World War I

President Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921

Southern Democrat back in the White House

School teacher and administratorPresident of PrincetonGovernor of New JerseyEmbraces ProgressivismWilliam Jennings Bryan endorsed

Wilson as a man not “tainted” by Wall Street; Wilson appointed Bryan Secretary of State

International Unrest 1910sMexican Revolution, 1910 to 1920

Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1910.Revolution:Francisco Madero, 1910-1913. (Beginning of PRI.)Victoriano Huerta, with Taft’s ambassador’s aid, took

control of Mexico in a violent coup.In 1913, Woodrow Wilson withheld recognition, declared

Huerta a murderer.US forces invaded Mexico in 1914 and occupied Veracruz.

Huerta fled.In the power vacuum, regional military leaders such as

Pancho Villa, Venustiano Carranza, and Emiliano Zapata struggled for influence and control in post-Diaz Mexico.

In 1916 Villa raided New Mexico and Wilson sent General Pershing into Mexico a second time to catch and punish Villa.

Carranza, 1914-1920.Alvaro Obregon, 1920-1924.

International Unrest 1910s

Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905

Europe, 1910s

• British industrial and political might eclipsed by United States and Germany.

• German industrial growth pressured neighbors France and Russia.

• Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Ottoman Empire formed Alliance in 1880s. Known as the Central Powers.

• Britain, France, Russia alliance. Known as the Triple Entente, formed in 1907.

• In the 1890s and 1900s a growing arms race between Germany and Britain raised tensions while Tsarist Russia began to seek sources of industrialization and commercial trade in Asia sparking wars with Japan.

World War IGreen: Entente/Allies

Orange: Central Powers

World War One

France and German stalemate emerges early• Trench warfare• Barbwire• Machine Guns• Poison Gas• Airplanes• Submarines• Tanks

Global Turmoil, 1914-1919

Irish revolt. 1916-1922. Resent British rule and use of Irish soldiers in the war.

Arab revolt. 1916-1918. Britain sponsors Arabian overthrow of Turkish rule in Middle East. Opened up Middle East to British, and later American, influence.

Russian Revolution. 1917-1921. Enormous suffering during War leads to overthrow of Tsar. Brief representative government taken over by Communists under leadership of Lenin. Russia quits WWI alliance and made a separate peace with Germany.

United States and Isolation

War erupted in 1914. U.S. population generally wished to remain neutral.

Irish American and German American ethnic groups, the largest immigrant communities of the 19th century, now in second and third generations. Opposed alliance with Britain.

Labor radicals opposed war as a war for capitalism and imperialism.

Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916 on a peace platform.William J. Bryan opposed US entry: War would make the US

“a vast armory with a skull and crossbones above the door.”

Election of 1916

Woodrow Wilson (D) 9.1 million votes277 electoral college votes49.2%

Charles E. Hughes (R)8.5 million votes254 electoral college votes46.1%

1916

US Enters WWIGerman submarines targeted British ships• 1915 Lusitania, 128 Americans among 1190

dead• 1916 Sussex

1917 Zimmerman Telegram

Germany proposed aid to Mexico if it attacks USA.

We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.

The Home FrontWoodrow Wilson wanted a united

America behind the war effort and did not tolerate anti-war dissent.

1917 Espionage Act: punished interference with war effort.

1918 Sedition Act: Amendments to Espionage Act punished disloyal speech.

1919 Schenck vs U.S. Supreme Court case: Upheld Espionage Act as not a restriction on free speech.

1920 Eugene Debs in prison for speaking against the draft, made fourth and final run for President on Socialist ticket.

The Home Front

Wilson’s Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

November 1919 to 1920• 50 federal raids, 5000

arrests, 10% deported• Russian Revolution,

anarchists, and anti-war activists targeted in first “Red Scare” in 1919

“Palmer Raids” break radical unions during the war

The Home Front

Prohibition, a reform agenda for 40+ years, gathered support when connected with anti-German sentiment.

Peace, 1918

• November 11, 1918 Armistice Day• Peace of Paris Treaty signed, June 1919• Woodrow Wilson proposed “14 Points”• Treaty placed responsibility for war on Germany• Germany obligated to make reparations• Wilson proposed League of Nations, rejected by US Senate,

created without U.S. participation• Article X: League members obligated to assist victims of

aggression• Japan pressed unsuccessfully for statement opposed to

racism

Cultural Legacies: The Lost Generation

70 million soldiers deployed, 14 million dead, 7 million disabled, Russian Revolution, Germany and France destroyed, Britain exhausted

American veterans became disillusioned with patriotism and masculinity. Novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald represented a new generation in literature

Film, music and painting embrace abstract, fractured non-narrative perspectives ushered in the era of Modernism

Rupert Brooke, The Soldier (1914)

If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.1887-1915

Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est (1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots  

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud  

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. 1893-1918

e.e. cummings, my sweet old etcetera (1926)

my sweet old etceteraaunt lucy during the recentwar could and whatis more did tell you justwhat everybody was fighting

for,my sister

Isabel created hundreds(andhundreds)of socks not tomention fleaproof earwarmersetcetera wristers etcetera, mymother hoped that

i would die etceterabravely of course my father usedto become hoarse talking about how it wasa privilege and if only hecould meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietlyin the deep mud et

cetera(dreaming,etcetera, ofYour smileeyes knees and of your Etcetera)