WORLD WAR I
1914-1918
COLLEGE BOARD
KEY CONCEPT
World War I and its aftermath intensified
debate about America’s role in the world
and how best to achieve national security
and protect the nation’s interest.
MOBILIZATION
Industry and
Labor
Finance
Public Opinion
and Civil Liberties
Armed Forces
• War Industries
Board – Bernard
Baruch
• Food
Administration –
Herbert Hoover
• Fuel
Administration –
Harry Garfield
• National War
Labor Board Taft
• Government
raises 33 billion
• Liberty Bonds
• Congress
increases income
taxes and
corporate taxes
• Committee on
Public
Information –
George Creel
• American
Protective
League
• Espionage
(1917) and
Sedition (1918)
Acts
• Schenck vs. the
U.S. (1919) –
“clear and
present danger”
• Selective Service
Act (June 1917)
• Support of
African
Americans and
W.E.B. DuBois
“Liberty
pups”
MOBILIZATION
Effects on American Society
 More jobs for women
 Their contributions as volunteers and wage
earners will convince the President and Congress
to pass the 19th Amendment
 Migration of Mexicans and African
Americans
 Job opportunities in America and political
upheaval in Mexico  thousands of Mexican
cross the border to work in agriculture and
mining
 African-Americans migrate North for jobs in
factories—”The Great Migration”
FIGHTING THE WAR
Russian Revolution takes them
out of the war & U.S. in
Naval Operation
 Recording setting ship production
 Convoy system
American Expeditionary
Force
 General John Pershing
 Western Front
 Argonne Forest ends the war
Death toll —trench warfare, poison
gas, & the flu kill millions (112,000
Americans)
MAKING THE PEACE
Wilson’s Fourteen Points
Treaty of Versailles, 1919




 The Big Four
 Peace terms:
 Germany disarmed
stripped of colonies,
forced to admit guilt
 Self determination applied
to former colonies of
Germany, Austria-Hungary
and Russia
 League of Nations


Freedom of seas
No secret treaties
Arms reduction
“impartial adjustment
of all colonial claims”
Self-determination
“General Association
of Nations”
MAKING THE “PEACE”
Battle for
Ratification in the
Senate



Irreconcilables/isola
tionists
Reservationists
Rejection of the
Treaty
Changing Borders in Europe
POST-WAR CONCERNS
1918-1945
CULTURAL CONFLICTS
The Red Scare
•
Response to the
Communists in Russia
• J. Edgar Hoover, the
Palmer Raids and
hysteria over May
Day
• Riots/Hysteria
subsides as more
Americans see threat
to civil liberties
Nativism (ch 23)
Rise of the KKK
Ire towards new
Mexican immigrants
Immigration quota laws
created in 1921
CULTURAL CONFLICTS
Economic Demobilization
• U.S. agriculture will suffer when Europe recovers
• Anti-union sentiment returns
• Strikes, inflation, and 10% unemployment
No Changes for African Americans
• frustration mounts
• Race Riots in St. Louis and Chicago
FOREIGN & DOMESTIC POLICY CHANGE
Disillusionment from the war and
growing fears of communist Russia
make Americans fearful of
intervention & expansion
War weary Americans craved
tradition and “normalcy” and
would thus abandon many
progressive issues
Details in Amsco chapter 23…