Prelude to War

• As the German empire rose in power and influence at the end of the nineteenth century, skilled diplomats maneuvered this disruption of traditional powers and influences into several decades of European peace

• Germany, a new ambitious monarch would overshadow years of tactful diplomacy

  • Wilhelm II rose to the German throne in 1888, admired the British Empire of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and envied the Royal Navy of Great Britain so much that he attempted to build a rival German navy and plant colonies around the globe

  • The British viewed the prospect of a German navy as a strategic threat, but, jealous of what he perceived as a lack of prestige in the world, Wilhelm II pressed Germany’s case for access to colonies and symbols of status suitable for a world power

  • Wilhelm’s maneuvers and Germany’s rise spawned a new system of alliances as rival nations warily watched Germany’s expansion

    • In 1892, German posturing worried the leaders of Russia and France and prompted a defensive alliance to counter the existing triple threat between Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Italy

    • Britain’s Queen Victoria remained unassociated with the alliances until a series of diplomatic crises and an emerging German naval threat led to British agreements with Tsar Nicholas II and French President Émile Loubet in the early twentieth century

• On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States played an insignificant role in global diplomacy—it rarely forayed into internal European politics

  • A foreign policy of neutrality reflected America’s inward-looking focus on the construction and management of its new robust industrial economy

  • The federal government possessed limited diplomatic tools with which to engage in international struggles for world power

    • America’s small military precluded forceful coercion and left American diplomats to persuade by reason, appeals to justice, or economic coercion

      • The Davis Act of 1908 and the National Defense Act of 1916 inaugurated the rise of the modern versions of the National Guard and military reserves

  • After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, President Wilson declared American neutrality

    • However, ties to the British and French proved firm, and those nations obtained far more loans and supplies than the Germans as President Wilson approved commercial credit loans to the combatants, which made it increasingly difficult for the nation to claim impartiality as war spread through Europe

      • Trade and financial relations with the Allied nations ultimately drew the United States further into the conflict

        • In May 1915, Germans sank the RMS Lusitania, with over 100 Americans died

War Spreads through Europe

• After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Grand Duchess Sophie, Austria secured the promise of aid from its German ally and issued a list of ten ultimatums to Serbia

  • On July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia for failure to meet all of the demands, and Russia (determined to protect Serbia) began to mobilize its armed forces

  • Germany then declared war on Russia to protect Austria after warnings directed at Tsar Nicholas II failed to stop Russian preparations for war

• In spite of the central European focus of the initial crises, the first blow was struck against neutral Belgium in northwestern Europe

  • German military leaders recycled tactics developed earlier and activated the Schlieffen Plan, which moved German armies rapidly by rail to march through Belgium and into France

  • However, this violation of Belgian neutrality also ensured that Great Britain entered the war against Germany

• In 1915, the European war had developed into a series of bloody trench stalemates that continued through the following year

• The third year of the war, however, witnessed a coup for German military prospects: the regime of Tsar Nicholas II collapsed in Russia in March 1917

• The Germans, realizing that submarine warfare could spark an American intervention, hoped the European war would be over before American soldiers could arrive in sufficient numbers to alter the balance of power

America Enters the War

• By the fall of 1916 and spring of 1917, President Wilson believed an imminent German victory would drastically and dangerously alter the balance of power in Europe

  • Meanwhile, submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram inflamed public opinion

• Congress declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917, but was unprepared in nearly every respect for modern war

  • Considerable time elapsed before an effective army and navy could be assembled, trained, equipped, and deployed to the Western Front in Europe

    • The U.S. historically relied solely on traditional volunteerism to fill the ranks of the armed forces, but despite fears of popular resistance, Congress quickly instituted a reasonably equitable and locally administered system to draft men for the military

      • On May 18, 1917, Congress approved the Selective Service Act, and President Wilson signed it a week later

• Jim Crow segregation was still present in both the military and civilian sectors, but many Black American leaders supported the war effort and sought a place at the front for Black soldiers

On the Homefront

• In the early years of the war, Americans were generally detached from the events in Europe, since America remained most concerned with the shifting role of government at home

  • However, the facts could not be ignored: the destruction taking place on European battlefields and the ensuing casualty rates exposed the unprecedented brutality of modern warfare

• The progression of the war in Europe generated fierce national debates about military preparedness

  • When America entered the war, the mobilization of military resources and the cultivation of popular support consumed the country, generating enormous publicity and propaganda campaigns

  • As war passions flared, challenges to the onrushing patriotic sentiment that America was making the world “safe for democracy” were considered disloyal

    • Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918, stripping dissenters and protesters of their rights to resist the war publicly

    • Immigrants, labor unions, and political radicals became targets of government investigations and an ever more hostile public culture

Before the Armistice

• European powers struggled to adapt to the brutality of modern war

  • In July 1917, after one last disastrous offensive against the Germans, the Russian army disintegrated

    • The tsarist regime collapsed and in November 1917 Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party came to power, and Russia soon surrendered to German demands and exited the war, freeing Germany to finally fight the one-front war it had desired since 1914

  • In March 1918, Germany launched the Kaiserschlacht (Spring Offensive), a series of five major attacks but by the middle of July 1918, each and every one had failed to break through the Western Front

The War and the Influenza Pandemic

• Even as war raged on the Western Front, a new deadly threat loomed: influenza

  • the spring of 1918, a strain of the flu virus appeared in the farm country of Haskell County, Kansas, and hit nearby Camp Funston, one of the largest army training camps in the nation

  • By September 1918, influenza spread to all training camps in the United States, and then it mutated

• The “Spanish Influenza,” or the “Spanish Lady,” misnamed due to accounts of the disease that first appeared in the uncensored newspapers of neutral Spain, resulted in the deaths of an estimated fifty million people worldwide

• The pandemic continued to spread after the armistice before finally fading in the early 1920s, no cure was ever found

The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations

• The war brought an abrupt end to four great European imperial powers, with the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires evaporating and reshaping into new independent nations

• After months of deliberation, the Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war in December of 1918

• Earlier that year, on January 8, 1918, before a joint session of Congress, President Wilson offered an ambitious statement of war aims and peace terms known as the Fourteen Points

  • The plan not only dealt with territorial issues but offered principles on which a long-term peace could be built

  • President Wilson labored to realize his vision of the postwar world

    • At the center of the plan was a novel international organization—the League of Nations—charged with keeping worldwide peace by preventing the kind of destruction that tore across Europe and “affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

      • This promise of collective security, that an attack on one sovereign member would be viewed as an attack on all, was a key component of the Fourteen Points

      • However, America’s closest allies had little interest in the League of Nations, wanting to guarantee the future safety of their own nations

The aftermath of World War I

• The 1917 Russian Revolution, meanwhile enflamed American fears of communism

• The Ottoman Empire disintegrated into several nations, many created by European powers with little regard for ethnic realities

• At home, the United States grappled with harsh postwar realities

  • Racial tensions culminated in the Red Summer of 1919 when violence broke out in at least twenty-five cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C

    • The riots originated from wartime racial tensions

      • Many Black Americans, who had fled the Jim Crow South and traveled halfway around the world to fight for the United States, would not so easily accept postwar racism

      • White Americans desired a return to the status quo, a world that did not include social, political, or economic equality for Black people

  • In 1919, America suffered through the “Red Summer.”

    • The Chicago Riot, from July 27 to August 3, 1919, considered the summer’s worst, sparked a week of mob violence, murder, and arson

    • This behavior galvanized many in Black communities, but it also shocked white Americans who alternatively interpreted Black resistance as a desire for total revolution or as a new positive step in the path toward Black civil rights