Test Review Chapter 27 World War 1 and the Aftermath

Hitting steel manufacturing plant workers holding bulletins in Chicago, Illinois, September 22, 1919. ExplorePAhistory.com

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• I. Introduction
• II. Prelude to State of war
• III. War Spreads through Europe
• 4. America Enters the War
• 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 Globe War I
• X. Conclusion
• Eleven. Primary Sources
• XII. Reference Material

I. Introduction

Earth War I ("The Great State of war") toppled empires, created new nations, and sparked tensions that would explode across future years. On the battlefield, gruesome mod weaponry wrecked an entire generation of young men. The The states entered the conflict in 1917 and was never once again the aforementioned. The war heralded to the world the United States' potential as a global military ability, and, domestically, it advanced just then beat out back American progressivism by unleashing vicious waves of repression. The state of war simultaneously stoked national pride and fueled disenchantments that burst Progressive Era hopes for the mod globe. And it laid the groundwork for a global depression, a second world war, and an unabridged history of national, religious, and cultural conflict effectually the globe.

Two. Prelude to War

As the German empire rose in ability 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 ambitious monarch would overshadow years of tactful diplomacy. Wilhelm 2 rose to the High german throne in 1888. He admired the British Empire of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and envied the Imperial Navy of United kingdom so much that he attempted 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, merely, jealous of what he perceived as a lack of prestige in the earth, Wilhelm 2 pressed Germany'southward case for admission to colonies and symbols of status suitable for a world power. Wilhelm'south maneuvers and Germany's ascent spawned a new system of alliances as rival nations warily watched Germany'southward expansion.

In 1892, German posturing worried the leaders of Russia and France and prompted a defensive brotherhood to counter the existing triple threat between Frg, Austro-Hungary, and Italy. Britain's Queen Victoria remained unassociated with the alliances until a serial of diplomatic crises and an emerging German language naval threat led to British agreements with Tsar Nicholas Two and French President Émile Loubet in the early twentieth century. (The alliance between Britain, France, and Russia became known as the Triple Entente.)

The other swell threat to European peace was the Ottoman Empire, in Turkey. While the leaders of the Austro-hungarian empire showed fiddling interest in colonies elsewhere, Turkish lands on its southern border appealed to their strategic goals. However, Austro-Hungarian expansion in Europe worried Tsar Nicholas II, who saw Russian federation as both the historic guarantor of the Slavic nations in the Balkans and the competitor for territories governed by the Ottoman Empire.

By 1914, the Austria-hungary had control of Republic of bosnia and herzegovina and viewed Slavic Serbia, a nation protected past Russian federation, every bit its side by side challenge. On June 28, 1914, after Serbian Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austro-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.^ane

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

Stated American attitudes toward international diplomacy followed the communication 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 countrymen avoid "foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues" and "those overgrown military establishments which, nether whatever form of authorities, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to exist regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."²

A strange policy of neutrality reflected America's inward-looking focus on the construction and management of its new powerful industrial economy (built in large role with foreign capital letter). The federal government possessed limited diplomatic tools with which to appoint in international struggles for world power. America's small and increasingly antiquated armed services precluded forceful compulsion 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 modernistic navy. The regular army withal remained small and underfunded compared to the armies of many industrializing nations.

Afterwards the turn of the century, the army and navy faced a bang-up deal of organizational doubt. New technologies—airplanes, motor vehicles, submarines, modernistic arms—stressed the capability of regular army and navy personnel to effectively procure and use them. The nation'southward army could police Native Americans in the West and garrison contempo overseas acquisitions, but it could not sustain a full-blown conflict of any size. The Davis Act of 1908 and the National Defence Act of 1916 inaugurated the rise of the modern versions of the National Guard and military reserves. A organization of state-administered units available for local emergencies that received provisional federal funding for training could be activated for utilize in international wars. The National Guard program encompassed individual units separated past state borders. The program supplied summer training for college students as a reserve officer corps. Federal and land governments now had a long-term strategic reserve of trained soldiers and sailors.ⁱⁱⁱ

Edge troubles in United mexican states served equally 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 authorities. He was jailed, fled to San Antonio, and penned the Programme of San Luis Potosí, paving the way for the Mexican Revolution and the rise of armed revolutionaries across the state.

In April 1914, President Woodrow Wilson ordered Marines to accompany a naval escort to Veracruz on the lower eastern coast of United mexican states. Afterward a cursory battle, the Marines supervised the city regime and prevented shipments of High german arms to Mexican leader Victoriano 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 regal influence in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The threat of war in Europe enabled passage of the Naval Human activity of 1916. President Wilson declared that the national goal was to build the Navy as "incomparably, the greatest . . . in the earth." 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 pop revolutionary in northern Mexico, raided Columbus, New Mexico, afterward being provoked by American support for his rivals. His raiders killed seventeen Americans and burned down the boondocks center before American soldiers forced their retreat. In response, President Wilson deputed Regular army full general John "Blackness 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 Full general Pershing to obtain supplies without relying on railroads controlled past the Mexican government. The aircraft assigned to the campaign crashed or were grounded by mechanical malfunctions, but they provided invaluable lessons in their worth and employ in war. Wilson used the powers of the new National Defence Act to mobilize over one hundred grand National Guard units beyond the country as a show of force in northern Mexico.⁴

The disharmonize between the United States and United mexican states might take escalated into full-scale war if the international crisis in Europe had not overwhelmed the public'due south attention. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, President Wilson alleged American neutrality. He insisted from the showtime that the Us exist neutral "in fact too as in name," a policy the majority of American people enthusiastically endorsed. It was unclear, however, what "neutrality" meant in a world of shut economic connections. Ties to the British and French proved strong, and those nations obtained far more loans and supplies than the Germans. In Oct 1914, President Wilson canonical commercial credit loans to the combatants, which made it increasingly difficult for the nation to claim impartiality as war spread through Europe. Trade and fiscal relations with the Centrolineal nations ultimately drew the United states of america further into the conflict. In spite of mutually alleged blockades betwixt Deutschland, Dandy Britain, and French republic, munitions and other war suppliers in the Usa witnessed a brisk and booming increase in business organisation. The British naval blockades that oftentimes stopped or seized ships proved annoying and plush, merely 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 language attacks on American and British aircraft, raised the ire of the public and stoked the want for war.⁵

American diplomatic tradition avoided formal alliances, and the Army seemed inadequate for sustained overseas fighting. Nevertheless, the Usa outdistanced the nations of Europe in ane of import mensurate of globe power: by 1914, the nation held the elevation 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 Great britain, and Germany combined.

Three. War Spreads through Europe

After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and One thousand Duchess Sophie, Austria secured the promise of assist from its German language 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 military. On August one, 1914, Frg declared war on Russia to protect Austria after warnings directed at Tsar Nicholas Two failed to finish 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 have reward of sluggish Russian mobilization by focusing the German army on France. German war machine leaders recycled tactics developed earlier and activated the Schlieffen Program, which moved German armies apace past rail to march through Belgium and into French republic. However, this violation of Belgian neutrality also ensured that Great Britain entered the war against Germany. On August iv, 1914, Groovy United kingdom declared war on Frg for failing to respect Kingdom of belgium as a neutral nation.

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

In 1915, the European war had developed into a series of bloody trench stalemates that continued through the post-obit year. Offensives, largely carried out by British and French armies, achieved nothing just huge numbers of casualties. Peripheral campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in Turkey at Gallipoli, throughout the Middle East, and in various parts of Africa either were unsuccessful or had piffling bearing on the European contest for victory. The third yr of the war, nonetheless, witnessed a insurrection for German military prospects: the regime of Tsar Nicholas II complanate in Russia in March 1917. At well-nigh the aforementioned time, the Germans again pursued unrestricted submarine warfare to deprive the Allies of replenishment supplies from the United States.^half-dozen

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 modify the balance of ability. A German diplomat, Arthur Zimmermann, planned to complicate the potential American intervention. He offered support to the Mexican authorities via a desperate bid to regain Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Mexican national leaders declined the offering, but the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram helped conductor the United states into the war.

Four. America Enters the State of war

By the autumn of 1916 and leap of 1917, President Wilson believed an imminent German language victory would drastically and dangerously alter the balance of power in Europe. Submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram, meanwhile, inflamed public opinion. Congress declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917. The nation entered a war iii thou miles abroad with a minor and unprepared military. The The states was unprepared in nigh every respect for mod state of war. Considerable time elapsed before an effective army and navy could be assembled, trained, equipped, and deployed to the Western Forepart in Europe. The process of edifice the army and navy for the war proved to be unlike from previous conflicts. Unlike the largest European military machine powers of Germany, France, and Austria-hungary, no tradition existed in the United States to maintain large continuing armed forces or trained military reserves during peacetime. Moreover, there was no American counterpart to the European practice of rapidly equipping, training, and mobilizing reservists and conscripts.

The U.S. historically relied solely on traditional volunteerism to make full the ranks of the military machine. Notions of patriotic duty and adventure appealed to many young men who not only volunteered for wartime service only sought and paid for their own grooming at army camps earlier the war. American labor organizations favored voluntary service over conscription. Labor leader Samuel Gompers argued for volunteerism in messages to the congressional committees because the question. "The organized labor movement," he wrote, "has always been fundamentally opposed to coercion." Referring to American 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 tin can mobilize its greatest force, resources and efficiency."^seven

The Boy Scouts of America accuse up Fifth Avenue in New York City in a "Wake Up, America" parade to back up recruitment efforts. Nearly 60 thousand people attended this single parade. Wikimedia.

Despite fears of pop resistance, Congress quickly instituted a reasonably equitable and locally administered system to draft men for the war machine. On May eighteen, 1917, Congress approved the Selective Service Act, and President Wilson signed information technology a week later. The new legislation avoided the unpopular system of bonuses and substitutes used during the Civil State of war and was more often than not received without major objection past the American people.^viii

The conscription deed initially required men from ages twenty-i to thirty to register for compulsory armed services service. Basic physical fettle was the primary requirement for service. The resulting tests offered the emerging fields of social science a range of data drove tools and new screening methods. The Army Medical Department examined the full general condition of immature American men selected for service from the population. The Surgeon General compiled his findings from draft records in the 1919 written report, "Defects Found in Drafted Men," a snapshot of the 2.v meg men examined for military service. Of that group, 1,533,937 physical defects were recorded (often more than one per individual). More 34 percent of those examined were rejected for service or later on discharged for neurological, psychiatric, or mental deficiencies.^nine

To provide a basis for the neurological, psychiatric, and mental evaluations, the regular army used cognitive skills tests to determine intelligence. Nearly 1.9 million men were tested on intelligence. Soldiers who could read took the Regular army Alpha test. Illiterates and non-English language-speaking immigrants took the nonverbal equivalent, the Army Beta test, which relied on visual testing procedures. Robert 1000. 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 bodily mental age of recruits was only about 13 years. Amidst recent immigrants, he said, it was even lower. As a eugenicist, he interpreted the results as roughly equivalent to a balmy level of retardation and as an indication of racial deterioration. Years afterward, 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 ground forces expanded many individual social horizons as native-born and foreign-born soldiers served together. Immigrants had been welcomed into Wedlock ranks during the Ceremonious War, including large numbers of Irish gaelic and Germans who had joined and fought alongside native-born men. Some Germans in the Ceremonious 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.

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Propagandistic images increased patriotism in a public relatively detached from events taking place overseas. This photograph, showing ii United states of america soldiers sprinting past the bodies of two High german soldiers toward a bunker, showed Americans the heroism evinced by their men in uniform. Likely a staged prototype was taken after the fighting ended, it even so played on the public'south patriotism, telling them to pace up and support the troops. "At close grips with the Hun, we bomb the corkshaffer'south, etc.," c. 1922?. Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91783839/.

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

In France, the experiences of Black soldiers during training and periods of get out proved transformative. The army frequently restricted the privileges of Blackness soldiers to ensure that the atmospheric condition they encountered in Europe did not lead them to question their identify in American club. However, Black soldiers were not the but ones tempted past European vices. To ensure that American "doughboys" did not compromise their special identity every bit men of the new world who arrived to salve the old, several religious and progressive organizations created an all-encompassing program designed to continue the men pure of heart, heed, and body. With assistance from the Young Men'south 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 about of the activities from these groups, merely many still managed to find and enjoy the traditional recreations of soldiers at war.¹⁰

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

The comprisal of women brought considerable upheaval. The War and Navy Departments authorized the enlistment of women to make full positions in several established administrative occupations. The gendered transition of these jobs freed more men to join gainsay units. Army women served every bit telephone operators (Hi Girls) for the Indicate Corps, navy women enlisted equally yeomen (clerical workers), and the first groups of women joined the Marine Corps in July 1918. Approximately twenty-five g nurses served in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps for duty stateside and overseas, and about a hundred female person physicians were contracted by the army. Neither the female nurses nor the doctors served as commissioned officers in the armed services. The ground forces and navy chose to appoint them instead, which left the condition of professional medical women hovering somewhere between the enlisted and officer ranks. As a result, many female nurses and doctors suffered diverse physical and mental abuses at the hands of their male coworkers with no organisation of redress in place.¹²

Millions of women also volunteered in civilian organizations such every bit 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 capacity 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 unabridged communities, including children, to get involved in war piece of work. While virtually of these efforts focused on support for the home front, a pocket-sized percentage of female volunteers served with the American Expeditionary Force in French republic.¹³

Jim Crow segregation in both the military and the civilian sector stood as a barrier for Black women who wanted to requite their fourth dimension to the state of war endeavour. The military prohibited Black women from serving every bit enlisted or appointed medical personnel. The merely avenue for Blackness women to wearable a military uniform existed with the armies of the centrolineal nations. A few Black female doctors and nurses joined the French Strange Legion to escape the racism in the American regular army. Black female volunteers faced the same bigotry in civilian wartime organizations. White leaders of the American Red Cross, YMCA/YWCA, and Conservancy Army municipal chapters refused to admit Black women as equal participants. Blackness 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 2 hundred chiliad Blackness soldiers and sailors serving in the military. While near female person volunteers labored to care for Black families on the dwelling house front end, three YMCA secretaries worked with the Black troops in French republic.^fourteen

V. On the Homefront

In the early on 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 office of regime at home. Withal, the facts of the war could not be ignored past 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 equally he embraced neutrality. Equally war engulfed Europe, it seemed apparent that the United states' economical power would shape the outcome of the disharmonize regardless of whatsoever American military intervention. Past 1916, American merchandise with the Allies tripled, while trade with the Central Powers shrank to less than 1 percent of previous levels.

A membership card for the American Protective League, issued May 28, 1918. German language immigrants in the U.s. aroused popular suspicions during World State of war I and the American Protective League (APL), a group of individual citizens, worked directly with the U.Southward. government to identify suspected German language sympathizers and to eradicate all antiwar and politically radical activities through surveillance, public shaming, and authorities raids. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Agency 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 violent national debates well-nigh military preparedness. The Allies and the Central Powers had quickly raised and mobilized vast armies and navies. The Usa still had a modest war machine. When America entered the war, the mobilization of military machine resource and the tillage of popular support consumed the land, generating enormous publicity and propaganda campaigns. President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, known as the Creel Commission, headed by Progressive George Creel, to inspire patriotism and generate support for military adventures. Creel enlisted the assistance of Hollywood studios and other budding media outlets to cultivate a view of the war that pitted commonwealth against imperialism and framed America every bit a crusading nation rescuing Western culture from medievalism and militarism. As war passions flared, challenges to the onrushing patriotic sentiment that America was making the earth "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 always more than hostile public culture. Meanwhile, the government insisted that individual financial contributions fabricated a discernible difference for the men on the Western Front. Americans lent their financial support to the state of war endeavor past purchasing war bonds or supporting the Liberty Loan Drive. Many Americans, notwithstanding, sacrificed much more than money.¹⁵

Vi. Earlier the Armistice

European powers struggled to conform to the brutality of modern war. Until the spring of 1917, the Allies possessed few constructive defensive measures against submarine attacks. German submarines sank more than a thousand ships by the time the Usa entered the war. The rapid addition of American naval escorts to the British surface fleet and the establishment of a convoy system countered much of the effect of German language submarines. Shipping and military machine losses declined apace, simply as the American regular army arrived in Europe in large numbers. Although much of the equipment still needed to make the transatlantic passage, the physical presence of the regular army proved a fatal accident to German language war plans.¹⁶

In July 1917, after i last disastrous offensive against the Germans, the Russian army disintegrated. The tsarist regime collapsed and in November 1917 Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party came to power. Russia soon surrendered to German demands and exited the war, freeing Germany to finally fight the i-forepart war information technology had desired since 1914. The High german military quickly shifted hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the eastern theater in preparation for a new serial of offensives planned for the following yr in France.¹⁷

In March 1918, Germany launched the Kaiserschlacht (Spring Offensive), a serial of five major attacks. Past the centre 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 serial of successful counteroffensives that pushed the disintegrating German language lines back across France. German general Erich Ludendorff referred to the launch of the counteroffensive equally the "blackness day of the High german army." The German offensive gamble exhausted Germany's unpleasing armed forces try. Defeat was inevitable. Kaiser Wilhelm Two abdicated at the request of the German war machine leaders and the new democratic government agreed to an armistice (stop-burn) on November 11, 1918. High german war machine forces withdrew from France and Belgium and returned to a Germany teetering on the brink of anarchy.^xviii

Past the end of the state of war, more four.7 million American men had served in all branches of the armed forces: 4 million in the army, six hundred chiliad in the navy, and about 80 yard in the Marine Corps. The United states of america lost over ane hundred k men (fifty-three thousand died in battle, and even more from affliction). Their terrible sacrifice, however, paled before the Europeans'. After four years of brutal stalemate, French republic had suffered about a million and a half military expressionless and Federal republic of germany even more. Both nations lost about four percent of their population to the war. And death was non washed.¹⁹

Vii. The War and the Flu Pandemic

Even equally 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 hitting nearby Camp Funston, one of the largest regular army training camps in the nation. The virus spread like wildfire. The army camp had brought disparate populations together, shuffled them between bases, sent them back to their homes across the nation, and, in sequent waves, deployed them around the world. Betwixt March and May 1918, fourteen of the largest American armed forces training camps reported outbreaks of flu. Some of the infected soldiers carried the virus on troop transports to France. By September 1918, flu spread to all training camps in the United States. And and so information technology mutated.²⁰

The second wave of the virus, a mutated strain, was fifty-fifty deadlier than the get-go. It struck downwardly those in the prime of their lives: a asymmetric amount of influenza victims were betwixt ages 18 and thirty-five. In Europe, influenza hit both sides of the Western Front. The "Castilian Influenza," or the "Spanish Lady," misnamed due to accounts of the disease that first appeared in the uncensored newspapers of neutral Kingdom of spain, resulted in the deaths of an estimated fifty one thousand thousand people worldwide. Reports from the Surgeon General of the Army revealed that while 227,000 American soldiers were hospitalized from wounds received in battle, nearly half a million suffered from flu. The worst function of the epidemic struck during the summit of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918 and weakened the combat capabilities of the American and German 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 always institute.²¹

VIII. The 14 Points and the League of Nations

Every bit the flu virus wracked the earth, Europe and America rejoiced at the end of hostilities. On December 4, 1918, President Wilson became the offset American president to travel overseas during his term. He intended to shape the peace. The war brought an abrupt finish to four great European imperial powers. The German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires evaporated, and the map of Europe was redrawn to accommodate new independent nations. Every bit part of the the armistice, Allied forces followed the retreating Germans and occupied territories in the Rhineland to forestall Federal republic of germany from reigniting war. Every bit Federal republic of 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. Afterward months of deliberation, the Treaty of Versailles officially ended the state of war.

Earlier that yr, on Jan 8, 1918, before a joint session of Congress, President Wilson offered an ambitious argument of war aims and peace terms known as the Fourteen Points. The plan not only dealt with territorial bug only offered principles on which a long-term peace could be built. Only in January 1918, Germany still anticipated a favorable verdict on the battlefield and did not seriously consider accepting the terms of the 14 Points. The Allies were even more dismissive. French prime minister Georges Clemenceau remarked, "The skillful Lord only had 10 [points]."²²

President Wilson labored to realize his vision of the postwar world. The Usa had entered the fray, Wilson proclaimed, "to make the earth safety 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 slap-up and pocket-size states alike." This promise of commonage security, that an assail on 1 sovereign member would be viewed as an assault on all, was a key component of the Fourteen Points.²³

But the fight for peace was daunting. While President Wilson was celebrated in Europe and welcomed every bit the "God of Peace," his fellow statesmen were less enthusiastic almost his plans for postwar Europe. America's closest allies had footling interest in the League of Nations. Allied leaders sought to guarantee the futurity safety of their own nations. Dissimilar the United States, the Allies endured the horrors of the war firsthand. They refused to sacrifice further. The negotiations made clear that British prime government minister David Lloyd-George was more than interested in preserving Uk'southward purple domain, while French prime government minister Clemenceau sought a peace that recognized the Allies' victory and the Fundamental Powers' culpability: he wanted reparations—severe financial penalties—and limits on Germany's time to come ability to wage war. The fight for the League of Nations was therefore largely on the shoulders of President Wilson. By June 1919, the last version of the treaty was signed and President Wilson was able to render home. The treaty was a compromise that included demands for German language reparations, 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 dwelling front. Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts stood as the about 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. Gild 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 commonage security—and oversight—offered by the League of Nations. Unable to friction match Lodge'southward influence in the Senate, President Wilson took his instance to the American people in the hopes that ordinary voters might be convinced that the merely guarantee of futurity 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 manus.²⁴

President Wilson's dream for the League of Nations died on the floor of the Senate. Club's opposition 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 50-eight sovereign members, but the Usa refused to join, refused to lend it American power, and refused to provide it with the ability needed to fulfill its purpose.²⁵

9. Aftermath of World State of war I

The war transformed the globe. The Middle East, for case, was drastically changed. For centuries the Ottoman Empire had shaped life in the region. Before the war, the Center East had iii main centers of power: the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Iran. President Wilson's telephone call for cocky-decision appealed to many under the Ottoman Empire's rule. In the aftermath of the war, Wilson sent a committee to investigate the region to determine the conditions and aspirations of the populace. The Male monarch-Crane Commission institute that most of the inhabitants favored an independent state free of European control. Still, these wishes were largely ignored, and the lands of the quondam 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 past European powers with little regard to ethnic realities. These Arab provinces were ruled past Britain and France, and the new nation of Turkey emerged from the quondam heartland of Anatolia. According to the League of Nations, mandates "were inhabited past peoples not however able to stand up by themselves nether the strenuous conditions of the modern earth." Though allegedly for the benefit of the people of the Middle Due east, the mandate system was essentially a reimagined form of nineteenth-century imperialism. France received Syria; Uk took control of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan (Jordan). The United States was asked to go a mandate power just declined. The geographical realignment of the Middle East also included the germination of ii 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.)²⁶

The 1917 Russian Revolution, meanwhile enflamed American fears of communism. The fates of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-built-in anarchists who were convicted of robbery and murder in 1920 epitomized a sudden American Scarlet Scare. Their arrest, trial, and execution, meanwhile, inspired many leftists and dissenting artists to limited their sympathy with the accused, such as in Maxwell Anderson's Gods of the Lightning or Upton Sinclair'south Boston. The Sacco-Vanzetti case demonstrated an exacerbated nervousness nigh immigrants and the potential spread of radical ideas, especially those related to international communism.²⁷

When in March 1918 the Bolsheviks signed a divide peace treaty with Federal republic of 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 Russian federation as tardily equally 1920. Although the Bolshevik rhetoric of cocky-determination followed many of the ethics of Wilson'southward 14 Points—Vladimir Lenin supported revolutions against majestic rule beyond the world—the American delivery to cocky-dominion was inappreciably strong enough to overcome powerful strains of anticommunism.

With America still at war in Earth War I, President Wilson sent American troops to Siberia during the Russian ceremonious 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 Summertime 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 Due north and Midwest to escape the traps of southern poverty. Simply the so-called Nifty Migration sparked meaning racial conflict as white northerners and returning veterans fought to reclaim their jobs and their neighborhoods from new Black migrants.²⁸

Many Black Americans, who had fled the Jim Crow S and traveled halfway effectually the globe to fight for the The states, would non then easily take postwar racism. The overseas experience of Black Americans and their render triggered a dramatic change in Black communities. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote boldly of returning soldiers: "We return. We return from fighting. Nosotros return fighting. Make way for Republic!"²⁹ But white Americans desired a return to the status quo, a world that did not include social, political, or economical equality for Black people.

In 1919, America suffered through the "Ruby-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'southward worst, sparked a week of mob violence, murder, and arson. Race riots had rocked the nation before, merely the Crimson Summer was something new. Recently empowered Black Americans actively defended their families and homes from hostile white rioters, often with militant force. This beliefs galvanized many in Black communities, but it also shocked white Americans who alternatively interpreted Black resistance every bit a want for total revolution or every bit a new positive step in the path toward Black civil rights. In the riots' backwash, James Weldon Johnson wrote, "Can't they understand that the more Negroes they outrage, the more than determined 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.³⁰

Ten. Conclusion

World War I decimated millions and profoundly altered the course of world history. Postwar instabilities led straight toward a global depression and a second world state of war. The war sparked the Bolshevik Revolution, which led to the Soviet Marriage and subsequently the Cold War. It created Middle Eastern nations and aggravated ethnic tensions that the U.s.a. 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 upwards nationalist passions, American attitudes toward radicalism, dissent, and clearing were poisoned. Postwar disillusionment shattered Americans' hopes for the progress of the modern world. The war came and went, leaving in its identify the bloody wreckage of an old globe through which the United States traveled to a new and uncertain futurity.

Eleven. Chief Sources

1. Woodrow Wilson Requests State of war (April 2, 1917)

In this speech before Congress, President Woodrow Wilson made the example for America's entry into Earth War I.

two. 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 Greenwich Village, New York and Paris, France. When the Dandy 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 conceptualize those of his countrymen, a one thousand thousand of whom would be deployed to France. Seeger's writings were published posthumously. The first selection is excerpted from a letter Seeger wrote to theNew 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 police 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 nine, 1917)

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

5. W.Eastward.B DuBois, "Returning Soldiers" (May, 1919)

In the aftermath of Earth War I, W.East.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 every bit a nurse in Washington D.C. during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Hither, she writes to a former classmate however enrolled at the Haskell Plant, a government-run boarding school for Native American students in Kansas, and describes her work as a nurse.

vii. Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919)

During Globe War I, Woodrow Wilson ready forth a vision for a new global future of democratic self-decision. The United States had controlled the Philippines since the Spanish-American War. Later on Globe 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 brand the following case for Filipino independence. It would be fifteen years until the United States acted and, in 1935, Manuel Quezon became the offset president of the Philippines.

8. Boy Scout Charge (1917)

In this 1917 photograph, The Male child Scouts of America charge up 5th Avenue in New York City in a "Wake Up, America" parade to support recruitment efforts. Most 60,000 people attended this single parade.

9. "I Want Yous" (1917)

In this state of war poster, Uncle Sam points his finger at the viewer and says, "I desire you lot for U.S. Ground forces." 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 Due west. 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 Academy Press, 2018).

Recommended Reading

• Capozzola, Christopher. Uncle Sam Wants You: Globe War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2010.
• Coffman, Edward M. The War to Finish 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 Nations. New York: Cambridge University Printing, 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'due south 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 Printing, 1975.
• Gerwarth, Robert, and Erez Manela, eds. Empires at State of war: 1911–1923. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2015.
• Greenwald, Maurine W. Women, War, and Work: The Touch on of World War I on Women Workers in the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980.
• Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Anxiety: Blackness 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 Gild. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979.
• Jensen, Kimberly. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the Get-go Earth War. Champaign: Academy of Illinois Printing, 2009.
• Keene, Jennifer. Doughboys, The Dandy War, and the Remaking of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
• Kennedy, David. Over Here: The Offset Earth 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 Globe Social club. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
• MacMillan, Margaret. The War That Concluded Peace: The Route to 1914. New York: Random House, 2014.
• Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Movement: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the Country, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• White potato, 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 Get-go World War Created Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Rosenberg, Emily. Financial Missionaries to the Earth: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930. 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 Anarchism: Chicago in the Red Summertime of 1919. Champaign: University of Illinois Printing, 1970.
• Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Sons: The Epic Story of America's Bully Migration. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.
• Williams, Republic of chad L. Torchbearers of Commonwealth: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. Chapel Hill: Academy of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Notes

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