
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Race Relation
“Great Migration”
About 500,000 blacks moved north for jobs
*

The Great Migration
*

Race Relations
Race Riots
East St. Louis, Illinois
Groups of whites burned down homes of black residents, shot those who tried to escape
300 homes destroyed, 39 blacks and 9 whites died
*

Women’s Roles
11,000 served in Navy overseas
1 million worked in industry
*

Women’s Roles
Women often earned high wages during the war
*

Patriotism and Volunteerism
Herbert Hoover headed Food Administration
Slogans were common:
“Meatless Mondays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays”
“Serve beans, by all means”
*

WWI Poster
*

Anti-German Hysteria
(Patriotism Turned Ugly)
1. Americans began to hate all things German (food)
Sauerkraut = “Liberty Cabbage”
Hamburgers = “Liberty Sandwiches”
2. Some towns changed their German names
3. Some states stopped teaching the German language in public schools
4. Some violence against German-Americans; a Jury in Collinsville, IL exonerated the leaders of a mob responsible for lynching a man born in Germany
*

Americanization
The nationalization of politics and the economy seemed to elevate consciousness of ethnic and racial difference and caused some to call for “Americanization”—the creation of a more homogenous national culture.
A 1908 play, The Melting Pot, gave a popular name to the process by which immigrants were expected to merge their identity with American nationality.
Public and private leaders, including teachers, employers, union leaders, social reformers, and public officials all engaged in Americanization efforts.
*

Americanization
The Ford Motor Company famously created a sociological department that entered immigrant workers’ homes to examine their clothes, furniture, and food, enrolled them in English-language courses, and fired those who failed to Americanize themselves.
A few Progressives criticized Americanization and demanded that Americans respect immigrant cultures. Reformers at Hull House encouraged immigrants to value their European backgrounds, and Randolph Bourne wrote in a 1916 essay, “Trans-National America” that there was “no distinctive American culture.”
*

Anti-German Hysteria
(Patriotism Turned Ugly)
Support for prohibition of alcohol received a final push during the war
Names of brewing companies:
-Pabst, Schlitz, Anheuser-Busch
Eighteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1917; it went into effect in 1920
*

Coercive Patriotism
More extreme repression was implemented by state government and private groups.
Many states imprisoned those critical of the American flag, outlawed the possession of red and black flags (symbolizing communism and anarchism), and twenty-three states passed “criminal syndicalism” laws, making it illegal to advocate political change through unlawful acts or “a change in industrial ownership.”
Patriotism came to be synonymous with support for the government, the war, and the American economic system, while anti-war sentiment, labor radicalism, and sympathy for the Russian Revolution became “un-American.”
*

The Race Problem
What was called the “race problem” was a major subject of debate before World War I, and it referred to more than just relations between blacks and whites.
Race was thought of as “innate” and a permanent characteristic
*

The “Race Problem”
In 1911, the U.S. Immigration Commission listed in one of its publications forty-five different immigrant “races,” each with its own alleged innate characteristics, ranging from Anglo-Saxons at the top of the racial hierarchy down to Hebrews, Northern Italians, and at the bottom, southern Italians—those apparently most violent, undisciplined, and incapable of assimilation.
Popular writers asserted that the wave of new immigration and white women’s declining birthrate threatened American civilization. The new science of eugenics, the study of the alleged mental traits of different races, lent scientific legitimacy to the new nativism.
*

Who is an American?
African-Americans, members of the largest non-white group in America, were excluded from almost all Progressive ideas of freedom.
They were disenfranchised in the South, barred from most unions and skilled jobs, most black women worked outside of the home for low wages in jobs not covered by new state-level protections for working women, and most blacks, who were desperately poor, could not participate in the new consumer economy.
Nearly all Progressive intellectuals, social scientists, labor reformers, and suffrage advocates were unconcerned by conditions facing black Americans.
*

World War I (1914/17-1918)
*
Introduction
The Great War
Battle Front
Origins-Wilson
The US at War
Home Front
Big Government
Economy
Society
Conclusion

Lusitania
Zimmerman Telegram
Selective Service Act
William McAdo
Committee for Public Information
Anti-German Hysteria
Key Terms

Review and Evaluation
World War I began in 1914; the US became involved in 1917
The war had a major impact on the “Home Front”
Women, immigrants, blacks were all majorly impacted by the war. Over 100,000 soldiers died and 200,000 were wounded.
*

VI. Before the Armistice | VII. The War and the Influenza Pandemic | VIII. The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations |

IX. Aftermath of World War I | X. Conclusion | XI. Primary Sources |

XII. Reference Material

21. World War I & Its Aftermath

Striking steel mill workers holding bulletins in Chicago, Illinois, September 22, 1919. ExplorePAhistory.com

*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click here to improve this chapter.*

I. Introduction

II. Prelude to War

III. War Spreads through Europe

A French assault on German positions. Champagne, France. 1917. National Archives.

IV. America Enters the War

A staged scene of two British soldiers charging a bunker with a “dead” German soldier lying in front. C. 1922. Library of Congress.

V. On the Homefront

VI. Before the Armistice

VII. The War and the Influenza Pandemic

VIII. The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations

IX. Aftermath of World War I

The 1917 Russian Revolution, meanwhile enflamed American fears of communism. The fates of Nicola Sacco and Bar-

THE AMERICAN YAWP

http://www.americanyawp.com/index.html

← 20. The Progressive Era 22. The New Era →

X. Conclusion

XI. Primary Sources

1. Woodrow Wilson Requests War (April 2, 1917)

In this speech before Congress, President Woodrow Wilson made the case for America’s entry into World War I.

2. Alan Seeger on World War I (1914; 1916)

3. The Sedition Act of 1918 (1918)

Passed by Congress in May 1918 and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, the Sedition Act of 1918 amended
the Espionage Act of 1917 to include greater limitations on war-time dissent.

4. Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917)

The Anarchist Emma Goldman was tried for conspiring to violate the Selective Service Act. The following is an excerpt
from her speech to the court, in which she explains her views on patriotism.

5. W.E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919)

In the aftermath of World War I, W.E.B. DuBois urged returning soldiers to continue fighting for democracy at home.

6. Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918)

7. Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919)

8. Boy Scout Charge (1917)

9. “I Want You” (1917)

XII. Reference Material

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