Transcript America: A Concise History 3e

War and the American State,
1914–1920
The Great War, 1914–1918
War in Europe
The Perils of Neutrality
“Over There”
How and why did World War I began?
Evaluate and discuss President Wilson’s decision
to enter the war in 1917.
Why World War I was considered a “total war”.
How he war affected economic affairs and social
relationships in America?
How and why President Wilson attempted to
shape the Treaty of Versailles?
The failures of the Settlement of
1919–1920 to achieve a lasting peace in America
and in Europe.
The Great War, 1914-1918
War in Europe
When war erupted, most Americans saw no reason
to involve themselves in the struggle among
Europe's imperialist powers; the United States had
a good relationship with both sides.
Almost from the moment the Triple Entente was
formed in 1907 to counter the Triple Alliance,
European leaders began to prepare for an
inevitable conflict.
Austria's seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
1908 enraged Russia and Serbia; Serbian terrorists
recruited Bosnians to agitate against Austrian rule.
On June 28,1914,
Gavrilo Princip, a
Bosnian, assassinated
Franz Ferdinand, the
heir to the AustroHungarian throne, and
his wife in the town of
Sarajevo.
After the assassination, the complex European alliance
system drew all of the major powers into war within a
few days.
The two rival blocs faced off: Great Britain, France,
Japan, Russia, and Italy formed the Allied Powers,
while Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria
formed the Central Powers.
Because the alliance system encompassed competing
imperial powers, the conflict spread to parts of the
world far beyond Europe, including the Middle East,
Africa, and China. The worldwide scope of the conflict
came to be known as "the Great War," or later, World
War I.
World War I utilized new military technology,
much of it from the United States, which made
armies more deadly than before.
Trench warfare produced unprecedented numbers
of casualties; between February and December of
1916, the French suffered 550,000 casualties and
the Germans 450,000.
World War I could be considered the first "modern"
war. Aside from the debut of the machine gun (seen
here), it also marked the advent of air forces,
submarines, tanks, and chemical warfare. Casualties
skyrocketed accordingly, due mostly to the new,
ruthlessly efficient weaponry, but also because
armies continued to use 19th century tactics like
trench warfare.
The Perils of Neutrality
After the war began in Europe, President
Woodrow Wilson made it clear that America
would remain neutral; he believed that if America
kept aloof from the quarrel, he could arbitrate and
influence a European settlement.
The United States had divided loyalties
concerning the war; many Americans felt deep
cultural ties to the Allies, while others, especially
Irish and German immigrants, had strong proGerman sentiments.
Progressive leaders opposed American
participation in the European conflict, new pacifist
groups mobilized popular opposition, the political
left condemned the war as imperialistic, and some
industrialists, such as Henry Ford, bankrolled
antiwar activities.
African American leaders saw the war as a conflict
of the white race only.
The British imposed a naval blockade that in
effect prevented neutral nations, including the
United States, from trading with Germany and its
Allies.
American Neutrality (cont)
Loans to Britain and France, but not to
Germany
Little protest to British violations of U.S.
neutral rights
German submarine warfare
– Designed to combat British dominance of the
seas
The resulting trade imbalance translated into
closer U.S. economic ties with the Allies, despite
America's official posture of neutrality.
The German navy launched a devastating new
weapon, the U-boat, and issued a warning to
civilians that all ships flying the flags of Britain or
its Allies were liable to be destroyed.
On May 7,1915, the British luxury liner Lusitania
was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast
of Ireland; 128 Americans were among the 1,198
people killed.
• Led to sharp protest from Wilson
– Government refused to yield unless Britain
allowed cargo to reach German ports
– Seemed to show that war with Germany was
inevitable
In February 1915, Germany
announced that it intended to
sink on sight enemy ships en
route to the British Isles. On
May 7, 1915, a German U-boat
torpedoed the British passenger
liner Lusitania, killing 1,198
passengers, 128 of them U.S.
citizens. American newspapers
featured drawings of drowning
women and children, and some
editorials demanded war.
Propaganda posters like this
one were used to encourage
military enlistment once the
United States entered World
War I in 1917.
Arabic pledge
Germany would warn non-military ships 30
minutes before they sank them to make sure
the passengers and crew got out safely.
They broke this pledge on March 24, 1916
The Sussex
March 24th 1916 a German submarine in the English
Channel attacked what it thought was a mine laying
ship.
French passenger steamer called 'The Sussex' and,
although it didn't sink and limped into port, fifty people
were killed. Several Americans were injured and, on
April 19th, the US President (Woodrow Wilson)
addressed Congress on the issue. He gave an
ultimatum: Germany should end attacks on passenger
vessels, or face America 'breaking off' diplomatic
relations.
Germany promised to alter their naval and
submarine policy of unrestricted submarine
warfare and stop the indiscriminate sinking
of non-military ships. Instead, Merchant
Ships would be searched and sunk only if
they contained contraband, and then only
after safe passage had been provided for the
crew and passengers.
American Neutrality (cont)
House-Grey Memorandum, February 1916
The so-called 'House-Grey Memorandum',
noted in memo form by Grey, involved the U.S.
'inviting' German participation in a U.S.
inspired peace convention; the failure of
Germany to attend would lead to U.S. military
involvement.
Won applause from many Americans
– American Union Against Militarism
Campaign in 1916 based on his peace
efforts
– Plans for international organization to
maintain peace
Laid out principles for a lasting peace in
early 1917
– Constituted new world order based on
equality of all nations
Despite repeated attempts to mediate an end
to the European conflict through his aide,
Colonel Edward House, Wilson worried that
the United States might be drawn into the
conflict; in the fall of 1915, he endorsed a
$1 billion buildup of the army and navy.
Public opposition to entering the war made
the election of 1916 a contest between two
antiwar candidates-Wilson and Charles
Evans Hughes; Wilson won by only a slim
margin that limited his options in
mobilizing the nation for war.
The events of early 1917 diminished
Wilson's lingering hopes of staying out of
the conflict.
German Escalation
German push for victory on land and at
sea, early 1917
– To counter effect of Russian exit from war
Zimmerman telegram
The resumption of unrestricted submarine
warfare, in conjunction with the
Zimmermann telegram, inflamed antiGerman sentiment in America.
coded telegram dispatched by the Foreign
Secretary of the German Empire, Arthur
Zimmermann, on January 16, 1917, to the German
ambassador in the United States of America,
Johann von Bernstorff
January 19, Bernstorff, per Zimmermann's
request, forwarded the Telegram to the German
ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt.
Zimmermann sent the Telegram in anticipation of the
resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the
German Empire on February 1, an act which German
High Command feared would draw the neutral United
States into war on the side of the Allies.
The Telegram, intercepted by the US, instructed
Ambassador Eckardt to propose a military alliance
between Germany and Mexico against the United
States.
Mexico was to receive material aid in the reclamation
of territory lost during the Mexican-American War,
specifically the American states of Texas, New Mexico,
and Arizona. Eckardt was also instructed to urge
Mexico to help broker an alliance between Germany
and Japan.
German Escalation
Benevolent nature of war demonstrated
by overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in
Russia
– Helped Wilson justify intervention on side of
democratic powers
– April 2, Congress voted to enter war
Wilson war speech, April 1917
Grand experiment to remake the world
Throughout March 1917, German U-boats
attacked and sank American ships without
warning; on April 2, Wilson asked Congress
for a declaration of war. Many Americans
accepted Wilson's claim that America had
no selfish aims and that U.S. participation in
the war would make the world "safe for
democracy."
The United States formally declared war on
Germany on April 6, 1917, although the
vote was far from unanimous.
"Over There"
Many Americans assumed that their participation in
the war would be limited to military and economic
aid and were surprised to find that American troops
would be sent to Europe.
To field an adequate fighting force, the American
government conscripted almost 4 million men with
the passage of the Selective Service Act in May
1917; women joined as navy clerks or army nurses.
The Selective Service system combined central
direction from Washington with local civiliancontrolled draft boards.
Images of women have been used
to represent the United States since
the nation was founded. Posters
used female representations to give
a feminine face to war aims. A
beautiful woman flanked by the
United States flag or dressed in
"the stars and stripes" represented
the patriotism of a nation at war.
This poster depicts a beseeching
woman wearing a cap that clearly
echoes the American flag. In the
backdrop is a European city with
its church towers in flames, a
potent reminder to Americans safe
at home of the devastating war
across the Atlantic.
Women's efforts were central to the
nation's call for patriotism. In the midst
of the final stages of their drive for
citizenship, many women saw
themselves, if not quite as regular
soldiers, as members of a volunteer
army that blanketed the nation in
support of various wartime mobilization
drives. These activities required
exceptional administrative skills, and
for some leisure-class women, this
became full-time work. Given the
eagerness with which women rushed
into the public sphere to support the
war, it is ironic that the majority of
these images depicted traditional
notions of womanhood. This poster
features a female form to indicate that
America's honor needed fighting men to
protect it.
War posters traded on images
of female sexuality. The saucy
young woman dressed in a
military uniform in this an
image created by well-known
artist Howard Chandler
Christy, provocatively
exclaims, "I Wish I Were a
Man." What does this image
suggest about modern notions
of female sexuality emerging
in the prewar years? Consider
how the cross-dressed figure
communicates the proper
roles of men and women in
wartime.
Hollywood joined in the
government's efforts to work up
war rage against the "brutal
Huns,” as Germans were often
called. In a film made for the
British and French governments
by America's leading filmmaker,
D. W. Griffith, a hulking German
is about to whip a defenseless
farm woman (Lillian Gish, one of
the nation's favorite stars)
innocently carrying potatoes from
a field. When the film premiered
in Washington, D.C., in 1918,
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson wrote
Griffith pleading with him to cut
or soften the violent whipping
scene. Her plea was one of the few
acts coming from the nation's
capital that sought to moderate the
hate campaign.
About 16,000 Native
Americans served in the U.S.
armed forces during World War
I. This magazine cover, entitled
"The Warrior's Return" offers a
romanticized reconstruction of
one homecoming. The young
soldier, still in uniform and
presumably fresh from France,
rides his painted pony to the
tepee of his parents, where
they proudly welcome the
brave warrior. Their tepee even
has a star, a national symbol
that families with sons in the
military displayed on their
homes. The painting sought to
demonstrate that all
Americans, even those on the
margins of national life, were
sufficiently assimilated and
loyal to join the national
sacrifice to defeat the enemy.
After the triumphal parades
ended, attention turned to the
question of what the heroes
would do at home. The
Department of Labor poster
tries to convey a strong image
of purposefulness and
prosperity by portraying a
soldier in front of a booming
industrial landscape. The U.S.
Employment Service had little
to offer veterans beyond
posters, however, and unions
were unprepared to cope with
the massive numbers of former
soldiers who needed retraining.
As workplace conditions
deteriorated, the largest number
of strikes in the nation's history
broke out in 1919.
Before the war ended, some
25,000 American women made it
to France, all as volunteers. Expresident Theodore Roosevelt
proclaimed war the "Great
Adventure,” and some women
were eager to share in it. About
half became nurses, where as one
said, they dealt with "a sea of
stretchers, a human carpet.”
Women also drove ambulances,
acted as social workers, and ran
canteens for the Red Cross and
the YMCA. One YMCA worker,
Mary Baldwin, hoped that a few
hours in her canteen would
"make life, and even death, easier
‘out there.'” A handful of female
physicians worked as contract
surgeons for the U.S. army. Dr.
Loy McAfee wore this uniform
in France.
Nothing could make
living in the trenches
anything better than
miserable, but a decent
shave with a Gillette
safety razor could
offer temporary relief.
While trenches could be dry, rains
brought mud so deep that
wounded men drowned in it. By
the time American doughboys
arrived in Europe, troops had
faced one another for more than
three years, burrowed into a
double line of trenches, protected
by barbed wire, machine gun
nests, and mortars, backed by
heavy artillery. A pair of dry
boots was perhaps one of the
greatest comforts a soldier could
experience in the trench.
General John J. Pershing was head of the American
Expeditionary Force (AEF), but the new recruits
had to be trained before being transported across the
submarine infested Atlantic.
The government countered the U-boats by sending
armed convoys across the Atlantic; the plan worked:
no American soldiers were killed on the way to
Europe.
Pershing was reluctant to put his men under foreign
commanders; thus, until May 1918, the French and
the British still bore the brunt of the fighting.
Their burden increased when the Eastern Front
collapsed after the Russian Revolution in
November 1917. Under the Treaty of BrestLitovsk, the new Bolshevik regime surrendered
about a third of Russia's territories in return for
peace with the Central Powers.
At the request of Allied leaders, Pershing
committed about 60,000 Americans to help the
French repel the Germans in the battles of
Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood.
American and Allied forces brought the
.German offensive to a halt in mid-July; by
mid-September 1918, American and French
troops had forced the Germans to retreat.
An intense campaign in the Argonne forest
eventually broke the German defenses, at
the cost of over 26,000 American lives.
American Fighting Force
Impact of American entry
– U.S. troops separate from Allied forces
• American Expeditionary Force
• John J. Pershing
– Eased pressure on British and French on
Western front
Wilson’s Fourteen Points, January 1918
– To encounter effect of secret Allied treaties
– Demonstrated that war was being fought for
just purposes
Germany launched huge offensives in March
and April of 1918
– War ended in November 1918
The American Fighting Force
The United States lost 53,000 American
servicemen in the fighting, and another 63,000
died from other causes; the Allies and Central
Powers lost 8 million soldiers.
The ethnic diversity of the American military
worried some observers, but most optimistically
predicted that service in the armed forces would
promote the Americanization of immigrants.
The Americanization of the army was imperfect at
best; African Americans were in segregated units
under the control of white officers and were
assigned to the most menial tasks.
Racial violence erupted at several camps.
The worst incident occurred in Houston in
August 1917, when 15 white soldiers were
killed by black soldiers in retaliation for a
string of racial incidents.
A group of former AEF soldiers formed the
first American Legion in 1919 in order to
preserve the "memories and incidents" of
their association in the Great War. War on
the Home Front
War on the Home Front
Mobilizing Industry and the Economy
Mobilizing American Workers
Wartime Reform: Woman Suffrage and Prohibition
Promoting National Unity
Mobilizing Industry and the
Economy
The cost of the war to America eventually reached
$33 billion. The government paid for the war by
enacting the War Revenue Bills of 1917 and 1918,
and by collecting excess-profits taxes from
corporations.
The central agency for coordinating wartime
production, the War Industries Board (WIB) under
Bernard Baruch, epitomized an unparalleled
expansion of the federal government's powers.
Despite higher taxes, corporate profits soared, aided by
an economic boom and the institution of price
guarantees for war work.
To ease a fuel shortage in the winter of 1917-1918, the
Fuel Administration ordered the temporary closing of
factories, and the Railroad War Board took temporary
control of the railroads when traffic slowed troop
movement.
The Food Administration encouraged farmers to
expand production and encouraged housewives to
conserve food; at no time was it necessary for the
government to contemplate domestic food rationing.
Herbert Hoover headed the Food Administration during World War I.
Sober and tireless, he led remarkably successful "Hooverizing”
campaigns for "meatless” Mondays and "wheatless” Wednesdays and
other means of conserving resources. Guaranteed high prices, the
American heartland not only supplied the needs of U.S. citizens and
armed forces but also became the breadbasket of America's allies.
Even as posters encouraged
women to participate in war
activities by buying Liberty
Bonds, supporting the Red
Cross, knitting socks for
soldiers, or conserving food, the
images rarely challenged
traditional ideas of women's
proper place. This is a
recruitment poster for the Land
Army, a voluntary organization
formed to mobilize women as
temporary farmworkers. Notice
how it links labor on the home
front to the war.
American officials were
adamant that all sectors of
the population be reached
by the propaganda
campaigns that urged
Americans to buybonds,
conserve food, enlist, and
support the war effor in
countless other ways.
They targeted immigrants
with posters such as this
one for Liberty Bonds in
the hopes no only that the
foreign-born would buy
bonds, but in doing so
they would become more
Americanized and more
deeply committed to their
adopted home.
With the signing of the armistice in 1918,
the WIB was disbanded: most Americans
could tolerate government planning power
during an emergency but not permanently.
The United States' participation in the war
lasted just eighteen months, but it left an
enduring legacy: the modern bureaucratic
state.
Mobilizing American Workers
The National War Labor Board (NWLB) and acute
labor shortages helped to improve labor's position
with eight-hour days, time-and-a-half pay for
overtime, and the endorsement of equal pay for
women.
During the war emergency, northern factories
actively recruited African Americans, spawning
the "Great Migration" from the South. More than
400,000 African Americans from the South moved
to northern industrial cities, where despite
discrimination, they found new opportunities and
an escape from the repressive southern agricultural
system.
On occasion, war posters
acknowledged women who crossed
conventional gender barriers when
they took jobs in war work. These
images were usually issued by the
Young Women's Christian
Association (YWCA), which
produced its own posters. During
the war, the YWCA continued its
prewar activism on behalf of young
working women and distributed the
poster depicted here as part of its
fund-raising campaign. In keeping
with YWCA literature that praised
women factory workers' vital
contribution to defense, this image
emphasizes female strength and
solidarity. Note too the graphic
style of this image.
Women took on new jobs
during the war, working as
mail carriers, polic
officers, drill-press
operators, and farm
laborers attached to the
Women's Land Army.
These women are riveters
at the Puget Sound Navy
Yard in Washington. Black
women in particular, who
customarily were limited
to employment as
domestic servants or
agricultural laborers,
found that the war opened
up new opportunities and
better wages in industry.
When the war ended,
black and white women
alike usually lost jobs
deemed to be men's work
Wartime labor shortages prompted many Mexican
Americans to leave farm labor for industrial jobs
in southwestern cities. At least 100,000 Mexicans
entered the United States between 1917 and 1920,
often settling in segregated neighborhoods
(barrios) in urban areas, meeting discrimination
similar to that faced by African Americans.
4. About I million women joined the labor force
for the first time, and many of the 8 miUion
already working switched from low-paying fields
to higher-paying industrial work.
Wartime Constitutionalism: Woman
Suffrage and Prohibition
Members of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NA WSA) felt that
women's patriotic service could advance the
cause of woman suffrage.
Members of the National Woman's Party (NWP)
were arrested and jailed for picketing the White
House; they became martyrs through their hunger
strike and drew attention to the issue of woman
suffrage.
In January 1918, Wilson withdrew his opposition
to a federal woman suffrage amendment. The
amendment quickly passed the House but took
eighteen months to get through the Senate,
followed by another year of hard work for ratification by the states. On August 26, 1920, the goal of
woman suffrage was finally achieved with the
Nineteenth Amendment.
Throughout the mobilization period,
advocates pushed for social reforms: enacting a federal wartime family assistance
program for dependents of servicemen,
launching a campaign against sexually
transmitted diseases, and lobbying for the
prohibition of alcohol.
Prohibition met with resistance in the cities
because alcoholic beverages played an important
role in the social life of certain ethnic cultures.
Many states already had Prohibition laws, but
World War I offered the impetus for national
action, as beer drinking became unpatriotic in
many people's minds.
In December 1917, Congress passed the
Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the
"manufacture, sale, or transportation of
intoxicating liquors." Ratified in 1919 and made
effective on January 16,1920, the Eighteenth
Amendment demonstrated the widening influence
of the state in matters of personal behavior.
Prohibition
Prohibition only drives drunkenness
behind doors and into dark places, and
does not cure or even diminish it.
MARK TWAIN
This image shows the suffrage militants of the National Woman's
Party picketing the White House during World War I. College
graduates, they identified themselves by their alma maters. Though
criticized by more moderate suffragists, these radical suffragists
sought to embarrass President Wilson by graphically pointing out the
hypocrisy of a war fought for democracy while women at home were
not enfranchised.
The Anti-Saloon League of America saw conquering
the alcohol problem as more than an American crusade.
In 1916 at the convention of the ASL in Indianapolis
Ernest Cherrington presented an address to the
convention titled "The World Movement Toward
Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic."
No beer, no vodka, no rum, no fun. Prohibition in the 1920’s was
nation wide when the 18th Amendment went into affect. On January
16, 1920 the United States officially had a ban on the sale,
consumption, and creation of all alcoholic beverages.
Promoting National Unity
Formed in 1917, the Committee on Public
Information (CPI) promoted public support
for the war and acted as a nationalizing
force by promoting the development of a
national ideology.
During the war, the CPI touched the lives of
practically every American, and in its zeal,
it often used inflammatory stories.
Promoting National Unity
Committee on Public Information headed
by George Creel
Many Americans found themselves targets of
suspicion as self-appointed agents of the American
Protective League spied on neighbors and
coworkers.
The CPI encouraged ethnic groups to give up their
Old World customs in the spirit of "One Hundred
Percent Americanism," an insistence on
conformity and an intolerance of dissent. German
Americans bore the brunt of this campaign owing
to the hostility generated by propaganda about
German militarism and outrages.
Law enforcement officials tolerated little criticism of
established values and institutions; legal tools for
curbing dissent included the Espionage Act of 1917,
which imposed stiff penalties for antiwar activities, and
the Sedition Act of 1918, which focused on disloyal
speech, writing, and behavior.
The acts, which defined treason and sedition loosely,
led to the conviction of more than one thousand people
and focused particularly on socialists and radical groups
such as the IWW (the Wobblies).
Courts rarely resisted wartime legal excesses. In
Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld
limits on freedom of speech that would not have been
acceptable in peacetime.
An Unsettled Peace 1919-1920
Treaty of Versailles
Racial Strife
Treaty of Versailles
14 Points
– Georges Clemenceau stated Moses only had to
have 10 Commandments – Wilson has to have
14
The Allies accepted Wilson's Fourteen Points as
the basis for the peace negotiations for the Treaty
of Versailles that began in January 1919.
Wilson called for open diplomacy, freedom of
navigation upon the seas, arms reduction, the
removal of trade barriers, and national selfdetermination.
Essential to Wilson's vision was the creation of a
multinational organization "for the purpose of
affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and
small States alike." The League of Nations became
Wilson's obsession.
The Fourteen Points were imbued with the spirit
of progressivism, but the lofty goals and ideals for
world reformation proved too far reaching to be
practical or attainable.
According to Article X of the peace treaty, the
League of Nations would curb aggressor countries
through collective military action.
Representatives from twenty-seven countries
attended the peace conference in Versailles, but
representatives from Germany and Russia were
excluded.
France, Italy, and Great Britain wanted to
punish Germany and treat themselves to the
spoils of war by demanding heavy
reparations; they had also made secret
agreements to divide up the German
colonies.
National self-determination bore fruit in the
creation of the independent states of
Austria, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and
Czechoslovakia.
The creation of the new nations of Finland,
Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia upheld the principle
of self-determination, while also isolating Soviet
Russia from the rest of Europe.
Wilson won only limited concessions regarding
the colonial empires. The Central Powers' colonial
empires in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were
dismantled, but instead of becoming independent
countries, the colonies were assigned to victorious
Allied nations to administer as mandates.
Certain topics, such as freedom of the seas and
free trade, never even appeared on the agenda
because of Allied resistance.
Wilson had only partial success in scaling back
French and British demands for reparations from
Germany, which eventually were set at $33
billion.
Wilson consoled himself with the negotiators'
commitment to his proposed League of Nations.
He acknowledged that the peace treaty had defects
but expressed confidence that they could be
resolved by a permanent international organization
dedicated to the peaceful resolution of disputes.
A peace treaty was signed in Versailles on June
28,1919, but when Wilson presented the treaty to
the U.S. Senate, it did not receive the necessary
wo-thirds vote for ratification.
Progressive senators felt that the treaty was too
conservative, "irreconcilables" disapproved of
permanent U.S. participation in European affairs,
and Republicans wanted to amend Article X
because they thought it would restrict Congress's
constitutional authority to declare war and would
limit the freedom of the United States to pursue a
unilateral foreign policy.
In September of 1919, Wilson went on a speaking
tour to defend the treaty, but the tour was cut short
when he collapsed; a week later he suffered a
severe stroke.
Wilson remained inflexible in his refusal to
compromise, but the treaty was not ratified
when it came up for a vote in the Senate in
1919 and again in 1920.
The United States never ratified the
Versailles treaty or joined the League of
Nations. Many wartime issues were only
partially resolved; some unresolved problems played a major role in the coming of
World War II.
Racial Strife, Labor Unrest, and the
Red Scare
.
Many African Americans emerged from the
war determined to stand up for their rights.
Blacks who had migrated to the North and
blacks who had served in the war had high
expectations that exacerbated white racism;
lynching nearly doubled in the South, and
race riots broke out in the North.
A variety of tensions were present in
northern cities where violence erupted:
black voters determined the winners of
close elections, and blacks competed with
whites for jobs and housing.
Workers of all races had hopes for a better life, but
after the war employers resumed attacks on union
activity, and rapidly rising inflation threatened to
wipe out wage increases.
As a result of workers' determination and
employers' resistance, one in every five workers
went on strike in 1919: strikes were held by
steelworkers, shipyard workers in Seattle, and
policemen in Boston.
Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts fired
the entire Boston police force, and that strike
failed; Coolidge was rewarded with the
Republican vice presidential nomination in 1920.
A crucial factor in organized labor's failure to win
many of its strikes in the post-War period was the
pervasive fear of radicalism in America, which
coincided with a longstanding anxiety about
unassimilated immigrants, an anxiety that had
been made worse by the war.
The Russian Revolution ofl917 so alarmed the
Allies that Wilson sent several thousand troops to
Russia in hopes of weakening the Bolshevik
regime.
American fears of Communism were deepened as
the labor unrest coincided with the founding of the
Bolsheviks' Third International (or Comintern) to
export Communist doctrine and revolution to the
rest of the world.
Ironically, as public concern about domestic
Bolshevism increased, the U.S. Communist
Party and the Communist Labor Party were
rapidly losing members and political power.
II. Tensions mounted with a series of
bombings in the early spring of 1919; in
November, Attorney General A. Mitchell
Palmer staged the first of what were known
as "Palmer raids," in which federal agents
stormed the headquarters of radical
organizations
Mitchell Palmer
Lacking the protection of U.S. citizenship,
thousands of aliens who had committed no
crime but were suspect because of their
anarchist or revolutionary beliefs or their
immigrant backgrounds faced deportation
without formal trial or indictment.
Palmer predicted that a conspiracy attempt
to overthrow the government would occur
on May Day in 1920; when the incident
never occurred, the hysteria of the Red
Scare began to abate.
At the height of the Red Scare, Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti-alien draft
evaders-were arrested for robbery and
murder, were denied a new trial even
though evidence surfaced that suggested
their innocence, and were executed in 1927.
The war left racial, ethnic, and class
tensions in its wake. With few casualties
and no physical destruction at home, the
positive legacy was that America emerged
from the war stronger than ever-a major
international power economically and
politically.
The End