Chapter 30: The War to End War: 1917-1918

In January, 1917, Germany announced it was resuming unrestricted submarine warfare on all shipping in the war zone around the British Isles. Germany knew this would eventually draw America into the war, but hoped to knock Britain out of the war before this happened. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, but did not yet declare war. Wilson preferred to first wait for an "overt" act of war by Germany.

War by Act of Germany

America moved from neutrality to the side of the Allies in the spring of 1917, and despite some anti-war sentiment, several factors pushed America into the war.

Wilson's request to arm American merchant ships is met with resistance from mid-western Senators who have no wish to get involved in a European war. In March of 1917, the Zimmerman note was intercepted and published. This note was a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to the Mexican government proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the United States. In return for Mexican support, Germany hinted it would help Mexico recover Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In March of 1917, Germany sank 4 unarmed American ships. Simultaneously, a revolution knocked the despotic Russian government out of the war, freeing moralistic Wilson to claim that the purpose of the war was to make the world safe for democracy.

Wilsonian Idealism Enthroned

Woodrow Wilson faced the task of persuading the American public to give up over a century of isolationist tradition to support involvement in a European war. He did so by framing America's involvement as an idealistic crusade. America's war aim was to "make the world safe for democracy" and to help shape a democratic world order.

Wilson's 14 Potent Points

In January 1918, President Wilson when delivered an address to Congress outlining his plan for peace after the war, known as the Fourteen Points, many people were inspired by Wilson's ideals while some critics here and abroad found the plan too idealistic and impractical.

The Fourteen Points included:
1) an end to secret treaties
2) freedom of the seas
3) free trade
4) reduction in armaments
5) adjustment of colonial claims of the Western powers (and Japan)
6) the rights of minority groups in Europe to form their own governments

The final and most important to Wilson of the Fourteen Points was his idea for a League of Nations, an international organization that would keep world peace through collective security. Many European leaders and conservatives at home criticized Wilson and his plan as being unrealistic and Wilson as being self-righteous.

 

Creel Manipulates Minds

The United states government undertook a large-scale propaganda effort employing hundreds of thousands of workers to mobilize support for the war.

The Committee on Public Information, headed by a journalist named George Creel, was tasked with this effort. This committee sent out 75,000 people across the country to give short speeches in support of the war. The effort included posters, billboards, leaflets, movies, and music.

The effort typified American war mobilization in that it relied more on persuasion and voluntary compliance than on the force of law. However, by overselling the war aims and raising expectations too much, Creel and his committee helped contribute to much of the disillusionment that occurred after the war.

 

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent

During the war, there was a backlash against all things German and Congressional legislation that significantly curbed First Amendment rights was upheld by the Supreme Court.

The loyalty of German-Americans was questioned during the war. Although they were mostly loyal, they were blamed for acts of sabotage and spying, real or imagined. Anti-German hysteria swept the nation. Foods with German names like hamburgers and sauerkraut were called "liberty steak" and "liberty cabbage". Beers with names like "Schlitz" and "Pabst" were suspect.

The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 made criticism of the war illegal. 1,900 people were prosecuted under this law, including socialist union leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. About 100 members of the radical union International Workers of the World, including their leader "Big Bill" Haywood were convicted.
Despite much criticism of these laws for abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these laws in their landmark 1919 decision Schneck v. United States. Most of the people put in jail, including Eugene V. Debs, were pardoned by president Warren G. Harding after the war.

The Nation's Factories Go to War (Forging a War Economy)

America was both militarily and industrially unprepared for entry into the war, but Wilson implemented an unprecedented amount of government control over the economy before the war ended.

Wilson authorized the Council of Defense in 1915 to begin looking at issues concerning economic mobilization. He launched a shipbuilding program and increased the size of the army, but given the enormous size and scale of this war, these measures were fairly weak.

Some obstacles to full mobilization of resources to support the war included:
1) Nobody knew exactly how much steel or other resources the country was capable of            producing.
2) Traditional beliefs about limited, constitutional government caused many states rights          Democrats and Republican business leaders to balk at a government take-over of the           economy.

In March, 1918, President Wilson appointed Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board. This board didn't have much power, but it represented an early attempt to centralize economic planning. It served as a model for Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to fight the Depression and World War II in the '30s and '40s.

 

Workers in Wartime

Despite significant wage growth and government efforts to mediate labor disputes, conflict between labor and management persisted during the war, and manifested itself in both violent strikes and racial conflict as black workers were brought in as strikebreakers.

The War Department's rule that any unemployed male risked being drafted discouraged many workers from striking. The National War Labor Board tried to diffuse labor disputes by serving as a government mediator between the two sides. The government did persuade employers to give higher wages and an 8-hour work day, but did not give legal protection to labor's right to organize.

The largest labor union, the American Federation of Labor (or AF of L), led by Samuel Gompers, supported the war effort. More radical unions like the International Workers of the World (IWW) did not, and even committed acts of industrial sabotage. By the end of the war, wages were high, but so was inflation. Some 6,000 strikes broke out during the war years, and the year after the war the largest strike in American history occurred in the steel industry. When 250,000 steel workers walked off the job, rather than negotiate with the union, the steel companies brought in black workers as strike breakers. These strike-breakers were just a fraction of the tens of thousands of black migrants who left the South in search of wartime employment in Northern factories. Their sudden appearance in previously all-white working class neighborhoods was often followed by bloody race riots.

Suffering Until Suffrage

Despite some disagreement, women in the US supported the war effort, replaced men in industrial and agricultural jobs, and saw significant political gains by the end of the war, including suffrage at the national level with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

1) Thousands of women took jobs in factories and on farms to take the place of men who went to war. After the war most returned to their traditional roles, but this foreshadowed the modern era in which women increasingly pursued their own careers.

2) Some women were pacifists and opposed the war effort, but the majority of women supported the war effort because they believed that  supporting the fight for democracy abroad would give them a greater role in helping shape the peace.

3) States in the U.S. and countries all over the world grant women the right to vote and the US does so after the war with the 19th Amendment.

4) Women made some political gains with the establishment of a women's bureau and passage of the Sheppard Towner maternity Act of 1921.

Forging A War Economy

The American government relied heavily upon propaganda-supported voluntary efforts to support the war, but compulsory measures were also taken by the Wilson Administration

 Mobilization was largely voluntary, with the government using various forms of propaganda and advertising to persuade the public to conserve resources for the war effort.
Some examples of voluntary mobilization included:
"Wheatless Wednesdays" Meatless Tuesdays", "Victory Gardens" War Bonds funded the war

Compulsory measures included:
1) Congress banned use of wheat for making alcoholic beverages
2) Taxes were levied to raise additional funds for the war
3) War Production Board gained greater power to control the economy
4) Daylight Savings Time

 

Making Plowboys into Doughboys

Despite fears of massive resistance, when Congress instituted the first draft since the Civil War, the public largely complied and an army of 4 million, known as the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), was raised, including significant numbers of women and African Americans, who served in segregated non-combat units.

America Helps Hammer the Hun (Fighting in France Belatedly)

Once Russia pulls out of the war, Germany is able to concentrate on the Western Front, and manpower shortages make the Allies desperate for the arrival of the American forces, who arrive just in time to prevent a German victory and turn the tide of the war.

1) The arrival of American forces help prevent an Allied collapse.
2) Once Germany realizes that an unlimited supply of American troops was on the way, they surrender to the Allies.
3) Though 9 million soldiers died in combat, a world-wide flu epidemic killed 30 million people, including over 550,000 Americans.
4) The major contribution of the US was supplying credit and materials to the Allies.

Need to know battle: Meuse-Argonne offensive
Need to know soldiers: John J. Pershing, Alvin York

 

Wilson Steps Down from Olympus
Although Wilson was enormously popular in Europe for his role in winning the war, a series of mistakes on his part led to a decline in his popular support back home and undermined his ability to persuade his political opponents to embrace his plan for a post-war peace.

Wilson ignored his political opposition, gambling that popularity as a moral leader would create unstoppable momentum for his peace plan. He made little or no effort to persuade Senators of the Republican Party to support him.

An Idealist Amidst the Imperialists

Although Wilson hoped that global popular support would help his Fourteen Points prevail at the Paris Peace conference, he soon had to abandon many of his priorities in the compromises that followed in order to preserve his most cherished priority, the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles included little of Wilson's idealism, punished Germany severely, but did release many European ethnic minorities from control of larger countries.

 

Wilson's Battle for Ratification

Despite strenuous efforts on the part of President Wilson to gain popular support for the Treaty of Versailles, isolationist sentiment and Republican opposition prevent passage of the treaty.

Wilson returned to American facing stiff Senate opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. There were two main groups of opposition, the irreconcilables who rejected the treaty outright, and another group, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who used various tactics to delay the vote,  hoping to change the treaty through the amendment process to make it more acceptable to American interests. Wilson then embarked on a railroad tour of the country to try to persuade the public to support the treaty as it was. Wilson suffered a severe stroke during this tour. When Senator Lodge began making changes to the bill, Wilson decided he wanted the treaty as originally written or not at all, and told fellow Democrats to vote against the amended version and the Treaty of Versailles failed to pass the US Senate.

The "Solemn Referendum" of 1920

Woodrow Wilson hoped the election of 1920 would be a chance for the public to show support for the Treaty of Versailles and revive its hopes of passing in the Senate, however, the Republican nominee Warren G. Harding defeated the Democratic supporter of Wilson's treaty in a landslide electoral victory promising Americans a "Return to Normalcy". The American public rejected Woodrow Wilson's lofty idealism and passed on its last chance to join the League of Nations.

 

The Betrayal of Great Expectations

America's rejection of the League of Nations left European nations to deal with the post-war era on their own, and the continent drifted towards a second world war as Adolph Hitler used German grievances to propel his rise to power. Whether US involvement would have prevented this isn't certain, but we do know that the League of Nations and the international community utterly failed to prevent this catastrophe when America turned its back on them.