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Title: War and the American State, 1914


1
  • War and the American State, 19141920

2
  • The Great War, 19141918
  • War in Europe
  • The Perils of Neutrality
  • Over There

3
  • How and why did World War I began?
  • Evaluate and discuss President Wilsons decision
  • to enter the war in 1917.
  • Why World War I was considered a total war.
  • How he war affected economic affairs and social
  • relationships in America?
  • How and why President Wilson attempted to
  • shape the Treaty of Versailles?
  • The failures of the Settlement of
  • 19191920 to achieve a lasting peace in America
  • and in Europe.

4
The Great War, 1914-1918
  • War in Europe

5
  • When war erupted, most Americans saw no reason to
    involve themselves in the struggle among Europe's
    imperialist powers the United States had a good
    relationship with both sides.
  • Almost from the moment the Triple Entente was
    formed in 1907 to counter the Triple Alliance,
    European leaders began to prepare for an
    inevitable conflict.
  • Austria's seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
    1908 enraged Russia and Serbia Serbian
    terrorists recruited Bosnians to agitate against
    Austrian rule.

6
  • 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 Sarajevo.

7
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8
  • After the assassination, the complex European
    alliance system drew all of the major powers into
    war within a few days.
  • The two rival blocs faced off Great Britain,
    France, Japan, Russia, and Italy formed the
    Allied Powers, while Germany, Austria-Hungary,
    Turkey, and Bulgaria formed the Central Powers.
  • Because the alliance system encompassed competing
    imperial powers, the conflict spread to parts of
    the world far beyond Europe, including the Middle
    East, Africa, and China. The worldwide scope of
    the conflict came to be known as "the Great War,"
    or later, World War I.

9
  • World War I utilized new military technology,
    much of it from the United States, which made
    armies more deadly than before.
  • Trench warfare produced unprecedented numbers of
    casualties between February and December of
    1916, the French suffered 550,000 casualties and
    the Germans 450,000.

10
  • World War I could be considered the first
    "modern" war. Aside from the debut of the machine
    gun (seen here), it also marked the advent of air
    forces, submarines, tanks, and chemical warfare.
    Casualties skyrocketed accordingly, due mostly to
    the new, ruthlessly efficient weaponry, but also
    because armies continued to use 19th century
    tactics like trench warfare.

11
The Perils of Neutrality
  • After the war began in Europe, President Woodrow
    Wilson made it clear that America would remain
    neutral he believed that if America kept aloof
    from the quarrel, he could arbitrate and
    influence a European settlement.
  • The United States had divided loyalties
    concerning the war many Americans felt deep
    cultural ties to the Allies, while others,
    especially Irish and German immigrants, had
    strong pro-German sentiments.

12
  • 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, such as
    Henry Ford, bankrolled antiwar activities.
  • African American leaders saw the war as a
    conflict of the white race only.
  • The British imposed a naval blockade that in
    effect prevented neutral nations, including the
    United States, from trading with Germany and its
    Allies.

13
American Neutrality (cont)
  • Loans to Britain and France, but not to Germany
  • Little protest to British violations of U.S.
    neutral rights
  • German submarine warfare
  • Designed to combat British dominance of the seas

14
  • The resulting trade imbalance translated into
    closer U.S. economic ties with the Allies,
    despite America's official posture of neutrality.
  • The German navy launched a devastating new
    weapon, the U-boat, and issued a warning to
    civilians that all ships flying the flags of
    Britain or its Allies were liable to be
    destroyed.
  • On May 7,1915, the British luxury liner Lusitania
    was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of
    Ireland 128 Americans were among the 1,198
    people killed.

15
  • Led to sharp protest from Wilson
  • Government refused to yield unless Britain
    allowed cargo to reach German ports
  • Seemed to show that war with Germany was
    inevitable

16
In February 1915, Germany announced that it
intended to sink on sight enemy ships en route to
the British Isles. On May 7, 1915, a German
U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner
Lusitania, killing 1,198 passengers, 128 of them
U.S. citizens. American newspapers featured
drawings of drowning women and children, and some
editorials demanded war. Propaganda posters like
this one were used to encourage military
enlistment once the United States entered World
War I in 1917.
17
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18
Arabic pledge
  • Germany would warn non-military ships 30 minutes
    before they sank them to make sure the passengers
    and crew got out safely. They broke this pledge
    on March 24, 1916

19
The Sussex
  • March 24th 1916 a German submarine in the English
    Channel attacked what it thought was a mine
    laying ship.
  • French passenger steamer called 'The Sussex'
    and, although it didn't sink and limped into
    port, fifty people were killed. Several Americans
    were injured and, on April 19th, the US President
    (Woodrow Wilson) addressed Congress on the issue.
    He gave an ultimatum Germany should end attacks
    on passenger vessels, or face America 'breaking
    off' diplomatic relations.

20
  • Germany promised to alter their naval and
    submarine policy of unrestricted submarine
    warfare and stop the indiscriminate sinking of
    non-military ships. Instead, Merchant Ships would
    be searched and sunk only if they contained
    contraband, and then only after safe passage had
    been provided for the crew and passengers.

21
American Neutrality (cont)
  • House-Grey Memorandum, February 1916
  • The so-called 'House-Grey Memorandum', noted in
    memo form by Grey, involved the U.S. 'inviting'
    German participation in a U.S. inspired peace
    convention the failure of Germany to attend
    would lead to U.S. military involvement.

22
  • Won applause from many Americans
  • American Union Against Militarism
  • Campaign in 1916 based on his peace efforts
  • Plans for international organization to maintain
    peace
  • Laid out principles for a lasting peace in early
    1917
  • Constituted new world order based on equality of
    all nations

23
  • Despite repeated attempts to mediate an end to
    the European conflict through his aide, Colonel
    Edward House, Wilson worried that the United
    States might be drawn into the conflict in the
    fall of 1915, he endorsed a 1 billion buildup of
    the army and navy.

24
  • Public opposition to entering the war made the
    election of 1916 a contest between two antiwar
    candidates-Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes
    Wilson won by only a slim margin that limited his
    options in mobilizing the nation for war.
  • The events of early 1917 diminished Wilson's
    lingering hopes of staying out of the conflict.

25
German Escalation
  • German push for victory on land and at sea, early
    1917
  • To counter effect of Russian exit from war
  • Zimmerman telegram

26
  • The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare,
    in conjunction with the Zimmermann telegram,
    inflamed anti-German sentiment in America.

27
  • coded telegram dispatched by the Foreign
    Secretary of the German Empire, Arthur
    Zimmermann, on January 16, 1917, to the German
    ambassador in the United States of America,
    Johann von Bernstorff
  • January 19, Bernstorff, per Zimmermann's
    request, forwarded the Telegram to the German
    ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt.

28
  • Zimmermann sent the Telegram in anticipation of
    the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare
    by the German Empire on February 1, an act which
    German High Command feared would draw the neutral
    United States into war on the side of the Allies.
  • The Telegram, intercepted by the US, instructed
    Ambassador Eckardt to propose a military alliance
    between Germany and Mexico against the United
    States.
  • Mexico was to receive material aid in the
    reclamation of territory lost during the
    Mexican-American War, specifically the American
    states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Eckardt
    was also instructed to urge Mexico to help broker
    an alliance between Germany and Japan.

29
German Escalation
  • Benevolent nature of war demonstrated by
    overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia
  • Helped Wilson justify intervention on side of
    democratic powers
  • April 2, Congress voted to enter war

30
Wilson war speech, April 1917Grand experiment to
remake the world
  • Throughout March 1917, German U-boats attacked
    and sank American ships without warning on April
    2, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of
    war. Many Americans accepted Wilson's claim that
    America had no selfish aims and that U.S.
    participation in the war would make the world
    "safe for democracy."

31
  • The United States formally declared war on
    Germany on April 6, 1917, although the vote was
    far from unanimous.

32
"Over There"
  • 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 Europe.
  • To field an adequate fighting force, the American
    government conscripted almost 4 million men with
    the passage of the Selective Service Act in May
    1917 women joined as navy clerks or army nurses.
  • The Selective Service system combined central
    direction from Washington with local
    civilian-controlled draft boards.

33
Images of women have been used to represent the
United States since the nation was founded.
Posters used female representations to give a
feminine face to war aims. A beautiful woman
flanked by the United States flag or dressed in
"the stars and stripes" represented the
patriotism of a nation at war. This poster
depicts a beseeching woman wearing a cap that
clearly echoes the American flag. In the backdrop
is a European city with its church towers in
flames, a potent reminder to Americans safe at
home of the devastating war across the Atlantic.
34
Women's efforts were central to the nation's call
for patriotism. In the midst of the final stages
of their drive for citizenship, many women saw
themselves, if not quite as regular soldiers, as
members of a volunteer army that blanketed the
nation in support of various wartime mobilization
drives. These activities required exceptional
administrative skills, and for some leisure-class
women, this became full-time work. Given the
eagerness with which women rushed into the public
sphere to support the war, it is ironic that the
majority of these images depicted traditional
notions of womanhood. This poster features a
female form to indicate that America's honor
needed fighting men to protect it.
35
  • War posters traded on images of female
    sexuality. The saucy young woman dressed in a
    military uniform in this an image created by
    well-known artist Howard Chandler Christy,
    provocatively exclaims, "I Wish I Were a Man."
    What does this image suggest about modern notions
    of female sexuality emerging in the prewar years?
    Consider how the cross-dressed figure
    communicates the proper roles of men and women in
    wartime.

36
Hollywood joined in the government's efforts to
work up war rage against the "brutal Huns, as
Germans were often called. In a film made for the
British and French governments by America's
leading filmmaker, D. W. Griffith, a hulking
German is about to whip a defenseless farm woman
(Lillian Gish, one of the nation's favorite
stars) innocently carrying potatoes from a field.
When the film premiered in Washington, D.C., in
1918, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson wrote Griffith pleading
with him to cut or soften the violent whipping
scene. Her plea was one of the few acts coming
from the nation's capital that sought to moderate
the hate campaign.
37
  • About 16,000 Native Americans served in the U.S.
    armed forces during World War I. This magazine
    cover, entitled "The Warrior's Return" offers a
    romanticized reconstruction of one homecoming.
    The young soldier, still in uniform and
    presumably fresh from France, rides his painted
    pony to the tepee of his parents, where they
    proudly welcome the brave warrior. Their tepee
    even has a star, a national symbol that families
    with sons in the military displayed on their
    homes. The painting sought to demonstrate that
    all Americans, even those on the margins of
    national life, were sufficiently assimilated and
    loyal to join the national sacrifice to defeat
    the enemy.

38
  • After the triumphal parades ended, attention
    turned to the question of what the heroes would
    do at home. The Department of Labor poster tries
    to convey a strong image of purposefulness and
    prosperity by portraying a soldier in front of a
    booming industrial landscape. The U.S. Employment
    Service had little to offer veterans beyond
    posters, however, and unions were unprepared to
    cope with the massive numbers of former soldiers
    who needed retraining. As workplace conditions
    deteriorated, the largest number of strikes in
    the nation's history broke out in 1919.

39
  • Before the war ended, some 25,000 American women
    made it to France, all as volunteers.
    Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed war
    the "Great Adventure, and some women were eager
    to share in it. About half became nurses, where
    as one said, they dealt with "a sea of
    stretchers, a human carpet. Women also drove
    ambulances, acted as social workers, and ran
    canteens for the Red Cross and the YMCA. One YMCA
    worker, Mary Baldwin, hoped that a few hours in
    her canteen would "make life, and even death,
    easier out there.' A handful of female
    physicians worked as contract surgeons for the
    U.S. army. Dr. Loy McAfee wore this uniform in
    France.

40
  • Nothing could make living in the trenches
    anything better than miserable, but a decent
    shave with a Gillette safety razor could offer
    temporary relief.

41
  • While trenches could be dry, rains brought
    mud so deep that wounded men drowned in it. By
    the time American doughboys arrived in Europe,
    troops had faced one another for more than three
    years, burrowed into a double line of trenches,
    protected by barbed wire, machine gun nests, and
    mortars, backed by heavy artillery. A pair of dry
    boots was perhaps one of the greatest comforts a
    soldier could experience in the trench.

42
  • General John J. Pershing was head of the American
    Expeditionary Force (AEF), but the new recruits
    had to be trained before being transported across
    the submarine infested Atlantic.
  • The government countered the U-boats by sending
    armed convoys across the Atlantic the plan
    worked no American soldiers were killed on the
    way to Europe.
  • 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.

43
  • Their burden increased when the Eastern Front
    collapsed after the Russian Revolution in
    November 1917. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
    the new Bolshevik regime surrendered about a
    third of Russia's territories in return for peace
    with the Central Powers.
  • At the request of Allied leaders, Pershing
    committed about 60,000 Americans to help the
    French repel the Germans in the battles of
    Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood.

44
  • American and Allied forces brought the .German
    offensive to a halt in mid-July by mid-September
    1918, American and French troops had forced the
    Germans to retreat.
  • An intense campaign in the Argonne forest
    eventually broke the German defenses, at the cost
    of over 26,000 American lives.

45
American Fighting Force
  • Impact of American entry
  • U.S. troops separate from Allied forces
  • American Expeditionary Force
  • John J. Pershing
  • Eased pressure on British and French on Western
    front

46
  • Wilsons Fourteen Points, January 1918
  • To encounter effect of secret Allied treaties
  • Demonstrated that war was being fought for just
    purposes
  • Germany launched huge offensives in March and
    April of 1918
  • War ended in November 1918

47
The American Fighting Force
  • The United States lost 53,000 American servicemen
    in the fighting, and another 63,000 died from
    other causes the Allies and Central Powers lost
    8 million soldiers.
  • 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.
  • 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.

48
  • Racial violence erupted at several camps. The
    worst incident occurred in Houston in August
    1917, when 15 white soldiers were killed by black
    soldiers in retaliation for a string of racial
    incidents.
  • 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. War on the Home Front

49
  • War on the Home Front
  • Mobilizing Industry and the Economy
  • Mobilizing American Workers
  • Wartime Reform Woman Suffrage and Prohibition
  • Promoting National Unity

50
Mobilizing Industry and the Economy
  • The cost of the war to America eventually reached
    33 billion. The government paid for the war by
    enacting the War Revenue Bills of 1917 and 1918,
    and by collecting excess-profits taxes from
    corporations.
  • The central agency for coordinating wartime
    production, the War Industries Board (WIB) under
    Bernard Baruch, epitomized an unparalleled
    expansion of the federal government's powers.

51
  • Despite higher taxes, corporate profits soared,
    aided by an economic boom and the institution of
    price guarantees for war work.
  • To ease a fuel shortage in the winter of
    1917-1918, 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.
  • 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.

52
  • Herbert Hoover headed the Food Administration
    during World War I. Sober and tireless, he led
    remarkably successful "Hooverizing campaigns for
    "meatless Mondays and "wheatless Wednesdays and
    other means of conserving resources. Guaranteed
    high prices, the American heartland not only
    supplied the needs of U.S. citizens and armed
    forces but also became the breadbasket of
    America's allies.

53
Even as posters encouraged women to participate
in war activities by buying Liberty Bonds,
supporting the Red Cross, knitting socks for
soldiers, or conserving food, the images rarely
challenged traditional ideas of women's proper
place. This is a recruitment poster for the Land
Army, a voluntary organization formed to mobilize
women as temporary farmworkers. Notice how it
links labor on the home front to the war.
54
  • American officials were adamant that all sectors
    of the population be reached by the propaganda
    campaigns that urged Americans to buybonds,
    conserve food, enlist, and support the war effor
    in countless other ways. They targeted immigrants
    with posters such as this one for Liberty Bonds
    in the hopes no only that the foreign-born would
    buy bonds, but in doing so they would become more
    Americanized and more deeply committed to their
    adopted home.

55
  • 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.
  • The United States' participation in the war
    lasted just eighteen months, but it left an
    enduring legacy the modern bureaucratic state.

56
Mobilizing American Workers
  • The National War Labor Board (NWLB) and acute
    labor shortages helped to improve labor's
    position with eight-hour days, time-and-a-half
    pay for overtime, and the endorsement of equal
    pay for women.
  • During the war emergency, northern factories
    actively recruited African Americans, spawning
    the "Great Migration" from the South. More than
    400,000 African Americans from the South moved to
    northern industrial cities, where despite
    discrimination, they found new opportunities and
    an escape from the repressive southern
    agricultural system.

57
  • On occasion, war posters acknowledged
    women who crossed conventional gender barriers
    when they took jobs in war work. These images
    were usually issued by the Young Women's
    Christian Association (YWCA), which produced its
    own posters. During the war, the YWCA continued
    its prewar activism on behalf of young working
    women and distributed the poster depicted here as
    part of its fund-raising campaign. In keeping
    with YWCA literature that praised women factory
    workers' vital contribution to defense, this
    image emphasizes female strength and solidarity.
    Note too the graphic style of this image.

58
  • Women took on new jobs during the war, working as
    mail carriers, polic officers, drill-press
    operators, and farm laborers attached to the
    Women's Land Army. These women are riveters at
    the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington. Black
    women in particular, who customarily were limited
    to employment as domestic servants or
    agricultural laborers, found that the war opened
    up new opportunities and better wages in
    industry. When the war ended, black and white
    women alike usually lost jobs deemed to be men's
    work

59
  • Wartime labor shortages prompted many Mexican
    Americans to leave farm labor for industrial jobs
    in southwestern cities. At least 100,000 Mexicans
    entered the United States between 1917 and 1920,
    often settling in segregated neighborhoods
    (barrios) in urban areas, meeting discrimination
    similar to that faced by African Americans.
  • 4. About I million women joined the labor force
    for the first time, and many of the 8 miUion
    already working switched from low-paying fields
    to higher-paying industrial work.

60
Wartime Constitutionalism Woman Suffrage and
Prohibition
  • Members of the National American Woman Suffrage
    Association (NA WSA) felt that women's patriotic
    service could advance the cause of woman suffrage.

61
  • Members of the National Woman's Party (NWP) were
    arrested and jailed for picketing the White
    House they became martyrs through their hunger
    strike and drew attention to the issue of woman
    suffrage.
  • In January 1918, Wilson withdrew his opposition
    to a federal woman suffrage amendment. The
    amendment quickly passed the House but took
    eighteen months to get through the Senate,
    followed by another year of hard work for
    ratification by the states. On August 26, 1920,
    the goal of woman suffrage was finally achieved
    with the Nineteenth Amendment.

62
  • Throughout the mobilization period, advocates
    pushed for social reforms enacting a federal
    wartime family assistance program for dependents
    of servicemen, launching a campaign against
    sexually transmitted diseases, and lobbying for
    the prohibition of alcohol.

63
  • Prohibition met with resistance in the cities
    because alcoholic beverages played an important
    role in the social life of certain ethnic
    cultures.
  • Many states already had Prohibition laws, but
    World War I offered the impetus for national
    action, as beer drinking became unpatriotic in
    many people's minds.
  • In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth
    Amendment prohibiting the "manufacture, sale, or
    transportation of intoxicating liquors." Ratified
    in 1919 and made effective on January 16,1920,
    the Eighteenth Amendment demonstrated the
    widening influence of the state in matters of
    personal behavior.

64
Prohibition
  • Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors
    and into dark places, and does not cure or even
    diminish it.
  • MARK TWAIN

65
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66
  • This image shows the suffrage militants of
    the National Woman's Party picketing the White
    House during World War I. College graduates, they
    identified themselves by their alma maters.
    Though criticized by more moderate suffragists,
    these radical suffragists sought to embarrass
    President Wilson by graphically pointing out the
    hypocrisy of a war fought for democracy while
    women at home were not enfranchised.

67
  • The Anti-Saloon League of America saw conquering
    the alcohol problem as more than an American
    crusade. In 1916 at the convention of the ASL in
    Indianapolis Ernest Cherrington presented an
    address to the convention titled "The World
    Movement Toward Prohibition of the Liquor
    Traffic."

68
  • No beer, no vodka, no rum, no fun. Prohibition in
    the 1920s was nation wide when the 18th
    Amendment went into affect. On January 16, 1920
    the United States officially had a ban on the
    sale, consumption, and creation of all alcoholic
    beverages.

69
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70
Promoting National Unity
  • 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.
  • During the war, the CPI touched the lives of
    practically every American, and in its zeal, it
    often used inflammatory stories.

71
Promoting National Unity
  • Committee on Public Information headed by George
    Creel

72
  • Many Americans found themselves targets of
    suspicion as self-appointed agents of the
    American Protective League spied on neighbors and
    coworkers.
  • The CPI encouraged ethnic groups to give up their
    Old World customs in the spirit of "One Hundred
    Percent Americanism," an insistence on conformity
    and an intolerance of dissent. German Americans
    bore the brunt of this campaign owing to the
    hostility generated by propaganda about German
    militarism and outrages.

73
  • Law enforcement officials tolerated little
    criticism of established values and institutions
    legal tools for curbing dissent included the
    Espionage Act of 1917, which imposed stiff
    penalties for antiwar activities, and the
    Sedition Act of 1918, which focused on disloyal
    speech, writing, and behavior.
  • The acts, which defined treason and sedition
    loosely, led to the conviction of more than one
    thousand people and focused particularly on
    socialists and radical groups such as the IWW
    (the Wobblies).
  • Courts rarely resisted wartime legal excesses. In
    Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court
    upheld limits on freedom of speech that would not
    have been acceptable in peacetime.

74
An Unsettled Peace 1919-1920
  • Treaty of Versailles
  • Racial Strife

75
Treaty of Versailles
  • 14 Points
  • Georges Clemenceau stated Moses only had to have
    10 Commandments Wilson has to have 14

76
  • The Allies accepted Wilson's Fourteen Points as
    the basis for the peace negotiations for the
    Treaty of Versailles that began in January 1919.
  • Wilson called for open diplomacy, freedom of
    navigation upon the seas, arms reduction, the
    removal of trade barriers, and national
    self-determination.
  • Essential to Wilson's vision was the creation of
    a multinational organization "for the purpose of
    affording mutual guarantees of political
    independence and territorial integrity to great
    and small States alike." The League of Nations
    became Wilson's obsession.

77
  • The Fourteen Points were imbued with the spirit
    of progressivism, but the lofty goals and ideals
    for world reformation proved too far reaching to
    be practical or attainable.
  • According to Article X of the peace treaty, the
    League of Nations would curb aggressor countries
    through collective military action.
  • Representatives from twenty-seven countries
    attended the peace conference in Versailles, but
    representatives from Germany and Russia were
    excluded.

78
  • France, Italy, and Great Britain wanted to punish
    Germany and treat themselves to the spoils of war
    by demanding heavy reparations they had also
    made secret agreements to divide up the German
    colonies.
  • National self-determination bore fruit in the
    creation of the independent states of Austria,
    Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.

79
  • The creation of the new nations of Finland,
    Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia upheld the
    principle of self-determination, while also
    isolating Soviet Russia from the rest of Europe.
  • Wilson won only limited concessions regarding the
    colonial empires. The Central Powers' colonial
    empires in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were
    dismantled, but instead of becoming independent
    countries, the colonies were assigned to
    victorious Allied nations to administer as
    mandates.
  • Certain topics, such as freedom of the seas and
    free trade, never even appeared on the agenda
    because of Allied resistance.

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  • Wilson had only partial success in scaling back
    French and British demands for reparations from
    Germany, which eventually were set at 33
    billion.
  • Wilson consoled himself with the negotiators'
    commitment to his proposed League of Nations. He
    acknowledged that the peace treaty had defects
    but expressed confidence that they could be
    resolved by a permanent international
    organization dedicated to the peaceful resolution
    of disputes.
  • A peace treaty was signed in Versailles on June
    28,1919, but when Wilson presented the treaty to
    the U.S. Senate, it did not receive the necessary
    wo-thirds vote for ratification.

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  • Progressive senators felt that the treaty was too
    conservative, "irreconcilables" disapproved of
    permanent U.S. participation in European affairs,
    and Republicans wanted to amend Article X because
    they thought it would restrict Congress's
    constitutional authority to declare war and would
    limit the freedom of the United States to pursue
    a unilateral foreign policy.
  • In September of 1919, Wilson went on a speaking
    tour to defend the treaty, but the tour was cut
    short when he collapsed a week later he suffered
    a severe stroke.

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  • Wilson remained inflexible in his refusal to
    compromise, but the treaty was not ratified when
    it came up for a vote in the Senate in 1919 and
    again in 1920.
  • The United States never ratified the Versailles
    treaty or joined the League of Nations. Many
    wartime issues were only partially resolved some
    unresolved problems played a major role in the
    coming of World War II.

83
Racial Strife, Labor Unrest, and the Red Scare
  • .

84
  • Many African Americans emerged from the war
    determined to stand up for their rights.
  • 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.
  • 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.

85
  • 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.
  • 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 Seattle, and
    policemen in Boston.
  • Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts fired
    the entire Boston police force, and that strike
    failed Coolidge was rewarded with the Republican
    vice presidential nomination in 1920.

86
  • A crucial factor in organized labor's failure to
    win many of its strikes in the post-War period
    was the pervasive fear of radicalism in America,
    which coincided with a longstanding anxiety
    about unassimilated immigrants, an anxiety that
    had been made worse by the war.
  • The Russian Revolution ofl917 so alarmed the
    Allies that Wilson sent several thousand troops
    to Russia in hopes of weakening the Bolshevik
    regime.
  • 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.

87
  • 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.
  • II. 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," in which
    federal agents stormed the headquarters of
    radical organizations

88
Mitchell Palmer
89
  • Lacking the protection of U.S. citizenship,
    thousands of aliens who had committed no crime
    but were suspect because of their anarchist or
    revolutionary beliefs or their immigrant
    backgrounds faced deportation without formal
    trial or indictment.
  • Palmer predicted that a conspiracy attempt to
    overthrow the government would occur on May Day
    in 1920 when the incident never occurred, the
    hysteria of the Red Scare began to abate.

90
  • 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.

91
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  • The war left racial, ethnic, and class tensions
    in its wake. With few casualties and no physical
    destruction at home, the positive legacy was that
    America emerged from the war stronger than ever-a
    major international power economically and
    politically.

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  • The End
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