The USA and the “War to End All Wars”

American Reactions to the Outbreak

• “Again and ever, I thank Heaven for the Atlantic Ocean” – US Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, July 29, 1914 describing “The Great Smash”

• American outrage at atrocities

• Who is to blame?

• How should the US react?

Neutrality

• What did the term mean?

• Equal impact on all sides?

• No impact on the war at all?

• Total US freedom of action?

The Germans are killing people. The British are merely inconveniencing them – Wilson on the two blockade strategies.

The Rivals

Woodrow Wilson• Born 1856• Governor (NJ): 1911-1913• President: 1913-1921• Died: 1921 (stroke in 1919)

Theodore Roosevelt• Born 1858• Governor (NY): 1899-1901• President: 1901-1909• Died: 1919

Roosevelt’s Critiques

• Neutrality is “utter folly” akin to disarming the NYPD to fight crime in Central Park

• US policy should be “righteousness backed by force.”

• Wilson’s policy is “object cowardice and weakness.”

Plattsburg Camps

Germany and USW

• Wilson supported a “peace without victory”

• “A War to End All Wars”• “Make the World Safe

for Democracy”• Use the American Army

to solve Europe’s problems through reason and morality

• Roosevelt sought to use US military might to punish Germany

• Use the war to make America a world power

• Roosevelt wanted to lead a division personally

• All of his sons fought, one was killed

The American Army?

• Smaller than Romania’s• Equipment, doctrine,

knowledge of European war all badly out of date

• “I watched them leave and wondered how they could possibly do any good” – Elizabeth Coles Marshall.

The American Army?

• Volunteers, National Guard, or Draftees?

• Combination of systems• An army drafted from a

nation that had volunteered en masse

• “Channeled manpower”

Second Marne

Amiens

St. Mihiel

Argonne Forest

Meuse-Argonne

• Then the largest battle ever fought by American forces

• 27,000 Americans killed and 95,000 wounded, plus thousands of “stragglers”

• Views on an armistice and Pershing’s plans for 1919

The Paris Peace Conference:19 January to 28 June 1919

Wilson and the USA• Elections of 1918

– Irreconcilables– Sen. Lodge

• 14 Points– Should they guide the

conference? Can they?– Contradictions?

• “God Himself only gave mankind ten, and we soon learned how to break those” – Georges Clemenceau

• I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at. • II. Absolute freedom of navigation • III. The removal of all economic barriers • IV. national armaments will be reduced to the lowest

point consistent with domestic safety. • V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial

adjustment of all colonial claims, • VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory. • VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be

evacuated and restored. • VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded

portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, should be righted.

Fourteen Points (abridged)

• IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

• X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

• XI. The relations of the several Balkan states to one another [should be] determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality.

• XII. The nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships.

• XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea.

• XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Impacts

• Isolationism vs. internationalism

• Home front impacts– Great migration– 100% Americanism– Growth of government

influence• Birth of modern

American foreign policy