America and

the First World

War
22 February 2017
 1.Zimmerman
IDs Telegram

2. Wilson’s 14 points

3. The Great Migration

4. Commission on
Training Camp
Activities

5. Espionage and
Sedition Acts
Major Questions

1. Why did the U.S. enter WWI?

2. How and why is WWI considered to be the high point of

Progressivism?

3. What were the major domestic impacts of the war?

4. How did the war change the meaning of “American”?

How the War Begins:
 An Industrialized War
● New technologies: mustard gas, machine guns, barbed wire
● Most fighting in European theatre; settles into bloody stalemate in trenches
● 11 million combatants; 7 million civilians left dead; kills an entire generation
● Leads to widespread disillusion in the potential of human progress
● U.S. loses about 117,00 men; emerges from war as a new int’l power BUT is
not ready to take on that role
 In a 1914 speech, Wilson asks
Americans to stay “neutral
in fact, as well as in name”

The U.S. population is “drawn

from many nations, and
Neutrality (1914- chiefly from nations now at
war”
17) Tells Americans that their
Official policy of the Wilson love of country and
Administration loyalty to U.S. should
keep them bound
together

In reality, Wilson, and most

Americans, hold sympathy
with the Allies
Wilson wins re-election in 1916
● Runs on slogan “He Kept Us Out of the War”
● Re-elected due to the new voting women in the West - many women are
pacifists during the War
○ Ex: Carrie Chapman Catt & Jane Addams found help lead Woman’s
Peace Parade in 1914; later found Woman’s Peace Party
○ Pacifist mov’t funded by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford as well
○ See as anti-American when America enters the war
Difficult Neutrality
• America is deeply tied to Great
Britain, economically and
culturally
• Wilson is an ardent Anglophile
• German is the second-most
spoken language in the US

• Germany’s unrestricted
submarine warfare also
challenges U.S neutrality

Lusitania sinking 7 May 1915;

kills 1,200 ppl including
128 Americans
U.S. involved in Mexican Revolution
Wilson participates in most interventions in Latin
America in U.S. history

extension of Roosevelt and Taft policies

U.S intervention in Mexican Rev. early testing

grounds before U.S. entry into WWI

Mexican Rev. started in 1911, overthrow pres. Porfirio

Diaz; president now pro-democracy Francisco
Madero

Madero overthrown by Gen. Huerta

U.S. helps overthrow Huerta and install pro-U.S.

Carranza - but he is unpopular

1916, revolutionary Pancho Villa raids New

 1. Germany resumes submarine
warfare 31 January 1917

2. Zimmerman Telegram : From

Germany to Mexico

a. promises to help Mexico

regain territories lost to
the U.S.
U.S. Enters the 3. Economic incentives: U.S.
War - why? loaned France and Britain tons
of $$
Four reasons, both short- and
a. By April 1917, U.S. lent the
long-term
Allies $2.3 billion; Germany
$27 million

4. The “Rape of Belgium” had

long been a humanitarian issue

a. Britain kept emphasizing

German brutality, hoping
 America enters the war on 6 April
1917
● Wilson asks Congress on 2 April for a declaration, arguing the U.S.
needs to make the “World safe for democracy”
● He wants a “war without hate” -- for America to fight for justice, not to
destroy Germany
● Selective Service Act (18 May 1917) creates draft
○ 2.8 mil are drafted; 2 mil volunteer
U.S. not ready for full-scale war
Prior to draft, U.S. army has 120,000 men with
no combat experience; small ammunition
reserves

U.S. Fights with a “minimum engagement”

policy

Means American troops fight in their own

battalions

Wilson reluctant to totally commit U.S. troops

and resources

seeks to protect American interests, esp.

economic ones

Few soldiers actually see battle; but their fresh-

faces bring hope and morale to Allied
Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Jan. 1918
Outlines his own vision of a post-war world

Makes WWI a fight against imperialism

Wilson demands:

end to secret treaties

free int’l trade

self-determination of colonized
peoples

creation of a “general association of

nations” to secure political
independence for small and large
WWI seen by historians as the
height of progressivism
Federal government grows, progressive reformers are able to
implement their policies, use of statistics, health reforms, etc.
The Commission on Training Camp Activities
(CTCA); est. 1917
Wanted to prevent the corruption of men
in military camps

Monitored habits of troops

Regulated drinking, encouraged personal

hygiene

Starts a massive campaign against

Venereal Disease

fear that troops will contract VD

abroad and infect their wives,
sweethearts

“A German bullet is cleaner than a

WWI dramatically Expansion of the federal
influences the government

homefront Stymies immigration

Increases hostility to foreign-

born Americans

Leads to wartime labor

shortages

Women and African

Americans enter the
workforce in new
numbers
The Great Migration

About 1 million African Americans move to Northern and Western

urban centers - abandoning the South

Creates new black cultural centers

City Black pop, 1910 Black pop, 1920 % increase

New York 91,709 152,467 66.3%

Philadelphia 84,459 134,229 58.9%

Chicago 44,103 109,458 148.2%

St. Louis 43,960 69,854 58.9%

Detroit 5,741 40,838 611.3%

Pittsburgh 25,623 37,725 47.2%

Cleveland 8,448 34,451 307.8%

Map of the Great Migration
Women join the war effort in many ways
More than 25,000 women serve in France; half
are nurses; rest are secretaries,
ambulance drivers, telephone operators

Help Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA

Women also enter the workforce, about 1

million find jobs in war industries

Gov’t creates Women’s Bureau in 1918 -

leads first gov’t survey of women’s
employment

War service “earns” women the right to vote

Wilson supports suffrage amendment in

1918 saying it was “vital to winning
Fed Gov’t controls industries to promote war

Creation of the War Industries Board (1917-19)

helps ensure efficient production of war supplies

creates Fuel Administration which controls coal output and fuel

prices

Est. of National War Labor Policies Board (1918-19)

ensures a happy labor force

enacts 8-hr day, minimum living wage, collective bargaining rights

AFL membership sors from 2.7 mil to 5 mil

Ex: After 1918 RR strike - gov’t nationalized the RR in some areas

Promoting War; Suppressing Dissent
U.S. finances war through War bonds and Liberty
Loans

⅔ of war paid by these

Americans encouraged to conserve food; Herbert

Hoover and his Food Administration ests ration
days

Desire to save grain helps get 18th amendment

passed

Committee on Public Information (1917-19) uses

propaganda to suppress criticism of the war
“On Wednesdays, we don’t eat led by George Creel & 75,000 volunteers “Four-
Wheat”
Minute Men”
 Anti-German Backlash
By 1914, about 9 million German immigrants or heritage
Americans

German second-most common language

¼ high-schools teach German

Wilson in 1917 told Congress “there are millions of men

and women of German birth and native sympathy
that live among us. .. If there be disloyalty, it will be
dealt with a firm hand of repression.”

Americans fear sabotage, attack German communities,

culture, and language:

bans books, music, language

German towns change their name

WWI heightens existing fears about
immigrants
Contemporaries call this the “race problem”

Americans want all ethnicities to assimilate;

ideal of the “melting pot” emerges in 1900s

Hostility grows towards all immigrants who

did not assimilate

Wilson launches campaign against these

“hyphenates” arguing that “America does
not consist of groups”

these people seen as unpatriotic and

dangerous

Part of a general push for “100% Americanism

Wartime restriction of civil liberties: free
speech is limited
Espionage Act (1917) -makes it illegal to interfere with recruitment;
also allows gov’t to prosecute “false statements” that impede
military success; postmaster can ban critical publications

upheld by Supreme Court in 1919 in Schenck v. United States

Sedition Act (1918) - makes it a crime to write or say anything that

casts “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the U.S gov’t, the military,
or the flag

repealed in Dec. 1920

Under these laws, 1,500 pacifists, socialist, anarchists arrested

Eugene Debs goes to prison for 3 years

The war ends on November 11, 1918,
although peace becomes
controversial in the U.S.