Word for the Day
American David Bushnell (ca. 1742-1824) invented a submarine that was used during the Revolution in 1776. Then in 1864, the Confederate navy operated the submarine Hunley with disastrous results—for the crew of the Hunley. By the early 20th century, all the major European powers built submarines. By far the best were the German vessels, which were called Unterseebooten, or U-booten for short: U-boats.
Voice from the Past
From Woodrow Wilson’s war message to Congress, April 2, 1917:
“…The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters. in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of poise and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation.
“… We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those tights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nations can make them….”
Word for the Day
In a military context, a salient is a line of battle, especially a concentrated area of defense.
Stats
A total of 65 million men and women served in the armies and navies of combatant nations during World War 1. Of this number, at least 10 million were killed and 20 million wounded. Of the 2,000,000 U.S. troops who fought, 112,432 died, and 230,074 were wounded. The monetary cost the war to the United States was the equivalent of $32,700,000,000 in dollars.
As deadly as bullets, shells, and poison gas were, an influenza epidemic produced by the filthy living conditions of the war proved even more terrible. About half the number of American troop deaths were caused by “flu.” The epidemic would grow to pandemic proportions after the war, killing some 21.64 million people world percent of the world’s population. In the United States, 25 percent of the ill, and 500,000 died.
Jazzed, Boozed, and Busted Flat
(1918-1929)
In This Chapter
Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”
Rejection of the League of Nations
The “Lost Generation” and the “Roaring Twenties”
Women’s right to vote and advancement of African-Americans
Prohibition and the birth of organized crime
Crash of the stock market
The United States had entered World War I late, but in time for the American Expeditionary Force to suffer a ghastly 10 percent casualty rate—even higher if deaths from the influenza epidemic are included. President Wilson was determined that these deaths in a “foreign war” would not be in vain. He had told the American people that the “Great War” was a “war to end all war,” and he meant it. On January 8, 1918, almost a year before the war ended, Wilson announced to Congress “Fourteen Points,” which he called “the only possible program” for peace. After a complex of treaty obligations had escalated an obscure Balkan conflict into a worldwide conflagration, Wilson’s dream was that his Fourteen Points would create a single international alliance, making armed conflict among nations impossible. The alliance would be called the League of Nations.
A League of Nations
As vigorously as Wilson had worked to mobilize his nation for war, he now struggled to bring about a peace meant to spell the end of war. Wilson personally headed the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, which was charged with creating a final treaty. Driven by his intense and intensely idealistic vision of a world league and a world of perpetual peace, Wilson did not deign to develop strong bipartisan support for his peace plans. Fearing Republican isolationists would be hostile to the League of Nations, he chose not to appoint a prominent Republican to the delegation. Worse, Wilson made peace a political issue by appealing to voters to reelect a Democratic Congress in 1918. In fact, the 1918 contest went to the Republicans, who won majorities in both houses. To many, this election seemed a no-confidence vote against Wilson and his crusade for world peace.
In Europe, Wilson was at first greeted with nothing but confidence in his leadership. However, it soon became apparent that the other major Allied leaders—Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy—wanted to conclude a settlement that simply and severely penalized Germany. Wilson nevertheless hammered away at his Fourteen Points, ultimately seeing them embodied in the Treaty of Versailles, which, however, also imposed crippling terms on Germany. Gratified that he had won inclusion of the League of Nations as part of the treaty, Wilson presented the Versailles document to his fellow Americans as the best obtainable compromise, He felt that the League of Nations itself would eventually rectify some of the injustices presently imposed upon Germany.
Red Scare
While Wilson was trying to engineer world harmony, popular American sentiment was already retreating toward isolationism. The Russian Revolution of 1917, which toppled the long regime of the czars, was not greeted by most Americans as a victory over autocracy, but was regarded with terror as an assault on established order. A “Red Scare” swept western Europe and the United States.
At the beginning of 1919, U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer ordered a series of raids on the headquarters of radical organizations in a dozen cities, indiscriminately rounding up 6,000 U.S. citizens believed to be “sympathetic to Communism.” Palmer and others lumped Communist, radicals, and “free thinkers” together with out-and-out anarchists, who, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, were committing acts of terrorism. Anarchists mailed bombs to Palmer, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and more than 30 other wealthy, prominent conservatives. Ironically, many of the bombs failed to reach their destinations—due to insufficient postage!
In a climate of intense fear, outrage, and confusion, Palmer created the General Intelligence Division, headed by an eager young Justice Department investigator named J. Edgar Hoover. With meticulous zeal, Hoover (in those precomputer days) created by hand a massive card index of 150,000 radical leaders, organizations, and publications. As all too often happened in American history, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts passed at the end of the 18th century, legislators and administrators did not hesitate to take totalitarian measures to defend American liberty.