The US in WWI

Neutrality “Freedom of the seas” U-Boats Lusitania

Sussex Pledge “He kept us out of war” Col. House Zimmerman note

Kerensky/Lenin “World safe for democracy” “Armed neutrality”Gen. Pershing

War Industries Bd. War Labor Board(s) CPIEspionage Act

Sedition Act Black migration Verdun/Argonne Fourteen Points

Is the US really neutral?Wilson was a fervent Anglophile

US trade with Allies is $825 million in 1914; $3.2 billion in 1916

US trade with Germany falls from $170 million to $1 million

Britain cut German Atlantic telegraph cable: most news came via Britain and France

Germany had made moves toward Philippines in 1898: US had same colonial holdings to lose as Britain, France

Lusitania, Sussex are ships of a combatant nation; international law does not protect passengers

The US edges toward war ... but on whose side?

This wartime poster from Germany says “God punish England” - a sentiment that many in the world (and in the US) could agree with.

The British and French are the most hated colonial overlords in the world

At least 13 million in the US were of Irish, German, or Austrian descent, and hated the English or French for ancient reasons

Submarine attacks on civilian ships like the Lusitania aroused the public - but Germany suspended them for nearly a year. Attacks resume February 1, 1917

On February 24, the US ambassador to England passes along the “Zimmerman Telegram” proposing a secret German alliance with Mexico!

Also...

Africa illustrates how competitive European nations were for new colonies: all of it is seized by Europeans, some of whom are members of ancient colonial empires

…and the Brits have Canada, Ireland, Australia, India, Hong Kong, part of New Guinea; the French have Indochina, various Pacific islands; the Portuguese Macao: it goes on and on, and it seems that possession of these could be the key to selling the industrial products of Europe and America...

In January 1917 Wilson had called for a “peace without victory,” and a Europe in which nations ruled their own fates democratically…In March 1917 Czar Nicholas is overthrown, and a socialist and DEMOCRATIC government takes over in Russia

So in April 1917 Wilson can proclaim: “the world must be made safe for democracy” - and the US declares war April 6

Before the US really enters the fight, Lenin stages a 2nd Russian revolution and quits the war, signing the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and giving away a huge chunk of Russia.

As the US enters the war, Germany looks like it is winning - this will haunt the next 25 years of history...

After the war ends, the US and the British empire will invade Russia, taking the anticommunist side in the ongoing Russian Revolution! We are terrified of socialism, and will seek to root it out in the US in the 1920s. Also, the Russians learn to distrust the US; this leads indirectly to the Cold War.

The American Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Pershing, will bring 1.25 million soldiers to France

Pershing was fresh from his previous job, chasing Pancho Villa in a romantic and ludicrous border war with Mexico; the Zimmerman telegram changed the aspect of this struggle, making German-sponsored war with Mexico seem possible.

Mobilizing for WarMobilizing for War•War Industries Board: this organization had the power to dictate what businesses produced

•Creel’s Committee on Public Information (CPI): 75,000 speakers hired to travel the country giving patriotic pro-war party-line speeches

•Espionage and Sedition Acts: illegal to urge anyone to resist the draft or not buy war bonds

•Eugene Debs, former (Socialist) presidential candidate, sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an antiwar speech!

•Schenck v. U.S.: Supreme Court upheld the conviction under federal law of socialists who during WWI mailed pamphlets opposing the draft, even though the 1st Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

No rationing in WWIHowever, the US will lead a campaign of voluntary conservation of scarce resources, and will buy the entire US and Cuban sugar crops to foil speculators.

“Teufel hunden” was German slang for US Marines, this poster claims...

These recruiting posters put a jaunty face on this grinding nightmare of a war … but their point was moot: most US soldiers were drafted.

Take your pick: in a war in which both sides were evil, propaganda makes the choice clear, demonizing Germans and equating the Allies with “civilization.”

War brings new roles for womenThese women shipyard workers helped to move public opinion to favor women’s suffrage: women will get the vote in 1919, with 19th Amendment

(By the way, the first ship built for WWI was not completed until after the war ended...

So now the US

joins the party. These

are America

n trenches

in the Argonne

Forest area. Soon

this will be a

blasted wasteland, not a tree

left standing

.

To refresh your memory

The machine gun: emblem of WWIMachine guns could fire 500-600 rounds per minute, or ten bullets per second - beyond the threshold at which the frontal assault becomes futile. The generals were … slow to catch on.

Known infamously to the allies as “Big Bertha,” this gun fired a 42 cm (16 in.) shell over 10 miles.

Weapons, not generals, create tactics

Probably the most discussed of all of the big guns of the Great War is the infamous Paris Gun. Also known as Lange Max (Long Max), Big Bertha (not to be confused with the 42cm Krupp howitzer given the same nick name) and William’s Gun; this gun was strategic, rather than tactical in nature, in that it was a terror weapon meant to demoralize the citizens of Paris. This forerunner to the Iraqi supergun could fire a shell 70 miles in about 170 seconds reaching a maximum altitude of 24 miles - quite a feat of German engineering for 1918. On the down side, the payload was only 15 pounds of explosive, accuracy was non-existent (you could hit Paris but not a specific target in Paris), and the whole gun would have to be rebored after 65 firings.

Big guns change the face of war

Schneider Obusiers de 520. This French 520mm howitzer was the biggest gun of the Great War. It could deliver a 3,100 lb shell (600 lbs of explosive) over 10 miles. The gun car was just under 100 feet long and weighed 290 tons.

In the summer of 1916, these weapons killed and wounded half a million at the Battle of the Somme.

War at sea

These photos show an unidentified Allied merchant ship breaking up as it sinks after being torpedoed by a German U-boat

Architecture of a trench-war nightmare: designs for life underground

Verdun and Meuse-Argonne1.2 million US soldiers fight for a month and a half in this final climactic battle; 10% of them are killed or wounded in this single battle - they got off easy.

Note shaded areas on map: these are the areas that 110,000 Americans bought with their lives.

Ypres marks the first use of poison gases.

At right, a mustard-gas

victim receives

treatment.

A photo essay: the battle of Ypres

Aftermath of Ypres

Ypres was intended to be part of a battle to control the ports of Belgium, and to avoid being outflanked along the beaches of the English Channel. Locked into a small fighting area, the battle was savage and inconclusive. Desperate, the Germans first used poison gas here in 1915.

Life in the trenches was unbelievably squalid - and usually brief...

Left, the results of an allied artillery shell hitting a German command bunker; above, the results of a gigantic mine planted under enemy lines.

Desperate measures to break trench-war deadlockBritish “sappers” tunneled hundreds of yards under the German lines, planted 200,000 lbs. of explosive here and elsewhere to break open a section of the trench defenses.

It did not work; German soldiers hidden in concrete blockhouses emerged to slaughter thousands of British and French soldiers.

One of the mine craters has been preserved to this day; these are modern pictures of the enormous crater.

Pointless butchery: the weapons of WWI made the tactics of the past obsolete, and the generals could think of no tactic but to continue to pour men into the meat grinder of the western front...

Alien landscape

Can you identify this photo?

This is an aerial view of the banks of the Yser river, after the battle of Ypres.

(14) creation of a general association of nations to give mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity.

The 14 points(1) abolition of secret diplomacy by open covenants, openly arrived at;

(2) freedom of the seas in peace and war

(3) removal of international trade barriers wherever possible

(4) reduction of armaments consistent with public safety;

(5) adjustment of colonial disputes consistent with the interests of both the controlling government and the colonial population;

Structural changes in the international order

Territorial adjustment, hoping to establish stable self-determing nations

Creation of League of Nations

(6) evacuation of Russian territory

(7) evacuation and restoration of Belgium;

(8) evacuation of French territory, including Alsace-Lorraine;

(9) readjustment of Italian frontiers along clearly recognizable lines of nationality;

(10) autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary;

(11) restoration of territory to Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania, granting of seaports to Serbia, and readjustment of the Balkan nations;

(12) self-determination for non-Turkish peoples under Turkish control

(13) an independent Poland, with access to the sea; and

The war’s gruesome scorecard