Chapter 30

The War to End War(1917-1918)

War by Act of Germany

Zimmermann note was intercepted and published on Mar.1,1917 infuriating Americans

German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann had secretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance tempting anti-Yankee Mexico with recovering Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona

Zimmermann note

War by Act of Germany

Over this provocation German U-boats sank four unarmed American merchant vessels

Wilson asked for a declaration of war on Apr.2 1917

Four days later Congress obliged the President

Wilsonian Idealism Enthroned

Six senators and fifty representatives had voted against the war resolution

Republic sought only to shape an international order in which democracy could flourish without fear of power-crazed autocrats and militarists

Wilson’s Fourteen Potent Points On January 8, 1918 Wilson delivered his

Fourteen Point Address The first five were broad in scope

1)A proposal to abolish secret treaties pleased liberals of all countries.

2)Freedom of the seas appealed to the Germans, as well as to Americans who distrusted British sea power.

Wilson’s Fourteen Potent Points

3)A removal of economic barriers among nations had long been the goal of liberal internationalists.4)Reduction of armament burdens was gratifying to taxpayers in all countries.5)An adjustment of colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and the colonizers.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Helped to delegitimize the old empires and opened the road to eventual national independence for millions of “subject peoples”

Creel Manipulates Minds

Committee on Public Information was created because of the war

Headed by journalist, George Creel, his job was to sell America on the war and sell the world on Wilsonian war aims

Creel organization employed 150,000 workers

Creel Manipulates Minds

Sent an army of 75,000 “four-minute men” to deliver speeches containing “patriotic pep”

Types of propaganda: posters, leaflets and pamphlets

Creel typified American war mobilization which relied more on aroused passion and voluntary compliance than on formal laws

George Creel

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent 8 million German Americans proved to be

loyal to the US out of a total population of 100 million

Few German Americans were tarred, feathered, and beaten

Hatred of Germans swept the nation German-composed music was unsafe to be

present, German books were removed from libraries, and German classes were canceled from high schools and colleges

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918

reflected current fears about Germans and anti-war Americans

Socialist Eugene V. Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act in 1918 and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leader William D. Haywood and ninety-nine associates were similarly convicted

Eugene V. Debs

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent

Some critics claimed the new laws were bending if not breaking the First Amendment

In Schenck v. United States (1919) the Supreme Court affirmed their legality.

Workers in Wartime

American workers were driven by the War Department’s “work or fight” rule of 1918(threatened any unemployed male with being immediately drafted)

The National War Labor Board exerted itself to head off labor disputes that might hamper the war effort

Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor (AF of L) loyally supported the war but some did not including the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) known as the “Wobblies”

The Wobblies were victims of some of the shabbiest working conditions

Samuel Gompers

Workers in Wartime

At war’s end, the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) had more than doubled its membership to over 3 million

Coal mining, manufacturing, and transportation wages had risen more than 20 percent

Six thousand strikes broke out during the war years In 1919 more than a quarter million steelworkers

walked off their jobs in a bid to force employers to recognize their right to organize and bargain collectively

Steel companies refused to negotiate and brought in 30,000 African American strikebreakers

Suffering Until Suffrage

Thousands of female workers took up jobs vacated by men who left the assembly line for the frontline

National Woman’s Party led by Quaker activist Alice Paul was against the war

National American Woman Suffrage Association supported Wilson’s War

Wilson endorsed woman suffrage as “a vitally necessary measure”

In 1920 the nineteenth amendment was ratified giving all American women the right to vote

Alice Paul/ Nineteenth Amendment

Forging a War Economy

Chosen to head the Food Administration was the Quaker-humanitarian Herbert C. Hoover

Already considered a hero because he had successfully led a massive charitable drive to feed the starving people of war-racked Belgium

Hoover preferred to rely on voluntary compliance rather than on compulsory edicts

Hoover proclaimed wheatless Wednesdays and meatless Tuesdays

The country soon broke out in a rash of vegetable “victory gardens”

Herbert C. Hoover

Forging a War Economy

Congress restricted the use of foodstuffs for manufacturing alcoholic beverages

Many brewers were German-descended, made the drive against alcohol more popular. In 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, prohibiting all alcoholic drinks.

Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol

Eighteenth Amendment

Forging a War Economy

Farm production increased by one-fourth and food exports to the Allies tripled in volume

Fuel Administration exhorted Americans to save fuel with “heatless Mondays”, “lightless nights”, and “gasless Sundays”

Forging a War Economy

Invoked slogans like “Halt the Hun” to promote four great Liberty Loan drives

Together all efforts made about $21 million or two-thirds of the current cost of the war to the US

Remainder was raised by increased taxes

Making Plowboys into Doughboys In April and May of 1917 European

associates confessed that they were scraping the bottom not only of their money chest but or their manpower barrels

Conscription was the only answer to the need for raising an immense army

Wilson eventually accepted and supported conscription , the bill immediately ran into a barrage of criticism in Congress

Six weeks after declaring war Congress passed the conscription

Making Plowboys into Doughboys

Draft required the registration of all males between the ages of 18 and 45

Registration day proved to be a day of patriotic pilgrimages

337,000 “slackers” escaped the draft and about 4,000 were excused

Making Plowboys into Doughboys Within a few months the army grew to over

4 million men For the first time women were admitted to

the armed forces. African Americans also served in the armed forces

Recruits were supposed to receive 6 months of training in America and 2 overseas but many doughboys were swept into battle hardly knowing how to handle a rifle.

America Helps Hammer the “Hun” May 1918 German juggernaut threatened to knock out

France Newly arrived American troops were thrown into the

breach at Chateau-Thierry, into the teeth of German advance (the first significant engagement of American Troops in a European war)

In September 1918 nine American divisions joined four French divisions to push the Germans from the St. Mihiel salient, a German dagger in France’s flank.

Americans dissatisfied with merely bolstering the British and French had been demanding a separate army

America Helps Hammer the “Hun” General John J. Pershing was assigned a front of

eighty-five miles stretching northwestward from the Swiss border to meet the French lines

One objective was to cut the German railroad lines feeding the western front

Pershing’s army undertook Meuse-Argonne offensive from Sept.26 to Nov. 11,1918.

Lasted 47 days and engaged 1.2 million American troops

The most massive battle in American history

General John J. Pershing

Military leader Became the

commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe

The Fourteen Points Disarm Germany

The exhausted Germans were through they laid down their arms at 11o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918

The war to end wars had ended US main contributions to the ultimate

victory had been foodstuffs, munitions, credits, oil, and manpower

An Idealist Battles the Imperialists in Paris The Paris Conference was made up of Wilson,

Premier Vittorio Orlando of Italy, prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, and Premier Georges Clemenceau of France

The conference opened on Jan. 1918 Wilson’s ultimate goal was a world parliament to be

known as the League of Nations Gained a signal victory over the Old World diplomats

in Feb. 1918 when they agreed to make the League Covenant

The Big Four