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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
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