The Great War

1
The Great War

• War and Society, 1914-1920

2
Study Guide Identifications

• 14 points
• Peace without Victory
• League of Nations
• Imperial Competition
• American neutrality
• Factors that led to US entering war
• U-boats
• Trench Warfare

3
Study Guide Questions

•  Why did the US become involved in WWI?
• What problems did the US encounter as it sought
  to mobilize its people, and economy for war?
• How were they overcome?
• What were Woodrow Wilsons peace proposals and
  how did they fare?

4
Origins of Conflict

• Since 1870s
• Competing imperial ambitions of the great
  European powers
• Economic rivalries
• Military expansion
• Diplomatic maneuvering
• International tensions

5

• May 1914, an American diplomat reported, there
  is too much hatred, too much jealousies, he
  predicted an awful Cataclysm

6
Entente Central Powers

• Entente Powers
• Led by France, Russia, Britain
• Later Italy (1915) and the United States (1917)
• Central Powers
• Austro-Hungarian
• German
• Ottoman Empire

7
Inevitable War

• Began between Serbia and Austro-Hungary
• Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke
  Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne
• Austria declared war on Serbia in 1914
• World powers promised to come to each others aid
  if attacked
• 2 hostile groups

8
Dominos

• Russia was obligated by a treaty to defend Serbia
  if attacked by the Austria-Hungary Empire
• Alliance System
• Alliances a factor in powers joining WWI

9
Imperial Rivalry

• Greater Factors in rise of WWI - competition
• Economic rivalries
• Military Expansion
• Diplomatic maneuvering  
• International tensions
• Britain and Germany - struggle for world
  supremacy
• Myth of the swift and decisive war

10
Unprecedented Warfare

• Victory Not Swift
• Two camps evenly matched
• New technologies and methods of warfare  
• Tanks
• trench warfare
• rat infested disease
• airplanes
• barbed wire
•  

11
Myth of Victorious War

• In the first 3 months of the war
• (August 1914) the original British army was
  wiped out.
• The British press
• Impression of victory
• German press
• All quiet on the western front.
• 1917 the French military
• Mutinies

12
Devastation Carnage

• 8.5 million soldiers died, with 17 million
  wounded
• total casualties military and civilian reached 37
  million.
• Europe lost an entire generation of young men,
  leaving behind an entire nation of young widows.

13
American Neutrality

• Woodrow Wilson - Europes war
• No threat to vital American interests
• Wilson effort to seek peace
• Normal trade relationships with both.
•  

14
Roosevelts Pro-war Camp

• War was inevitable
• German Expansion needed to be checked
• Majority agreed with Wilson.

15
Factors of Americas entering into War

• Strong economic ties with Britain
• 800 million dollars a year in exports
• 170 million to Germany and Austria-Hungary
• Shared culture and language
• Economic Boom for the United states in providing
  food, clothing and war supplies and equipment to
  France and Britain
• American business and investors had a direct
  stake in an Allied victory

16
Critical Perspectives

• Anti-Imperialist and Socialist Imperialist war
• advanced capitalist countries of Europe were
  fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of
  influence
• Alsace-Lorraine, The Balkans, Africa and the
  middle east.
• Imperialist Economic necessity
• 1914 recession in the U.S.
• business depressed, farm prices deflated,
  employment serious,

17
War Profits

• 1915 war orders for the allies stimulated the
  economy
• by April 1917 more than 2 billion worth of goods
  had been sold to the allies. Prosperity depended
  on foreign markets
• 1897 700 Million in exports
• by 1914 3 ½ billion in exports
• Even secretary of State, an anti-imperialist
  William Jennings Bryan advocated the righteous
  conquest of foreign markets.

18
Interest in an Allied victory

• JP Morgan and Allies
• lent money at great amounts to make a profit and
  tie American finance closely to the interest of a
  British victory.
• (Was the prosperity classless, who benefited?)

19
Factors Continued

• 4. British Blockade on German Ports (attempt to
  starve Germans into submission)
• America did not challenge its right to trade with
  Germany
• Violated American neutrality
• protested the blockade, created a recession in
  the US.
• U-boat or submarine warfare
• Combat British control of the seas
• Flow of US goods to the allies. 

20
Lusitania

• Significance of the sinking of the Lusitania
• Brought public opinion in line with government
  action
• People supported a war they collectively did not
  previously

21
Germanys Escalation of Aggression

• Beginning in 1918, Germanys aggression against
  the allies began to escalate
• United States entered into the war to reinforce
  British lines
• Allied powers won
• Germany asked for an armistice to be followed by
  peace negotiations based on Wilsons 14 points

22
Wilsons 14 points

• Peace without victory campaign won him
  re-election in 1916.
• Culminated 14 points policy
• Proposed a new world order
• All nations, weak and powerful, could participate
  as equals in the world.

23
Paris Peace Conference

• Wilson led the American delegation of the Paris
  Peace Conference
• 14 points
• Code of conduct that embraced free trade, freedom
  of the seas, open diplomacy, disarmaments, and
  resolution of disputes through mediation  

24
League of Nations

• function as an international parliament and
  judiciary
• establish rules of international behavior
• resolve disputes between nations through rational
  and peaceful means
• nine member executive council
• power to punish aggressor nations through
  economic isolation and military retaliation
• Due to opposition, congress failed to ratify the
  treaty

25
The Big Three

• Conference controlled by
• Wilson
• David Lloyd George of Britain
• Georges Clemenceau of France
• France and Britain refused to include most of the
  14 points into the peace treaty. They wanted to
  punish Germany.

26
Treaty of Versailles (1919)

• Awarded portions of Germany to Denmark, Poland
  and Czechoslovakia
• disarmed Germany (all but 100,000)
• forced admission of responsibility for the war
• reparations of 33 billion dollars

27
War on the Home FrontID/Terms

• CPI 1917 campaign
• CPI 1918 Campaign
• War Time Repression
• IQ test
• Liberty Bonds
• Trading with the Enemy Act
• Anti-German Campaign
• Anti-radical Crusades
• Flappers
• Nativism Xenophobia

28
Total War

• Scale of men needed, preparations heavily taxed
  the United States in every way.
• First conscription law passed to raise a multi
  million man army
• Agricultural, transportation, industrial and
  human resources all devoted to war effort.
•  

29
How to Organize War Time Economy?

• Southern and Midwestern democrats
• feared centralization of government authority
• Northeastern progressives
• strong state to regulate the economy, boost
  efficiency and achieve social harmony.

30
Organized industry

• Centralized federal agencies
• food administrations
• Private transportation shifted to public control
• Rail Roads
• unified system to move supplies and troops
  efficiently
• centralized management eliminated competition,
• permitted improvements in equipment,
• brought great profits to the owners
• higher prices to the general public.

31
War Industries Board

• Further empowered corporations responsible for
  mobilizing supplies
• led by Bernard Baruch who aimed for
  business-government integration
• promoted major business interests
• helped suspend anti-trust laws
• guaranteed huge corporate profits.
• (industrialists charged high prices for what the
  federal government needed)

32
Organized Civilian labor

• New job opportunities
• half million African Americans
• half million southern whites
• migrated from tenant farms and share cropping to
  industrial centers such as Chicago and Detroit.
• Hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants (1910
  revolution)
• 40,000 women

33
Black Migration

• industrial northern cities doubling and tripling
  the black population there
• fearful and resentful whites began race riots,
  In east St Louis, IL,
• a white mob murdered at least 39 people in
• July 1917.

34
Gains in Labor Unions

• Demand of labor
• Success of labor unions (1916-1920)
• Membership doubled
• Wages rose 137
• work week decreased to 48 hours.
• Industrial democracy
• War for democracy in Europe, why not at home.

35
The Draft

• Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested it
  to avert the danger of class struggle and
  movements for social change
• that these people should be divided by classwe
  must let our young men know that they owe some
  responsibility.

36
Military Labor

• Selective Service Act passed 1917
•  
• 24 million men registered
• 3 million were drafted
• 2 million volunteered
• 18 were foreign born
• 10 African American

37
Socialist Challenge

• Despite Wilsons words of the war to end all
  wars and to make the world safe for democracy
  Americans did not rush to enlist and congress
  voted for a draft.
• The socialist party declared the war a crime
  against the people of the United States

38
Socialist party Gains

• 1917 up to 20,000 farmers protested the war, the
  draft and profiteering.
• It began to gain in strength rapidly.
• Politically in municipal elections of 1917
  socialists made gains.

39
Segregation, Discrimination, IQ

• Scientific Racism continued
• Eugenics
• 1905 Pennsylvania
• 1970s African American 500,000
• Native American 25,000
• Military
• 10 were African American
• Segregated and barred from combat
• Justified by IQ test
• Non-whites not as endowed mentally
• Half the troops-morons, with a mental capacity of
  13

40
NAACP- Concessions

• Pressured military to allow African Americans
  combat positions
• 369th infantry
• Croix de Guerre by French government length and
  distinction of service

41
Who paid for the war?

• Government borrowed money and raised taxes
• Corporations paid 1/3 in taxes
• Richest charged a 67 income tax, and a 25
  inheritance tax
• Liberty Bonds
• government effort, patriotic duty to purchase
  them treasury bond campaign
• Every Person who refuses to subscribe is a
  friend of Germany

42
Committee on Public Information

• 1917 Wilson - CPI
• George Creel
• Goal fight for the minds of men, for the
  conquest of heir convictions
• publicize and popularize the war
• unprecedented propaganda campaign
• to make the world safe for democracy
• Self-determination of Nations

43
Renewed Protest

• Demanding U.S. live up to its ideals at home
• Industrial democracy
• Womens suffrage
• Deliverance of African Americans from second
  class citizenship
• Ethnic groups opportunity for success

44
Suppressing Dissent

• Espionage Act
• Heavy fines and 20 years in prison in obstructing
  the war effort
• Sedition Act 1918
• based on state laws designed to suppress labor
  radicals
• severe penalties for speaking or writing against
  the draft, bond sales, or war production or for
  criticizing government personnel or policies

45
Political repression and Ultra Patriotism

• Senator Hiram Johnson lamented
• It is war. But good God,when did it become war
  upon the American people?
• Eugene Debs
• it is extremely dangerous to exercise the right
  of free speech in a country fighting to make
  democracy safe in the world

46
1918 CPI campaign

•  State and Local authorities
• 184,000 investigating and enforcement agencies
  known as Councils of Defense or Public Safety
  Committees
• Inflammatory advertisements called on patriots to
  call on their neighbors and ethnics they
  suspected of subverting the war effort
• Propagandists 100 American
• Repudiate all ties to homeland, language and
  customs.

47
German Americans

• Aroused hostility spreading lurid tails of German
  atrocities
• Justice department arrested thousands of German
  and Austrian immigrants suspected of subversive
  activities

48
Anti-German Campaign

• German Americans objects of popular hatred
• German banned
• Music
• books burned
• teaching of German language
• German Americans risked being fired, losing
  businesses and assault on the streets
• Some lynched - defended as an act of patriotism
• Began hiding ethnic identity and changed names

49
Immigration Restriction Act

• Escalated into Anti-immigrant campaign
•   Immigration Restriction Act of 1917
• denied entry to US to adults who failed the
  reading test
• Banned immigration of laborers from India,
  Indochina, Afghanistan, Arabia and East Indies.

50
Repression

• Wilsons administration relied on repression more
  and more to achieve domestic unity
•  Espionage, Sabotage and Sedition acts passed in
  1917 and 1918
• Sweeping power to silence dissenters
• Prosecuted for writing or uttering any statement
  that could be construed as profaning the flag,
  constitution or military

51
Banning and Persecution of Socialists

• Repressed and banned socialist meetings in the
  US
•    Businessmen used rhetoric to suppress labor
  movements

52
Anti-radical Crusades

• Super charged patriotism
• Encouraged local governments and private citizens
  to initiate anti-radical crusades
•  Bisbee, AZ, Kidnapping 1,200 IWW members, New
  Mexican Desert
• Butte, MN, chained a IWW organizer to a car,
  drove through city streets, castrated

53
American Protective League

• The Return of Vigilantism
• Attorney General Thomas Gregory
• American Protective League
• 250,000 members spied on workers and neighbors
• Domestic Spying and surveillance
• Opened mail, Tapped phones
• Harassed those suspected of disloyalty
• Federally supported and endorsed