American Imperialism and World War I Overview

All right, so this is Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation, Chapter 21. This is America and the Great War. The Great War is in reference to World War I. At the time, there had not yet been a World War II, to call it World War I, so most nations simply refer to the conflict as the Great War. Now this chapter begins a little bit earlier than that. It continues where the last chapter left off in the era of imperialism. So we'll discuss kind of briefly first some other American imperial adventures before getting to World War I itself, but World War I is the focus of... of this chapter. Probably the biggest supporter of imperialism in the United States was Teddy Roosevelt, who did assume the presidency in 1901. Roosevelt had been the vice president under William McKinley. Here you can see the ticket for the presidential race in the year 1900, but William McKinley was assassinated. And when he was assassinated, that put Roosevelt, who was a great advocate of American expansion, that put him at the forefront of now American foreign policy. So with Roosevelt now the most powerful person in the United States and maybe even the world, he is able to kind of exercise a greater influence in. global affairs. Roosevelt's approach to imperialism is embodied with this quote, speak softly and carry a big stick. So we might say that this is Teddy Roosevelt's approach to, I would just say foreign policy. Roosevelt ended up being president from 1901 until 1908. So at least the first decade or so of the 20th century. And what speak softly and carry a big stick meant was that the speak softly part had more to do with the diplomacy aspect of it. In other words, that the United States maybe shouldn't make. kind of strong demands, you know, don't be a jerk, essentially, at least on the diplomatic level. But the carry a big stick part, that was in reference to the military. So in other words, the United States should have a giant military, but should use it kind of in a more timid way, or again, in Roosevelt's words, to speak softly. And we can clearly see this. in the modernization of the United States Navy, which if you go back to the Civil War, the United States Navy was not comparable to the powers of the world by 1906. The United States had the second strongest navy, and it would be with this navy that the United States could, in some essence, kind of bully. even though they were speaking softly, but, you know, could use it as intimidation, especially against their neighbors. Now, of Roosevelt's foreign policy accomplishments, one of them was seeking peace in the Russo-Japanese War. The Russo-Japanese War, we'll call this a conflict between Japan and Russia. as you can probably guess from the title here. But Roosevelt played a role in mediating that peace. In fact, he won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for having negotiated it. And this was sort of part of the broader American interest in protecting its own investments and own interests in... Asia. Remember open door policy from the last chapter, this was a policy that referred to um the ways in which imperial powers could do business in china and it was a way for the americans to kind of get in on this imperial competition um and so you know under roosevelt it was the use of the american great white fleet as it was called um this was the nickname for the u.s uh we'll say naval fleet and we might say that under roosevelt it was often, we'll say, paraded, probably around the world, certainly as an effort to kind of flex off American power, to intimidate, for sure. You know, this was definitely part of, you know, Roosevelt's big stick policy, so to speak. And so at the very least, the United States, and this is maybe a little bit foreshadowing of things to come, but... As time goes on, as the United States continues to project its power outwards, and as other imperial nations like Japan potentially project their power outwards, the Pacific Ocean is going to be a source of tension between both of these emerging powers. The United States and Japan are very similar in that they're somewhat late to the imperialism game, but certainly want to exert their power and exercise influence over the... over the Pacific Ocean. Under Roosevelt, though, the United States had less direct interventions. Recall that there are two sort of forms or versions of imperialism. There is sort of a direct version of it, and the direct version is what we saw in places like Hawaii, for example, or the Philippines. Whereas the imperialism under Roosevelt was much more indirect. And what we mean by that is simply direct imperialism is taking over the nation's governments, kind of controlling them outright. Whereas indirect imperialism is allowing for governments to stay in place, but extracting benefits from them, namely in the form of... economic resources. This is probably more the case in Latin America. So whereas the United States never really outright takes over any Latin American countries and incorporates them under the U.S. government like Hawaii or the Philippines, it certainly intervenes militarily and also exerts influence over Latin America in a way to economically benefit the United States. This map here is showing you... All of the various countries that the United States had sent troops into, you know, in the early 20th century. There's a lot of yellow in here, right, including U.S. troops that were sent to Mexico several times, Cuba several times, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Puerto Rico is an American possession. U.S. troops sent to Nicaragua, sent to Panama and sent to Venezuela. So at least in the eyes of Americans, especially those who were in policy or in charge of policy, you know, they certainly felt that they had a right or obligation to intervene in Latin American countries and hence might kind of give the United States the nickname the iron fisted neighbor. So this is a reference to U.S. slash Latin American relations. where the United States certainly felt that it was more than appropriate and maybe even desirable for them to really encroach upon and violate the sovereignty of Latin American nations. This was made more clear, or we might say more public, by Roosevelt's announcement of the Roosevelt Corollary. The Roosevelt Corollary was building off of a previous doctrine of the United States. of the United States that was geared towards Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine. Let's start with the Monroe Doctrine first. This was issued something around the 1820s. And in fact, when it was issued, the relationship between the United States and Latin America was much stronger. The nations or people of Latin America had recently revolted against the Spanish crown, whereas the Americans revolted against the British crown. And so there was a sense of solidarity. And so the United States issued in the 1820s, it said that no European powers. should, we'll say, encroach on Latin America. And the idea was that, you know, there was a fear that after many of these nations revolted against the Spanish crown, there was a fear that Europeans would come back. And the Americans were essentially saying, look, if Europeans want to come back into the new world. We are siding with our Latin American neighbors. Now, fast forward to the early 1900s, Roosevelt is essentially saying the same thing, but we can interpret the Roosevelt Corollary as kind of more possessive. The difference between 1820 and, you know, I'll just guess here, 1904, something like that for the Roosevelt Corollary. The difference is that here, the United States actually has the power to... enforce this. Back in the 1820s, if Europeans wanted to encroach upon the Americas, the United States was in no position really to stop it. But here they are. And we might summarize the Roosevelt Corollary as being, you know, the United States, or we might say the US, kind of claiming, we'll just say, quote unquote, authority over Latin America. And it's certainly a time period where U.S.-Latin American relationships are not the greatest. The United States very much views Latin America kind of as like their own backyard. It's a very indirect form of imperialism. So one great example of this is in the construction of the Panama Canal, which was, you know, the construction of it. I want to say it was. Was it 1916 it was completed? 1916 or 1914, one of those dates. But the Panama Canal and the decision to build the Panama Canal was kind of in part due to this kind of viewpoint that the Americans had. So if we're looking at the map here, this is the country of Panama right here. And the goal was to build a canal, which is a man-made river, across. The idea being that it would make it much easier for ships to just cut through here on their way, instead of having to go the long way around South America. And so there had been a couple of efforts to construct the canal, but none of them were really good until the Americans got involved. The big problem, though, is that Panama, at the time, was part of Colombia. Columbia, you also see right here. So it was actually part of Columbia. And initially, the United States offered the Colombian government $10 million to build the canal. The Colombian government said no and wanted $20 million. And so instead, what the United States did, rather than forking up $20 million, instead, they assisted with Panama's independence. Again, in a very sort of Roosevelt. esque way, and that was just making sure that the Navy was close by when the Panamanians decided to declare independence. So we might say about Panama's independence, it was maybe aided by the U.S. by the U.S. in exchange. for U.S. ability to construct a canal. And that was the deal. And eventually, Panama was successful in breaking away. American businesses got involved. It also proved to be a pretty good photo opportunity for the president himself, who wasn't the president anymore at the time. But, and... It was a great engineering accomplishment, and in some ways you could say, well, it assisted Panama in their effort to break away. But on the other hand, we could say, well, they certainly undermined Colombian sovereignty in the process. But in total, having a canal between North and South America ended up being rather quite useful. So after Roosevelt's time in office, it gets passed on to his successor, William Howard Taft. And Taft was a little bit less eager to involve the United States in global affairs, at least in kind of a militaristic way. And so Taft focused on what's known as dollar diplomacy. And that was for the U.S. to instead invest in other nations. Kind of, we might just say, like less military. You know, several times the United States had to send in troops to protect economic interests. Roosevelt, or sorry, Taft and dollar diplomacy was kind of a less militaristic approach to imperialism, more about investing in other nations, specifically in terms of Latin America and Asia. Those were kind of two big areas. invest in other nations. For Woodrow Wilson, for Wilson, we want to know him mostly for the president for World War I. But before World War I broke out, while Wilson was president, there was maybe at least one intervention that's worth mentioning, and that is what happened between the United States and Mexico. In 1910, Mexico went through a revolution. This caused, we might say, concern. for U.S. investments, and we might say political support. After 1910, the Mexican government went through a process in which leaders would often consolidate or control power for a short period of time before being deposed. And so it was kind of, you know, leader after leader after leader. It was a lot of political instability. And so for the United States, looking at Mexico, their neighboring country, they wanted to ensure that whoever ended up on top was pro-American policies. And a lot of those policies were concerned around, you know, protecting U.S. investments. And so in one incident in particular, the United States troops were sent to Veracruz, which is a city in Mexico. So we might say that U.S. troops landed in the Mexican city to, again, protect U.S. interests. And as a result, several small, we might say small battles broke out in which a handful of people, a couple hundred people, in fact, were killed. There were factions in the Mexican Revolution that the United States supported. There were factions in the Mexican Revolution that the United States did not support. One of those factions was led by Pancho Villa, who was amongst the handful of people vying for political control in Mexico. And during the process, Pancho Villa had led raids into the United States. which resulted in a handful of Americans being killed crossing the border into New Mexico. In response, the U.S. sent troops into Mexico. All right, sent troops into Mexico. The Mexican Revolution would rage on, but it would be events in Europe that would divert attention away. But at the very least, we can see how... in this case under Wilson that the United States is violating the sovereignty of Mexico and kind of the tit for tat which occurred in the aftermath of it. So I would say overall keep in mind that despite the fact the United States didn't actually take over any countries in Latin America during the era of imperialism, there certainly was still an exercise of control or an informal or indirect form of imperialism that the United States often utilized. It's one of the lower points in U.S. Latin American history. In the 1930s, the United States will pursue what's called the good neighbor policy and the idea or the inspiration by calling it a good neighbor policy. It sort of infers that in the decades earlier that the United States was not being quite a good neighbor, or as your textbook puts it, the United States was being an iron-fisted neighbor. as Brinkley puts it. Okay, so now moving on to the First World War, which is the primary focus of this chapter. World War I is one of those events that often gets kind of overshadowed, I would say, in popular imagination, especially from an American perspective. The Civil War, World War II, the American Revolution, some of these conflicts tend to have or hold a higher importance in American history, but... What's important to understand about World War I was that at the time, it was very much felt in the U.S. It had a dramatic impact on the United States and the rest of the world. It's one of those events that is kind of fundamentally transformative in the way that society, politics, culture, you know, everything else that's involved. So the war itself, World War I. stretches from the year 1914 to 1918 in terms of the actual fighting. So the war lasted for four years. The U.S., however, doesn't get formally involved in the war until 1917. So for most of the war, the United States is not directly involved. It only comes in at the very end. Now, the causes for World War I are very complicated, and there's a lot of debate over exactly what led to its outbreak, but we can certainly identify some contributing factors. First and foremost, the alliance systems allowed for a small conflict to turn into a much larger conflict. So you might just say that European powers... were allied with each other before the war. A good example of this is something they called the Triple Entente. That was the alliance with Britain, France, and Russia. And alliances do several things. First and foremost, it takes a small conflict and turns it into a big conflict. This cartoon is kind of poking fun at that. You know, here you have a conflict that begins between two relatively minor nations. But because this person's ally is this guy back here, it brings this person into the fight because this person's ally is this person back here. It brings that person into a fight. So there's a tendency for alliances to make smaller conflicts much, much bigger, in fact, spill into a world war in this case. But there's another thing we can say about the alliance system, and that is it causes weaker countries or weaker powers to act more boldly or confidently. If a smaller, weaker nation knows that it has an alliance with a stronger, more powerful nation, it could act in a way that is looking for war. And that very much was the case as well. Another factor is nationalism. Again, we might just call this pride in one's nation. All the countries involved were very much motivated by fighting for one's country. It's very much a nationalistic war. Germans against Russians, against French, against Americans, etc., etc. There were kind of two other things also working behind the scenes. Recall imperialism. Now, we saw some examples in which the imperial powers worked together in order to avoid conflict. That could only last so long. And a last one we'll add here is militarism. In fact, the causes of World War I are kind of conveniently described in this acronym. And that... is mania. So mania helps us remember the causes of World War I, M, militarism, A, alliances, N, nationalism, I, imperialism, and then the last A in mania stands for assassination. And that was what started this all off. There are sort of the long-term causes and the short-term cause. So All these things regarding the alliances and pride in one's nation and the buildup of militaries and the imperial competition, all of these things had been building up for years, and then it all sort of exploded in 1914. When Franz Ferdinand, he is the heir, so he's like the prince, to the Austrian throne, right? Prince to the Austrian throne. So he's next in line to be the Austrian emperor. Here he is right here. He was visiting the city of Sarajevo, and it was there that Serbian nationalists, or Slavic nationalists, as we might want to describe them, where they assassinated him. So he was assassinated. And after his assassination, the government of Austria. blamed the government on Serbia. In fact, if we look back at this political cartoon, this person right here is supposed to be Serbia, and this person right here is supposed to be Austria. So the Austrians blamed the Serbians for this assassination, and as a result, You know, because all these nations were essentially allied with each other, Europe descended into chaos and eventually into warfare in which two camps would be fighting one another. On the one side, we had the allies. The allies consisted of Serbia's ally, Russia. Russia was an ally of Serbia. Russia, as we know, had allied themselves with France. which had also been an ally of Britain. Also in 1917, we can also add the United States to the Allies. Meanwhile, fighting for the central powers was Austria, or at the time was called Austria-Hungary, was Austria's ally Germany. And lastly was the Ottoman Empire, who had been a, in a lot of ways, a historic enemy of Russia and saw it as an opportunity to jump in. So again, the two sides fighting each other. We want to be able to sort of line these things up for the allies, Russia, France, Britain, and later the United States for the central powers, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. So initially for the United States, what Wardrow Wilson, the president at the time, the time did was to declare neutrality. That was the U.S. is not picking a side. In Wilson's eyes, this was a war that did not concern the United States right away. But the reality was that the United States was, in fact, not totally neutral. That when it came to trade and especially money, right, loans, American business. The U.S. was tied very closely to the Allies, tied to the Allies, we'll say, financially. So this notion of neutrality, yes, it was a political neutrality, but economically speaking, it wasn't. During the course of the war, however, German policies would tend to rub the United States the wrong way and eventually caught... be a cause for concern. One of the new technologies that Germany used were called U-boats, underwater boats or submarines. And the German strategy for using submarines or U-boats, we'll say submarines used by Germany to, we'll say, isolate. Britain. You know, Britain as an island nation relied very heavily on their imperial empire. In fact, the British had built the largest imperial empire in the world. And so the German strategy was to sink every single ship that was attempting to make its way around British waters. The British were very clever. in the way that they avoided this, sometimes disguising their ships as civilian ships and sometimes disguising them as American ships. And so the German policy went back and forth between what they called restricted. which would be to only shoot military targets and only shoot British ships, to unrestricted, which was to shoot any ship, right, regardless. And so it's when the Germans practiced this unrestricted warfare, where they were to shoot pretty much any ship, that Americans got caught up in the crossfire. And, you know, this was a reason for American outrage. Very famously, one of these ships, the Lusitania, which was a civilian ship, was sunk by German submarines in 1915. 1,200 people died as a result of that, 128 Americans. And especially for the United States, this was national outrage, the fact that Germany was responsible for killing Americans. We would see Germany go back and forth between restricted and unrestricted. but pretty soon the United States would become involved. Now, despite the Lusitania, there was still a strong sense in the United States for pacifism or for peace, right? Pacifism essentially means to not fight, right? So to be a pacifist means that you don't really believe in violence or you don't want to use violence. And Wilson ran in 1916 for his re-election. on the slogan, he kept us out of war. So he kept us out of war was Wilson's campaign slogan in the 1916 election. In other words, Europe is mired in this incredibly deadly conflict. Look at me, Woodrow Wilson. I kept this out of the war, you should vote for me. And as a result, Wilson won. So at the very least, we could say that the American public, you know, maybe they weren't voting for Wilson only because of this reason. But at the very least, Wilson was still, you know, this message resonated enough with the American population that they decided to vote for Wilson again. However, though, not long after Wilson wins his reelection campaign in 1916, promising to keep us, or not really promising, but certainly vote for me because I did keep us out of war, the United States becomes involved. First and foremost, Germany goes back to using an unrestricted version of submarine warfare, essentially making American ships and American passengers at risk. Second... the United States intercepts what's known as the Zimmerman Telegram. This was a telegram from Germany to Mexico offering to take U.S. land. In exchange for an alliance. So essentially what the Zimmerman telegram proposed was that if Mexico was to help Germany in their war and potentially attack the United States, Germany would be willing to give land. that belonged to the United States back to Mexico. Essentially, this was land that was taken back in the Mexican-American War back in the year 1848. Mexico at the time, though, was still in the midst of a revolution and not really in any position to jump into the First World War. The only thing that the telegram did was after it got intercepted, it was just another reason for the Americans to be furious with... Germany. So through a combination of Germany's decision to go back to unrestricted submarine warfare, in addition to the somewhat embarrassing Zimmerman telegram, Woodrow Wilson went to the U.S. Congress, gave a message to them, and in April 1917, the U.S. officially joins World War I, right? In Wilson's war message, Wilson made it very clear what the United States was fighting for. And this quote is somewhat synonymous with. American involvement in World War I, at least from Wilson's perspective, and that was Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy, right? This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. So joining on the Allied side and fighting against the central powers. So as soon as the United States made its formal declaration of war, it was time for the United States to mobilize. Mobilize, if you're not familiar, essentially means like to get ready for war. At the time, you know, they referred to the World War I as being quote-unquote over there. Over there was in reference to the war in Europe. There's actually a rather popular song that was sang about over there, you know, the war in Europe, and now it was time for the United States military to get ready for it. However, though, the nature of the war by the time the United States started to mobilize and troops started landing in Europe had changed. A very significant development had happened in Russia, which was one of the Allied powers. And that was Russia, we'll say Russia, surrendered to Germany. And part of the reason as to why Russia surrendered to Germany was because of the Bolshevik Revolution. And the Bolshevik Revolution was caused when Lenin, we'll call him the leader of... And oftentimes it's just called the Russian Revolution. When Lenin successfully took over the Russian government and his organization, the Bolsheviks, which we should consider to be communists, effectively took control. So we might say about the Bolshevik Revolution, this is the ending of the Tsar, who was the ruler, aka the Russian Empire, and the start of the Soviet Union. So in short, the Russian Revolution is the transformation of Russia to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union is significant because the Soviet Union is the first communist nation in the world. Communism as an ideology, we talked about it earlier, how it appealed to the working class. In Russia, there wasn't a very strong working class. Russia was primarily an agrarian nation. However, though, the Bolsheviks were in the right place at the right time. The war had gone very badly for the Russian Empire. You know, the Tsar who had led his people into World War I. Russia was defeated somewhat embarrassingly on the battlefield under the Tsarist regime. And the Tsar eventually ended up abdicating. He just gave up his throne. And once he left, in the midst of the power vacuum, the Bolsheviks gained power, right? Lenin gained power. Bolshevik is the name of Lenin's party. And as a consequence of that, one of the things that Lenin did was to surrender. So the Russians are out of the war, right? They're out of the war. They're going through a revolution. Lenin himself has to consolidate power. In fact, after World War I, Russia goes into what's known as the Russian Civil War. And that's pretty much Lenin and the Bolsheviks trying to fight everyone else for power. Now, why is that important? Well, it's important because it happens in the same year, 1917, as you can also see here, as when the United States joins. So as the U.S. joins the war, Russia exits the war, and the United States in some ways kind of takes its place, we might say. In order to raise an army for the war, the United States issues a military draft, the Selective Service Act. We might call this conscription. or a mandatory, I don't know if there's any such thing as a non-mandatory, but a mandatory draft. And in fact, most of the United States troops, you see down here, create a military draft. Most of the United States troops that would serve in World War I would be drafted and not volunteers. The estimated amount of people that served, there were 4 million who would serve and about 2 million that would eventually reach Europe. Once American troops started to land, again, remember, it took kind of, you know, it took a little bit of time. 1917, the war was declared, but it wasn't as if, you know, a million troops just showed up the next day. It took a little while for the draft and training and arming and all those things to take place. But once Americans started to arrive in Europe, they really turned out to be a huge morale boost. Morale is sort of like fighting. spirit, right? Up until that year, for three years, Europeans had been fighting themselves in a very deadly conflict. And they were, you know, they were experiencing or had experienced the realities of war. When Americans arrived, they looked somewhat innocent, somewhat like well-fed. You know, they hadn't quite been experienced the horrors of war yet. So Europeans nicknamed U.S. soldiers doughboys. So doughboys were the nickname for U.S. soldiers in Europe. Again, relatively well-fed and high spirits, good spirits, hadn't quite been exposed to the harsh realities of World War I yet. And so they arrived there. And even though the United States was very much late to the game in terms of their direct involvement, only coming into the war in 1917, some of the battles that took place during the last year of the war, Americans were involved in directly. But at that time, Germany amongst the central powers, and we can see here on this map a little bit of what the war looked like in Europe. So here is Germany and Austria located in the center here. France and Britain on this side. And then most of the war was fought in this territory right here, which was simply just referred to as the Western Front. So once Americans arrived and, you know, started fighting in the later years, 1917, 1918, you know, they did experience very heavy casualties per battle participated in. But in the overall war, most of the fighting had already been done by the time the U.S. arrived. To make a long story short, Germany and the Central Powers, because they were surrounded, were eventually starved into submission. The Americans did play a role in that. But in November of 1918, an armistice was signed, effectively bringing an end to the fighting in World War I. So we might say the armistice ended. World War I in November 1918. All right, November 1918. So not to talk about any of the kind of specific battles themselves, we'll talk a little bit about what the fighting was like. And what played a huge role in World War I in particular was the type of new technology. Now, during the era of imperialism, you know, there had been... Nations with, you know, with sort of very sophisticated technology, but oftentimes during imperialism, it was technologically advanced nations fighting nations that did not have it. You know, the machine gun was one example of this. But World War I would be when industrial nation fights other industrial nation, and the type of warfare that resulted from the technology was something that we describe as trench warfare or war in the trenches. Trench warfare is a type of warfare where offensive attacks are really ineffective. There are several reasons for that. Again, just kind of looking at this map here to give you an idea of the scale. This blue bar down here is 50 miles. And so during the entire course of the war. More or less for four years, the Central Powers and the Allies fought each other in about 50 miles of each other, back and forth for four years. Neither side could make a lot of progress. And that was namely due to the machine gun. The machine gun was such a deadly weapon that ordering an offensive charge into machine guns was straight up suicidal. And in fact, many of the battles during World War I, especially in the early years when military officers didn't quite understand the impact of technology on the battlefield, it led to especially brutal battles, right, where 20,000 people could die in a matter of five minutes. We might just say about machine guns, these were a great defensive weapon. They were so big at the time that you couldn't pick it up and run with it, right? So it was mounted on the ground and anyone who tried to run and attack you, you could just shoot, you know, shoot down an entire army. And so, you know, during the course of the war, you know, nations started to get a little bit more innovative in trying to break the stalemate because it was a stalemate. Neither side could really effectively attack. And so both sides just dug holes in the ground to avoid being shot by the other side. But both sides had tried to use, you know, sort of different technologies. Artillery became bigger and more powerful. Artillery is kind of like cannons, sort of. It can shoot from very, very long distances. Tanks ended up being rather effective during the end of the war. Tanks could essentially drive over trenches, drive over barbed wire, which was also a big technology in the war, laying down defensive barbed wire. So one can't be attacked. But again, tanks were still pretty primitive. They were new inventions and they weren't that effective. But maybe one of the weapons that has become like maybe the most iconic from World War I was the use of chemical weapons, specifically poison gas, or what was sometimes referred to as mustard gas. And this was a weapon that you could shoot at your opponent and the poison gas. would be heavier than the air, so it would settle in the trenches. And if you didn't have a gas mask and you breathed in the poison gas, it would turn your lungs into liquid and you would essentially suffocate to death, you know, above ground. So very brutal in kind of those ways, but, you know, also very creative. It's from the experience of World War I that many countries around the world and international organizations ban chemical weapons today. They are prohibited in warfare because of the impact that they had during the First World War. In addition to the war being fought on land, it also expanded to the skies. Very primitive airplanes saw action during World War I in quote-unquote dogfights. Dogfights were fights between airplanes. Again, the airplanes were not quite advanced enough to carry... like a lot of bombs or anything like that to blow up the other side, but were used mostly for like reconnaissance. Dogfights was when two planes fought, you know, in the air. And then, of course, submarines or U-boats, as we talked about earlier, and these were used most effectively by Germany during the war. So essentially all these things were rather new. You know, tanks, chemical weapons, airplanes, you know, a lot of these things had never... been experienced on the battlefield before. And trench warfare never really got solved before the war was over. Tanks would eventually be the solution to that, but the technology wasn't quite there. Germany surrendered in 1918, essentially being starved out. What made World War I the quote-unquote Great War, and that term's kind of ironic in a sense, was just the sheer number of casualties that were called, or deaths. Um, there had never quite been a war like it. The combat deaths from the war are estimated around 10 million, um, to give you a sense for Russia, 1.8 million people were killed, uh, Germany, which is at the center of it. 2 million people, France, 1.4 million, Britain, 1 million United States, approximately 116,000. or 120 000 if we want to round that up So again, very comparably, compared to the nations that were involved in the war for all of those years, American combat deaths don't quite stack up. But if you compare that 116,000 deaths that the United States experienced to the time that it spent in the war, it's comparable, at least in some sense. So a very high death toll, right? Nothing had ever... Right. been quite on this level before in terms of the amount of people who died. To make matters worse, following the conflict, there was a serious influenza outbreak, sometimes called the Spanish flu. And between 1918 and 1919, it's estimated between 50 to 100 million people died from the influenza or the flu. A lot of global contact. going on as a result of World War I, and that only helped facilitate the spread of this influenza. So not a lot of relief to come after the war either. Now, back home for the United States, World War I had a tremendous impact on the U.S. economy. World War I is what we sometimes refer to as a total war, maybe even the first total war. And a total war is a war in which a society Britain, France, United States, whatever society we're referring to, in which every single resource in that society is dedicated to the war effort. The men, the women, the children. If you're not doing something directly related to the war, then you're doing something indirectly related to the war. It's the total mobilization of a society. In other words, everybody is aware that the war is going on and you're playing some sort of role in it. So for the United States, the art The U.S. became heavily involved, you know, even though it was a short period of time. One example was liberty bonds. If you're not familiar with what a bond is, a bond is something that is sold to citizens by the government. Essentially, you have the U.S. government, right? They are in need of money in order to fight the war. And so you have a citizen. And what the citizen does is that the citizen... buys a bond from the United States. So the citizen gives the U.S. money. In return, the U.S. government gives sort of this little ticket back to the citizen in the form of a bond. And what that bond has is both an interest rate and a time period. So let's say it's a 10-year bond at 5%. And essentially what this allows for is allows for in 10 years, the United States to pay back that bond with added interest. And this was a way for people to, we might say citizens, funded the war in sort of a very direct way, because much of the, or pretty much all of the money that was raised by selling. Of course, they call them liberty bonds in the United States, but broadly speaking, war bonds, was used directly for the war. Of course, there was an expectation that the United States would pay the money back later, would pay a little bit more, depending on what the interest rate was. But it was a way for citizens to, like, bet on their country. And in fact, war bonds were, in many countries, the primary source of revenue for the war, in addition to things like taxation. So... people individually funded the war effort through war bonds or liberty bonds. Another way in which the United States organized the economy for war was to establish the War Industries Board, or WIB, and the WIB would organize U.S. businesses to focus production on the war. And this was somewhat of an interesting approach because if we recall, at least Woodrow Wilson personally was a progressive. And during the progressive era, there had been a very maybe like combative relationship between the United States government and American businesses. However, though, most businesses were willing to fulfill their patriotic duty insofar as they. profited. And it turned out that during the war, a lot of businesses profited, and the WIB was established to kind of better coordinate that. Instead of businesses just being kind of a free-for-all and doing whatever they want, they worked together to make what was needed for the war. So in terms of the things that you need for war, we talked about some of them earlier. You need soldiers, the Selective Service Act. You need money, which is liberty bonds. You need guns for the war. that came in the form of the War Industries Board. But the often or sometimes overlooked thing that you also need for a conflict is you need popular support. You need some creation of propaganda or to convince Americans in this case that the war is worth fighting for. Now, World War I, and this might be one of the reasons why it's often overlooked by other conflicts in American history, is that it was a little bit more contentious in terms of American support for it. And so the U.S. government had to do more to try and convince people to support the war. So propaganda and propaganda, we can probably just describe this as maybe something like information designed to, we'll say, motivate, motivate people for a cause. And so in this case, we are very clearly talking about propaganda to try and keep American support for the war. And in fact, we can see two great examples of propaganda from the First World War. The famous Uncle Sam, I want you for the U.S. Army. And then here we have what we might call a form of negative propaganda, and that is the depiction of the Germans as being brutish, right? Do your part and enlist to destroy the mad. German brute. The government created an official organization called the CPI, or the Committee on Public Information, and this was created to manufacture and, we'll say, spread propaganda. try and get Americans to continue to support the war. But even with propaganda, there were still many who did not agree with the U.S. decision to participate in the war. And so we might say that Congress needed to take even more strict measures to make sure that any opposition to the war was suppressed. And what is very common in wartime, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, we often see that people are willing to surrender some of their civil liberties for the sake of security, or at least in the sake of warfare. So Congress passes a series of laws collectively known as the Espionage and Sedition Acts, 1918 to about, we'll just say 1918. And what these laws do, essentially, is that they make We'll say, make illegal any public expression or opposition, sorry, of opposition to the war illegal. Essentially, any... public expression against the war is made illegal by the Alien and Sedition Acts. And what this was targeting in specific was opposition to the draft, right? Namely, you know, people encouraging other people that if you get drafted, you know, don't go. This is also very clearly a violation, maybe not very, maybe not. clearly, but it's a violation of the First Amendment, right, this was. But nonetheless, the Supreme Court would uphold the Espionage and Sedition Acts, and in a very real and, you know, sort of practical way, individuals were put in prison for expressing anti-war sentiments. Probably the most famous among them was Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for president in 1912, and 1912, yeah. And the leader of the Pullman strike, we might say that he was put in prison under the Sedition and Prison Under the Sedition Act. And once again, you'll find that during other moments historically, there's a tendency to surrender certain civil liberties for the sake of national security or protection. So with the country fully mobilized, right, the United States had all the tools that it needed, the guns, the people, the mindset, the money. to achieve victory. And in 1918, when Germany surrendered, now it was a question of what role would the United States play in the post-war settlement, because there certainly would be a new world order. Several empires would come to an end. The Russian Empire had already ended via the Bolshevik Revolution. The Ottoman Empire, which was on the losing side. the German Empire, and the Austria-Hungarian or Austria-Hungary would also come to an end. All of these empires would no longer exist or survive the war. And so the big question was for those who won the war, what's going to come next? And Woodrow Wilson played a crucial role in that. The United States really benefited. from the fact that it joined the war at the very end, because then it got to have a role to play in the peace settlement. And so what Wilson wanted was collectively known as the 14 points. So the 14 points are what U.S., namely Wilson, wants after the war. And there are sort of several things that we can list here. We don't need to know all of the 14 points, but for example, you know, Wilson wants things like free trade, right? The ability to trade freely with other nations. He wants to reduce arms, right, or weapons. Recall that militarism was one of the causes of the war. And so in general, he would like to see Nations with less, smaller militaries, maybe. No secret alliances. You know, again, this was kind of a big cause of the war. Wilson doesn't want it. Again, recall the notion of making the world safe for democracy. You know, in Wilson's eyes, these things would lead to a safer world for democratic governments. Um, one of the aspects or one part of the League of Nations, or sorry, one part of the 14 points was this notion of the League of Nations, which is probably out of all the 14 points, the one to take note of. The League of Nations would be an international government to, or designed to, maintain. world peace. In other words, what Wilson believed was that, you know, nationalism had played such a crucial role or key role in the outbreak of the war, and if somehow different nations could kind of appeal to a higher power, right, if there was something that was above nations, that perhaps that would be a way of settling disputes. And that's ultimately what the League was designed to do. And so Wilson gave these proposals, right? But unfortunately for Wilson, he's not the only country at the Paris Peace Conference. The Paris Peace Conference, in short, would settle World War I. In Paris in 1919, all of the world powers met. It was quite a spectacle. Here we see a sign, Vive Wilson. All the world powers met in order to figure out what's going to happen after the war is over, after Germany surrendered, what to do with all these empires. And so the Americans came with a set of things, right? We want 14 points, essentially is what Wilson said. But other nations came with other points. And so Wilson wouldn't get completely everything he wanted, but he would have to contend with the other powers. namely those at the Paris Peace Conference that made the crucial decisions, were known as the Big Three. and that was the U.S., France, and Britain, right? The U.S., France, and Britain. They were kind of the, you know, sitting at the big kid table, so to speak, right? They would be the ones who would be the decision makers. Everyone else there would have to kind of contend for their attention and support. Wilson and his 14 points were guided by idealism. Wilson had very lofty goals. To make the world safe for democracy was, again, it's a huge task. And the specifics of it are to be kind of worked out in the meantime. The British, for the most part, they just wanted to maintain the status quo. They were really concerned about their imperial empire, which in fact, part of Wilson's 14 points was to actually discourage imperialism and promote national self-determination or national sovereignty. This caused opposition between the Americans and the British over what to do about imperialism. But probably one of the other countries who was more instrumental in deciding this peace was France, who wanted revenge for the war. You know, France was the nation in which was invaded. During World War I, World War I was fought primarily on French soil, and they didn't want an idealistic world to make everyone safe for democracy. France wanted, like, you know, they wanted revenge. And so part of what came out of the Paris Peace Conference was a much more maybe harsher peace than what was initially wanted by Wilson, right? For example, one of the conditions that France would successfully lobby for. was reparation payments or reparations. And that was to force Germany to pay, you know, quite literally, not just in like the figurative sense, but like financially in terms of money, Germany to pay for the damages of the war. So what ultimately came out of the Paris Peace Conference is known. as the Treaty of Versailles, right? The Treaty of Versailles, in which the United States, again, got kind of some of its demands, but not all of them. We'll talk more about the Treaty of Versailles in a later chapter as it pertains to the outbreak of World War II, because many consider the Treaty of Versailles, or at least historically speaking, consider it to be overly strict in some essence. But as part of the agreement, one thing that Wilson and the Americans did actually get is they did actually get the creation of the League of Nations. It was created. Britain and France agreed to join in on it, and many other nations agreed to join in on it as well. But the problem for Wilson and the problem for the League, quite frankly, was that it really wasn't only... up for Wilson to decide whether or not the United States would join. In fact, it would need approval by the U.S. Congress. And so when the United States, or sorry, when Wilson got back to the U.S., there was a debate over the ratification of the League. And the big question was, should the U.S. join? Which of course is somewhat, you know, I don't know if ironic is the right word, but it certainly is interesting that the League of Nations was... essentially an idea from the American president, yet the United States would eventually never join. And that was thanks in part to people like Henry Cabot Lodge. He was a senator who opposed U.S. joining the league. And amongst the concerns of people like Lodge, he was concerned that if the United States joined the League of Nations, then the United States might end up fighting somebody else's war. If this was an organization that was designed to maintain world peace, well, then the United States was making the problems of the world their problem. And those who are like Lodge would prefer or would rather just worry about what. The United States has to deal with. And so the ratification of it failed, and the United States never joined. Instead, the United States would move to a period known as isolationism. So again, the League of Nations created by an idea coming from the U.S. President Wilson. rejected by the U.S. Senate, and the United States would never join the League of Nations. Wilson spent his last years going across the United States trying to advocate for American participation in the League. He would suffer, I believe, a stroke late in his presidency that would leave him in very, very bad health or bad condition and would die not long after his presidency was up. And some maybe suggest that his effort to try and get the U.S. to join the League is what led to his deteriorating health. Now, this sort of push back to isolationism is going to be important because essentially this is the United States policy, and isolationism essentially means not intervening in global affairs. This will more or less be the case for the United States from 1919 until 1941. So when we start talking about foreign policy in some of the future chapters. Please keep in mind the United States very much is turning inward after the war is over. But back at home too, there's a domestic consequence from the war, and it's not typically what you would expect. Typically, the idea is that war serves as a way to unite populations together. You know, the country unites against a common foe. And that's reason for Americans to celebrate. World War I actually is an exception to this rule. There were several things that happened at home that were reason for domestic instability. So first and foremost, there was an uptick in labor unrest, a conflict between business and labor. And a lot of this happened from 1918 to 1919. And there were several factors that were contributing to this. the war is over. And what that led to was that there would be layoffs, there'd be decreases in pay, and there'd be a question about what would returning veterans do for work. Of course, they were going to come back and demand jobs. So generally speaking, when the war is over, this put, excuse me, workers. in a tricky condition because everything was sort of trending towards, you know, kind of a tough future ahead, right? The war was over, closed down the factories, we're not paying as much anymore, and all these returning veterans are coming back. They're going to need jobs, so unemployment is going to rise. Couple that with the success of the Russian Revolution, as you see in this image here. This political cartoon is showing you a steel strike with a red flag being held. The red flag was the sign of the Bolsheviks in Russia. And so there was somewhat of a fear in the United States that because workers were agitating, given the consequences of the economy now that the war was over, that this was going to lead to some sort of communist takeover in the United States. All right, we'll talk about this in a second, but... It led to a Red Scare of sorts. So there's an uptick in labor protests, labor violence, just the general conflicts. There was also a significant uptick in racial conflict as a result of World War I. One of the things that the war provided for was economic opportunities. And during World War I and through World War II, the United States experienced the Great Migration. The Great Migration was the migration. of African Americans out of the South to the North to work in the war industries. So what the jobs provided for by the war did was it provided economic opportunities for everyone, men, women, white, black. And for many who had been living in the South under the system of Jim Crow, with the war going on, there were now jobs available in the North, which allowed for millions of people, millions of African Americans in particular, to migrate out of the South into the North. And so this image is showing you the African-American population in 1910 compared to 1950. And we can see that in many states of the North, the African-American population in 1910 is between 0 and 5%. During World War I and World War II, millions of people would move out of the South, more or less a referendum on the Jim Crow South, and into the North. Now, these migrations led to an increase in violence amongst whites and blacks, but this time in the North. So the Red Summer of 1919 is often described as a year of racial violence across the U.S. But one thing that is different now is much more, well, maybe not much more, but a lot of the racial violence we talked about in previous chapters, especially in Reconstruction, was more or less isolated in the South. Now it's in the North, right? Now it's in the North. And this was especially... confounded by the fact that there were changes in the economy and there were significant or there was significant competition over jobs. 1919 in particular was one of the more violent years in regards to race relations in the United States. Again, Red Summer is sometimes what it's referred to. Because of the experience of the Red Summer, but also because of the role that African Americans played in World War I. Remember that Woodrow Wilson said this was the war to make the world safe for democracy. Well, it turned out that in the United States, African-Americans were not granted the full democratic rights as everybody else was. And so this contradiction was made very, very clear. And so following World War I, there were a lot more, there was sort of a lot more of a confrontational approach to race issues in the United States. One poet in particular, Claude McKay, he in some ways characterized this kind of newer attitude. He encouraged African-Americans to fight back against racial injustice. Another popular figure was Marcus Garvey. Marcus Garvey was originally from the Caribbean, but he promoted a lot of ideas that came to resonate. within African-American communities in the United States. And he promoted things like black nationalism. He promoted a back to Africa movement. He told those supporters to reject assimilation. In other words, the racial... prejudice in the United States is so strong and so embedded that you shouldn't even try to assimilate, that you'll never be welcomed, essentially, or treated as equals. So he was promoting a message more about separatism and segregation, racial pride, nationalism. His organization, the UNIA, the United Negro Improvement, Association, was created as a way to foster this sense of nationalism. In fact, there was a shipping company called the Black Star Line, and this was a ship that ran from the Caribbean, which again, where a lot of enslaved Africans had been brought in the decades and centuries earlier through slavery, to the southern part of the United States, and then to Africa. And it went in between all these different areas. And again, this was a type of, you know, approach to the racial problems in the United States that was different from, let's say, your conventional... Remember, we talked about people like Booker T, said, go to school and make money, and W.E.B. Du Bois, who essentially said, you know, we need to create just laws. Du Bois and... Booker T both wanted to still work within the system of the United States, whereas Garvey was rejecting it. And, you know, given the contradiction in World War I and given the violence during the Red Summer, Garvey's message was resonating much more, right? Much more. So in terms of, again, this notion that the United States was united during the war, we can see that clearly isn't the case with labor. That isn't the case with... you know the the type of racial conflicts that break out and characterize the united states in this period And so some of this culminates into a backlash, specifically against the backdrop of the successful Russian Revolution. And this ties in with the larger conflicts or agitation amongst the labor strikes or labor movement. So the Red Scare, or sometimes called the First Red Scare, because there is a second one that happens, is the fear that communism aka revolution, will spread to the US. You know, before the Russian Revolution, communism was just kind of like an idea. But after the Russian Revolution, it was made clear that it was possible for communism to take hold. And so following World War I, and, you know, being a result of several issues, including, you know, the labor strikes we talked about previously, but also there had been a series of bombs that had gone off in several American cities. There was a backlash and a crackdown against any organizations or groups that were believed to be susceptible to ideas related to communism. The attorney general at the time, Mitchell Palmer, and you could think of the attorney general as being like the nation's number one police officer. issued a series of raids against those who were suspected of being maybe sympathetic to those involved with, you know, anything related to communism. So the Palmer raids were a series of police raids against suspected communists, right? Suspected communists. And many of these raids didn't require or didn't follow the proper protocol of obtaining search warrants. About 500 people were deported as a result of the Palma raids having too close connections to radical groups. Maybe the most famous example of this crackdown against radicalism. We also have to remember or keep in mind that this was also very closely tied to... immigration. Again, immigrants from Europe were bringing radical ideas to the United States. So oftentimes the overlap of communism, anarchism, and immigrants were often closely intertwined. The most famous case of this was the case of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, two Italian anarchists who were accused of murder. And in 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti, two, we'll say, Italian anarchists, They were put to death for murder, and we would consider that their trial was much less a sort of, much less a referendum on their actual guilt, and much more a referendum on the Red Scare more broadly. Sacco and Vanzetti in some ways became scapegoats for this Red Scare and their execution. um, was only kind of more evidence to that.

It continues where the last chapter left off in the era of imperialism. So we'll discuss kind of briefly first some other American imperial adventures before getting to World War I itself, but World War I is the focus of... of this chapter. Probably the biggest supporter of imperialism in the United States was Teddy Roosevelt, who did assume the presidency in 1901. Roosevelt had been the vice president under William McKinley. Here you can see the ticket for the presidential race in the year 1900, but William McKinley was assassinated.

And when he was assassinated, that put Roosevelt, who was a great advocate of American expansion, that put him at the forefront of now American foreign policy. So with Roosevelt now the most powerful person in the United States and maybe even the world, he is able to kind of exercise a greater influence in. global affairs. Roosevelt's approach to imperialism is embodied with this quote, speak softly and carry a big stick.

So we might say that this is Teddy Roosevelt's approach to, I would just say foreign policy. Roosevelt ended up being president from 1901 until 1908. So at least the first decade or so of the 20th century. And what speak softly and carry a big stick meant was that the speak softly part had more to do with the diplomacy aspect of it. In other words, that the United States maybe shouldn't make.

kind of strong demands, you know, don't be a jerk, essentially, at least on the diplomatic level. But the carry a big stick part, that was in reference to the military. So in other words, the United States should have a giant military, but should use it kind of in a more timid way, or again, in Roosevelt's words, to speak softly. And we can clearly see this.

in the modernization of the United States Navy, which if you go back to the Civil War, the United States Navy was not comparable to the powers of the world by 1906. The United States had the second strongest navy, and it would be with this navy that the United States could, in some essence, kind of bully. even though they were speaking softly, but, you know, could use it as intimidation, especially against their neighbors. Now, of Roosevelt's foreign policy accomplishments, one of them was seeking peace in the Russo-Japanese War. The Russo-Japanese War, we'll call this a conflict between Japan and Russia.

as you can probably guess from the title here. But Roosevelt played a role in mediating that peace. In fact, he won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for having negotiated it.

And this was sort of part of the broader American interest in protecting its own investments and own interests in... Asia. Remember open door policy from the last chapter, this was a policy that referred to um the ways in which imperial powers could do business in china and it was a way for the americans to kind of get in on this imperial competition um and so you know under roosevelt it was the use of the american great white fleet as it was called um this was the nickname for the u.s uh we'll say naval fleet and we might say that under roosevelt it was often, we'll say, paraded, probably around the world, certainly as an effort to kind of flex off American power, to intimidate, for sure.

You know, this was definitely part of, you know, Roosevelt's big stick policy, so to speak. And so at the very least, the United States, and this is maybe a little bit foreshadowing of things to come, but... As time goes on, as the United States continues to project its power outwards, and as other imperial nations like Japan potentially project their power outwards, the Pacific Ocean is going to be a source of tension between both of these emerging powers.

The United States and Japan are very similar in that they're somewhat late to the imperialism game, but certainly want to exert their power and exercise influence over the... over the Pacific Ocean. Under Roosevelt, though, the United States had less direct interventions. Recall that there are two sort of forms or versions of imperialism. There is sort of a direct version of it, and the direct version is what we saw in places like Hawaii, for example, or the Philippines.

Whereas the imperialism under Roosevelt was much more indirect. And what we mean by that is simply direct imperialism is taking over the nation's governments, kind of controlling them outright. Whereas indirect imperialism is allowing for governments to stay in place, but extracting benefits from them, namely in the form of...

economic resources. This is probably more the case in Latin America. So whereas the United States never really outright takes over any Latin American countries and incorporates them under the U.S. government like Hawaii or the Philippines, it certainly intervenes militarily and also exerts influence over Latin America in a way to economically benefit the United States. This map here is showing you... All of the various countries that the United States had sent troops into, you know, in the early 20th century.

There's a lot of yellow in here, right, including U.S. troops that were sent to Mexico several times, Cuba several times, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Puerto Rico is an American possession. U.S. troops sent to Nicaragua, sent to Panama and sent to Venezuela.

So at least in the eyes of Americans, especially those who were in policy or in charge of policy, you know, they certainly felt that they had a right or obligation to intervene in Latin American countries and hence might kind of give the United States the nickname the iron fisted neighbor. So this is a reference to U.S. slash Latin American relations. where the United States certainly felt that it was more than appropriate and maybe even desirable for them to really encroach upon and violate the sovereignty of Latin American nations. This was made more clear, or we might say more public, by Roosevelt's announcement of the Roosevelt Corollary. The Roosevelt Corollary was building off of a previous doctrine of the United States.

of the United States that was geared towards Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine. Let's start with the Monroe Doctrine first. This was issued something around the 1820s.

And in fact, when it was issued, the relationship between the United States and Latin America was much stronger. The nations or people of Latin America had recently revolted against the Spanish crown, whereas the Americans revolted against the British crown. And so there was a sense of solidarity.

And so the United States issued in the 1820s, it said that no European powers. should, we'll say, encroach on Latin America. And the idea was that, you know, there was a fear that after many of these nations revolted against the Spanish crown, there was a fear that Europeans would come back. And the Americans were essentially saying, look, if Europeans want to come back into the new world.

We are siding with our Latin American neighbors. Now, fast forward to the early 1900s, Roosevelt is essentially saying the same thing, but we can interpret the Roosevelt Corollary as kind of more possessive. The difference between 1820 and, you know, I'll just guess here, 1904, something like that for the Roosevelt Corollary. The difference is that here, the United States actually has the power to... enforce this.

Back in the 1820s, if Europeans wanted to encroach upon the Americas, the United States was in no position really to stop it. But here they are. And we might summarize the Roosevelt Corollary as being, you know, the United States, or we might say the US, kind of claiming, we'll just say, quote unquote, authority over Latin America.

And it's certainly a time period where U.S.-Latin American relationships are not the greatest. The United States very much views Latin America kind of as like their own backyard. It's a very indirect form of imperialism. So one great example of this is in the construction of the Panama Canal, which was, you know, the construction of it.

I want to say it was. Was it 1916 it was completed? 1916 or 1914, one of those dates. But the Panama Canal and the decision to build the Panama Canal was kind of in part due to this kind of viewpoint that the Americans had. So if we're looking at the map here, this is the country of Panama right here.

And the goal was to build a canal, which is a man-made river, across. The idea being that it would make it much easier for ships to just cut through here on their way, instead of having to go the long way around South America. And so there had been a couple of efforts to construct the canal, but none of them were really good until the Americans got involved. The big problem, though, is that Panama, at the time, was part of Colombia. Columbia, you also see right here.

So it was actually part of Columbia. And initially, the United States offered the Colombian government $10 million to build the canal. The Colombian government said no and wanted $20 million. And so instead, what the United States did, rather than forking up $20 million, instead, they assisted with Panama's independence. Again, in a very sort of Roosevelt.

esque way, and that was just making sure that the Navy was close by when the Panamanians decided to declare independence. So we might say about Panama's independence, it was maybe aided by the U.S. by the U.S. in exchange. for U.S. ability to construct a canal. And that was the deal. And eventually, Panama was successful in breaking away.

American businesses got involved. It also proved to be a pretty good photo opportunity for the president himself, who wasn't the president anymore at the time. But, and... It was a great engineering accomplishment, and in some ways you could say, well, it assisted Panama in their effort to break away.

But on the other hand, we could say, well, they certainly undermined Colombian sovereignty in the process. But in total, having a canal between North and South America ended up being rather quite useful. So after Roosevelt's time in office, it gets passed on to his successor, William Howard Taft.

And Taft was a little bit less eager to involve the United States in global affairs, at least in kind of a militaristic way. And so Taft focused on what's known as dollar diplomacy. And that was for the U.S. to instead invest in other nations. Kind of, we might just say, like less military.

You know, several times the United States had to send in troops to protect economic interests. Roosevelt, or sorry, Taft and dollar diplomacy was kind of a less militaristic approach to imperialism, more about investing in other nations, specifically in terms of Latin America and Asia. Those were kind of two big areas.

invest in other nations. For Woodrow Wilson, for Wilson, we want to know him mostly for the president for World War I. But before World War I broke out, while Wilson was president, there was maybe at least one intervention that's worth mentioning, and that is what happened between the United States and Mexico. In 1910, Mexico went through a revolution.

This caused, we might say, concern. for U.S. investments, and we might say political support. After 1910, the Mexican government went through a process in which leaders would often consolidate or control power for a short period of time before being deposed. And so it was kind of, you know, leader after leader after leader.

It was a lot of political instability. And so for the United States, looking at Mexico, their neighboring country, they wanted to ensure that whoever ended up on top was pro-American policies. And a lot of those policies were concerned around, you know, protecting U.S. investments.

And so in one incident in particular, the United States troops were sent to Veracruz, which is a city in Mexico. So we might say that U.S. troops landed in the Mexican city to, again, protect U.S. interests. And as a result, several small, we might say small battles broke out in which a handful of people, a couple hundred people, in fact, were killed. There were factions in the Mexican Revolution that the United States supported. There were factions in the Mexican Revolution that the United States did not support.

One of those factions was led by Pancho Villa, who was amongst the handful of people vying for political control in Mexico. And during the process, Pancho Villa had led raids into the United States. which resulted in a handful of Americans being killed crossing the border into New Mexico.

In response, the U.S. sent troops into Mexico. All right, sent troops into Mexico. The Mexican Revolution would rage on, but it would be events in Europe that would divert attention away. But at the very least, we can see how... in this case under Wilson that the United States is violating the sovereignty of Mexico and kind of the tit for tat which occurred in the aftermath of it.

So I would say overall keep in mind that despite the fact the United States didn't actually take over any countries in Latin America during the era of imperialism, there certainly was still an exercise of control or an informal or indirect form of imperialism that the United States often utilized. It's one of the lower points in U.S. Latin American history.

In the 1930s, the United States will pursue what's called the good neighbor policy and the idea or the inspiration by calling it a good neighbor policy. It sort of infers that in the decades earlier that the United States was not being quite a good neighbor, or as your textbook puts it, the United States was being an iron-fisted neighbor. as Brinkley puts it. Okay, so now moving on to the First World War, which is the primary focus of this chapter.

World War I is one of those events that often gets kind of overshadowed, I would say, in popular imagination, especially from an American perspective. The Civil War, World War II, the American Revolution, some of these conflicts tend to have or hold a higher importance in American history, but... What's important to understand about World War I was that at the time, it was very much felt in the U.S.

It had a dramatic impact on the United States and the rest of the world. It's one of those events that is kind of fundamentally transformative in the way that society, politics, culture, you know, everything else that's involved. So the war itself, World War I. stretches from the year 1914 to 1918 in terms of the actual fighting.

So the war lasted for four years. The U.S., however, doesn't get formally involved in the war until 1917. So for most of the war, the United States is not directly involved. It only comes in at the very end.

Now, the causes for World War I are very complicated, and there's a lot of debate over exactly what led to its outbreak, but we can certainly identify some contributing factors. First and foremost, the alliance systems allowed for a small conflict to turn into a much larger conflict. So you might just say that European powers... were allied with each other before the war.

A good example of this is something they called the Triple Entente. That was the alliance with Britain, France, and Russia. And alliances do several things. First and foremost, it takes a small conflict and turns it into a big conflict.

This cartoon is kind of poking fun at that. You know, here you have a conflict that begins between two relatively minor nations. But because this person's ally is this guy back here, it brings this person into the fight because this person's ally is this person back here. It brings that person into a fight. So there's a tendency for alliances to make smaller conflicts much, much bigger, in fact, spill into a world war in this case.

But there's another thing we can say about the alliance system, and that is it causes weaker countries or weaker powers to act more boldly or confidently. If a smaller, weaker nation knows that it has an alliance with a stronger, more powerful nation, it could act in a way that is looking for war. And that very much was the case as well.

Another factor is nationalism. Again, we might just call this pride in one's nation. All the countries involved were very much motivated by fighting for one's country. It's very much a nationalistic war.

Germans against Russians, against French, against Americans, etc., etc. There were kind of two other things also working behind the scenes. Recall imperialism. Now, we saw some examples in which the imperial powers worked together in order to avoid conflict. That could only last so long.

And a last one we'll add here is militarism. In fact, the causes of World War I are kind of conveniently described in this acronym. And that... is mania.

So mania helps us remember the causes of World War I, M, militarism, A, alliances, N, nationalism, I, imperialism, and then the last A in mania stands for assassination. And that was what started this all off. There are sort of the long-term causes and the short-term cause. So All these things regarding the alliances and pride in one's nation and the buildup of militaries and the imperial competition, all of these things had been building up for years, and then it all sort of exploded in 1914. When Franz Ferdinand, he is the heir, so he's like the prince, to the Austrian throne, right?

Prince to the Austrian throne. So he's next in line to be the Austrian emperor. Here he is right here. He was visiting the city of Sarajevo, and it was there that Serbian nationalists, or Slavic nationalists, as we might want to describe them, where they assassinated him.

So he was assassinated. And after his assassination, the government of Austria. blamed the government on Serbia.

In fact, if we look back at this political cartoon, this person right here is supposed to be Serbia, and this person right here is supposed to be Austria. So the Austrians blamed the Serbians for this assassination, and as a result, You know, because all these nations were essentially allied with each other, Europe descended into chaos and eventually into warfare in which two camps would be fighting one another. On the one side, we had the allies.

The allies consisted of Serbia's ally, Russia. Russia was an ally of Serbia. Russia, as we know, had allied themselves with France.

which had also been an ally of Britain. Also in 1917, we can also add the United States to the Allies. Meanwhile, fighting for the central powers was Austria, or at the time was called Austria-Hungary, was Austria's ally Germany.

And lastly was the Ottoman Empire, who had been a, in a lot of ways, a historic enemy of Russia and saw it as an opportunity to jump in. So again, the two sides fighting each other. We want to be able to sort of line these things up for the allies, Russia, France, Britain, and later the United States for the central powers, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire.

So initially for the United States, what Wardrow Wilson, the president at the time, the time did was to declare neutrality. That was the U.S. is not picking a side. In Wilson's eyes, this was a war that did not concern the United States right away.

But the reality was that the United States was, in fact, not totally neutral. That when it came to trade and especially money, right, loans, American business. The U.S. was tied very closely to the Allies, tied to the Allies, we'll say, financially. So this notion of neutrality, yes, it was a political neutrality, but economically speaking, it wasn't.

During the course of the war, however, German policies would tend to rub the United States the wrong way and eventually caught... be a cause for concern. One of the new technologies that Germany used were called U-boats, underwater boats or submarines.

And the German strategy for using submarines or U-boats, we'll say submarines used by Germany to, we'll say, isolate. Britain. You know, Britain as an island nation relied very heavily on their imperial empire.

In fact, the British had built the largest imperial empire in the world. And so the German strategy was to sink every single ship that was attempting to make its way around British waters. The British were very clever.

in the way that they avoided this, sometimes disguising their ships as civilian ships and sometimes disguising them as American ships. And so the German policy went back and forth between what they called restricted. which would be to only shoot military targets and only shoot British ships, to unrestricted, which was to shoot any ship, right, regardless.

And so it's when the Germans practiced this unrestricted warfare, where they were to shoot pretty much any ship, that Americans got caught up in the crossfire. And, you know, this was a reason for American outrage. Very famously, one of these ships, the Lusitania, which was a civilian ship, was sunk by German submarines in 1915. 1,200 people died as a result of that, 128 Americans. And especially for the United States, this was national outrage, the fact that Germany was responsible for killing Americans.

We would see Germany go back and forth between restricted and unrestricted. but pretty soon the United States would become involved. Now, despite the Lusitania, there was still a strong sense in the United States for pacifism or for peace, right?

Pacifism essentially means to not fight, right? So to be a pacifist means that you don't really believe in violence or you don't want to use violence. And Wilson ran in 1916 for his re-election.

on the slogan, he kept us out of war. So he kept us out of war was Wilson's campaign slogan in the 1916 election. In other words, Europe is mired in this incredibly deadly conflict. Look at me, Woodrow Wilson. I kept this out of the war, you should vote for me.

And as a result, Wilson won. So at the very least, we could say that the American public, you know, maybe they weren't voting for Wilson only because of this reason. But at the very least, Wilson was still, you know, this message resonated enough with the American population that they decided to vote for Wilson again. However, though, not long after Wilson wins his reelection campaign in 1916, promising to keep us, or not really promising, but certainly vote for me because I did keep us out of war, the United States becomes involved.

First and foremost, Germany goes back to using an unrestricted version of submarine warfare, essentially making American ships and American passengers at risk. Second... the United States intercepts what's known as the Zimmerman Telegram. This was a telegram from Germany to Mexico offering to take U.S. land.

In exchange for an alliance. So essentially what the Zimmerman telegram proposed was that if Mexico was to help Germany in their war and potentially attack the United States, Germany would be willing to give land. that belonged to the United States back to Mexico.

Essentially, this was land that was taken back in the Mexican-American War back in the year 1848. Mexico at the time, though, was still in the midst of a revolution and not really in any position to jump into the First World War. The only thing that the telegram did was after it got intercepted, it was just another reason for the Americans to be furious with... Germany.

So through a combination of Germany's decision to go back to unrestricted submarine warfare, in addition to the somewhat embarrassing Zimmerman telegram, Woodrow Wilson went to the U.S. Congress, gave a message to them, and in April 1917, the U.S. officially joins World War I, right? In Wilson's war message, Wilson made it very clear what the United States was fighting for.

And this quote is somewhat synonymous with. American involvement in World War I, at least from Wilson's perspective, and that was Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy, right? This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. So joining on the Allied side and fighting against the central powers. So as soon as the United States made its formal declaration of war, it was time for the United States to mobilize.

Mobilize, if you're not familiar, essentially means like to get ready for war. At the time, you know, they referred to the World War I as being quote-unquote over there. Over there was in reference to the war in Europe. There's actually a rather popular song that was sang about over there, you know, the war in Europe, and now it was time for the United States military to get ready for it.

However, though, the nature of the war by the time the United States started to mobilize and troops started landing in Europe had changed. A very significant development had happened in Russia, which was one of the Allied powers. And that was Russia, we'll say Russia, surrendered to Germany.

And part of the reason as to why Russia surrendered to Germany was because of the Bolshevik Revolution. And the Bolshevik Revolution was caused when Lenin, we'll call him the leader of... And oftentimes it's just called the Russian Revolution.

When Lenin successfully took over the Russian government and his organization, the Bolsheviks, which we should consider to be communists, effectively took control. So we might say about the Bolshevik Revolution, this is the ending of the Tsar, who was the ruler, aka the Russian Empire, and the start of the Soviet Union. So in short, the Russian Revolution is the transformation of Russia to the Soviet Union.

And the Soviet Union is significant because the Soviet Union is the first communist nation in the world. Communism as an ideology, we talked about it earlier, how it appealed to the working class. In Russia, there wasn't a very strong working class.

Russia was primarily an agrarian nation. However, though, the Bolsheviks were in the right place at the right time. The war had gone very badly for the Russian Empire. You know, the Tsar who had led his people into World War I. Russia was defeated somewhat embarrassingly on the battlefield under the Tsarist regime.

And the Tsar eventually ended up abdicating. He just gave up his throne. And once he left, in the midst of the power vacuum, the Bolsheviks gained power, right? Lenin gained power.

Bolshevik is the name of Lenin's party. And as a consequence of that, one of the things that Lenin did was to surrender. So the Russians are out of the war, right?

They're out of the war. They're going through a revolution. Lenin himself has to consolidate power.

In fact, after World War I, Russia goes into what's known as the Russian Civil War. And that's pretty much Lenin and the Bolsheviks trying to fight everyone else for power. Now, why is that important? Well, it's important because it happens in the same year, 1917, as you can also see here, as when the United States joins. So as the U.S. joins the war, Russia exits the war, and the United States in some ways kind of takes its place, we might say.

In order to raise an army for the war, the United States issues a military draft, the Selective Service Act. We might call this conscription. or a mandatory, I don't know if there's any such thing as a non-mandatory, but a mandatory draft.

And in fact, most of the United States troops, you see down here, create a military draft. Most of the United States troops that would serve in World War I would be drafted and not volunteers. The estimated amount of people that served, there were 4 million who would serve and about 2 million that would eventually reach Europe.

Once American troops started to land, again, remember, it took kind of, you know, it took a little bit of time. 1917, the war was declared, but it wasn't as if, you know, a million troops just showed up the next day. It took a little while for the draft and training and arming and all those things to take place.

But once Americans started to arrive in Europe, they really turned out to be a huge morale boost. Morale is sort of like fighting. spirit, right? Up until that year, for three years, Europeans had been fighting themselves in a very deadly conflict.

And they were, you know, they were experiencing or had experienced the realities of war. When Americans arrived, they looked somewhat innocent, somewhat like well-fed. You know, they hadn't quite been experienced the horrors of war yet.

So Europeans nicknamed U.S. soldiers doughboys. So doughboys were the nickname for U.S. soldiers in Europe. Again, relatively well-fed and high spirits, good spirits, hadn't quite been exposed to the harsh realities of World War I yet.

And so they arrived there. And even though the United States was very much late to the game in terms of their direct involvement, only coming into the war in 1917, some of the battles that took place during the last year of the war, Americans were involved in directly. But at that time, Germany amongst the central powers, and we can see here on this map a little bit of what the war looked like in Europe. So here is Germany and Austria located in the center here.

France and Britain on this side. And then most of the war was fought in this territory right here, which was simply just referred to as the Western Front. So once Americans arrived and, you know, started fighting in the later years, 1917, 1918, you know, they did experience very heavy casualties per battle participated in.

But in the overall war, most of the fighting had already been done by the time the U.S. arrived. To make a long story short, Germany and the Central Powers, because they were surrounded, were eventually starved into submission. The Americans did play a role in that. But in November of 1918, an armistice was signed, effectively bringing an end to the fighting in World War I. So we might say the armistice ended. World War I in November 1918. All right, November 1918. So not to talk about any of the kind of specific battles themselves, we'll talk a little bit about what the fighting was like.

And what played a huge role in World War I in particular was the type of new technology. Now, during the era of imperialism, you know, there had been... Nations with, you know, with sort of very sophisticated technology, but oftentimes during imperialism, it was technologically advanced nations fighting nations that did not have it.

You know, the machine gun was one example of this. But World War I would be when industrial nation fights other industrial nation, and the type of warfare that resulted from the technology was something that we describe as trench warfare or war in the trenches. Trench warfare is a type of warfare where offensive attacks are really ineffective. There are several reasons for that.

Again, just kind of looking at this map here to give you an idea of the scale. This blue bar down here is 50 miles. And so during the entire course of the war. More or less for four years, the Central Powers and the Allies fought each other in about 50 miles of each other, back and forth for four years. Neither side could make a lot of progress.

And that was namely due to the machine gun. The machine gun was such a deadly weapon that ordering an offensive charge into machine guns was straight up suicidal. And in fact, many of the battles during World War I, especially in the early years when military officers didn't quite understand the impact of technology on the battlefield, it led to especially brutal battles, right, where 20,000 people could die in a matter of five minutes.

We might just say about machine guns, these were a great defensive weapon. They were so big at the time that you couldn't pick it up and run with it, right? So it was mounted on the ground and anyone who tried to run and attack you, you could just shoot, you know, shoot down an entire army. And so, you know, during the course of the war, you know, nations started to get a little bit more innovative in trying to break the stalemate because it was a stalemate.

Neither side could really effectively attack. And so both sides just dug holes in the ground to avoid being shot by the other side. But both sides had tried to use, you know, sort of different technologies.

Artillery became bigger and more powerful. Artillery is kind of like cannons, sort of. It can shoot from very, very long distances. Tanks ended up being rather effective during the end of the war.

Tanks could essentially drive over trenches, drive over barbed wire, which was also a big technology in the war, laying down defensive barbed wire. So one can't be attacked. But again, tanks were still pretty primitive. They were new inventions and they weren't that effective. But maybe one of the weapons that has become like maybe the most iconic from World War I was the use of chemical weapons, specifically poison gas, or what was sometimes referred to as mustard gas.

And this was a weapon that you could shoot at your opponent and the poison gas. would be heavier than the air, so it would settle in the trenches. And if you didn't have a gas mask and you breathed in the poison gas, it would turn your lungs into liquid and you would essentially suffocate to death, you know, above ground. So very brutal in kind of those ways, but, you know, also very creative. It's from the experience of World War I that many countries around the world and international organizations ban chemical weapons today.

They are prohibited in warfare because of the impact that they had during the First World War. In addition to the war being fought on land, it also expanded to the skies. Very primitive airplanes saw action during World War I in quote-unquote dogfights.

Dogfights were fights between airplanes. Again, the airplanes were not quite advanced enough to carry... like a lot of bombs or anything like that to blow up the other side, but were used mostly for like reconnaissance. Dogfights was when two planes fought, you know, in the air. And then, of course, submarines or U-boats, as we talked about earlier, and these were used most effectively by Germany during the war.

So essentially all these things were rather new. You know, tanks, chemical weapons, airplanes, you know, a lot of these things had never... been experienced on the battlefield before.

And trench warfare never really got solved before the war was over. Tanks would eventually be the solution to that, but the technology wasn't quite there. Germany surrendered in 1918, essentially being starved out.

What made World War I the quote-unquote Great War, and that term's kind of ironic in a sense, was just the sheer number of casualties that were called, or deaths. Um, there had never quite been a war like it. The combat deaths from the war are estimated around 10 million, um, to give you a sense for Russia, 1.8 million people were killed, uh, Germany, which is at the center of it. 2 million people, France, 1.4 million, Britain, 1 million United States, approximately 116,000. or 120 000 if we want to round that up So again, very comparably, compared to the nations that were involved in the war for all of those years, American combat deaths don't quite stack up.

But if you compare that 116,000 deaths that the United States experienced to the time that it spent in the war, it's comparable, at least in some sense. So a very high death toll, right? Nothing had ever... Right. been quite on this level before in terms of the amount of people who died.

To make matters worse, following the conflict, there was a serious influenza outbreak, sometimes called the Spanish flu. And between 1918 and 1919, it's estimated between 50 to 100 million people died from the influenza or the flu. A lot of global contact. going on as a result of World War I, and that only helped facilitate the spread of this influenza.

So not a lot of relief to come after the war either. Now, back home for the United States, World War I had a tremendous impact on the U.S. economy. World War I is what we sometimes refer to as a total war, maybe even the first total war.

And a total war is a war in which a society Britain, France, United States, whatever society we're referring to, in which every single resource in that society is dedicated to the war effort. The men, the women, the children. If you're not doing something directly related to the war, then you're doing something indirectly related to the war.

It's the total mobilization of a society. In other words, everybody is aware that the war is going on and you're playing some sort of role in it. So for the United States, the art The U.S. became heavily involved, you know, even though it was a short period of time.

One example was liberty bonds. If you're not familiar with what a bond is, a bond is something that is sold to citizens by the government. Essentially, you have the U.S. government, right? They are in need of money in order to fight the war.

And so you have a citizen. And what the citizen does is that the citizen... buys a bond from the United States.

So the citizen gives the U.S. money. In return, the U.S. government gives sort of this little ticket back to the citizen in the form of a bond. And what that bond has is both an interest rate and a time period.

So let's say it's a 10-year bond at 5%. And essentially what this allows for is allows for in 10 years, the United States to pay back that bond with added interest. And this was a way for people to, we might say citizens, funded the war in sort of a very direct way, because much of the, or pretty much all of the money that was raised by selling. Of course, they call them liberty bonds in the United States, but broadly speaking, war bonds, was used directly for the war. Of course, there was an expectation that the United States would pay the money back later, would pay a little bit more, depending on what the interest rate was.

But it was a way for citizens to, like, bet on their country. And in fact, war bonds were, in many countries, the primary source of revenue for the war, in addition to things like taxation. So...

people individually funded the war effort through war bonds or liberty bonds. Another way in which the United States organized the economy for war was to establish the War Industries Board, or WIB, and the WIB would organize U.S. businesses to focus production on the war. And this was somewhat of an interesting approach because if we recall, at least Woodrow Wilson personally was a progressive. And during the progressive era, there had been a very maybe like combative relationship between the United States government and American businesses.

However, though, most businesses were willing to fulfill their patriotic duty insofar as they. profited. And it turned out that during the war, a lot of businesses profited, and the WIB was established to kind of better coordinate that. Instead of businesses just being kind of a free-for-all and doing whatever they want, they worked together to make what was needed for the war.

So in terms of the things that you need for war, we talked about some of them earlier. You need soldiers, the Selective Service Act. You need money, which is liberty bonds.

You need guns for the war. that came in the form of the War Industries Board. But the often or sometimes overlooked thing that you also need for a conflict is you need popular support.

You need some creation of propaganda or to convince Americans in this case that the war is worth fighting for. Now, World War I, and this might be one of the reasons why it's often overlooked by other conflicts in American history, is that it was a little bit more contentious in terms of American support for it. And so the U.S. government had to do more to try and convince people to support the war. So propaganda and propaganda, we can probably just describe this as maybe something like information designed to, we'll say, motivate, motivate people for a cause. And so in this case, we are very clearly talking about propaganda to try and keep American support for the war.

And in fact, we can see two great examples of propaganda from the First World War. The famous Uncle Sam, I want you for the U.S. Army. And then here we have what we might call a form of negative propaganda, and that is the depiction of the Germans as being brutish, right?

Do your part and enlist to destroy the mad. German brute. The government created an official organization called the CPI, or the Committee on Public Information, and this was created to manufacture and, we'll say, spread propaganda.

try and get Americans to continue to support the war. But even with propaganda, there were still many who did not agree with the U.S. decision to participate in the war. And so we might say that Congress needed to take even more strict measures to make sure that any opposition to the war was suppressed.

And what is very common in wartime, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, we often see that people are willing to surrender some of their civil liberties for the sake of security, or at least in the sake of warfare. So Congress passes a series of laws collectively known as the Espionage and Sedition Acts, 1918 to about, we'll just say 1918. And what these laws do, essentially, is that they make We'll say, make illegal any public expression or opposition, sorry, of opposition to the war illegal. Essentially, any... public expression against the war is made illegal by the Alien and Sedition Acts.

And what this was targeting in specific was opposition to the draft, right? Namely, you know, people encouraging other people that if you get drafted, you know, don't go. This is also very clearly a violation, maybe not very, maybe not. clearly, but it's a violation of the First Amendment, right, this was. But nonetheless, the Supreme Court would uphold the Espionage and Sedition Acts, and in a very real and, you know, sort of practical way, individuals were put in prison for expressing anti-war sentiments.

Probably the most famous among them was Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for president in 1912, and 1912, yeah. And the leader of the Pullman strike, we might say that he was put in prison under the Sedition and Prison Under the Sedition Act. And once again, you'll find that during other moments historically, there's a tendency to surrender certain civil liberties for the sake of national security or protection.

So with the country fully mobilized, right, the United States had all the tools that it needed, the guns, the people, the mindset, the money. to achieve victory. And in 1918, when Germany surrendered, now it was a question of what role would the United States play in the post-war settlement, because there certainly would be a new world order. Several empires would come to an end.

The Russian Empire had already ended via the Bolshevik Revolution. The Ottoman Empire, which was on the losing side. the German Empire, and the Austria-Hungarian or Austria-Hungary would also come to an end.

All of these empires would no longer exist or survive the war. And so the big question was for those who won the war, what's going to come next? And Woodrow Wilson played a crucial role in that.

The United States really benefited. from the fact that it joined the war at the very end, because then it got to have a role to play in the peace settlement. And so what Wilson wanted was collectively known as the 14 points. So the 14 points are what U.S., namely Wilson, wants after the war. And there are sort of several things that we can list here.

We don't need to know all of the 14 points, but for example, you know, Wilson wants things like free trade, right? The ability to trade freely with other nations. He wants to reduce arms, right, or weapons. Recall that militarism was one of the causes of the war.

And so in general, he would like to see Nations with less, smaller militaries, maybe. No secret alliances. You know, again, this was kind of a big cause of the war. Wilson doesn't want it.

Again, recall the notion of making the world safe for democracy. You know, in Wilson's eyes, these things would lead to a safer world for democratic governments. Um, one of the aspects or one part of the League of Nations, or sorry, one part of the 14 points was this notion of the League of Nations, which is probably out of all the 14 points, the one to take note of. The League of Nations would be an international government to, or designed to, maintain. world peace.

In other words, what Wilson believed was that, you know, nationalism had played such a crucial role or key role in the outbreak of the war, and if somehow different nations could kind of appeal to a higher power, right, if there was something that was above nations, that perhaps that would be a way of settling disputes. And that's ultimately what the League was designed to do. And so Wilson gave these proposals, right?

But unfortunately for Wilson, he's not the only country at the Paris Peace Conference. The Paris Peace Conference, in short, would settle World War I. In Paris in 1919, all of the world powers met. It was quite a spectacle. Here we see a sign, Vive Wilson. All the world powers met in order to figure out what's going to happen after the war is over, after Germany surrendered, what to do with all these empires.

And so the Americans came with a set of things, right? We want 14 points, essentially is what Wilson said. But other nations came with other points.

And so Wilson wouldn't get completely everything he wanted, but he would have to contend with the other powers. namely those at the Paris Peace Conference that made the crucial decisions, were known as the Big Three. and that was the U.S., France, and Britain, right? The U.S., France, and Britain.

They were kind of the, you know, sitting at the big kid table, so to speak, right? They would be the ones who would be the decision makers. Everyone else there would have to kind of contend for their attention and support. Wilson and his 14 points were guided by idealism. Wilson had very lofty goals.

To make the world safe for democracy was, again, it's a huge task. And the specifics of it are to be kind of worked out in the meantime. The British, for the most part, they just wanted to maintain the status quo. They were really concerned about their imperial empire, which in fact, part of Wilson's 14 points was to actually discourage imperialism and promote national self-determination or national sovereignty. This caused opposition between the Americans and the British over what to do about imperialism.

But probably one of the other countries who was more instrumental in deciding this peace was France, who wanted revenge for the war. You know, France was the nation in which was invaded. During World War I, World War I was fought primarily on French soil, and they didn't want an idealistic world to make everyone safe for democracy. France wanted, like, you know, they wanted revenge. And so part of what came out of the Paris Peace Conference was a much more maybe harsher peace than what was initially wanted by Wilson, right?

For example, one of the conditions that France would successfully lobby for. was reparation payments or reparations. And that was to force Germany to pay, you know, quite literally, not just in like the figurative sense, but like financially in terms of money, Germany to pay for the damages of the war.

So what ultimately came out of the Paris Peace Conference is known. as the Treaty of Versailles, right? The Treaty of Versailles, in which the United States, again, got kind of some of its demands, but not all of them.

We'll talk more about the Treaty of Versailles in a later chapter as it pertains to the outbreak of World War II, because many consider the Treaty of Versailles, or at least historically speaking, consider it to be overly strict in some essence. But as part of the agreement, one thing that Wilson and the Americans did actually get is they did actually get the creation of the League of Nations. It was created. Britain and France agreed to join in on it, and many other nations agreed to join in on it as well. But the problem for Wilson and the problem for the League, quite frankly, was that it really wasn't only...

up for Wilson to decide whether or not the United States would join. In fact, it would need approval by the U.S. Congress.

And so when the United States, or sorry, when Wilson got back to the U.S., there was a debate over the ratification of the League. And the big question was, should the U.S. join? Which of course is somewhat, you know, I don't know if ironic is the right word, but it certainly is interesting that the League of Nations was...

essentially an idea from the American president, yet the United States would eventually never join. And that was thanks in part to people like Henry Cabot Lodge. He was a senator who opposed U.S. joining the league. And amongst the concerns of people like Lodge, he was concerned that if the United States joined the League of Nations, then the United States might end up fighting somebody else's war. If this was an organization that was designed to maintain world peace, well, then the United States was making the problems of the world their problem.

And those who are like Lodge would prefer or would rather just worry about what. The United States has to deal with. And so the ratification of it failed, and the United States never joined.

Instead, the United States would move to a period known as isolationism. So again, the League of Nations created by an idea coming from the U.S. President Wilson. rejected by the U.S.

Senate, and the United States would never join the League of Nations. Wilson spent his last years going across the United States trying to advocate for American participation in the League. He would suffer, I believe, a stroke late in his presidency that would leave him in very, very bad health or bad condition and would die not long after his presidency was up.

And some maybe suggest that his effort to try and get the U.S. to join the League is what led to his deteriorating health. Now, this sort of push back to isolationism is going to be important because essentially this is the United States policy, and isolationism essentially means not intervening in global affairs. This will more or less be the case for the United States from 1919 until 1941. So when we start talking about foreign policy in some of the future chapters.

Please keep in mind the United States very much is turning inward after the war is over. But back at home too, there's a domestic consequence from the war, and it's not typically what you would expect. Typically, the idea is that war serves as a way to unite populations together.

You know, the country unites against a common foe. And that's reason for Americans to celebrate. World War I actually is an exception to this rule. There were several things that happened at home that were reason for domestic instability. So first and foremost, there was an uptick in labor unrest, a conflict between business and labor.

And a lot of this happened from 1918 to 1919. And there were several factors that were contributing to this. the war is over. And what that led to was that there would be layoffs, there'd be decreases in pay, and there'd be a question about what would returning veterans do for work. Of course, they were going to come back and demand jobs.

So generally speaking, when the war is over, this put, excuse me, workers. in a tricky condition because everything was sort of trending towards, you know, kind of a tough future ahead, right? The war was over, closed down the factories, we're not paying as much anymore, and all these returning veterans are coming back.

They're going to need jobs, so unemployment is going to rise. Couple that with the success of the Russian Revolution, as you see in this image here. This political cartoon is showing you a steel strike with a red flag being held. The red flag was the sign of the Bolsheviks in Russia.

And so there was somewhat of a fear in the United States that because workers were agitating, given the consequences of the economy now that the war was over, that this was going to lead to some sort of communist takeover in the United States. All right, we'll talk about this in a second, but... It led to a Red Scare of sorts. So there's an uptick in labor protests, labor violence, just the general conflicts. There was also a significant uptick in racial conflict as a result of World War I. One of the things that the war provided for was economic opportunities.

And during World War I and through World War II, the United States experienced the Great Migration. The Great Migration was the migration. of African Americans out of the South to the North to work in the war industries.

So what the jobs provided for by the war did was it provided economic opportunities for everyone, men, women, white, black. And for many who had been living in the South under the system of Jim Crow, with the war going on, there were now jobs available in the North, which allowed for millions of people, millions of African Americans in particular, to migrate out of the South into the North. And so this image is showing you the African-American population in 1910 compared to 1950. And we can see that in many states of the North, the African-American population in 1910 is between 0 and 5%. During World War I and World War II, millions of people would move out of the South, more or less a referendum on the Jim Crow South, and into the North.

Now, these migrations led to an increase in violence amongst whites and blacks, but this time in the North. So the Red Summer of 1919 is often described as a year of racial violence across the U.S. But one thing that is different now is much more, well, maybe not much more, but a lot of the racial violence we talked about in previous chapters, especially in Reconstruction, was more or less isolated in the South. Now it's in the North, right? Now it's in the North.

And this was especially... confounded by the fact that there were changes in the economy and there were significant or there was significant competition over jobs. 1919 in particular was one of the more violent years in regards to race relations in the United States.

Again, Red Summer is sometimes what it's referred to. Because of the experience of the Red Summer, but also because of the role that African Americans played in World War I. Remember that Woodrow Wilson said this was the war to make the world safe for democracy. Well, it turned out that in the United States, African-Americans were not granted the full democratic rights as everybody else was. And so this contradiction was made very, very clear.

And so following World War I, there were a lot more, there was sort of a lot more of a confrontational approach to race issues in the United States. One poet in particular, Claude McKay, he in some ways characterized this kind of newer attitude. He encouraged African-Americans to fight back against racial injustice. Another popular figure was Marcus Garvey. Marcus Garvey was originally from the Caribbean, but he promoted a lot of ideas that came to resonate.

within African-American communities in the United States. And he promoted things like black nationalism. He promoted a back to Africa movement. He told those supporters to reject assimilation. In other words, the racial...

prejudice in the United States is so strong and so embedded that you shouldn't even try to assimilate, that you'll never be welcomed, essentially, or treated as equals. So he was promoting a message more about separatism and segregation, racial pride, nationalism. His organization, the UNIA, the United Negro Improvement, Association, was created as a way to foster this sense of nationalism. In fact, there was a shipping company called the Black Star Line, and this was a ship that ran from the Caribbean, which again, where a lot of enslaved Africans had been brought in the decades and centuries earlier through slavery, to the southern part of the United States, and then to Africa. And it went in between all these different areas.

And again, this was a type of, you know, approach to the racial problems in the United States that was different from, let's say, your conventional... Remember, we talked about people like Booker T, said, go to school and make money, and W.E.B. Du Bois, who essentially said, you know, we need to create just laws. Du Bois and...

Booker T both wanted to still work within the system of the United States, whereas Garvey was rejecting it. And, you know, given the contradiction in World War I and given the violence during the Red Summer, Garvey's message was resonating much more, right? Much more.

So in terms of, again, this notion that the United States was united during the war, we can see that clearly isn't the case with labor. That isn't the case with... you know the the type of racial conflicts that break out and characterize the united states in this period And so some of this culminates into a backlash, specifically against the backdrop of the successful Russian Revolution.

And this ties in with the larger conflicts or agitation amongst the labor strikes or labor movement. So the Red Scare, or sometimes called the First Red Scare, because there is a second one that happens, is the fear that communism aka revolution, will spread to the US. You know, before the Russian Revolution, communism was just kind of like an idea. But after the Russian Revolution, it was made clear that it was possible for communism to take hold.

And so following World War I, and, you know, being a result of several issues, including, you know, the labor strikes we talked about previously, but also there had been a series of bombs that had gone off in several American cities. There was a backlash and a crackdown against any organizations or groups that were believed to be susceptible to ideas related to communism. The attorney general at the time, Mitchell Palmer, and you could think of the attorney general as being like the nation's number one police officer. issued a series of raids against those who were suspected of being maybe sympathetic to those involved with, you know, anything related to communism.

So the Palmer raids were a series of police raids against suspected communists, right? Suspected communists. And many of these raids didn't require or didn't follow the proper protocol of obtaining search warrants. About 500 people were deported as a result of the Palma raids having too close connections to radical groups.

Maybe the most famous example of this crackdown against radicalism. We also have to remember or keep in mind that this was also very closely tied to... immigration. Again, immigrants from Europe were bringing radical ideas to the United States.

So oftentimes the overlap of communism, anarchism, and immigrants were often closely intertwined. The most famous case of this was the case of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, two Italian anarchists who were accused of murder. And in 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti, two, we'll say, Italian anarchists, They were put to death for murder, and we would consider that their trial was much less a sort of, much less a referendum on their actual guilt, and much more a referendum on the Red Scare more broadly. Sacco and Vanzetti in some ways became scapegoats for this Red Scare and their execution.

um, was only kind of more evidence to that.

Transcript for:American Imperialism and World War I Overview

Transcript for:
American Imperialism and World War I Overview