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diff --git a/smith/07_great_war b/smith/07_great_war new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ebc4e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/07_great_war @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ +Woodrow Wilson - 1912, The Great War + +Atlantic Ocean allowed US to be isolationist, but +- expanding world trade +- US extranational interventions +- Increasingly powerful navies +Began to threaten US. + +First three years of Great War: +- Wilson maintains neutrality +- But supplying more food and supplies to GB & France +- German submarine attacks American ship, provoking congress + +- Segregated army +- African-Americans moved urban and north for jobs, racism reasons + +When war interrupted, Wilson shifted his focus from internal +progressivism to int'l affairs. Believed God was calling him to shape +the world landscape. + +Questions: +What caused the Great War? +Why did the US join the conflict? +How did the adm of Pres. Wilson mobilize the war effort? +How did Wilson promote his plans for a peaceful postwar world order? +What were its consequences domestically and abroad? + +Great War +- Wilson had a personally difficult time handling the war: his wife died +- Causes (instabilities) + - Imperial competition + - Hypernationalism + - Ethnic hatred, racism + - Alliance system: Central, Allies + - Gets everyone involved +- "Jingoism run mad" + - German system was dangerous to world order (recently organized) + - Powerful enough to challenge GB supremacy and attack old + enemies, France and Russia. + - Austro-Hungarian Empire: unstable combination of 11 ethnicities + - Wanted to oppress nearby Bosnia (Slavic) +- Archduke Francis Ferdinand assassinated by Serbian nationalist + - Wanted to go to war, even though ultimatums were resolved. + - Used Russian forces to provoke AH. +- GB enters war at attack of Belgium. + - One of the five global empires +- Charles Schwab, pres. of Bethlehem Steel, an arms merchant + - Secures order from GB for arms + - 8x revenues +- British propaganda + - JP Morgan lent millions to GB. + - Helps get US involved "in thought and in deed" + +1894, Gen. Alfred von Schlieffen designed plan for Germany + - Defeat France in 4 weeks by taking Paris + - Go through Belgium + - Then, 2 weeks before Russia is prepared, attack + - Wanted to avoid two-front war + - By November, Germany, France in a war of attrition + +Trench Warfare +- Cold, atrocious conditions: surrounded by dead bodies, starve, PTSD + - Modern Warfare: machine guns, tanks, submarines, tear gas + chem + +- U-Boats/Submarines by Germany around GB coast + - Germany dangerous to ships because GB flew false flags + - US/Wilson wanted to keep shipping to all combatants (neutrality) + - Lusitania attacked by Germany, killing 1260 people in May + - American newspapers denounced Germany + - Small group of Americans demand forceful response + - Wilson responds with only "a next sinking will be considered + act of aggression" + + - Germany sinks *Arabic* ship with 2 Americans (also GB) in August + - ``Arabic Pledge'': Germany promises to end unrestricted submarines + - Mar 1916: Sussex (France) sunk with many American passengers + - May 1916: Germany agrees not to attack merchant & passenger ships + without warning + - This means that a German violation forces America + - Germany is starving GB population, and GB Germany. + - Interventionist v. Isolationist + - Interventionists mostly war profiteers in NE/midwest + +Jan 1917: Wilson's Congressional Speech + ``Covenant of Cooperative Peace'' (League of Nations + - Wants to end the war + - Peace without victory (no reparations) + - open diplomacy: no secret treaties or alliances + - freedom of the seas + - self-determination + +1917, Germany to unrestrict submarine use to block GB, FR supplies + - Germans deeply underestimated US force + - Zimmerman Telegram: secret German telegram asks Mexico to atk US + - Incensed American opinion + - America declares war, landing troops in Jun 1917 + - Other motives + - British propaganda + - Wilsonian Idealism: use WWI to make the world safe for + democracy and avoid future conflict + - But the US needed to join the war for negotiation power + - Corporate monetary concerns + +Selective Service Act + - 18--45yo could be drafted + - 2m drafted and 2m volunteered + - 18th amendment (prohibition) passed in 1918 --- wartime motives + - Grain not to beer but to army + - Sober factory workers for industrialists + - Some moralistic concerns + +The Great War ended a sense of laissez-faire government + - National Railroad Administration coordinates companies, workers, + routes + - National War Labor Board improves labor conditions + - Equal wages for women "in wartime industries" + - Minimum wage + - Wants to keep the supply chain coming (total war) + - Ends after war + - Liberty/war bonds + - Espionage and Sedition Acts + - Espionage: don't interfere with recruitment or encourage + "disloyalty" + - Obstruction or aiding enemy is 20 years' jailtime + - Banned critical journals/magazines + - Sedition Act: prohibited abusive, profane, negative gov't + speech + - Anti-free speech militia worked illegally for Attorney General + +Committe on Public Information (CPI) + - Trying to sell the American people on Wilson's war effort + - Recruited people working in arts, advertising, media + - 4 minute men: 4 minute speechers on why the US fights, portray the + Germans as "blood-thirsty huns" + +NAWSA w/ Carrie Chapman Catt +- Work inside the old system +- Women are more virtuous so would improve the political culture +- State-by-state strategy proves ineffective + +NWP w/ Alice Paul +- More radical suffragists: inspired by British suffrage movement +- Wanted federal suffrage amendment +- Picketed the White House + - Arrested/imprisoned for obstructing traffic +- Hunger strikes, willing to suffer for human rights + - Makes Woodrow Wilson look bad, so he begrudgingly supports in Fall + 1918 as "a war measure" + - 19th amendment ratified in 1920 + +America helps win the war +- Mar 1918: Germans launch massive offensive in France +- July 1918: Allies mobilize counter forces +- Fall 1918: Meuse-Argonne Offensive + - Largest and bloodiest battle for the American Expedition Forces + - Allies have bigger numbers and win, pushing back German front +- Armistice on Nov 11, 1918 + +Wilson's 14 points: Working towards League of Nations +Treate of Versailles +- David Lloyd George -- Brit prime minister +- Clemenceau -- France +- Orlando -- Italian +- Wilson, with an exclusively Dem party, attends negotiations + - Gets none of what he wants + - No disarmament + - No elimination of trade barriers + - No open diplomacy or peace w/o victory + - And couldn't join League of Nations because senate Repub blocked +- Germany, Russia not in attendance + - Article 231, War Guilt Clause, requires $33BB German reparations + - Also military costs + +Longlasting results +- American Military manpower accelerates +- National Security State develops +- Economic Change/profit: America #1 creditor nation (private financier) +- Still internal conflict in America |