World War I / America at War
I. American Mobilization: How did the U.S mobilize for war?
1. War Agencies
A. War Industry Board- Bernard Baruch (Wall Street Broker)
1.Aim: to increase arms and clothing = best equipped “DoughBoys”
2. told manufacturers what & how much to produce
3. doled out war materials
4. fixed prices
B. War Trade Board
1. Licensed foreign trade
C. War Labor Policies Board - Felix Frankfuter
1. Set standards for wages, hours, and working conditions.
D. Lever Food & Fuel Control Act of 1917
1. Food Administration- Herbert Hoover (pacifist)
.
a. imposed rationing "Meatless Day", "Gasless Day” “Food will win the war”.
“Stop, before throwing any food away, and ask ‘can it be used?’
…stop catering to different appetites. No second helpings.
Stop all eating between meals…one meatless day a week.
One wheatless meal a day…no butter in cooking: use substitutes.” --Gospel of the Clean Plate
b. imposed price controls and imposed Daylight Savings Time
(increase in vegetable gardens, wheat crops, and introduction of exotic meats such as horse and rabbit)
c. great success for Hoover and increased his popularity.
2. Fuel Administration - Harry A. Garfield
a. “heatless Mondays”, “lightless nights”, “gasless Sundays”
b. Zinn historian, “Garfield was a dictator of the nations fuel supply. He closed down civilian
manufacturing plants in order to divert their coal supplies to munition ships leaving New York harbor.”
*(July 1916, German saboteur blows up munitions depot at Black Tom Island adjacent to Liberty Park. Some
killed $20 million in damages including Statue of Liberty. This was a depot for munitions manufactured around the country and to be
shipped to Allied forces in Europe)
E. (CPI) Committee on Public Information (1917) - George Creel (progressive Journalist)
1. short films, pamphlets, & posters aimed @ recruitment because
a. 1 million men needed but after 1st week of war declaration only 73,000
volunteered—so Congress voted for a draft --(Selective Service Act of 1917)
b. Unions initially resisted until declaration made then supported war efforts. Union
membership will rise. AFL membership increases 50% to 4 million.
c. Socialists resisted (Socialists Party, IWW, and others Eugene Debs will be arrested
under the Sedition act).
2. selling LibertyBonds--$33 billion needed for war costs, 2/3rds covered by bonds
3. Progressive income tax (16th Amendment -1913) raises additional funds.
2. Great Migration
A. Immigration from Europe was cutoff
B. African American leave the South to go North.
1. 500,000 migrate North
2. Enlistment to non-combat functions---labor and supply movement etc.
3. Effects: Racial discrimination and violence in the North
C. Women find jobs on farms, in factories, & corporations
1. Fill position not normally open to women
a. telegraph messenger, elevator operator, mail carrier
b. Women's Land Army - find women farm jobs
c. 400,000 join the industrial workforce
2. Enlistment to non-combat functions ---ambulance drivers, nurses, Red Cross.
3. Effects: Increase in Womens Suffrage Movement
i. Alice Paul –National Women’s Party / Carrie Catt –Nat’l Women’s Suffrage Mvmnt.
ii. 19th Amendment (1920) introduced in Congress in January 1918
3. Enforcing Loyalty
As in all wars a fear of espionage or spying wass widespread. A few months after the sinking of the Lusitania, a staffmember of the
German embassy left his briefcase on a train in NYC. In it were plans for weakening pro-Allied sentiment and disrupting the American
economy. The government was also concerned with dissenters or people who actively opposed the majority view, in this case the war
effort. The Constitutions 1st Amendment protected ones freedom of speech, but during war time National Security is paramount.
A. Committee of Public Information (George Creel and use of propaganda)
1. “Hate the Hun”, German measles become Liberty Measles, and hamburgers to Libertyburgers.
B. Espionage (1917) + Sedition (1918) Acts
1. Dissenters - people who actively oppose the majority view.
a. Eugene Debs, Socialist Party leader, Bill Haywood IWW union leader, and Emma Goldman
and Alexander Berkman, anarchists were all jailed for their anti-war speeches and activities on evading the
draft.
2. Trading with the Enemy Act 1917
a. authorized the govt. to confiscate and run German owned businesses
b. censor international communication and foreign language press (ex. Spanish Flu—killed more
people than the War. The epidemic was censored in most countries except in neutral Spain who did not censor it. Countries did not
want their citizens distracted from the war effort).
3. Espionage Act (1917) "Spying"
A. Severe penalties for: a. obstructing recruitment, b. aiding the enemy, c. encouraging anyone to be
disloyal, insubordinate, or refused duty in the armed forces. *Post Masters were permitted to exclude from
the mail any materials deeemed treasonable or seditious.
4. Sedition Act of 1918 “ Disloyalty”
A. No disloyal or seditious speech or actions that encourage rebellion.
B. Interfering w/ the recruitment of soldiers
C. Speaking against the govt’s campaign to sell Liberty Bonds in order to finance the war.
D. Using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the American form of govt., flag, or
military uniform.
5. Schenk v. U.S. (1919) “No freedom of speech if it present a ‘clear and present danger’.”
The Espionage Act stated, “Whoever, when the U.S. is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, or
refusal of duty in military or naval forces of the U.S., or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the U.S. …
2 months after its passage Charles Schenk, General Secretary of the Socialist Party is arrested in Philadelphia for distributing 15,000
leaflets denouncing the draft and the war. His argument was that the draft violated the 13 th Amendment = no involuntary servitude.
The U.S. Supreme Court chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld the conviction that the government can curtail your speech if it
presents a clear and present danger, just as if some one yells fire in a crowded movie theatre. Opponents to the decision such as
Zechariah Chafee, Harvard Law Professor claims that Schencks actions were more like warning people who were about to buy a
ticket and enter a theatre where a fire was raging inside. Schenck’s conviction was finalized with a jail sentence of 6 months, one of
the shortest sentences given to the many 900 imprisoned under the Espionage Act. Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in jail for
his violation. He was later pardoned by President Horace Harding in 1921 after serving 32 months. IWW “Wobblies” union leader
Bill Haywood was also jailed under this act.
a.
Free speech may be curtailed during wartime if it poses a “clear & present danger”
6. Palmer Raids and the Red Scare 1919
Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer was attacked when a bomb exploded in front of his house. Six months
later “Palmer Raids” were conducted on immigrant aliens who were not citizens. A law created near the wars end provided for the
deportation of aliens who opposed organized govt. or advocated the destruction of property.
a. 249 aliens of Russian birth were deported to the Soviet Union (included were Emma Goldman
and Alexander Berkman) on Dec 21, 1919. Within one month 4,000 others were rounded up and deported.
In 1920 Andrea Salsedo was arrested by the FBI and later committed suicide by jumping from their 14th story window. Two of her
friends who learned of her death began carrying guns and were subsequently arrested for a Brockton, Mass. payroll robbery/murder,
anarchists Nicholas Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested and convicted. Seven years later they were executed under much
objection from the Pope and outside nations.
4. Fighting the War
a. Recruitment (Pre draft 120,000 enlisted + 80,000 National Guardsmen).
1. Selective Service Act (1917) authorized a draft.
2. 24 million men registered for the draft and from that a lottery picked 3 million draftees
3. Volunteers + National Guardsmen = American Expeditionary Force (AEF)
i. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing.
b.Convoy System (Consisted of unarmed ships surrounded by a ring of destroyers, torpedo boats,
+ other naval vessels)
In April 1917 German subs sunk 430 Allied and neutral ships. By May 1917 all merchant and troop ships travelled in
convoys. Torpedo boats were equipped to track and destroy subs. By Dec 1917 losses were cut by 50%.
1.
2.
Used for safe passage of military + supplies across the Atlantic
Torpedo boats were equipped to track + destroy submarines
5. Ending the War
A. Nov. 1917 Russian Rev. (Bolsheviks/Communists) took Russia out of the war. Germany now
devotes all resources to the Western Front.
B. Mar 1918 all out German offensive
a. Allied counter attack
1. Battle of Amiens (Aug 1918)-allied forces stop German offensive
2. Battle of St.Mihiel –Gen. Pershing led American offensive
3. Meuse-Argonne Offensive-(Sept-Oct 1918) final Allied offensive that led to
the armistice
6. Armistice (an agreement to stop fighting) “On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month the guns
went silent”
A. Nov 9, 1918 Kaiser abdicates and flees to Holland
B. Nov 11, 1918 Weimar Republic, the new German govt. asks for a cease fire
1. 8 million total deaths. (This is equivalent to 5,000 soldiers killed on each day of the war)
2.. 50,000 American deaths
7. Paris Peace Conference Jan 18, 1919 “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no
private international understanding of any kind but, diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view” President
Woodrow Wilson.
A. Wilson pushes his 14 Points. “Peace Without Victory”
B. Expresses American liberal idealism such as disarmament, tariff reduction, self-determination,
and freedom of the seas. “
1. No secret treaties
2. Freedom of the seas
3. Weapons reduction
4. Changing European borders through self-determination
5. Est. of a League of Nations
8. Treaty of Versailles
“Harsh and Revengeful”
According to Historian, Louis Auchincloss, “the failure of the Treaty of Versailles to accept the 14 points, as most Historians agree
today was on part because of Wilson’s apporach to dealing with the Europeans. Wilson wanted to handle negotiations himself and
brought a delegation of fellow Democrats to the conference. Snubbing the Republicans will come back to haunt him. If President
Wilson would have stayed in Washington D.C., and let the Europeans bicker, he would have been heard better across the ocean than
to be drowned out by the angry debate”.
A. Harsh and revengeful because France wanted to cripple Germany by having them sign the “War
Guilt Clause” and Britain insisted on Germany paying reparations. (Payments for damages suffered during
the war).
9. Senate Rejection of the League of Nations (1920)
A. Pro-League (led by Wilson and loyal democrats in the Senate)
B. Isolationists (those who rejected the treaty outright because it would involve too many commitments abroad)
C. Reservationsists (led by the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge who
created reservations or amendments to the treaty).
League of Nations
1. General Assembly of all nations
2. Executive Council of Britain, France, United States, Italy, Japan and 4 other elected by the council
Function: to listen to disputes and enforce resolutions by economic sanctions and if necessary use of a
multi-national military force.
3.International Court to settle minor disputes between citizens of different countries.
4. International Bureau of Labor – to improve world social standards
Issue: The Leagues Covenant – Article X-The treaty’s clause for forming the League of Nations
that all nations had to agree to, “respect and perserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and
existing political independence of all members of the League”. In the opinion of the treaty’s opponents,
this clause meant that the U.S. might be drawn into a war that its own Congress did not approve. Wilson
responded that compliance with the League’s decisions was, “binding in conscience only, not in law”,
failed to persuade the reservationists.
D. Sept 1919 - W. Wilson travels the country in a grass roots effort to get popular support but suffers a
stroke and returns to Washington incapacitated.
E. Nov 1919 – Senate does not approve the treaty.
(39 for 55 against)
Wilson’s Failure:
1.He snubbed the Republicans who were in the majority of the Senate.
2. Irish- Americans –no mention of Irish independence or freedom from Britain
3. Italian-Americans –did not award Adriatic city of Fiume (now Rijeka) to Italy
4. German-Americans - denounced the War Guilt clause.
5. Jingoists / Super-Patriots- treaty would compromise American sovereignty.
10. Return to Isolationism
Although the U.S. did not commit to a foreign policy of internationalism, it did agree to some Pacts for
peace.
*exception: 1. The World Court (1920)
a. est. to settle international disputes
b. est.by the League of Nations
c. Senate refuses to ratify
2.Washington Conference (1921)
a. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes (sponsor)
b. International meeting to address disarmament
3. Five Power Naval Armament Treaty (1922)
a. US-GB-Japan-France-Italy.
b. 10 year moratorium on the construction of major war ships. (10,000 tons or more Battleships,
cruisers but not destroyers or subs.)
4. Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) “Renounce War”
Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand
a.15 nations agreed not to use the threat of war in their dealings with one another.
Eventually 60 join the pact.
b. weak, unrealistic, and unworkable because it had no provision for enforcement.
(By 1941 all these countries were at war)