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The American Yawp, Volume 2, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 7 · pp. 201–228
This chapter follows the United States from its distance from European politics before 1914 to its role in World War I and the troubled years after it. It covers the alliances that led to war, America's neutrality and its decision to fight, the mobilization of soldiers and civilians at home, the end of the fighting and the peace settlement, and the social conflicts of 1919. This part covers the causes of the war, the weak US military but strong US economy, the Mexican Revolution on the border, and the first steps of the war in Europe.
Germany and the alliance systems. Germany became a major power at the end of the 1800s, and skilled diplomats kept Europe at peace for decades. That changed when Wilhelm II became emperor in 1888. He admired the British Empire and envied the Royal Navy, so he tried to build a rival German navy and to win colonies around the world. Britain saw a German fleet as a strategic threat. Other nations watched Germany's growth nervously and began forming alliances in response. (p. 202)
The result was two rival blocs:
The key point is cause and effect: Wilhelm's ambitions made neighbors feel threatened, and their response divided Europe into armed camps. A quarrel between two countries could now draw in many more.
Rivalry in the Balkans. The weakening Ottoman Empire was another danger. Austria-Hungary had little interest in overseas colonies, but Ottoman-held lands on its southern border fit its strategic goals. Nicholas II was alarmed by this. Russia saw itself as the historic protector of the Slavic peoples of the Balkans and as a competitor for Ottoman territory. Austrian expansion therefore threatened Russian influence. (p. 202)
The spark. By 1914 Austria-Hungary controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina and viewed Serbia, a Slavic state protected by Russia, as its next challenge. On June 28, 1914, the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie. Austria-Hungary now had a reason to prepare for war against Serbia, and the alliance system was ready to pull other powers in. (p. 202)
A tradition of neutrality. The United States played a small part in world diplomacy and joined no formal alliances. Its attitude followed George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796, which warned against foreign alliances and against large military establishments that could threaten liberty. Americans were busy building an industrial economy, and they gained from the trade that came with European peace. Without a strong army, American diplomats relied on persuasion, appeals to justice, and economic influence rather than force. (p. 203)
A small, outdated military. Congress approved a modern navy in the 1880s, but the army stayed small and underfunded. New technologies such as airplanes, motor vehicles, submarines, and modern artillery were hard for the services to buy and use well. The army could police Native Americans in the West and garrison new overseas territories, but it could not fight a large war. Two laws began to fix this: the Davis Act of 1908 and the National Defense Act of 1916. They created the modern National Guard and reserves. These were state-run units that received conditional federal funds for training and could be called up for international wars. Summer training for college students also built a reserve officer corps. The country now had a long-term reserve of trained troops. (p. 203)
An economic giant. In one measure of power the US led the world. By 1914 it produced slightly more than a third of all manufactured goods, about as much as France, Great Britain, and Germany combined. America was therefore an economic great power even though its diplomacy and army were weak. (p. 204)
Why the US intervened. In 1910 Francisco Madero challenged Mexico's unpopular president Porfirio Díaz and called for revolution in his Plan of San Luis Potosí. The unrest worried Americans who had invested heavily under Díaz. They owned over 100 million acres, more than a fifth of Mexico, along with railroads, mines, and oil fields. Oil demand rose even higher once war began in Europe. (p. 204)
Huerta's violent coup in 1913 overthrew Madero and disgusted President Wilson's government. Huerta refused to hold elections. In April 1914, after American sailors were arrested at Tampico and a further insult, Wilson sent Marines with a naval escort to occupy Veracruz. The Marines ran the city and blocked German arms shipments to Huerta until they left in November 1914. (p. 204)
Naval power. Veracruz showed that the US still depended on its navy. The growing threat of war in Europe helped Congress pass the Naval Act of 1916, and Wilson said he wanted the navy to be the greatest in the world. (pp. 204–205)
Effects on the borderlands. The revolution killed more than a million Mexicans, and as many as a million fled north. Anglo farmers and ranchers bought huge amounts of land and pushed Mexican American owners out by legal and illegal means. Tension rose. In 1915 a document called the Plan of San Diego, which called for a race war in South Texas, was found on a man arrested in McAllen. Raids on ranches and infrastructure followed. Anglo ranchers and Texas Rangers answered with violence that killed many hundreds of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, remembered as "La Matanza." Wilson also used the National Defense Act to station over 100,000 National Guardsmen on the border. (pp. 205–206)
Villa and the Punitive Expedition. In October 1915 the US recognized Venustiano Carranza's government, which angered his rival Pancho Villa. In March 1916 Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, killed seventeen Americans, and burned the town center. Wilson sent General John Pershing to capture him. The "Punitive Expedition" did not catch Villa, but it gave the army experience with modern tools:
As the European crisis grew, Wilson backed a border commission, and the expedition was withdrawn by early 1917. (p. 206)
War came through a chain of steps in summer 1914. Austria won a promise of support from Germany and sent Serbia ten demands. When Serbia did not accept all of them, Austria declared war on July 28. Russia began mobilizing its army to protect Serbia. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia to defend Austria, after warnings to Nicholas II had failed to stop Russian preparations. Each government acted to protect an ally, and the alliances turned a regional dispute into a continental war. (pp. 206–207)
When the crisis of 1914 turned into war, the first attack did not hit the countries that had started the quarrel. It hit neutral Belgium. Germany expected Russia to mobilize slowly, so its generals wanted to knock out France first. The Schlieffen Plan was the tool for this. It used railroads to move German armies fast, marching them through Belgium and into France. The plan had a fatal side effect. Invading a neutral country meant Great Britain joined the war against Germany. Britain declared war on August 4, 1914, because Germany had not respected Belgium's neutrality. (p. 207)
Germany's quick win never came. By 1915 the Western Front was a trench stalemate. British and French offensives sent huge numbers of soldiers forward, and the result was mass casualties with almost no ground gained. Fighting in other places did not change this. Campaigns against the Ottoman Empire, such as Gallipoli, and fighting across the Middle East and parts of Africa either failed or had little effect on who would win in Europe. (p. 207)
In March 1917, things shifted in Germany's favor when Tsar Nicholas II's government collapsed in Russia. A weaker Russia meant Germany could hope to move troops west. The story ended later that year: the army fell apart after a failed offensive in July 1917, and Lenin's Bolsheviks took power in November. Russia then accepted German terms and left the war. This gave Germany the one-front war it had wanted since 1914. (pp. 207, 216)
Around the time Russia's regime fell, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. German subs would sink ships without warning to cut off supplies from the United States to the Allies. German leaders knew this could bring America in. Their bet was that the war would end before enough American soldiers could arrive to matter. (pp. 207–208)
Germany also tried to make an American war effort harder. Diplomat Arthur Zimmermann sent a message offering Mexico support to win back Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Mexico's leaders said no. But once the Zimmermann Telegram became public, it angered Americans and helped push the country into the war. (p. 208)
President Wilson declared neutrality in 1914 and asked for neutrality "in fact as well as in name." Most Americans agreed. But a common misconception is that the US treated both sides the same. It did not. Economic ties with Britain and France were strong, and the Allies received far more loans and supplies than Germany. In October 1914 Wilson approved commercial credit loans to the warring countries, which made claims of impartiality harder to defend. By 1916, American trade with the Allies had tripled, while trade with the Central Powers dropped below 1 percent of its earlier level. (pp. 208, 214)
Both sides used blockades, and the British stopping or seizing ships was costly and irritating to American shippers. Still, German submarine attacks were far deadlier because they came by surprise. American munitions makers and other suppliers saw business boom. (p. 209)
The path from neutrality to war had several steps:
The United States entered a war three thousand miles away with a small, poorly trained, badly equipped military. It took a long time to assemble, train, equip, and ship an army to the Western Front. The reason was history. Germany, France, and Austria-Hungary kept large standing forces and trained reserves, so they could quickly call up reservists and conscripts. The US had no such tradition and had always relied on volunteers. (p. 209)
Volunteering was popular. Many young men even paid for their own training at army camps before the US joined the war. Organized labor also preferred it. Samuel Gompers wrote to congressional committees that the labor movement had always opposed compulsion, and he hoped volunteers could show the strength of the Republic. (pp. 209–210)
Congress went ahead with a draft anyway. The Selective Service Act passed on May 18, 1917, and Wilson signed it a week later. It first required men aged 21 to 30 to register. It was run locally and avoided the bonuses and paid substitutes that had made the Civil War draft unpopular, so it met little objection. (p. 210)
Basic physical fitness was the main standard. The Surgeon General's 1919 report looked at 2.5 million examined men and counted 1,533,937 physical defects. More than 34 percent were rejected or later discharged for neurological, psychiatric, or mental problems. (p. 210)
To judge mental ability, the army gave intelligence tests to about 1.9 million men. Men who could read took the Army Alpha. Illiterate men and immigrants who did not speak English took the Army Beta, a nonverbal test based on pictures. Psychologist Robert Yerkes, a eugenicist, ran the testing. He concluded that the average recruit had a mental age of only about thirteen, and lower for recent immigrants, and he claimed this showed racial decline. Later experts rejected this. The tests were badly designed and mistook gaps in schooling for low intelligence. (p. 210)
Army life mixed native-born and foreign-born men, as in the Civil War, when many Irish and Germans fought beside native-born soldiers and some German units used German as their main language. In 1917–1918, however, public anger at "hyphenated Americans" made the army accept immigrants hesitantly, and some were segregated. (pp. 210–211)
Racial attitudes meant white and Black soldiers were put in separate units. W.E.B. Du Bois and other Black leaders still backed the war and wanted Black soldiers at the front. Their reasoning was simple: if Black men were drafted and fought and died equally with white men, white Americans would have to see that they deserved full citizenship. The War Department did not agree. It barred Black troops from combat and mostly assigned them to labor units. It also limited their privileges so that Europe would not make them question their place in American society. Even so, training, leave, and service in France changed many of these men deeply. (p. 211)
Before 1917, most Americans paid little attention to the fighting in Europe. Progressive reform at home took up most of their interest. Even so, the huge death tolls pushed many to believe that the West's future depended on an Allied win. Trade with the Allies tripled by 1916, while trade with the Central Powers fell to under 1 percent of its old level (p. 214). This is why "neutral" America was never an equal partner to both sides.
Once the country joined the war, the government had to build support fast. President Wilson set up the Committee on Public Information, called the Creel Committee after its head, George Creel. It worked with Hollywood studios and other new media to tell a simple story: democracy was fighting imperialism, and America was rescuing Western civilization from militarism (p. 215).
The same patriotic mood had a harsh side. People called it "one hundred percent Americanism." Questioning the war counted as disloyalty. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 took away the right of protesters to speak out against the war, and many critics went to prison (pp. 214–215). Private groups joined in. The American Protective League, made up of ordinary citizens, spied on people suspected of disloyalty and worked with the government (p. 214). German Americans suffered most. Some towns banned speaking German in public, and mobs broke up German-language meetings and church services (p. 215).
Fear of foreigners also shaped law. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917 over Wilson's veto. It barred illiterate immigrants and moved policy toward limits based on nationality and supposed "fitness" for citizenship (p. 215).
The government also needed money. It sold war bonds through Liberty Loan drives, asking civilians to lend money to the government. Many Americans gave up far more than cash (p. 215).
German submarines had sunk over a thousand ships by the time the US entered the war. The Allies fought back by adding American naval escorts to the British fleet and by sailing ships in a convoy system, grouping merchant ships under armed protection. Losses dropped quickly. Large numbers of American soldiers then reached Europe, which badly damaged German plans (p. 216).
Russia's collapse helped Germany. The tsarist government fell, and in November 1917 Lenin's Bolsheviks took power and took Russia out of the war. Germany could now move troops west and fight on one front. In March 1918 it launched the Kaiserschlacht (Spring Offensive), five major attacks. None broke through by mid-July. On August 8, American, British, and French forces began counteroffensives that pushed the Germans back. General Ludendorff called that day "the black day" of his army (p. 216). Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, and the new democratic government accepted an armistice (ceasefire) on November 11, 1918. German troops left France and Belgium (p. 216).
The human cost differed by country. More than 4.7 million Americans served, and over 100,000 died, with 53,000 of those in battle. France lost almost 1.5 million soldiers and Germany lost more. Each lost about 4 percent of its people (p. 216).
A deadly flu strain appeared in Kansas in spring 1918 and hit Camp Funston, a huge army training camp. Camps gathered men from many places, moved them between bases, sent them home, and shipped them overseas, so the virus spread easily. By September every US training camp had cases, and then the virus mutated into a deadlier second wave. It struck people aged 18 to 35 especially hard (pp. 217–218).
The "Spanish flu" killed an estimated fifty million people worldwide. It got that name only because uncensored newspapers in neutral Spain reported on it. Almost half a million American soldiers caught influenza, compared with 227,000 hospitalized for wounds. The fall wave weakened American and German armies during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and more US soldiers died of flu than in combat (pp. 217–218).
On January 8, 1918, Wilson announced the Fourteen Points, his war aims and principles for lasting peace. At the center was a League of Nations built on collective security: an attack on one member would count as an attack on all. Germany did not take the plan seriously, and Clemenceau joked that "the good Lord only had ten" (p. 218).
At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson's idealism met other goals. Clemenceau wanted reparations (heavy payments) and limits on German power. Lloyd George cared most about protecting the British Empire. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, was a compromise. It included reparations and the League. Wilson called it imperfect but better than no peace (pp. 218–219).
Back home, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, argued that the League threatened American sovereignty. Wilson toured the country for support but suffered a stroke. The Senate blocked ratification, and the League worked without the US (p. 219).
In the Middle East, the King-Crane Commission found that most people wanted independence. Their wishes were ignored. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres created mandates: France took Syria, and Britain took Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan. The mandate system was a new form of imperialism, and the US declined to take part (p. 220).
The Russian Revolution fed fear of radicals. Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian-born anarchists, were convicted in 1920 and executed, which showed fear of immigrants and communism (p. 220). Mail bombs in April 1919 and explosions in eight cities in June, including one at Attorney General Palmer's home, led to the Palmer Raids. J. Edgar Hoover led the intelligence division, and the raids of 1919–1920 brought over 4,000 arrests. Many lacked warrants and found no weapons. The backlash helped create the ACLU in 1920 (pp. 220–222).
The US also sent troops to northern Russia and Siberia after Russia made peace with Germany in March 1918. Some stayed until 1920. Anticommunism outweighed any shared ideas about self-determination (p. 222).
In 1919 about four million workers struck, nearly a quarter of manual workers, starting with the Seattle general strike. They wanted "industrial democracy." Fear of revolution brought troops and injunctions, and Coolidge broke the Boston police strike. The steel and coal strikes were also suppressed (pp. 222–223).
The Great Migration brought Black southerners north to fill wartime jobs, and white workers and returning veterans fought them over jobs and housing. In the "Red Summer" of 1919, racial violence hit at least twenty-five cities. The Chicago Riot (July 27–August 3) was the worst. Many Black Americans defended their homes by force, and Du Bois wrote, "We return fighting" (pp. 223–224).
