Lecture 7 – The First World War

Week 3 opens with a reminder: mid-term at the end of the week
- Format: multiple-choice + 1 essay
- Exam window open several days, but timer starts once you open it; navigating away = auto-submission
- Recommended to budget ≈ $1\text{ hour}$ of uninterrupted time
- Instructor back from vacation → invite questions early

Focus: World War I (WWI) and immediate aftermath
Next week: Great Depression wrap-up, World War II, early Cold War
Instructor’s thesis: although U.S. culture spotlights WWII, WWI is the single most consequential conflict of the 20th century
- Dismantles old European empires
- Creates geopolitical seeds for Middle-East borders, India–Pakistan partition, Russia–Ukraine tensions, rise of U.S. & USSR

View both wars as one broad struggle with a $\approx 20$ -year pause (1919–1939)
Bookends re-shape: European colonialism, U.S. global status, Soviet emergence, Cold War framework

U.S. not yet a major military power; limited stake in European balance
- Overseas empire mostly Caribbean & Pacific (per Week 2 imperialism lecture)
Policy of neutrality under Pres. Woodrow Wilson
- 1916 campaign slogan: “He kept us out of war.”
- Public split: interventionists (e.g.
  Theodore Roosevelt) vs. isolationists/progressives opposing “kings’ vanity war.”

1910–1914: Philippine guerrilla war finally ends
Mexican Revolution complicates foreign policy
1. 1914 Tampico Affair → U.S. Navy/Marines occupy Veracruz $\approx 6$ months to protect oil interests
2. Pancho Villa raids U.S. border towns; Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing leads Punitive Expedition (1916–1917)
Small U.S. standing army means Mexican expeditions absorb significant manpower & budget

Imperial decay of Austria-Hungary & Ottoman Empire destabilises Balkans
June 28, 1914 – Sarajevo
- Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip (Black Hand) assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand after botched grenade attempt; chance meeting on a side street
Alliance chain reaction
1. Austria-Hungary → war on Serbia
2. Serbia ↔ Russia alliance → Russia mobilises
3. Germany gives Austria “blank check,” declares war on Russia
4. Russia–France treaty drags France in; Italy joins Allies to grab Austrian land
5. Germany invades France via Belgium → triggers British guarantee of Belgian neutrality
Mobilisation dynamics: once orders go out, millions of conscripts set in motion; impossible to “put the genie back.”

First war with airplanes, early tanks, poison gas, heavy artillery, modern machine guns
Simultaneously still using cavalry → surreal “steampunk” battlefield (gas-masked horses)
Trench warfare develops to escape direct fire & now, in modern parallels, drone surveillance (cf. Russia–Ukraine 2022-)

Deadliest single battle in human history
- $3\,000\,000$ combatants; $1\,000\,000$ casualties (killed + permanent wounded)
Illustrates futility: months of fighting, negligible territorial gain, both sides simply shift elsewhere afterward

British passenger liner sunk by German U-boat; $128$ Americans die
U.S. public anger but not the direct cause of U.S. entry; Wilson negotiates apology & remains neutral

British decrypt German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann’s message to Mexico:
- If Mexico joins Central Powers and fights U.S., it would regain lost Southwest territories
Authenticity debated, but in March 1917 Wilson presents it to Congress → Declaration of War Apr 6 1917

U.S. standing army $\approx 50\,000$ – $60\,000$ → rapid expansion
- Selective Service Act: $2.8\,\text{million}$ drafted of $5\,\text{million}$ total who serve
Shipping, training, logistics delay front-line arrival until spring–summer 1918
European perception of AEF
- Under-trained, “cowboy” tactics; stories of units over-penetrating German lines then fighting their way back with shovels & shotguns
Segregated military
- Many Black troops prefer integrated French or Canadian units; notable U.S. segregated unit: 369th Infantry “Harlem Hellfighters,” highly decorated

Robust anti-war coalition: Sen. Robert La Follette (WI), William Jennings Bryan (resigns as Sec. of State), Henry Ford, Eugene V. Debs, etc.
Wilson administration clamps down:
1. Espionage Act 1917 – illegal to aid enemy or obstruct recruitment
2. Sedition Act 1918 – criminalises disloyal or “abusive” speech against government/war effort
Constitutional implications: First Amendment curtailed; protests erupt nationwide
Debs tours urging draft resistance; convicted under Sedition Act, sentenced $10$ years; 1920 presidential run from prison as “Convict No. 9653”

Largest U.S. engagement of WWI
- $\approx 100\,000$ American casualties
Ends on 11 a.m., Nov 11 1918 with armistice; Germans recognise U.S. manpower potential (could mobilise $\gt 20\,\text{million}$ ) vs. their exhausted reserves

Four-year war grinds down entire generation
- Austria-Hungary: up to $90\%$ of military-age men killed or incapacitated
- Other powers suffer $50\%–70\%$ casualty rates
Labor vacuum propels women into factories → seeds of European social democracy & expanded state welfare

Victors debate punishment vs. reform
- Many seek “Carthaginian Peace” to cripple Germany permanently
Wilson’s Fourteen Points = globalised Progressive agenda
1. Free trade and open seas
2. National self-determination for colonies/ethnic groups
3. Arms limitations
4. Creation of League of Nations (proto-UN)
Wilson personally attends, breaking precedent of congressional control over treaties → angers Senate
U.S. Senate rejects Treaty & League
- Fear of perpetual policing obligations; resurgence of isolationism
- U.S. signs separate peace with Germany only in $1926$
Absence of U.S. power leaves League weak; international disputes lack enforcement muscle, paving road to WWII

War illustrates danger of entangling alliances & unchecked mobilisations
Raises perennial U.S. debate: civil liberties vs. national security
Demonstrates industrialisation’s dark side—technology without ethical restraint magnifies human suffering
Sets stage for 20th-century ideological contests: communism, fascism, liberal democracy

Progressivism: Wilson tries exporting domestic reform logic to world stage (Fourteen Points)
Imperialism lecture: U.S. Philippine War & Mexican interventions show pattern of overseas entanglement despite proclaimed isolation
Spanish-American War & anti-imperialist movement foreshadow WWI dissent, but Wilson’s response far harsher (Espionage/Sedition Acts)

Next lecture: post-war economic & social chaos → Roaring Twenties
Continue tracing how WWI’s unresolved tensions funnel directly into Great Depression & WWII