I. The Great War, 1914–1918
A. War in
1. When war erupted, most Americans saw no reason to
involve themselves in the struggle among Europe’s imperialist powers; the
4.
5. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian, assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the heir
to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife in the town of
6. After the assassination, the complex European alliance
system drew all the major powers into war within a few days.
7. The two rival blocs faced off:
9. World War I was the first war in which extensive harm
was done to civilians; new military technology, much of it from the
1. After the war began in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson
made it clear that
3. Progressive leaders opposed American participation in
the European conflict, new pacifist groups mobilized popular opposition, the
political left condemned the war as imperialistic, and some industrialists,
like Henry Ford, bankrolled antiwar activities.
4. African American leaders saw the war as a conflict of
the white race only.
5. The British imposed a naval blockade that in effect
prevented neutral nations, including the
6. The resulting trade imbalance translated into closer
9. In September 1915,
10.
12. Public opposition to entering the war made the
election of 1916 a contest between two anti-war candidates;
13. The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, in
conjunction with the Zimmermann telegram, inflamed anti-German sentiment in
14. Throughout March 1917, German U-boats attacked
and sank American ships without
80 Chapter 22 War and the American State, 1914–1920
warning; on April 2,
1. Many Americans assumed that their participation in the
war would be limited to military and economic aid and were surprised to find that
American troops would be sent to
3. The Selective Service system combined central direction
from
6. Pershing was reluctant to put his men under foreign
commanders; thus, until May 1918, the French and the British still bore the
brunt of the fighting.
7. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the new Bolshevik
regime under Vladimir Ilych Lenin surrendered about
one-third of
8. At the request of Allied leaders, Pershing committed about
60,000 Americans to help the French repel the Germans in the battles of Château-Thierry
and
11. German and Allied representatives signed an armistice
on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.
12.
1. The
2. The ethnic diversity of the American military worried
some observers, but most optimistically predicted that service in the armed
forces would promote the Americanization of immigrants. 3. The Stanford-Binet
intelligence test used by the armed forces reinforced stereotypes about the
supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks and immigrants; in fact, the lower
scores stemmed from the cultural and environmental biases of the tests.
4. The Americanization of the army was imperfect at best;
African Americans were in segregated units under the control of white officers and
were assigned to the most menial tasks. The
French were more egalitarian, socializing with black troops and awarding
hundreds of them the Croix de Guerre.
5. A group of former AEF soldiers formed the first
American Legion in 1919 in order to preserve the “memories and incidents” of
their association in the Great War.
A. Mobilizing Industry and the Economy 1. As the Allies
paid in gold for American grain and military supplies, the
2. The government paid for the war by using the Federal
Reserve System to expand the money supply, by enacting the War Revenue Bills of
1917 and 1918, and by collecting excess-profits taxes from corporations.
3. The central agency for coordinating wartime production,
the War Industries Board (WIB), epitomized an unparalleled expansion of the federal
government’s powers.
4. Despite higher taxes, corporate profits soared, aided
by the suspension of antitrust laws and the institution of price guarantees for
war work.
5. To ease a fuel shortage in the winter of 1917–18, the
Fuel Administration ordered the temporary closing of factories, and the
Railroad War Board took temporary control of the railroads when traffic slowed
troop movement. 6. The Food
Administration encouraged farmers to expand production and encouraged
housewives to conserve food; at no time was it necessary for the government to
contemplate domestic food rationing.
82 Chapter 22 War
and the American State, 1914–1920
7. With the signing of the armistice in 1918, the WIB was
disbanded; most Americans could tolerate government planning power during an emergency
but not permanently. 8. The
1. The National War Labor Board (NWLB) and acute labor
shortages helped to improve labor’s position with eight-hour days, timeand-a-half pay for overtime, and equal pay for women.
2. After the war, the NWLB quickly disbanded; wartime
inflation ate up most of the wage hikes, and a postwar antiunion movement caused
a decline in union membership. 3. During
the war emergency, northern factories actively recruited African Americans,
spawning the “Great Migration” from the South.
4. Wartime labor shortages prompted many Mexican Americans to leave farm
labor for industrial jobs in rapidly growing southwestern cities.
5. About 1 million women joined the labor force for the
first time, and many of the 8 million already working switched from low-paying
fields to higher-paying industrial work.
C. Wartime Reform:Woman
Suffrage and Prohibition 1. Members of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA) felt that women’s patriotic service could advance the cause
of woman suffrage.
2. Members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) were
arrested and jailed for picketing the White House; they became martyrs and drew
attention to the issue of woman suffrage.
3. In January 1918,Woodrow Wilson withdrew his
opposition to a federal woman suffrage amendment; on August 26, 1920, the goal
of woman suffrage was finally achieved with the Nineteenth Amendment.
4. Throughout the mobilization period, reformers pushed
for social reforms: addressing children’s welfare, launching a campaign against
sexually transmitted diseases, and lobbying for a ban on drinking.
5. Prohibition met with resistance in the cities because alcoholic
beverages played an important role in the social life of certain ethnic
cultures. 6. Many states already had
Prohibition laws, and the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution demonstrated
the government’s widening influence on personal behavior.
7. Federal agencies were quickly disbanded after the war
was over, reflecting the unease most Americans felt about a strong bureaucratic
state.
8. The wartime collaboration between government and
business gave corporate leaders more influence in shaping the economy and government
policy.
1. Formed in 1917, the Committee on Public Information (CPI)
promoted public support for the war and acted as a nationalizing force by promoting
the development of a national ideology. 2.
During the war, the CPI touched the lives of practically every American, and in
its zeal, it often ventured into hatemongering against the Germans.
3. Many Americans found themselves targets of suspicion as
self-appointed agents of the American Protective League spied on neighbors and
coworkers.
4. The CPI encouraged ethnic groups to give up their
6. The acts, which defined treason and sedition loosely,
led to the conviction of more than a thousand people, and the courts rarely
resisted wartime legal excesses.
7. In Schenck v. United
States, the Supreme Court upheld limits on freedom of speech that
would not have been acceptable in peacetime.
III. An Unsettled Peace, 1919–1920 A. The Treaty of
2. The Allies accepted
7.
11. A peace treaty was signed in
12. Progressive senators felt that the treaty was too conservative,
“irreconcilables” disapproved of
13. In September of 1919,
15. Wartime issues were only partially resolved; some
unresolved problems played a major role in the coming ofWorld
War II, and some, like the competing ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, remain
unsolved today. B. Racial Strife, Labor
Unrest, and the Red Scare 1. Many African Americans emerged from the war
determined to stand up for their rights and contributed to a spirit of
resistance to oppression that characterized the early 1920s. 2. Blacks who had migrated to the North and blacks
who had served in the war had high expectations that exacerbated white racism; lynching
nearly doubled in the South, and race riots broke out
in the North.
3. A variety of tensions were present in northern cities
where violence erupted: black voters determined the winners of close elections,
and blacks competed with whites for jobs and housing.
4. Workers of all races had hopes for a better life, but
after the war employers resumed attacks on union activity, and rapidly rising
inflation threatened to wipe out wage increases. 5. As a result of workers’ determination and
employers’ resistance, one in every five workers went on strike in 1919;
strikes were held by steelworkers, shipyard workers in
6. Governor Calvin Coolidge of
7. Americans harbored a pervasive fear of radicalism and a
long-standing anxiety about unassimilated immigrants, an anxiety that had been
made worse by the war.
8. The Russian Revolution of 1917 so alarmed the Allies
that Wilson sent several thousand troops to
9. American fears of communism were deepened as the labor
unrest coincided with the founding of the Bolsheviks’ Third International (or Comintern) to export Communist doctrine and revolution to
the rest of the world. 10. Ironically,
as public concern about domestic Bolshevism increased, the U.S. Communist Party
and the Communist Labor Party were rapidly losing members and political power. 11. Tensions mounted with a series of
bombings in the early spring of 1919; in November, Attorney General A.Mitchell Palmer staged the first of what were known as “Palmer
raids.” 12. Lacking the protection of
13. Palmer predicted that a conspiracy attempt to overthrow
the government would occur in May 1920; when the incident never occurred, the
hysteria of the Red Scare began to abate.
14. At the height of the Red Scare, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti—alien draft evaders —were arrested for robbery and murder, were denied
a new trial even though evidence surfaced that
suggested their innocence, and were executed in 1927.
15. With few casualties and no
physical destruction
at home,