Timeline

• 1893: Queen Liliuokalani deposed by a coalition of U.S. Marines and businessmen

  • Panic of 1893

• 1898: Spanish-American War

  • United States annexation of Hawaii

  • Formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League

• 1899–1900: Secretary of State John Hay establishes Open Door policy in China

• 1899–1902: Philippine-American War

• 1900: Hurricane and flood in Galveston, Texas

• 1901: Publication of The Octopus: A California Story by Frank Norris

• 1903: The United States acquires Panama Canal Zone (Canal completed, 1914)

  • Elkins Act

• 1904: Publication of The Shame of the Cities by Lincoln Steffens

  • Publication of The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell

  • Election of Theodore Roosevelt

• 1905: Founding of the Niagara Movement

• 1906: Theodore Roosevelt wins Noble Peace Prize

  • Publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

  • Meat Inspection Act

  • Pure Food and Drug Act

  • Hepburn Act

• 1908: Election of William Howard Taft

• 1909: Creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

• 1910: Mann Act

• 1912: Election of Woodrow Wilson

• 1913: Sixteenth Amendment (federal income tax) ratified

  • Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of senators) ratified

  • Henry Ford introduces conveyor belt to automobile production

• 1914: Federal Reserve Act

  • Federal Trade Commission

  • Clayton Antitrust Act

  • Beginning of World War I

• 1914–1917: United States intervention in Mexico

• 1915: Release of D. W. Griffithʼs film Birth of a Nation

• 1916: Reelection of Woodrow Wilson

• 1917: United States enters World War I

  • Espionage Act

• 1918: Sedition Act

  • Armistice ends World War I

• 1919: Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) ratified

  • Creation of the Comintern

  • Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles

• 1919–1920: Boston Police Strike

• 1920: Nineteenth Amendment (womenʼs right to vote) ratified

  • Deportation of Emma Goldman

  • Schenck v. United States

  • Seattle General Strike

  • Height of the “Palmer raids”

  • Election of Warren G. Harding

• 1921: Emergency Quota Act

  • Beginning of Teapot Dome Scandal

• 1924: National Origins Act

  • Election of Calvin Coolidge

• 1925: Scopes trial

• 1927: Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti

• 1928: Kellogg–Briand Pact

  • Election of Herbert Hoover

• 1929: Stock market crash

  • The Great Depression begins

• 1930 Hawley-Smoot Tariff

• 1931: The Marx Brothersʼ movie Duck Soup released

• 1932: Bonus March

  • Reconstruction Finance Corporation established

  • Election of Franklin D. Roosevelt

• 1933: The 100 Days

  • “Bank holiday”

  • Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

  • Glass–Steagall Act (Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation established)

  • National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)

  • Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

  • Twenty-first Amendment (repeal of Prohibition) ratified

• 1934: Share Our Wealth clubs started by Huey Long

  • Securities and Exchange Commission

  • Clifford Odets writes the play Waiting for Ley

• 1935: National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

  • Social Security Act

  • Schechter decision strikes down NIRA

  • Works Progress Administration

  • First Neutrality Act

• 1936: Butler decision strikes down AAA

  • Rooseveltʼs “Court packing plan”

  • Roosevelt elected to a second term

  • Charlie Chaplinʼs Modern Times released

• 1936–1939: Spanish Civil War

• 1937: “Roosevelt Recession”

  • Farm Security Administration

• 1939: Cash-and-Carry Policy

  • Nazi–Soviet Pact

  • The movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington released

  • John Steinbeck' s The Grapes of Wrath published

• 1940: Selective Service Act

  • Tripartite Pact

  • Roosevelt elected to unprecedented third term

• 1941: Lend-Lease Act

  • Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in war-related industries

  • Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

  • United States enters World War II

• 1942: Battle of Midway

• 1943: Tehran Conference

• 1944: D-Day—allied invasion of Normandy

  • Korematsu v. United States

  • Bretton Woods Conference

  • Roosevelt elected to a fourth term

• 1945: Yalta Conference

  • Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa

  • Death of Roosevelt

  • Harry Truman becomes president

  • German surrender

  • Potsdam Conference

  • Dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki

  • Japanese surrender

Imperialism: Debates

The Motives of American Imperialism

• Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Importance of Naval Power

  • Alfred Thayer Mahan, a retired admiral, stressed the importance of naval power and colonies in achieving and maintaining influence on the world stage.

  • He advocated for the United States to develop a strong navy, maintain military bases and coaling stations, and administer an overseas empire in his book, “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History”, 1660–1783 (1890).

• Industrialization and the Panic of 1893

  • The push for imperialism was driven by the unprecedented growth of American industry and the desire for new markets.

  • This desire intensified with the onset of the economic depression following the Panic of 1893, which left Americans unable to absorb additional consumer items.

  • The economy did not fully recover until 1901.

• “The White Manʼs Burden” and Racial Hierarchy

  • In the late 1800s, America's imperialist activities were justified by racial ideas that Anglo-Saxon ancestors were superior and nonwhite peoples were inferior.

  • This led to contradictory inclinations, with some white Americans believing it was the duty of "civilized" peoples to uplift the less fortunate, while others believed the "inferior" races would simply perish in a struggle for "survival of the fittest."

  • Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "The White Man's Burden" (1899), argued that the "Anglo-Saxon race" had a responsibility to "civilize and Christianize" the world, and the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 displayed a sideshow of the "exotic" peoples of the world.

  • Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells wrote a pamphlet critical of the fair's racist assumptions.

• Christian Missionaries

  • Missionaries were eager to introduce new communities to Christianity and spread the gospel. Several of these missionaries focused their efforts on China's vast population.

• Hawaii

  • American missionaries arrived in Hawaii in the 1820s and established sugar plantations, leading to discord between the businessmen and Queen Liliuokalani.

  • Sanford Dole, a pineapple grower, urged the United States to intervene, leading to a coup in 1893 and the establishment of a provisional government.

  • U.S. forces protected the new government, but annexation of the islands did not occur until 1898.

Debate over the Role of the United States in the World

• The American Anti-Imperialist League

  • This league was a coalition of conservative Democrats (or Bourbon Democrats), more progressive elements.

  • Mark Twain, who became increasingly radical as he grew older; he was vice president of the league from 1901 to 1910 and wrote some of its more scathing condemnations of imperialism.

• A Departure from American Traditions

  • Opponents of imperialism argued that American control over a far-flung array of island nations was different from earlier acquisitions, as these islands were densely populated and far from the settled parts of the United States.

  • They argued that earlier territorial gains were intended to absorb American citizens and eventually achieve statehood and equal footing with the existing states.

  • Critics saw this as an immoral departure from the democratic traditions of a nation that was born in a war against a major power.

• Anti-imperialist Sentiment and White Supremacy

  • Some critics of imperialism feared that by acquiring the Philippines, the United States would experience an influx of Filipinos, who were seen as inferior to whites.

  • Anti-imperialists feared that an influx of people from American colonies would undermine the bargaining power of American workers.

The Spanish-American War and Its Aftermath

The Spanish-American War

• United States Interest in Cuba

  • The United States became increasingly concerned about Spanish actions in Cuba in the 1890s, as an independence movement was trying to end Spanish rule.

  • Valeriano Weyler used cruel tactics to suppress the rebellion, and thousands of Cubans were crowded into concentration camps.

  • By 1898, one-quarter of Cuba's rural population had died due to starvation and disease.

  • Many Americans wanted the United States to intervene on Cuba's side, as they saw parallels between the Cuban struggle for independence and America's struggle for independence from Great Britain.

  • Some American businessmen were angered by the interruption of the sugar harvest by the fighting between Cuban rebels and Spanish forces.

• “Yellow Journalism” and the Call to War

  • Mass-produced newspapers used sensationalist journalism, known as “yellow journalism” to build support for war with Spain, often disregarding journalistic objectivity and truth.

  • These newspapers breathlessly followed events in Cuba, with lurid accounts of Spanish wrongdoing and condemnations of "Butcher" Valeriano Weyler.

• The Sinking of the Maine

  • The Spanish-American War was sparked by the destruction of an American battleship, the USS Maine, in Havana, Cuba.

  • The United States declared war in April 1898, and Spain agreed to an armistice four months later.

  • American forces landed in Cuba on June 22, 1898, and Spanish forces surrendered there on July 17.

  • Fighting in the Philippines lasted just days, and Admiral George Dewey led American naval forces in an alliance with Filipino rebels to take Manila.

  • Theodore Roosevelt led a charge up San Juan Hill in a key battle for Cuba, elevating his status in the political realm.

• The Treaty of Paris

  • This treaty was signed in 1898 between the United States and Spain to cede the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the United States.

  • Ratification of the treaty was nearly quashed by heated debates over imperialism, as antiimperialists argued that the Constitution did not allow the American government to make rules for peoples not represented by lawmakers.

• Cuba and the Platt Amendment

  • The Platt Amendment was inserted into the Cuban Constitution to allow the United States to militarily intervene in Cuban affairs.

  • It limited the Cuban government's ability to conduct its own foreign policy and to manage its debts, and allowed the US to lease a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

  • American troops intervened in Cuba three times between 1902 and 1920, and the US still maintains a naval base there.

The United States as an Imperialist Power

• The Insular Cases

  • Expansionists argued that the Constitution did not necessarily follow the flag, while anti-imperialists argued that denying constitutional rights to people living under the American flag would put the United States into the ranks of Europe.

  • In 1901, the Supreme Court settled the issue in the Insular Cases, agreeing that democracy and imperialism are not incompatible.

  • The decisions were based on the racist assumption that the colonial subjects were of an inferior race, and the colonial power had the responsibility to upli these peoples before granting them autonomy.

• War in the Philippines

  • The United States decided to hold on to the Philippines as a colony after the Spanish-American War, which was not the intent of the United States.

  • The Philippine-American War was a three-year long conflict, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, and lasted until after World War II.

• China and the Open Door Policy

  • The conflict in the Philippines was designed to provide the United States with a stepping-stone to an even greater prize— trade with China.

  • The major powers of Europe had begun carving up China earlier in the nineteenth century, and the United States asserted that all of China should be open to trade with all nations.

  • U.S. secretary of state John Hay enunciated this goal in a note to the major powers, asserting an "open door" policy for China.

  • The policy was begrudgingly accepted by the major powers.

• The Boxer Rebellion

  • Christian missionaries came to China in large numbers, but had little success.

  • This led to the growth of militant anti-foreign secret societies, such as the Boxers, which led to the death of 30,000 Chinese converts and 250 foreign nuns and 200 Western missionaries.

  • The US participated in a multination force to rescue Westerners held hostage by the Boxers.

• Theodore Roosevelt and the “Big Stick”

  • William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, became president.

  • Roosevelt was an adventurer, an expansionist, and a hero of the Spanish American War.

  • His foreign policy approach was summed up in his famous adage that the United States should "speak softly, but carry a big stick" when dealing with other nations.

  • He envisioned the United States acting as the world's policeman, punishing wrongdoers, and claiming the right to militarily intervene in Latin America.

  • In 1902, he warned Germany to stay out of the Americas after Venezuela failed to repay a loan to Germany and Germany threatened military intervention.

• Panama and the Panama Canal

  • President Theodore Roosevelt's aggressive approach to Latin America was exemplified by the building of a canal through Panama, which was a region of Colombia before 1903.

  • American investors picked this narrow piece of land as an ideal location for a canal to facilitate shipping between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

  • When Colombia refused the U.S. offer of $10 million to build a canal, American investors instigated a "rebellion" in Panama against Colombia.

  • Panama became an independent country and agreed to the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the United States to build the canal. Roosevelt later boasted that he "took Panama."

• Roosevelt, Diplomacy, and the Nobel Peace Prize

  • President Theodore Roosevelt sought to establish the United States as a major player in world diplomacy, mediating between France and Germany in Morocco and offering to mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

  • He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

• The “Gentlemanʼs Agreement”

  • In 1907, the diplomatic gains President Theodore Roosevelt had achieved with Japan were threatened by discriminatory legislation passed in California.

  • The San Francisco Board of Education decided that Japanese-American students would be segregated and sent to racially specific schools, similar to segregated schools established for Chinese-American students.

  • Roosevelt negotiated a "Gentleman's Agreement" in which Japan agreed to limit immigration to the US and Roosevelt agreed to pressure California authorities to end discriminatory practices.

• President Taft and “Dollar Diplomacy”

  • William Howard Taft (1909–1913) pursued an aggressive foreign policy, focusing on expanding and securing American commercial interests rather than global strategic goals.

  • He sent troops to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to coerce them into signing commercial treaties, and tried to substitute "dollars for bullets" in pursuing American interests, but failed to stem the Mexican Revolution.

• President Wilsonʼs Foreign Policy

  • Woodrow Wilson's presidency (1913-1921) was focused on domestic concerns, but he also became increasingly drawn into foreign policy matters, driven by both a desire to secure American economic interests and a strong moral compass.

  • He appointed anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state and authorized the occupation of Nicaragua by American Marines to suppress a rebellion.

  • He also sent troops to Haiti and the Dominican Republic to ensure that American business interests were not challenged.

• Wilson and the Mexican Revolution

  • President Woodrow Wilson was deeply involved in the Mexican Revolution, which began with the ousting of an autocratic leader in 1910 and degenerated into a civil war that left nearly a million Mexicans dead.

  • In 1914, Wilson challenged the legitimacy of the new Mexican leader, General Victoriano Huerta, and sent 800 troops to overthrow him.

  • This new government was challenged by an uprising led by Francisco "Pancho" Villa, who successfully intercepted a train carrying American gold and led a raid into American territory that left eighteen Americans dead.

  • Wilson authorized more than 12,000 troops to invade Mexico to capture Villa, who eluded the American forces.

  • By 1917, the United States had turned its attention away from Mexico as it began preparations for World War I.

The Progressives

The Progressive Movement

• The Making of the Progressive Movement

  • The Progressive movement was a middle-class response to the excesses of rapid industrialization, political corruption, and unplanned urbanization.

  • It was led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but was more of an amalgam of interests, ideas, groups, and individuals than a cohesive ideology.

  • It championed reforms to benefit the working class, but looked at the actual working class with a mix of paternalism and suspicion.

  • It challenged women's exclusion from the political process, but largely accepted the prevailing racist social views about African Americans.

  • Many industrialists embraced progressive legislation in order to tame the freewheeling nature of the capitalist system and create a more rational, predictable economic order.

• Women and the Progressive Movement

  • The Progressive movement provided a way for women to become engaged in public issues in an era when the vote was still restricted to men.

  • Prominent women in the movement included Florence Kelly, Frances Perkins, and Jane Addams.

  • Women often framed their participation in the movement as "social housekeeping" in order to not seem like a radical break from traditional domestic activities.

• Pragmatism

  • Pragmatists argued that the value of an idea lies in its ability to positively impact the world, exemplified by the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

• Reform Darwinism

  • Progressive activists rejected Social Darwinism and embraced Reform Darwinism, which called for active intervention and cooperation in the evolution of society.

• Muckrakers and the Birth of Investigative Journalism

  • Progressives believed in the power of mass print media to shed light on social ills and inspire action, leading to the emergence of "muckrakers" who wrote articles detailing the corruption and scandals of the modern world.

  • Important muckrakers included Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Frank Norris.

• Progressives and Municipal Reform

  • Progressive activists were alarmed by the inefficiency and corruption of municipal government in the early twentieth century, highlighted by the Democratic Party machine in New York City and Lincoln Steffens' 1904 muckraking book, “The Shame of the Cities“.

• Progressivism and Moral Reform

  • Reformers sought to "civilize" the urban environment by tackling social ills such as drinking, prostitution, rowdy behavior, and bawdy entertainment.

• The Progressive Response to the Triangle Factory Fire

  • The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 was a tragic event that led to the creation of fire safety laws in New York and the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union.

  • 146 workers died in the fire, many of whom were recent Italian or Jewish immigrants.

  • The factory was located in the upper floors of a factory building in the Greenwich Village section of New York City.

  • The workers discovered that one of the entrances was blocked by flames and another was locked, preventing them from escaping.

Divisions within the Progressive Movement

• The Progressive Movement, Race, and Segregation

  • White progressives accepted prevailing notions around race, leading to a rigid system of segregation in the South following the end of Reconstruction (1877).

  • Jim Crow laws and voting laws had excluded African Americans from voting, and violence by the Ku Klux Klan and others had become the backdrop to life in the South for African Americans.

  • In the beginning of the twentieth century, eugenics tried to justify segregation and racist attitudes with scientific backing.

  • Progressive activists and writers ignored the conditions of African Americans, and some endorsed the segregation system, such as Woodrow Wilson, who ordered the segregation of government offices and praised the racist film Birth of a Nation.

• Fighting Segregation in the Progressive Era

  • White progressives challenged the Jim Crow system, but African American activists sought to put the issue of race and racism on the national agenda.

  • W. E. B. Du Bois was a militant civil-rights activist who wrote about the injustices against African Americans in the South.

  • He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, which had first met in 1905 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

• Different Directions Among African-American Leaders

  • African-American activists in the Progressive Era put forth different approaches to social change.

  • W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington advocated for full political equality and civil rights, respectively, while Marcus Garvey urged African Americans to return to their ancestral homelands in Africa.

  • Garvey was influential in instilling a sense of pride among many African Americans and is seen as an important figure in the Black-nationalist movement.

• Democracy Versus Expertise in Progressive Governance

  • Progressive reformers were troubled by corruption and cronyism in government, but were divided between empowering professional managers and planners and empowering the citizenry through democratic reforms.

• Expertise, Efficiency, and Mastery

  • Progressive reformers embraced the goals of expertise and efficiency in reforming governance, believing that experts in government could address social ills using scientific and rational criteria.

  • Frederick Winslow Taylor's "scientific management" techniques and Walter Lippmann's book, “Drift and Mastery“, argued that governance based on rational scientific ideas could overcome forces contributing to societal drift.

• Efficiency and Municipal Government in the Wake of the Galveston Flood

  • The issue of municipal inefficiency and corruption came to the fore in Galveston, Texas, in 1900, when 8,000 people died in the deadliest natural disaster in US history.

  • Local leaders created commissions to lead the cleanup and rebuilding of the city, creating a model for the commission form of government.

  • Elected commissioners run the city and head various departments, preventing city officials from being under the sway of powerful political bosses.

  • Other cities hired managers with professional training to administer municipal affairs.

• The Push for Expanded Participation in Democracy

  • Progressive reformers pushed for democratic empowerment of the citizenry, but did not address the most obvious impediment to voting, laws and practices preventing African Americans from voting.

  • Reforms were advocated to make local, state, and national governments more responsive to the popular will.

• Womenʼs Suffrage

  • The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1920) was the most important reform of the Progressive era, granting women the right to vote.

  • The push for women's suffrage dates back to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and grew to over two million members by 1917.

  • The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) formed in 1890 and the National Woman's Party was founded by Alice Paul in 1916.

  • Men and women in the movement organized hundreds of parades, raised millions of dollars, and engaged in hunger strikes and civil disobedience.

  • President Woodrow Wilson recognized the "suffering and sacrifice" of women during World War I.

• The Referendum, the Recall, and the Initiative

  • Reformers proposed and implemented reforms to expand democracy, such as the referendum, which allowed people to vote directly on proposed legislation.

  • The recall empowered the people of a city or state to remove an elected official before their term ended, and the initiative allowed citizens to introduce a bill to the local or state legislature by petition.

  • In 2003, Californians recalled Governor Gray Davis and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• Direct Primaries

  • The Progressive movement pushed for the adoption of direct primaries, which empowered voters to choose party candidates to run for elected public office.

  • Minnesota was the first state to adopt a direct primary in 1899, and most other states had done so by 1916.

• Direct Election of Senators

  • Progressives pushed for direct election of senators to counterbalance the House of Representatives, which was seen as elitist by many.

  • The Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913.

• The Australian Ballot

  • In the nineteenth century, political machines printed ballots with candidates on them and voters deposited them in voting boxes, allowing for voter intimidation.

  • In 1888, Massachusetts adopted a secret ballot, which became the norm in America by 1910.

Progressive Reform on the National Level

• Progressivism and Industrial Capitalism

  • Laissez-faire economics led to the Gilded Age's growth of industrial output, but by the early 20th century, many Americans realized that unregulated industry could be harmful to individuals, communities, and the health of industrial capitalism.

• The Jungle and the Meat-packing Industry

  • Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle“, sparked a public outcry about the conditions of the meat-processing industry.

  • The novel follows a Lithuanian immigrant family through the stockyards of Chicago and brings to light the unsanitary and dangerous conditions of the industry.

  • The public uproar led to Congress passing the Meat Inspection Act (1906) and the Pure Food and Drug Act (also 1906), which established the Food and Drug Administration.

• The History of the Standard Oil Company

  • The Standard Oil Company was a giant trust assembled by John D. Rockefeller that dominated the petroleum-processing industry by the end of the 19th century.

  • Journalist and teacher Ida Tarbell detailed the rise of the company in her articles and book, “The History of the Standard Oil Company” (1904).

  • Her research led to the government invoking the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up the company in 1911.

• Regulating Workplace Practices—Muller v. Oregon and the “Brandeis Brief”

  • Progressives tackled the dual issues of long working hours and child labor in the late 19th century.

  • In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled a New York State law restricting hours for bakers unconstitutional, but in 1908, Muller v. Oregon upheld an Oregon law limiting the number of hours women could work.

  • The case is significant because of the brief written by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, which cited scientific, psychological, and sociological studies to bolster the case for limiting women's hours of work.

  • This type of legal argument would become increasingly common in the twentieth century, including in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

• Challenging Child Labor

  • The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 addressed the issue of child labor by prohibiting the sale of goods produced by factories that employed children under fourteen years of age.

  • However, in the case of Hammer v. Dagenhart (1917), the Supreme Court found that the goods being regulated were not inherently "immoral" and were subject to state, not federal, law.

  • Child labor was not effectively addressed until federal fair-labor standards were established during the New Deal era of the 1930s.

• Progressivism in the White House

  • The Progressive movement was primarily a grassroots movement, but in the early twentieth century, progressivism entered the discourse of the national political parties.

  • President Theodore Roosevelt embraced many progressive reforms, but his handpicked successor, President William H. Ta, was a disappointment.

  • This led to the electoral victory of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who implemented progressive reforms.

• Theodore Roosevelt and the “Square Deal”

  • Roosevelt moved the Republican Party and nation in a progressive direction with the "Square Deal" and conservation of natural resources, known as the "trust buster".

• Roosevelt and the Regulation of Business

  • President Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal" approach to public issues was reflected in his handling of the anthracite coal strike in 1902.

  • He called representatives from both management and labor to the White House, threatening to take over the mines if owners did not negotiate in good faith.

  • Roosevelt also pushed for consumer protections, stronger measures to protect the environment, and stronger regulation of the powerful railroad industry.

  • He strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) with the Elkins Act (1903) and the Hepburn Act (1906) to set railroad rates.

• Roosevelt as “Trust Buster”

  • President Roosevelt saw the concentration of economic power in a few hands as potentially dangerous to the economy, and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) was passed to limit monopolistic practices.

  • He used the act to pursue "bad trusts" such as the Northern Securities Company, a railroad holding company that controlled all railroad traffic in the Northwest.

  • In Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1904), the Supreme Court upheld the power of the government to break up the company, a victory for Roosevelt, earning him the nickname "trust buster."

• The Administration of William Howard Taft

  • William Howard Taft was chosen to succeed President Theodore Roosevelt and won the 1908 election.

  • Progressives were disappointed by Taft, who was not a skillful politician and failed to develop a base of support.

  • He agreed to higher tariff rates and fired Gifford Pinchot as chief of the United States Forest Service.

  • He also pursued antitrust suits, including a major case against U.S. Steel.

• Taft, Roosevelt, and the Election of 1912

  • Theodore Roosevelt and his supporters walked out of the Republican Party nominating convention in 1912, leading to a civil war between Taft and Roosevelt.

  • Roosevelt and his loyalists founded the Progressive Party and nominated Roosevelt to run as a third-party candidate in the general election.

  • The election was further complicated by the candidacy of Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party, who won the majority of the electoral votes despite winning only 41 percent of the popular vote.

• Progressivism and Woodrow Wilson

  • Woodrow Wilson was an anomaly in the White House, only the second Democrat to serve since Andrew Johnson.

  • He was the first southerner elected to the White House since 1844 and had been governor of New Jersey and president of Princeton University before assuming the presidency.

  • He established a track record as a progressive reformer.

• Wilson and the Federal Reserve Act

  • President Wilson grew increasingly suspicious of the banking industry, arguing that it was inflexible and in the service of the stock market.

  • Following the Panic of 1907, he pushed for the Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System in 1913.

  • The Fed is a partly privately controlled and partly publicly controlled central banking system that regulates economic growth by expanding or contracting the currency supply.

  • It also raises or lowers the interest rate at which it loans money to other banks, stimulating economic activity by making it more attractive for people to make major purchases, and raising interest rates if it wants to cool economic activity in order to prevent inflation.

• Regulation of Business

  • President Wilson was a strong supporter of small business and took on the mantle of business regulation.

  • He strengthened the antitrust powers of the federal government with the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), which exempted labor unions from being targeted by antitrust actions.

  • He also created the Federal Trade Commission (1914) to regulate business practices and enforce provisions of the Clayton Act.

  • The legislation enumerates a host of powers and responsibilities, including guarding against "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce."

• The Prohibition Movement and the Eighteenth Amendment

  • The movement to limit or eliminate alcohol consumption in American society was a major reform movement in the nineteenth century.

  • It gained new enthusiasts among progressives who sought to harness the power of the government to change social behavior.

  • In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloons were seen as parasites on working-class communities, and the Anti-Saloon League (founded in 1893) saw the saloon industry as profiteering off alcohol abuse.

  • The movement equated the prohibition of alcohol with the quest to bring democracy to the world, and anti-German sentiment during World War I led to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol as of January 1, 1920.

Addressing Environmental Issues in the Progressive Era

• Concern for Disappearing Wilderness

  • Sportsmen were early advocates of environmental protection, organizing the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887 to promote outdoor activities and lobby for protection.

• Roosevelt and Conservation

  • Theodore Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 to lead the government's conservation efforts.

  • The roots of the Forest Service date back to the 1870s, when Congress appointed a special agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the condition of forested land.

• Expansion of the National Park System

  • The federal government began the National Park System in 1872, creating Yellowstone Park and Yosemite Valley.

  • In 1890, California's Yosemite Valley and the surrounding area were designated a national park.

  • President Roosevelt expanded the system, creating five additional national parks and establishing 150 national forests.

  • Ultimately, Roosevelt put over 200 million acres under public protection.

• Conservationism and Preservationism

  • President Theodore Roosevelt endorsed the view that the nation's natural resources should be used in a responsible way, contrasting with environmental preservationists who want society to have a hands-off approach.

  • John Muir was an early preservationist, while conservationism focused on regulation and responsible economic utilization of resources, tapping into progressive thinking.

• The Controversy over the Hetch Hetchy Valley

  • The destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in California illustrates the divergent approaches to the environment during the Progressive era.

  • San Francisco officials sought to dam the Tuolumne River and turn the valley into a giant reservoir, but federal officials reversed themselves after a devastating earthquake and fire in 1906.

  • The plan was given final approval by the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1913 and was completed a decade later.

World War I: Military and Diplomacy

The United States Enters World War I

• The Context of World War I

  • Historians cite several factors that created an unstable, even dangerous, situation in Europe in the years before World War I, such as nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and the alliance system.

  • This nationalism was fueled by a competition to imperialize the remaining independent areas of Asia and Africa, and was made more dangerous by an arms build-up among the European nations, especially the rival maritime nations of Great Britain and Germany.

  • Finally, the situation was made more volatile by a dangerous series of alliances, which could lead to a broad European-wide war.

• The Onset of War

  • The long-term causes of World War I were the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which resulted in Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia.

  • This led to the formation of the Triple Alliance, the Central Powers, and the Allied Powers, which included Serbia, Belgium, Montenegro, Japan, and several other nations.

  • The conflict would last four years and result in the deaths of 8.5 million soldiers.

• United States Neutrality

  • The United States initially assumed that it could stay neutral during World War I, but several factors kept it from doing so.

  • The US had previously attempted to stay away from Europe, but had gone to war with Great Britain and Spain.

  • Isolationism remained strong, and neutrality allowed the US to trade with both sides in the conflict.

• Immigration Patterns and Public Opinion Around World War I

  • Immigration patterns in World War I did not predispose the United States to support either side.

  • German and Irish immigrants tended to favor the Central Powers, while Americans had ties to Great Britain due to their language and cultural ties.

• From Neutrality to Intervention

  • The United States initially kept America out of World War I, but important developments propelled the United States toward intervention.

  • President Woodrow Wilson had emphasized the principle of freedom of the seas, but Great Britain had effectively blockaded Germany.

  • Trade with Britain increased by 300% between 1914 and 1917, while trade with Germany shrank to almost nothing.

  • Germany responded by warning that U.S. ships in the waters off Great Britain would be subject to attack by U-boats, and the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania in May 1915 infuriated many Americans. In response, Germany agreed to make no attacks on passenger ships without prior warning.

  • The following year, a French ferry named the Sussex was torpedoed by a German U-boat, resulting in eighty deaths and hundreds of injuries.

  • Wilson threatened to break off relations with Germany, and Germany issued the Sussex Pledge (1916) to appease the United States, reaffirming the promise of the Arabic Pledge and extending it to include merchant ships.

  • The United States took advantage of this pledge and traded extensively with Great Britain, much to the consternation of Germany.

• Progressives and the War

  • Progressives were divided about American participation in World War I, but many saw great possibilities in it, such as an expansion of the federal government, a sense of unity and national purpose, and a renewed focus on social justice.

  • John Dewey encouraged progressives to see the "social possibilities" of war.

• President Woodrow Wilson and the War

  • Public opinion towards the Allied Powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia began to shift towards the democratic side of the war after czarist Russia was no longer part of the alliance.

  • President Wilson's approach to the conflict changed rapidly, as he became increasingly convinced that U.S. participation in World War I was necessary to make the world "safe for democracy."

  • Wilson's pro-war stance divided Americans, with some joining him in his idealistic crusade to create a new world order based on peace and autonomy.

  • The government went to great lengths to alter public opinion.

• The Zimmerman Note and Unrestricted German Submarine Warfare

  • The "Zimmerman Note" became public in March 1917, which indicated that Germany would help Mexico regain territory it had lost to the United States if Mexico joined the war on Germany's side.

  • This was seen as a threat to their territory, and in early 1917, Germany announced it would rescind the Sussex Pledge and resume unrestricted submarine warfare against Great Britain and its allies, including the United States.

  • This proved to be the final straw for the United States, which declared war on Germany in April 1917.

• Shaping Public Opinion

  • The Committee on Public Information (CPI) was established by President Wilson in 1917 to organize pro-war propaganda.

  • It sent "Four-Minute Men" to give speeches and produced evocative posters to convince Americans to support the war.

  • These posters targeted the supposed ruthless actions of German soldiers, often labeled the "Huns," and featured the image of Uncle Sam pointing directly at the viewer with the famous tag line, "I Want You for U.S. Army."

• Funding the War

  • The Committee on Public Information's mission was to raise funds for the war, with posters encouraging Americans to purchase bonds to fund the costs.

  • The government ended up raising two-thirds of the war's costs from war bonds.

• Federal Agencies and War Production

  • Government agencies were created during World War I to ensure a smooth transition to a war economy.

  • The War Industries Board was led by Bernard Baruch, the Food Administration was created to ensure food production, and the National War Labor Policies Board dealt with labor disputes.

  • This constellation of government agencies was what progressive reformers had hoped to create on a permanent basis.

The Role of the United States in World War I

• The United States entered World War I late in the conflict, providing the Allies with much needed reinforcement.

• The two million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force proved to be crucial in Allied offensives that led to victory.

• By the time the United States entered, the war had bogged down into a stalemate, with both sides dug into trenches separated by a strip of "no-manʼs land".

• When one side attempted a frontal attack on the other, they were subjected to machine gun fire, barbed wire, and poison gas.

• The five-month-long Battle of the Somme (1916) resulted in more than a million casualties and no substantial gains for either side.

• American troops suffered over 300,000 casualties, including over 50,000 battlefield deaths and over 60,000 non-combat deaths.

The United States and the Postwar World

• Wilsonʼs Fourteen Points

  • President Wilson proposed the Fourteen Points (1918) to create a world order based on freedom of the seas, removal of barriers to trade, self-determination for European peoples, and an international organization to resolve conflicts.

  • These ideas were rejected by the victorious European powers, with the exception of the creation of the League of Nations.

• United States Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles

  • The Treaty of Versailles was a key component of President Wilson's Fourteen Points document, but some isolationist Republican senators vowed to reject it.

  • Other senators took a middle position, saying they would agree to vote to approve the treaty if the Senate put certain conditions on American participation in the League of Nations.

  • Wilson refused to compromise on this and urged his allies in the Senate to reject any amendments.

  • Without the senators in the middle, the treaty was rejected by the Senate in 1919, shaping American foreign policy for the next decade.

World War I: Home front

World War I and the Conservative Rejection of Progressive Reform

• Civil Liberties During Wartime

  • The Espionage and Sedition Acts were passed during World War I to limit public expressions of antiwar sentiment.

  • The Espionage Act (1917) made it a crime to interfere with the draft or with the sale of war bonds, and the Sedition Act (1918) extended the reach of the Espionage Act.

  • The Supreme Court ruled in Schenck v. United States (1919) that freedom of speech is not absolute and that the government is justified in limiting certain forms of speech during wartime.

  • The Court argued that certain utterances pose a "clear and present danger" and that one is not allowed to falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

• The Crusade Against Organized Labor and Dissent

  • The attacks on organized labor in the immediate aftermath of World War I occurred due to increased union activism and the increased visibility of radical movements.

  • This led to the second largest strike wave in American history, involving 4,500 strikes and involving four million workers.

  • Management used a variety of techniques to maintain the upper hand, such as painting striking workers as subversives and would-be Bolsheviks, pushing for open shops, and intervening on behalf of management.

  • It was not until the New Deal era of the 1930s that the labor movement was able to regain momentum.

• The “Red Scare”

  • The "Red Scare" of the late 1910s and early 1920s was a campaign against Communists, anarchists, and other radicals, and targeted labor leaders.

  • It was a grassroots response to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which brought the Communist Party to power and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union.

  • In December 1919, Emma Goldman was deported by the Justice Department, and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer began a broad hunt for suspected radicals.

  • Six thousand alleged radicals were identified by Palmer's men, and he deporting more than 500 noncitizens.

  • The movement spread to the local level as radical newspapers were shut down, libraries were purged of allegedly radical books, and accused elected officials were removed from office.

  • The Supreme Court decision in Schenck v. United States gave cover to Palmer's aggressive tactics, but suspicion of "reds" persisted throughout the 1920s.

• The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

  • The Red Scare era saw the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were accused of robbing and killing a payroll clerk in 1920.

  • The judge was hostile to the men, who were not only immigrants but also anarchists.

  • After they were found guilty, many Americans protested the verdict and wondered if an immigrant with radical ideas could get a fair trial. Despite protests, the two men were executed in 1927.

World War I and the Rise of Nativism

• Nativism, or opposition to immigration, rose sharply during World War I. Government propaganda vilified Germans, labeling them as "Huns" and portraying them as ruthless killers.

• In 1917, the German-born director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Karl Muck, was hounded by the public and forced to resign. In 1918, a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was lynched by an anti-German mob.

• Anti-German sentiment spread to a broader anti-immigrant crusade during the war, with Congress passing the Immigration Restriction Act, which established a reading test requirement for admission to the U.S. and barred immigrant laborers from several countries that were designated as the "Asiatic Barred Zone."

War, Opportunity, and Migration

• The Great Migration

  • The Great Migration of African Americans out of the South during World War I led to the onset of the Great Depression.

  • This migration was caused by the mistreatment African Americans received in the South, such as Jim Crow laws that separated them from whites in schools, buses, trains, and other facilities.

  • African Americans were excluded from the political system due to obstacles such as literacy tests and poll taxes.

  • The main factor that drew African Americans to the North was jobs, as factories using new mass production techniques were able to fill the jobs with local people and European immigrants.

  • Factory agents from the North frequently made recruiting trips to the South, offering immediate employment and free passage to the North.

• Racial Violence—Chicago, Washington, Tulsa, and Beyond

  • The Great Migration led to racial violence in many cities, with at least twenty-five significant race riots in 1919 alone. In July 1919, a riot against African Americans occurred in Washington, D.C., and an even more violent riot in Chicago le thirty-eight people dead and more than 500 injured.

  • The deadliest race riot in American history occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, caused by an encounter in an elevator between a young white female elevator operator and a young African American male shoe-shiner.

  • Rumors of rape quickly spread, and a white mob attempted to lynch the young man.

  • A maelstrom of violence ensued, as white residents, including police and National Guardsmen, rioted through the Greenwood District of Tulsa, which was known as the "Black Wall Street" and was considered the wealthiest African-American community in the United States at the time.

  • The district was destroyed by the rioting, with over 10,000 people le homeless and more than 300 African Americans killed.

1920s: Innovation in Communications and Technology

Technological Advances, Corporate Growth, and the Consumer Economy

• Henry Ford and Mass Production

  • Henry Ford was an important figure in the development of new production techniques, opening a plant with a continuous conveyor belt in 1913.

  • This reduced the price of his Model T car and made it affordable to the middle class, but it also displaced skilled mechanics who had previously built automobiles.

• The Impact of the Automobile

  • Americans embraced the automobile more rapidly than other nations, owning 80% of the world's automobiles by the end of the 1920s. Automobiles rapidly became more affordable, with a Ford car costing the equivalent of two to three months' salary.

  • The proliferation of the automobile industry stimulated the growth of the steel, chemical, oil, and glass-production industries, employing nearly four million Americans.

  • This led to a reshaping of demographic patterns, as more Americans began to settle in suburban communities, reducing rural isolation and contributing to "urban sprawl."

  • The growing cities that developed in the twentieth century, such as Los Angeles and Houston, were designed to accommodate the automobile.

• Scientific Management

  • Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific-management techniques were key to mass production.

  • He watched workers, noted the most efficient techniques, and wrote down instructions to reconfigure work on the shop floor.

  • Work became more efficient, but also monotonous, and many workers resisted the loss of control and autonomy.

• Advertising and Mass Consumption

  • The 1920s saw an increase in the availability of consumer goods to average families, such as cars, radios, toasters, health and beauty aids, and other consumer goods.

  • Easy credit and layaway plans helped move merchandise, and advertising and public relations men tapped into Freudian psychology and crowd psychology to reach the public on a subconscious level.

  • Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, was a key figure in the shift towards elaborate corporate advertising campaigns, and the values of advertising and promotion seeped into the broader culture, even into religion.

  • Bruce Barton wrote a best-selling book, “The Man Nobody Knows“, which portrayed Jesus Christ as a "super-salesman" and the spread of Christianity as a marketing triumph.

New Media and National and Regional Cultures

• Radio and the Development of Mass Culture

  • Radio grew from being virtually nonexistent in the 1920s to becoming an extremely popular medium by the end of the decade.

  • It was initiated by amateurs who sent out music or sermons to the few scattered people who had "wireless receivers."

  • Westinghouse and other corporations saw the potential to reach the masses with radio, and by 1923, there were almost 600 licensed radio stations.

  • Early successful programs included The Amos ʼnʼ Andy Show (1928), a holdover from "blackface" minstrel shows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  • In the 1930s, Americans listened to weekly serials, comedians, and soap operas, as well as big-band swing music led by Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller.

• Movies and the Development of Mass Media

  • Movie attendance in the 1920s and 1930s reached staggering levels, with three-fourths of the American people going to the movies every week.

  • Escapist musicals such as Gold Diggers and 42nd Street were popular, as were anarchic comedies such as Monkey Business and Duck Soup.

  • Charlie Chaplin's “Modern Times“ satirized the capitalist system, while Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington depicted the triumph of a decent, "everyman" politician.

  • Radio and movies combined to create a more homogeneous culture in the 1930s.

• Modern Media and Regional Culture

  • The 1920s saw the spread of new technologies, such as recorded music and radio, which enabled the development of a mass culture.

  • Record companies began issuing records of "hillbilly" songs, and Ralph Peer traveled through the South to record local string bands, balladeers, and other musicians in traditional genres.

  • Sessions held in Bristol, Tennessee, are considered to be uniquely significant in the origins of country music, with Jimmie Rogers and the Carter Family emerging from the Bristol sessions.

1920s: Cultural and Political Controversies

The Growth of the City

• The Social Geography of the City

  • Immigrants from abroad poured into American cities in the first two decades of the 20th century, making up 76% of the population of New York City, 71% of Chicago, and 64% of San Francisco.

  • The mechanization of agriculture lowered the demand for labor in rural areas, contributing to the internal migration of people into cities. By 1920, 51% of Americans lived in cities.

• New Opportunities for Women

  • Urbanization and industrialization provided new opportunities for women in the workforce, with the most common occupation in the midnineteenth century being domestic service.

  • In the late nineteenth century, more women were working in factories and by the first decades of the twentieth century, office work became their primary occupation.

  • The "new woman" of the 1920s was engaged in public issues and gained a new sense of confidence in public issues, especially after they achieved the right to vote in 1920.

  • The new image of women was symbolized by the popularity of the "flappers" and their style of dress, who defied Victorian moral codes.

Nativism and the Quota System

• The Growth of Nativism

  • A large wave of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in the US between 1880 and 1920, leading to a popular nativist movement.

  • This was due to the fact that most of the new immigrants were not Protestant, and the cacophony of languages heard on the streets of New York or Chicago.

  • Working-class people feared that low-wage immigrant laborers would take jobs from native-born American workers, and World War I contributed to the rise of nativist sentiments toward Germans and other ethnic groups.

• The Quota System

  • The Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the National Origins Act (1924) set quotas for new immigrants based on nationality.

  • The first act set the quota for each nationality at 3 percent of the total number of that nationality in 1910, while the second act reduced the percentage to 2 percent and moved the year back to 1890.

  • This had the effect of setting very low quotas for many of the "new immigrants" from eastern and southern Europe.

  • The acts did not set limits on immigration for natives of countries within the Americas.

Migration Patterns and Cultural Production

• The Harlem Renaissance

  • This was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement centered in Harlem, New York City, that sought to increase pride in Black culture by celebrating African American life and forging a new cultural identity.

  • It included the writings of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson, as well as the jazz music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith.

    • Hughes wrote "Harlem," "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," and "I, Too, Sing America."

    • Ellington wrote "Mood Indigo," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."

    • Johnson wrote the poem "Li Ev'ry Voice and Sing," which is often considered the African-American national anthem.

• The Literature of Dissent

  • The "Lost Generation" literary movement of the 1920s expressed a general disillusionment with society, commenting on the narrowness of small-town life and the materialism of American society.

  • The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald exposed the shallowness of the lives of the wealthy and privileged, while Sinclair Lewis' novels mocked middle-class life and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms critiqued the glorification of war.

  • Several novels of the 1930s reflected the influence of the Communist Party on American culture, including It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair Lewis and The Disinherited (1933) by Jack Conroy.

• Regionalism in the Context of Modernity

  • Regionalism in art and literature emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century, as a response to the homogenizing forces of modern media and mass culture.

  • It has its roots in the nineteenth century, with Mark Twain's novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

  • Regionalist writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries include Willa Cather (Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains) and Sarah Orne Jewett (Maine).

  • Sui Sin Far captured life in the Chinese-American community in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest.

  • William Faulkner is the most important Southern writer, with important works such as The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930).

  • Other important writers of the "Southern Renaissance" of the 1920s and 1930s include Tennessee Williams, Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Wolfe, and Robert Penn Warren.

  • Regionalism can also be seen in the art of the 1930s, especially in much of the work of the Works Progress Administration.

  • Two important regionalist painters, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, both depicted scenes from the Midwest, most notably Wood's American Gothic.

• The “Okie” Migration and the Culture of Displacement

  • The Dust Bowl caused a cultural shift in California, with displaced people from the southern Great Plains bringing their culture to the Central Valley.

  • Country music artists Buck Owens and Merle Haggard both had roots in the Dust Bowl and ended up in Bakersfield, contributing to a style of country music that was more mournful and rough-edged than the more slickly produced country music that originated in Nashville in the 1950s.

• Yiddish Theater

  • The migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States from the 1880s to the 1920s gave rise to several cultural developments, including the flourishing Yiddish theater, which was a major cultural force in the United States between 1890 and 1940.

  • It was centered in New York City, with over 200 venues or touring performing groups.

  • From the 1890s, dedicated Yiddish playwrights sought to capture the immigrant experience and present works of Shakespeare, Strindberg, and Ibsen to the newly arrived Yiddish-speaking community.

  • By the 1900s, a more populist approach began to compete with a classical tradition, characterized by a flamboyant style of acting, overstated pageantry, and audience participation.

  • The Dybbuk (1919), by Shloyme Rappoport, is considered one of the more important Yiddish dramas of this period.

  • Yiddish theatrical presentations, such as Der Yidisher Yenki Dudl (the Jewish Yankee Doodle) (1905), often explored ways of holding onto Old-World traditions while assimilating into American culture.

Culture Clashes in the 1920s

• The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan

  • The Ku Klux Klan was a violent, racist group with its roots in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

  • By 1925, it had grown to three million members and was devoted to white supremacy and "100 percent Americanism."

  • This ideology was evident in a number of race riots in the late 1910s and 1920s.

• The Bible Versus Science

  • The Scopes trial of 1925 highlighted the conflict between Protestant fundamentalism and modern science.

  • John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher, was arrested for violating the Butler Act, a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution.

  • The case turned into a national spectacle, with Clarence Darrow representing Scopes and William Jennings Bryan representing the state.

  • Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, highlighting cultural divisions in the 1920s.

• Rural and Urban Responses to Prohibition

  • The movement to ban alcohol from American society achieved success in 1919 with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

  • However, the victory was hollow as per capita consumption of alcohol increased and lawlessness increased due to bootleggers, speakeasies, and organized crime.

  • Congress ratified the Twenty-first Amendment (1933) which repealed Prohibition.

The Great Depression

The Transition of the American Economy and Economic Instability

• The Panic of 1893

  • In the nineteenth century, the economy experienced several economic downturns, triggered by "panics".

  • As the economy became more consolidated in the post-Civil War era, the potential for more severe downturns became increasingly likely.

  • The Panic of 1893 signaled the beginning of the worst economic depression in American history, when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt and the National Cordage Company also failed.

  • This led to a major decline in stock prices and a wave of bank failures, leading to a contraction of credit and the collapse of approximately 15,000 businesses.

  • By 1894, the unemployment rate had reached 20 percent of the workforce and approximately a million workers had lost their jobs.

  • The economy did not fully recover until 1901.

• The Panic of 1907

  • This was a major economic downturn caused by a lack of confidence in major New York banks.

  • Several banks had invested in a scheme to gain control of the United Copper Company, leading to runs on several of them. One major New York bank, Knickerbocker Trust Company, collapsed, sending ripples of fear through the banking world and leading to a withdrawal of reserves.

  • The panic was partly calmed by the action of J. P. Morgan, who offered to have U.S.

  • Steel take over a struggling steel-industry rival.

  • The deal could not proceed until Morgan got assurances from President Theodore Roosevelt that the government would not initiate antitrust action.

  • The entire episode demonstrated the lack of control the US government had over the industrial and financial worlds.

The New Deal

The Creation of the New Deal

• From Hoover to Roosevelt

  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, was a wealthy New York family who won the governorship in 1928 and introduced a number of innovative programs to help New Yorkers during the Great Depression.

  • He was able to convey a sense of empathy and personal warmth, and his openness to experimentation allowed for a more flexible response to the Depression than Hoover's more ideological approach.

  • Roosevelt won the election of 1932 easily, garnering 57% of the popular vote and 472 out of 529 electoral votes.

  • The New Deal provided relief to individuals through a variety of agencies.

• The First New Deal

  • The Roosevelt administration developed a remarkable array of programs during its first hundred days in 1933 and in the months immediately following.

  • These programs, which comprised the first New Deal, reflected both Rooseveltʼs willingness to experiment and the scope of problems that faced the nation.

• Glass-Steagall Act (1933)

  • President Roosevelt faced a crisis caused by the instability of the banking industry, as people withdrew their money in fear that their banks would close.

  • The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, created by the Glass-Steagall Act, insures deposits to ensure people do not lose their savings.

• National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)

  • The Industrial Code was designed to stabilize the industrial sector of the economy by creating codes to shorten hours, guarantee trade union rights, establish minimum wage levels, regulate the price of petroleum products, and promote fair business practices.

  • It was designed to prevent cutthroat competition from hurting the economy and limiting workers' ability to purchase goods.

• Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933)

  • This act is implemented to reduce production and strengthen the agricultural sector, but it had an unintended negative effect by evicting tenant farmers and sharecroppers, including African-American farmers.

  • This hurt many of the nation's poorest farmers.

• Tennessee Valley Authority (1933)

  • It was the federal governmentʼs first experiment in regional planning.

  • The TVA built dams, generated electricity, manufactured fertilizer, provided technical assistance to farmers, and fostered economic development in the Tennessee Valley

• Federal Emergency Relief Act (1933)

  • This was created to distribute more than $500 million to state and local governments, which would, in turn, distribute aid to the poor.

  • FERA was intended to provide temporary relief for people in need.

• Civilian Conservation Corps (1933)

  • Roosevelt created CCC to provide outdoor work for young men between the ages of 18 and 24.

  • Projects initiated by the CCC included soil conservation, flood control, trail and road building, bridges, and forest projects.

  • During the 1930s, approximately 2.75 million men worked on CCC projects.

• Securities and Exchange Commission (1934)

  • Many individuals had lost confidence in the stock market after the 1929 crash, which was partly caused by unsound fiscal practices.

  • This was created to oversee stock market operations by monitoring transactions, licensing brokers, limiting buying on margin, and prohibiting insider trading.

Critics of the New Deal and the Second New Deal

• The Growth of the Communist Party

  • The Communist Party in the United States gained new members and influence in the 1930s due to the Great Depression and the Soviet Union's achievements.

  • It adopted the "Popular Front" strategy, which called for the Party to drop talk of an impending revolution and cooperate with anti-fascist groups and governments, including Roosevelt's New Deal administration.

• Populist Opposition to the New Deal

  • The New Deal was criticized by a variety of voices, including Upton Sinclair, Francis Townsend, and Huey Long, who proposed sweeping socialistic solutions.

  • Long organized a national network of clubs under the "Share Our Wealth Society" banner, which proposed breaking up the fortunes of the rich and distributing them to everyone else.

  • He talked of running against Roosevelt in 1936, but was assassinated in 1935.

• The Growth of Organized Labor

  • President Roosevelt encouraged union membership in order to increase purchasing power, leading to the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the Wagner Act (1935) legalizing union membership.

  • Union membership rose from 3 million in 1933 to 10.5 million by 1941, and by the end of World War II, 36% of nonagricultural American workers were in unions.

• The Congress of Industrial Organizations

  • The drive to organize workers in the 1930s led to tensions within the labor movement.

  • John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers organized the Committee for Industrial Organization, which was ordered to disband in 1936 and expelled in 1937.

  • In 1938, the committee reconstituted itself as the independent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

  • It grew rapidly, surpassing the AFL in 1941, with 5 million members compared to the AFL's 4.6 million.

• The Sit-down Strike

  • This was a militant tactic used by unions in the late 1930s to prevent employers from reopening with replacement workers.

  • The most famous was at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan.

• Conservative Critics Denounce “Creeping Socialism”

  • Conservative critics of the New Deal saw it as socialism in disguise, arguing that it had pushed the government too far into new realms.

  • The American Liberty League, founded in 1934, supported conservative politicians and promoted the "open shop" business model.

  • Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin attacked Roosevelt as a Communist and dictator, adding anti-Semitic and fascistic elements to his broadcast.

• The Second New Deal

  • President Roosevelt was facing several problems in 1935, including the New Deal, which had not resolved the nation's economic woes.

  • The Supreme Court had declared key New Deal acts unconstitutional, such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and Agricultural Adjustment Act, and Roosevelt introduced a second set of programs known as the Second New Deal.

  • This second phase of the New Deal was less about shaping the economy and more about providing assistance and support to the working class.

  • This was in response to pressure from populist and lewing forces, and with a presidential election looming in 1936.

• Works Progress Administration (1935)

  • This was a massive initiative that created jobs for millions of unemployed men and women, ranging from construction work to theatrical productions.

  • At its peak in 1938, over three million people worked for the WPA, and by 1943, 8 million had worked for it.

• Social Security Act (1935)

  • This was designed to help the unemployed, elderly, and disabled with retirement benefits, funded by taxes on workers and employers.

  • The Social Security Agency is still in existence and popular with the public.

• The Wagner Act (1935)

  • The act established the National Labor Relations Board, which still exists, to oversee union elections and to arbitrate conflicts between workers and owners.

  • It also prohibited owners from taking punitive actions against workers who sought to organize unions.

  • As a result, the act led to a tremendous increase in union activity.

• The Second New Deal and the “Court Packing Plan”

  • Roosevelt proposed a bill to alter the composition of the Supreme Court by allowing him to appoint six additional justices, but Congress rejected it.

  • Over the next few years, some of the more conservative justices retired and Roosevelt was able to appoint seven new justices, including the liberal Hugo Black.

• The Rollback of the New Deal

  • Roosevelt's New Deal took a new direction in 1937 and 1938, leading to a decrease in the economy, which was showing signs of improvement.

  • He cut back on spending to balance the budget and reduce unemployment and stabilize the economy.

• The “Roosevelt Recession”

  • Roosevelt's move to cut spending on New Deal programs in 1938 caused a downturn in economic activity, leading to the "Roosevelt Recession".

  • Later, he increased government spending and the economy showed signs of growth, but the real boost came in 1939 as the US began producing armaments and supplies for World War II.

• Keynesian Economics

  • John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) argued that deficit spending by the government was acceptable, even desirable, as a means of increasing overall demand and stimulating economic activity.

  • His theories have influenced government policy in the twentieth century, especially during Democratic administrations, while Republicans focused on cutting government spending.

The Legacy of the New Deal

• The New Deal created a legacy of agencies and laws aimed at economic security and ushered in a major political realignment, with a new coalition of ethnic groups, African Americans, and working-class communities identifying with the Democratic Party.

• The 1930s saw the emergence of a political and ideological alignment that has continued to the present.

• President Herbert Hoover's conservative laissez-faire approach has been echoed by Republican presidents, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal interventionist approach inspired Democratic president Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society".

• Today, Democratic leaders debate how closely their party should be associated with New Deal liberalism, while Republicans brand their opponents "tax and spend" liberals.

• The debates of the 1930s are still part of the political culture.

The Depression, the New Deal, and Affected Groups

• African Americans

  • African Americans were particularly hard hit by the Great Depression, and many New Deal programs ignored them.

  • Despite President Roosevelt's reluctance to take the lead in civil rights legislation, African Americans switched their allegiance from the party of Lincoln to the Democratic Party.

  • First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes did champion civil rights causes, including organizing a concert by Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  • Roosevelt also met with a group of African-American advisors to the president, called the "Black Cabinet," and issued an executive order banning discrimination in the defense industry.

  • Despite his shortcomings, Roosevelt was attempting to improve conditions for poor and working-class people.

• The “Scottsboro Boys” Case

  • Nine African-American youths were convicted of rape in Alabama on flimsy evidence, but the Supreme Court reversed most of the convictions on the grounds that their due process rights had been violated.

  • The cases were then sent back to state court for retrial, where the defendants were again found guilty, even after one of the alleged victims admitted fabricating her story.

  • Charges were later dropped for four out of the nine defendants, and five served prison time.

• Women

  • Women faced a double burden during the Depression: they were responsible for putting food on the table, and were often scorned if they took a job away from a man.

  • New Deal programs tended to slight women, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and National Industrial Recovery Act, but individual women such as Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt opened doors for women.

  • Despite criticism, more women were working outside the home in 1940 than in 1930.

• American Indians

  • The Indian Reorganization Act (1934) reversed the Dawes Severalty Act by restoring tribal ownership of reservation lands and recognizing the legitimacy of tribal governments.

  • It also extended loans to American Indian groups for economic development.

Economic Dislocation and Migrations in the Era of the New Deal

• The Dust Bowl was a major drought in the Great Plains from 1934 to 1937, caused by unsustainable over-farming coupled with a devastating drought.

• Approximately 3.5 million people fled their homes in the areas affected by the Dust Bowl, with 400,000 ending up in California.

• Many Dust Bowl refugees became migrant farmers, working on large farms growing cotton, grapes, and other fruits and nuts.

• John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) chronicled the travails of the Joads, an Oklahoma, or "Okie, " family of Dust Bowl refugees who suffered additional indignities and setbacks once they made it to California.

• Woody Guthrie sang in one of his many "Dust Bowl Ballads" that California may have looked like a "garden of Eden," but it was a difficult place to survive without enough money.

Interwar foreign policy

The Politics of Isolationism

• Higher Tariff Rates—From Fordney-McCumber to Smoot-Hawley

  • The isolationist Republican presidents of the 1920s enacted higher tariffs to keep out foreign goods.

  • The 1922 Fordney-McCumber Act dramatically raised tariff rates.

  • In 1930, in the midst of the Great Depression, isolationist legislators pushed through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased tariffs to their second-highest rate in United States history; only the Tariff Act of 1828 enacted higher average tariff rates.

• The Washington Disarmament Conference

  • The presidents of the 1920s attempted to isolate the United States from world affairs and reduce spending on war munitions.

  • President Warren Harding successfully pressed for a reduction of naval power among Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States at the Washington Naval Conference (1921-1922).

• The Kellogg-Briand Pact

  • This pact was negotiated outside of the League of Nations and was unenforceable, but it provided a legal basis for the Nuremberg trials and encouraged the use of economic sanctions in the post-World War II world.

• The Good Neighbor Policy

  • The United States continued its "Big Stick" approach to Latin America in the 1920s, but in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began to pursue a more conciliatory policy.

  • Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed a declaration that no nation had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation.

  • Roosevelt rejected an interventionist approach in Cuba by abrogating a 1903 treaty and working out a new treaty.

  • Roosevelt also worked to expand trade with Latin America through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.

From Isolationism to Intervention

• The Challenges of Isolationism in the 1930s

  • The traditional isolationism of the United States was tested by developments in Europe in the 1930s.

  • The Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, took power in Italy in 1922.

  • Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers came to power in Germany in 1933.

  • A civil war in Spain led to the rise of a government run by Francisco Franco in 1939.

  • In Japan, militaristic leaders set the country on an aggressive course.

  • Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the Axis Powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact (1940).

• The Continued Pull of Isolationism

  • The 1930s saw a debate in the United States about America's role in world affairs. Isolationists argued that the United States should stay out of world affairs, citing World War I as a lesson in the futility of getting involved in European affairs.

  • Antidemocratic forces emerged after the war ended, and the Senate's Nye Committee uncovered evidence that certain American corporations had profited from U.S. participation in World War I.

  • Americans wondered if the so-called merchants of death had pushed the country into the war.

• The Argument for Intervention

  • In the 1930s, many Americans believed it would be a mistake for the United States to isolate itself from world affairs on the eve of World War II.

  • Interventionists believed the Atlantic Ocean would be a means for Hitler to bring his war machine to the United States, and that the war in Europe was different from earlier European quarrels over territory or national pride.

  • They were also convinced that the Axis Powers were determined to defeat democratic forces all over the world.

• The Quarantine Speech and the Panay Incident

  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sympathetic to the countries defending themselves against fascism, but he knew he could not commit the United States to an interventionist position without the support of the public.

  • In 1937, he delivered the Quarantine Speech in Chicago, which argued that aggressive nations should be "quarantined" by the international community.

  • However, the public response to the speech was generally negative, and when Japan attacked and sank an American gunboat, the USS Panay, in China, Roosevelt was urged to accept Japanese apologies.

  • This made it clear to Roosevelt that he would have to proceed with caution in global affairs.

  • He did not take decisive steps toward intervention, but he also did not pretend that the United States could isolate itself from the affairs of the world.

• The Onset of World War II

  • The question of the role of the United States in World War II began in 1939 when German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered an attack on Poland.

  • President Roosevelt pushed for legislation allowing the US to send armaments to Britain with the condition that Britain pay for the weapons first and transport them in their own ships.

  • This "cash-and-carry" policy allowed the US to support Britain without the risk of U.S. ships being destroyed.

• Steps Toward Engagement in World War II

  • The American public began to take a more interventionist stance in response to the defeat of France at the hands of the Nazis in mid-1940.

  • In 1940, the Selective Service Act was ratified, requiring compulsory military service for males between twenty-one and thirty-five years of age.

  • By 1941, 70% of the American people were ready to help Britain directly, even if it risked getting involved in World War II.

  • In March 1941, Congress approved the Lend-Lease Act, allowing the United States to send armaments to Britain in American ships.

  • In July of that year, Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill solidified the alliance between their two countries by releasing a statement of "common principles" known as the Atlantic Charter.

  • Though officially neutral, the United States was moving steadily toward intervening on the side of Great Britain.

• Pearl Harbor and American Intervention

  • The American public was divided in its support of intervention during World War II, with isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh arguing against any U.S. steps toward helping Britain.

  • Debates about intervention ended abruptly on December 7, 1941, when Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war.

  • With American involvement in the war, the isolationist position was largely silenced.

World War II: Mobilization

Mobilizing for World War II

• Rationing and Recycling

  • During the war, the Office of Price Administration began rationing key commodities to civilians, such as gasoline and tires, and the government began rationing food, such as sugar, meat, coffee, lard, butter, and many other items.

  • Families received ration books and ration stamps, and children organized Tin Can Clubs to collect scrap metal to be used in weapons and ammunition production.

• Funding the War Effort

  • The Roosevelt administration paid for the war effort through the sale of war bonds and increases in taxes, leading to a massive increase in government debt between 1940 and 1949.

  • This experience demonstrates that massive government spending can stimulate a sluggish economy.

• War Production—Becoming the “Arsenal of Democracy”

  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Production Board and Office of War Mobilization in 1942 to increase production of war-related materials, leading to the end of unemployment and the end of the Great Depression.

  • To ensure a sufficient supply of factory workers, women were recruited to work in industry and labor unions agreed to refrain from striking during the war.

  • This promise was kept, with the exception of a few strikes in the coal industry.

World War II and American Values

• “Rosie the Riveter”

  • The government made a concerted effort to recruit women to participate in the war effort.

  • Many recruiting posters were produced by the Office of War Information, showing women in industrial settings.

  • The fictional "Rosie the Riveter" character was featured in this public relations campaign.

  • This campaign was needed because prewar societal mores discouraged women from doing industrial work.

  • By 1945, a third of the workforce was female.

• World War II and the Status of African Americans in American Society

  • During World War II, African Americans challenged Jim Crow segregation through their participation in the armed forces and war-related industries.

  • This challenge continued into the postwar world with the growth of the civil rights movement, putting race and segregation on the national agenda.

• African Americans and War Production

  • A. Phillip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, planned a public demonstration in Washington, D.C., to protest discrimination in war-related industries.

  • When the Roosevelt administration heard of the plans, it worked out a bargain and Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination.

  • African Americans joined millions of other Americans in moving toward industrial centers, continuing the Great Migration that began in World War I.

• The Japanese Relocation

  • In 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the government to remove 100,000 Japanese Americans from West Coast states and relocate them to distant camps in more than a dozen western states.

    • The order applied to both Issei (Japanese Americans who had emigrated from Japan) and Nisei (native-born Japanese Americans).

    • Most of their property was confiscated by the government.

  • In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court ruled that the relocation was acceptable on the grounds of national security.

  • In 1988, the U.S. government apologized to the surviving victims and extended $20,000 in reparations.

  • The federal law acknowledged that the reolocation was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership," not on national security.

Migration and Mobilization

• Roosevelt initiated the Bracero program in 1942 to bring in temporary contract workers from Mexico, but the Mexican government pushed the US to guarantee that these temporary workers would not be drafted.

• More than 200,000 Mexicans participated in the program, and it is estimated that at least that number came into the US as undocumented workers.

• Mexicans and Mexican Americans were the object of discrimination, harassment, and violence during World War II, with whites targeting Mexican Americans for violent attacks.

• A "zoot-suit riot" occurred in Los Angeles in 1943, resulting in over 150 injuries and over 500 arrests.

World War II: Military

The Stakes Involved in World War II

• The Nazi Regime and the Holocaust

  • The Holocaust was the systematic murder of six million European Jews and millions of other "undesirables" by the Nazis.

  • It began with Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and in territories it took over in the 1930s.

  • In 1939, Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis developed plans for a "final solution of the Jewish question" to eliminate Europe's Jewish populations.

  • The plan also included other groups such as Slavic people, the disabled, and homosexuals.

  • Reports of Nazi death camps began to trickle out of German-occupied Europe by 1942, and as the war ended, the Allies found these camps, revealing the full extent of the barbaric crimes against civilians committed by the Nazis during the war.

• The American Response to the Holocaust

  • Americans were divided over how to respond to the Holocaust, with the United States resisting pleas to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe.

  • In 1939, the German passenger ship St. Louis was turned away by the US when it was off the coast of Florida, having been turned away by Cuban authorities.

  • Secretary of State Cordell Hull advised Roosevelt not to let the Jewish passengers disembark, and this resistance continued during the war.

• Japanese Wartime Atrocities

  • The Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing, was a Japanese military campaign against China in 1937 that resulted in at least 80,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000.

  • Many Americans saw Japanese wartime actions as representative of a militarist ideology that threatened to undermine democratic traditions.

Staffing the Military During World War II— Opportunities and Debate

• Staffing the Military

  • The Roosevelt administration began a push to expand the size of the military in 1941, with the Selective Service Act creating the first peacetime draft in American history.

  • By the summer of 1941, almost a million and a half men were in the armed forces, and by the end of the war, more than a million would serve.

• Women in the Military

  • World War II opened many new opportunities for women, both in wartime production, as well as in the military itself. Many women served as nurses.

  • More than 150,000 women joined the Womenʼs Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later designated the Womenʼs Army Corps (WAC), and in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), the womenʼs branch of the Navy.

• African Americans in the Armed Forces—The “Double V Campaign”

  • African Americans participated in the war effort to raise their status at home, and 1.2 million served in the military during World War II.

  • The most famous segregated African-American units were the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion.

  • African-American effectiveness on the battlefield encouraged President Truman to desegregate the armed services in 1948 with Executive Order 9981.

The Allied Victory Over the Axis Powers in World War II

• War in the Pacific Theater

  • The United States sent more troops to the Pacific theater than Europe in the first year of the war, despite the defeat of Hitler.

  • Japan took over the Philippines in December 1941 and had Australia in its sights by May 1942.

  • The US suffered setbacks in the first few months of the war.

• The Battles of Coral Sea and Midway

  • The United States turned the tide of the war in the Pacific in two naval battles in 1942.

  • In May, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the U.S. Navy stopped a Japanese fleet headed to New Guinea.

  • In June, the United States achieved a victory over the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway.

  • After Midway, the United States steadily began to push Japanese forces back toward the Japanese home islands.

• “Island Hopping”

  • The United States and Allies used a strategy called "island hopping" to capture key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific.

  • Island hopping focused on islands that were most important, such as airfields or key positions to block or attack enemy naval movements.

  • The US cut off the Japanese held islands it had "hopped" over by blockading supply ships, making them "wither on the vine".

• War in Europe

  • Joseph Stalin urged the US and Britain to open a second front in Western Europe against Germany, and in November 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to do so.

• The Washington and Casablanca Conferences

  • In June 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in Washington, D.C., and in January 1943, they met in Casablanca, Morocco.

  • Stalin did not attend either meeting, but he hoped the other Allies would open up a major second front in Europe.

  • Churchill opposed the idea of immediately invading France, but agreed to open a front in North Africa, followed by an attack on "the so underbelly" of the Axis—Italy.

  • Nearly 90% of German casualties in World War II came at the hands of Soviet troops.

• Fighting in North Africa

  • The first American offensive in North Africa occurred in November 1942, when American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria and pushed back the forces of France's Vichy government.

  • Allies then moved eastward to attack German troops in Tunisia and Libya, while British forces drove westward to trap the enemy.

  • By May 1943, North Africa was in Allied hands, with some of Hitler's best troops defeated.

• The “So Underbelly” of the Axis

  • The Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 led to the dismissal of Mussolini as prime minister and the formation of a new Italian government.

  • Germany refused to accept an Allied-occupation of Italy, so the Allies marched into Rome in 1944, but the rest of the advance up the Italian peninsula was defended by German troops.

• “D-Day” and the Allied Assault on Europe

  • In June 1944, the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, and began pushing Hitlerʼs forces back toward Germany.

  • On “D-Day” itself, June 6, nearly 200,000 Allied troops landed.

  • Over the next several weeks, more than one million additional troops arrived.

  • By August 1944, after heavy fighting and great loss, Allied forces under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower had liberated Paris from Nazi occupation.

• V-E Day

  • Hitler attempted to stop the Allied assault in the winter of 1944-1945, but his forces were stopped and driven back.

  • By April 1945, the Soviets were on the outskirts of Hitler's capital, Berlin, and on April 30, Hitler committed suicide.

  • On May 7, Germany surrendered, marking "Victory in Europe Day".

• Victory in the Pacific

  • By February 1945, American forces had taken control of most of Japan's Pacific empire, but Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two small, heavily fortified islands, stood between American forces and the Japanese homeland.

  • Capturing these two islands proved to be an onerous task for American forces, with the battle for both islands lasting six weeks in February and March 1945.

  • Approximately 7,000 Americans died in the battle, while Japan lost 140,000.

  • The island of Okinawa was used as a staging area for an attack on the Japanese home islands, and the United States mobilized 300,000 troops for the battle, resulting in 12,000 Americans and 140,000 Japanese deaths.

  • After these bloody battles, Japan's sphere of control was reduced to its home islands.

• The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender

  • In April 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly and was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman.

  • In July, Truman learned that the United States had successfully tested an atomic bomb and that more bombs were ready for use.

  • The Manhattan Project had been working on the bomb since 1942 and the facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico, headed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was charged with construction of the bomb.

  • The United States used this new weapon twice on Japan, dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and a second bomb on Nagasaki.

  • As many as 226,000 people died, and Japan officially surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.

  • The decision to drop the atomic bomb did not generate much public debate at the time, but in the decades since the war, some Americans have raised questions about the decision.

Postwar Diplomacy

The United States and the Postwar World

• Tehran Conference

  • Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Chruchill, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943.

  • The Allies agreed that the D-Day invasion would coincide with a major Soviet offensive. Also, Stalin pledged that the Soviet Union would join the war in Asia following the defeat of Germany.

  • The Allies agreed in theory to forming an international peacekeeping organization.

• Bretton Woods Conference

  • In July 1944, forty-four nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss the basis of the global economy following the war.

  • The International Monetary Fund was established at this meeting.

• Yalta Conference

  • The Yalta Conference, held in February 1945, was the last meeting of Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt.

  • At the meeting, the "big three" agreed to divide Germany into four military zones of occupation and allow free elections in Poland.

  • Secret agreements were also made allowing for Soviet control of Outer Mongolia, the Kuril Islands, and part of Sakhalin Island, as well as Soviet railroad rights in Manchuria.

  • Critics faulted Roosevelt and Churchill for abandoning Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe to Communist forces, but there was little the US and Britain could do to dislodge the Red Army from Eastern Europe.

• Potsdam Conference

  • The final meeting of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain took place in Potsdam, Germany in 1945 to discuss the administration of occupied Germany.

  • This included the process of "denazification" and the Nuremberg trials, which set up an international tribunal to try leading Nazis for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  • Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the trials, and many of the Nazis defended themselves by claiming they were merely following orders.

Period 8: 1945-1980 Redefining Democracy in the Era of Cold War and Liberal Ascendancy