Woodrow Wilson and the Great War

Challenges abroad and at Home, 1913-1921

Wilson the Idealist and Moralist

• Worked with William Jennings Bryan to negotiate “cooling off” treaties with potential warring powers

• Rejected Dollar Diplomacy• Missionary Impulses led him to intervene in

Mexico’s La Revolucion• Kept U. S. military presence in Nicaragua,

Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Pancho Villa

Wilson and WWI

• Desire to be neutral compromised by events

• Both German U-Boats and American loans to France and Britain make claims of neutrality silly.

• Bryan resigned

• Lusitania sunk on May 7, 1915

• Preparedness efforts (inadequate) by 1916

Lusitania

1916 Election

• Lot’s of contenders but came down to Wilson versus moderate-progressive Charles Evans Hughes

• Democrats have progressive platform—women’s suffrage and league of nations

• Great Irony: Wilson elected because he kept U. S. out of war

Road to War

• Attempts at mediation fail

• German’s resume unrestricted Uboat warfare

• Feb. 1917—U. S. breaks off relations with Germany

• Zimmermann Telegram decoded

• War measure signed April 6, 1917

Early Contributions

• Convoy system• Liberty Loans--$3 billion to Allies• Selective service act drafts over 2 million, 1.4

million of whom would see some action.• Voluntary regulation of food production

under Hoover• War Industries Board under Baruch

Voluntary Propaganda

War Changes a Nation

• Black Migration—400,000 go north for work• One million women participate in “War Work”• George Creel, “Committee on Public

Information”; 75,000 “four minute men”• Espionage Act (1917); Sedition Act (1918)—1000

convicted—“clear and present danger” test.

Women War Workers

A Nation Changes a War?

• Did Americans stop Friedensturm?• 1,000,000 saw combat• Part of counterattack: took Cantigny on May 28,

1918; Belleau Wood on June 2-3, 1918; the Vaux and Chateau-Thierry

• Fought at St. Mihiel on August 10 and then at the Meuse-Argonne offensive on Sept. 26

• 26,000 KIA; 117,000 total casualties:• German casualties were 2.2 million.

Marines at Belleau Wood

Those Damn Commies

• U. S. intervened in Bolshevik Revolution, landing troops at Mermansk and Archangel and Vladivostok in 1918

14 Points: Plan for a New World Order

• Open diplomacy• Freedom of the Seas• Free trade• Arms reductions• Adjustment of Colonial Claims• National Self Determination for subject peoples• Independent Poland• League of Nations• Became basis for German’s seeking peace

Failure of 14 Points

• Allies were never on board

• Wilson alienated Republicans in 1918 election and in ignoring Henry Cabot Lodge and other key Senate Republicans

• Only took Democrats to Paris

• Wilson’s moralistic personality offended Orlando, Clemenceau and Lloyd-George

Orlando, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson

Henry Cabot Lodge

Treaty of Versailles

• Fit European “Realpolitik” not Wilson’s world view

• Senate wouldn’t ratify treaty—Wilson suffered stroke trying to get public support for it

• League of Nations was part of Versailles Treaty but U. S. didn’t join

• U. S. signed separate treaties with Central Powers

Tough adjustment to Peace

• Spanish Flu—killed 675,000 Americans

• Labor demands better wages: strikes including the Boston police

• Race Riots

• Fear of Communism

• American mainstream desires normality