U.S. History: World War I to World War II and the Great Depression

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the United States' transition from neutrality to combatant in World War I, 1920s consumer culture, the causes and institutional responses to the Great Depression, World War II mobilization, and associated primary source documents.

Franz Ferdinand

The Archduke and nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire whose assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, sparked the outbreak of World War I.

Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality Policy

The official stance declared by President Wilson urging Americans to be 'neutral in thought and deed,' justified by the belief that the war had nothing to do with American national security and allowing the U.S. to trade with both sides.

Sinking of the Lusitania

The May 7, 1915, sinking of a British passenger liner by a German torpedo off the coast of Ireland; 1,197 passengers died (including 128 Americans) and the ship sank in 18 minutes partly due to smuggled American explosives in its cargo hold.

Zimmerman Telegram

A secret correspondence proposing that if Mexico attacked the southern border of the United States, Germany would assist Mexico after the war in reclaiming lost territory from the U.S.

A. Mitchell Palmer

The U.S. Attorney General whose Washington, D.C., home was firebombed during postwar unrest, leading federal officials to blame strikes and bomb attacks on immigrants and foreign ideologies.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

An immigration restriction law that capped incoming immigrants of any ethnicity at 3% of that group's population already living in the United States, based on data from the 1910 census.

Immigration Act of 1924

A federal law that shifted the immigration quota base year to the 1890 census and lowered the entry limit to 2%, deliberately favoring Northern European immigrants over newer immigrant groups.

General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC)

A financing arm created by General Motors that enabled consumers to purchase automobiles on credit, expanding car ownership and urbanization.

Alfred Sloan

An executive hired by the DuPont family at General Motors who developed a segmented market strategy, offering vehicles at different price points and customizable options to surpass Henry Ford's uniform Model T.

DuPont Highway

Completed in 1923, it was the first paved highway to span Delaware north to south and the first highway designed with two lanes heading in opposite directions.

Black Thursday

October 24, 1929, the day a wave of panic selling overwhelmed the New York Stock Exchange, with far more sellers than buyers, marking the initial crash of the Great Bull Market.

Underconsumption

A key underlying cause of the Great Depression characterized by a lack of aggregate demand, as consumers burdened by installment debt began pulling back purchases of appliances, cars, and homes by 1927.

Discount Rate

The interest rate set by the Federal Reserve for lending funds to commercial banks; keeping this rate high during the early Great Depression discouraged borrowing and deepened the monetary crisis.

Open Market Operations

The Federal Reserve's mechanism of buying or selling government bonds in the open market to regulate the money supply, an intervention the Fed largely failed to use to stimulate money circulation before the depression.

Reserve Ratio

The percentage of customer deposits that commercial banks are legally mandated to keep in reserve rather than lending out; lowering it stimulates economic activity by freeing cash for loans.

Benjamin Strong

The influential head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York whose death left the central bank without decisive leadership, contributing to monetary policy failures during the Great Depression.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

An agency created under Herbert Hoover that allocated government funds to keep struggling banks, businesses, and insurance companies solvent during the Great Depression.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A New Deal relief agency that employed young men aged 18 to 25 to work on federal public lands; workers earned $25 to $35 a month, were allowed to keep $5, and sent the remainder home to their families.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

A New Deal relief program that hired architects, engineers, construction laborers, artists, and writers to build municipal infrastructure and produce cultural documentation such as former slave narratives.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

A New Deal recovery measure that paid commercial landowners government subsidies to reduce cultivated acreage and raise commodity prices, often displacing rural sharecroppers in the process.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

A regional New Deal recovery program established to construct dams for flood control and generate cheap hydroelectric power for one of the poorest rural areas in the United States.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

A New Deal financial reform established to restore public faith in the banking system by insuring individual bank deposits up to $5,000 against bank failures.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

A federal regulatory agency created to oversee stock market transactions and require public corporations to disclose honest financial records to investors.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

A federal agency created to protect the right of workers to organize labor unions and prevent employers from firing employees simply for union membership.

Neutrality Acts (1935–1937)

Federal statutes mandating that belligerent nations purchasing war-related goods from the U.S. pay in cash and transport goods on their own non-American ships, designed to prevent U.S. entry into foreign wars.

Lend-Lease Act (1941)

A policy promoted by FDR—analogous to lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose house is on fire—allowing the U.S. to supply Britain with war materiel on the promise of deferred postwar payment.

War Production Board (WPB)

A wartime agency that directed the conversion of civilian factories to military production, barring domestic automobile manufacture and reassigning firms like General Electric to build aircraft engines.

Office of Price Administration (OPA)

A wartime government agency tasked with curbing inflation by stabilizing prices and managing coupon books for the nationwide rationing of food and fuel.

National Wage Labor Board

A wartime agency that froze baseline worker wages to prevent inflation; in response, employers began competing for labor by offering fringe benefits such as employer-sponsored health insurance and paid time off.

Bracero Program

A bilateral labor agreement between the United States and Mexico active from 1942 to 1962 that allowed Mexican agricultural laborers to enter the U.S. for nine months a year to relieve wartime farm shortages.

Executive Order 9066

A presidential directive signed by FDR on February 19, 1942, that authorized the forced removal and internment of 130,000 Japanese Americans, approximately 67% of whom were native-born U.S. citizens.

Revenue Act of 1942

A tax law that introduced automatic payroll withholding taxes on American paychecks to fund approximately 40% of the cost of World War II.

Manhattan Project

The top-secret U.S. government initiative directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves to construct the first nuclear weapons, successfully tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.

Four Minute Men

A network of 75,000 volunteer public speakers organized by the Committee on Public Information during WWI to give brief patriotic speeches in theaters, schools, and churches across diverse languages.

Robert M. Yerkes

A psychologist who persuaded the U.S. Army in 1917 to implement standardized IQ tests on recruits, which reflected severe cultural and educational biases and were later cited to label minorities as 'subnormal.'

Senator Ellison DuRant Smith

A South Carolina senator who argued during the 1924 immigration debates to 'shut the door' on foreign immigration using pseudoscientific racial arguments to advocate for national racial purity.

Executive Order 8802

A 1941 directive issued by FDR after A. Philip Randolph threatened a March on Washington, establishing the Committee on Fair Employment Practices and outlawing discrimination in defense industries.

Economic Bill of Rights

A set of proposed socioeconomic rights outlined by FDR in his January 1944 State of the Union address guaranteeing full employment, healthcare, decent housing, and fair farm returns.

An Appeal to the World (1947)

A petition presented by W. E. B. DuBois to the United Nations General Assembly documenting racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the U.S., which prompted Harry Truman to create the Civil Rights Commission.

FHA Underwriting Manuals

Government appraisal manuals issued in 1935 and 1955 that institutionalized redlining by conditioning federal mortgage support on neighborhood racial homogeneity and protective deed restrictions against 'inharmonious' groups.