Lecture 6 – World War I, 1914-1920

President Woodrow Wilson: Wilson’s Foreign Policy

• Believed the US had a moral duty to champion national growth
• Believed in peaceful free trade
• Supported political democracy
• Still, he was ready as any American President had been to apply military solutions to problems in foreign policy

Latin American Policy

• Wanted to depart from foreign policy of Roosevelt and Taft (his Republican predecessors – he was a Democrat)
• Believed the US had special rights to Latin America
• Authorized military intervention in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic
• Paved way for US banks and private enterprises to take financial control of these places

US-Mexican Relations

• Wilson sent 800 US Marines to Veracruz, Mexico and ousted a Mexican revolutionary who had seized control of the Mexican government by violent force
• As a result of US intervention, a more compliant government takes over in Mexico led by a man named Venustiano Carranza
• Mexican Rebel army criticizes Carranza for being a puppet of the US

Pancho Villa and the Mexican Rebel Army

• Rebel army forms with Francisco “Pancho” Villa as its commander
• Seizes a train to Texas, carrying gold and kills 17 American engineers on board
• Later raided towns in New Mexico, killing 18 more Americans
• Wilson then dispatches 12,000 troops to Mexico (troops later recalled to fight in Europe)

Crisis in Europe

• Before 1914, Europe enjoyed decades of peace, but nationalism and imperialism were brewing
• New rivalries brewing between Germany/Italy and Russia
• Competition for colonial settlements across the world increased tensions between the European countries
• Formed treaties with nations that obligated them to aid a member of the alliance in war

Tipping Point of War

• June 28, 1914 – In Sarajevo, Bosnia a Bosnian Serb terrorist assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand , heir to the Austrian throne
• July 18, 1914-  Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
• Russia decides to back the Serbs
• August 3, 1914 – compelled to help Austria-Hungary because of a treaty, Germany attacks Russia and France (allied with Russia)

Opposing Sides in WWI, 1914

• Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
• OPPOSE
  • The Allies: Britain, France, Russia (and later the US)

America’s Neutrality

• After Europe goes to war, Wilson declares the US will remain neutral and that it is only a European matter
• Suggests the US should conduct normal relations with European countriess
• Insisted neutral nations could trade with all nations at war and still remain neutral
• Overall, was more sympathetic to Britain and France, however

What leads to the US’s decision to enter the war?

• German U-boats, or submarines, threaten traditional rules of war when they blockade British ports and prevent the US from accessing British harbors
• US continues to supply food, clothing, steel, and munitions to Great Britain
• This alienates the US from Germany

The Sinking of the Lusitania

• The ship the RMS Lusitania was an ocean liner built by the Scottish and sunk off of the Irish coast during WWI in 1915.  The ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat (submarine) and sank in 18 minutes, killing  1,198 people.  124 Americans died that day.
• The sinking of this ship sparked a rallying cry for anti-German sentiment and became a major impetus for the United States entering WWI.

The Sinking of the Lusitania

• US Enters the War
  • US starts to become less and less neutral and sides with the Allies
  • US supplies Britain with 40% of their war material
  • Germany practices unrestricted submarine warfare around Britain’s harbor

Tipping Point: The Zimmerman Note

• German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmerman, sends a note to Mexico offering to return its  “lost providences” of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (all lands the US took from Mexico during the Mexican-American War) if Mexico would help Germany in the event of war between Germany and the US
• April  6, 1917 – the US enters WWI

Selective Service Act: a call to arms

• May 18, 1917 – Wilson signed the Selective Service Act,  which is a draft law that called all young men into the armed forces
• Draft boards call 2.8 million men into service
• 2 million more volunteer
• Of the 4.8 million men in arms,  370,000 were African American

War in France

• War was long, brutal, and violent by the time the US entered the war
• Trench warfare was fought in France, where men huddled in mud trenches along with deceased soldiers, and separated from  their enemy by only a few hundred yards called “no man’s land”

Support at Home

• Many progressives were hopeful that war would improve the quality of American life
• Helped the cause of woman suffrage and prohibition of alcohol
• Increased industrial and agricultural production into the war effort
• Unionized workers gain higher pay and shorter hours
• However, an increase in US patriotism led to the suppression of anyone who dissented

Prohibition

• December 1917 – Congress passes the Eighteenth Amendment which bans the sale and distribution of alcohol
• Believed banning alcohol would actually make the cause of democracy more powerful and pure

Women and War

• Women would participate in war efforts: about 25,000 served in France working as nurses, ambulance drivers and delivering water
• Women take over men’s jobs at home when they are away at war, proving their abilities as welders, metalworkers, and heavy machines operators – jobs thought traditionally male

Nineteenth Amendment

• Most dramatic gain for women during the war, was winning the right to VOTE
• 1919, Congress finally passes the 19^th Amendment

Peace in Paris

• In the end, only the Civil War was more costly to American lives
• 230,000 Americans died, while 2.2 million Germans, 1.9 million Russians, 1.4 million French and 900,000 Britons died in battle
• Peace eventually came in Paris, but at a cost to all involved

The Terms of Peace

• After 4 terrible years of war, a peace conference convened at the palace of Versailles outside of Paris
• Wilson and his 14 points were received as a sign of American naivete
• Treaty  of Versailles: established a League of Nations , Germany had to accept blame for starting the way and pay reparations, the German army had to be reduced, the German navy could only have 6 ships and no subs, and no airforce, Germany also lost much land, other allies of Germany lost land as well

Conflict at Home

• Despite the fact that the League of Nations had been Wilson’s idea, the US Congress rejects the US’s involvement in the league
• The US enters a period of economic hardship
• Most gains workers made during the war were lost
• Inflation ate up the individual’s paycheck
• Former soldiers flooded the job market

The Red Scare

• As the economy worsened after the war, many labor organizations led strikes
• The government and corporations responded with repressing such strikes
• Men and women were targeted who were believed to be communists (against the capitalistic system in the US, or against free markets)
• US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer led raids on individuals thought to be communists even though they had not done anything illegal

Palmer Raids

• As a result of these raids, 6,000 Americans were arrested and 500 were eventually deported
• No revolutionary conspiracies were found
• Other institutions joined in fighting the so-called “reds”
• Libraries removed dissenting literature
• Law enforcement opened fire on strikes in Washington state
• The Supreme Court limited free speech when there was a “clear and present danger”
• Overall diminishing of civil rights during this period

Postwar Politics

• While the US had emerged on the side of the victorious at the end of WWI, sometimes called “the Great War,” at home the hope of extending democracy and liberal reform had been dashed.
• By 1920, the Progressive era had come to an end and the 1920s promised peace and prosperity (which we will investigate next week when we look at the “Roaring Twenties”)