War and society, 1914-1920

War and Society,1914-1920

Chapter 4

Europe by 1914• In 1814-1815, a meeting of European nations was held

Vienna to settle the numerous issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution [break up] of the Holy Roman Empire.

• The Congress of Vienna consisted of representatives from all the nations which had participated in the wars; however, the principal negotiations were lead by the “Big Four” – Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

• The Congress established international order and a balance of power that lasted for almost a century.

• By 1914, however, a multitude of forces were threatening to tear this order and balance apart.

Europe by 1914• The Balkan Peninsula, in southeastern Europe, was a

particularly violent region.

• Order in the region depended on the cooperation of two competing powers: Russia and Austria-Hungary.

• In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed the twin Balkan provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

• This grab for territory and control angered the independent Balkan nation of Serbia – who considered Bosnia a member of the Serbian homeland.

• In retaliation, Serbia doubled its territory in back-to-back Balkan wars (1912 and 1913), which further threatened Austria-Hungary.

Europe by 1914

• Meanwhile, Russia had entered into treaties with two Western European powers:

• France was angry over Germany’s annexation of their lands in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871.

• Great Britain’s legendary naval dominance was now being threatened by Germany’s growing navy.

• This Triple-Entente, squared off against the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance, meant that any regional conflict had the potential to turn into a European war.

• Entente – “friendship, understanding, agreement” [French].

Europe’s Descent into War

• In mid-June 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand met with his great friend, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, to discuss the tense situation in the Balkans.

• Two weeks later, on June 28, Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, traveled to Sarajevo to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

• When Gavrilo Princip and his fellow members of the nationalist Young Bosnia movement learned of the Archduke’s planned visit, they took action.

• Supplied with weapons by a Serbian terrorist organization called the Black Hand, Princip and his co-conspirators traveled to Sarajevo for the Archduke’s visit.

Kaiser Wilhelm IIWilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, was the eldest

grandson of the Great Britain’s Queen Victoria.

Crowned in 1888, Wilhelm was related to two notable contemporaries: his first

cousin King George V of the United Kingdom and his second cousin Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire.

Franz FerdinandFranz Ferdinand was never meant to ascend to the throne.

In 1889, his life changed dramatically when his cousin,

Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide at his hunting lodge.

This act left his father, Karl Ludwig, as the immediate

successor to the throne. Ludwig, however, immediately renounced

the throne in favor of his son, Franz Ferdinand.


• The seven conspirators joined the crowd lining the Archduke’s route to City Hall – each took a different position, ready to attack the royal procession if the opportunity presented itself.

• The first two conspirators had no practical chance of assassinating the Archduke.

• At 10:10 a.m., as the six-car procession approached the third conspirator, he tossed a bomb at the Archduke’s open-top vehicle.

• The bomb bounced off the folded back convertible cover and exploded underneath the following car.

• Unhurt, the Archduke and the Archduchess sped away to the reception at City Hall.

• The remaining conspirators did not attempt to interfere with the motorcade.


• After the ceremonies finished, an Austrian Commander pleaded with the Archduke to leave the city immediately for fear of rebellion.

• He persuaded Ferdinand to drive the shortest possible route out of the city and to do so quickly.

• At 10:45 a.m., the Archduke and the Archduchess returned to the motorcade in the same open-top vehicle.

• Surprisingly, the Royal procession retraced its route in an attempt to exit the city.

• Continuing back along the Appel Quay, the driver, who was unaware of the change in routes, turned right onto Franz Josef Street.

• Realizing his error, the driver put his foot on the brake and began to reverse the vehicle – in doing so, the engine stalled and the gears locked.


• Gavrilo Princip stepped forward from the curb, drew his Belgian-made semi-automatic pistol and fired two shots from an estimated five feet.

• The first struck the Archduchess in the abdomen – she died instantly.

• The second struck the Archduke millimeters from the heart – he died moments later.

• Police officers seized Princip almost immediately, and would eventually apprehend and prosecute all seven conspirators..

• During the trial, the conspirators acknowledged that the assassination was meant as a protest of Austria-Hungary’s imperial presence in the Balkans.

• Additionally, it was meant to encourage the Bosnians, Croatians, and other Balkan peoples to join the Serbs in establishing independent nations free of imperial rule.

Gavrilo PrincipAt the time of the assassination,

Princip was under the age of twenty, therefore, he received a

maximum sentence of twenty years imprisonment.

He would die on April 28, 1918, of tuberculosis while serving out

his sentence.

The Road to War• In response to the testimony of the conspirators, Austria-

Hungary responded to this provocation on July 28, 1914, by declaring war on Serbia, holding it responsible for the Archduke’s murder.

• This incident might have remained local if not for an intricate series of treaties, which had divided Europe into two hostile camps.

• Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the so-called Triple Alliance) had promised to come to each other’s aid if attacked.

• Britain, France, and Russia (the Triple Entente) opposed such an alliance.

• Russia was obligated to defend Serbia against Austria-Hungary if such a conflict ever arose.

• On July 30, Russia mobilized its armed forces to give Serbia aid.

The Road to War• Russia’s support of Serbia brought Germany into the conflict

to protect Austria-Hungary from a Russian attack.

• On August 3, German troops struck not at Russia but at France, Russia’s western ally, thus bringing France into the conflict.

• To reach France, German troops had marched through neutral Belgium, a British ally.

• On August 4, Britain responded by declaring war on Germany.

• Within the space of only a few weeks, all of Europe was engulfed in war.

• In essence, Europe was a powder keg needing only a spark to explode – a spark which came in the form of a political assassination of an Austrian archduke.

The Road to War• Complicated alliances and defense treaties of the

European nations undoubtedly accelerated the rush toward war.

• Equally important was the competition among the larger powers to build the strongest economies, the largest armies and navies, and the grandest colonial empires.

• Britain and Germany, in particular, were engaged in a bitter struggle for European and world supremacy.

• Few Europeans had any idea that these military buildups might lead to a terrible war that would kill nearly an entire generation of young men and expose the barbarity lurking in their civilization.

The Road to War• Historians now believe that several advisors close to the German

emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, were actually eager to engage Russia and France in a fight for supremacy on the European continent.

• They expected that a European war would be swift and decisive – in Germany’s favor.

• England and France also believed in their own supremacy.

• Millions of young men, rich and poor, rushed to join the armies on both sides and share in the expected glory.

• Victory was not swift – both camps were evenly matched.

• Moreover, the first wartime use of machine guns and barbed wire made defensive against attack easier than staging an offensive.

• Both tanks and airplanes had been invented by this time, but military strategists on both sides were slow to put them to offensive use.

The Road to War• On the Western Front, after the initial German attack

failed to take Paris in 1914, the two opposing armies confronted each other along a battle line stretching from Belgium in the north to the Swiss border in the southeast.

• Troops dug trenches to protect themselves from artillery bombardment and poison gas attacks.

• Commanders on both sides mounted suicidal ground assaults on the enemy by sending tens of thousands of infantry, armed only with rifles, bayonets, and grenades, out of the trenches and directly into enemy fire.

• Barbed wire further slowed forward progress, enabling enemy artillery and machine guns to cut down appalling numbers of men.

Trench WarfareTrench warfare occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by

advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage.

The trenches significantly protected troops from the enemy’s small arms fire and substantially sheltered them from artillery – the area between opposing

trench lines, known as “no man’s land,” was fully exposed to enemy fire.

The Road to War• In 1916, during one ten-month German offensive at Verdun

(France), 600,000 German troops died; 20,000 British troops were killed during only the first day of an Entente assault on the Somme River (also in France).

• Many of those who were not killed in combat succumbed to disease that spread rapidly in the cold, wet, and rat-infested trenches.

• In Eastern Europe, the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary squared off against those of Russia and Serbia.

• Although that front did not employ trench warfare, the combat was no less lethal.

• By the time the First World War ended, an estimated 8.5 million soldiers had died and more than twice that number had been wounded.

The Battle of the SommeThe Battle of the Somme was one of the largest clashes of troops

during World War I, in which more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of humanity's bloodiest battles.

The battle is well-known for the importance of air superiority and the first use of the tank on the battlefield.

American Neutrality• Soon after the fighting began, President Woodrow Wilson

told Americans that this was a European war; neither side was threatening a vital American interest.

• The United States would therefore proclaim its neutrality and maintain normal relations with both sides while seeking to secure peace.

• Normal relations meant that the United States would continue trading with both camps.

• Wilson’s neutrality policy was met with lively opposition, especially from Theodore Roosevelt, who was convinced that the United States should join the Entente to check German power and expansionism.

• Most Americans, however, applauded Wilson’s determination to keep the country out of war.

Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson served as the twenty-eighth President of the United States, in office from

March 4, 1913 to March 4, 1921.

Prior to his election to America’s highest office, Wilson served as

the president of Princeton University (1902-1910) and

Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913).

American Neutrality• Neutrality was easier to proclaim than to achieve, however,

because many Americans, especially those with economic and political power, identified culturally more with Britain than with Germany.

• They shared with the English a language, a common ancestry, and a commitment to liberty.

• On the contrary, Germany’s acceptance of monarchical rule, the prominence of militarists in German politics, and its lack of democratic traditions inclined U.S. officials to judge Germany harshly.

• The United States had strong economic ties to Great Britain as well.

• In 1914, the United States exported more than $800 million in goods to Britain and its allies, compared with $170 million to Germany and Austria-Hungary.

American Neutrality• As soon as the war began, the British and French turned

to the United States for food, clothing, munitions, and other war supplies.

• The American economy enjoyed a boom as a result.

• Bankers began to issue loans to the Allied Powers, further knitting together the American and British economies and giving American investors a direct stake in an Allied victory.

• Moreover, the British navy had blockaded German ports, which damaged the United States’ already limited trade with Germany.

• By 1916, American exports to the Central Powers had plummeted to barely one million, a fall of more than ninety-nine percent in two years.

American Neutrality

• The British blockade of German ports clearly violated American neutrality.

• The Wilson administration protested the British navy’s search and occasional seizure of American merchant ships but it never retaliated by suspending loans or exports to Great Britain.

• To do so would have plunged the American economy into a severe recession.

• In failing to protect its right to trade with Germany, however, the United States compromised its neutrality and allowed itself to be drawn into war.

Submarine Warfare• To combat British control of the seas and to check the flow of

American goods to the Allies, Germany unveiled a terrifying new weapon, the Unterseeboot or U-Boat, the first militarily effective submarine.

• Early in 1915, Germany announced its intent to use its U-boats to sink on sight enemy ships en route to the British Isles.

• On May 7, 1915, without warning, a German U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, en route from New York to London.

• The ship sank in twenty-two minutes, killing 1,198 men, women, and children, 128 of them American citizens.

• Americans were shocked the innocent civilians had been murdered in cold blood with a warning or a chance to surrender.

German Unterseeboot More like submersible vessels than the submarines of today, U-

Boats operated primarily on the surface using diesel engines and submerging occasionally to attack under electrical power.

On September 5, 1914, the U-21 sunk the HMS Pathfinder, the first ship to be sunk by a submarine using a self-propelled torpedo.

RMS Lusitania

The Lusitania was torpedoed eleven miles off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared “zone of war.” A

second internal explosion sent the vessel to the bottom of the ocean floor in eighteen minutes.

Submarine Warfare• The attack appeared to confirm what anti-German agitators

were saying: that the Germans were by nature barbaric and uncivilized.

• Before its sailing, the Germans had alleged that the Lusitania was secretly carrying a large store of munitions to Great Britain (a charge later proved true) and that it was therefore subject to U-boa attack.

• Moreover, Germany claimed, with some justification, that the purpose of the U-boat attacks – the disruption of Allied supply lines – was no different from Britain’s purpose in blockading German ports.

• Many argued that the German underwater strategy was reprehensible; yet, the Germans countered saying so was the British attempt to starve the German people into submission with a blockade.

Submarine Warfare• Wilson denounced the sinking of the Lusitania and demanded

that Germany pledge never to launch another attack on the citizens of neutral nations, even if they were traveling on British or French vessels.

• The result was a short-lived lull in submarine warfare.

• In 1916, the Allies began to arm their merchant vessels with guns and depth charges capable of destroying German U-boats.

• In March 1916, a German submarine torpedoed the French passenger liner Sussex, causing a heavy loss of life and injuring several Americans.

• In the so-called Sussex pledge, Germany once again relented but warned that it might resume unrestricted submarine warfare if the United States did not prevail on Great Britain to permit neutral ships to pass through the naval blockade.

Submarine Warfare• The German submarine attacks strengthened Theodore

Roosevelt’s hand that war with Germany was inevitable and that the United States must prepare itself to fight.

• Wilson could no longer ignore the facts and won congressional approval for bills to:

• increase the size of the army and navy

• tighten federal control over National Guard forces

• authorize the building of a merchant fleet

• To the contrary, he accelerated his diplomatic initiatives to secure peace by dispatching Colonel Edward M. House, his closest foreign policy advisor, to London to draw up a peace plan with Lord Grey, the British foreign secretary.

Submarine WarfareColonel Edward M.

House Lord Grey

Submarine Warfare• This initiative resulted in the House-Grey

memorandum of February 22, 1916, in which Britain agreed to ask the United States to negotiate a settlement between the Allies and the Central Powers.

• The British believed that the terms of such a peace settlement would favor the Allies.

• They were furious when Wilson revealed that he wanted an impartial, honestly negotiated peace in which the claims of the Allies and Central Powers would be treated with equal respect and consideration.

• Britain rejected the American peace overtures and relations between the two nations grew unexpectedly tense.

The Peace Movement• Underlying Wilson’s 1916 peace initiative was a vision

of a new world order in which:

• relations would be governed by negotiation rather than war

• justice would replace power as he fundamental principle of diplomacy

• In a major foreign policy address on May 27, 1916, Wilson formally declared his support for a League of Nations.

• The League would be an international parliament dedicated to the pursuit of peace, security, and justice for all the world’s peoples.

“Peace without Victory”

• The 1916 presidential election revealed the extent of the peace sentiment.

• At the Democratic convention, Governor Martin Glynn of New York re-nominated Woodrow Wilson for a second term and praised the president for keeping the United States out of war.

• His portrayal of Wilson as the “peace president” electrified the convention and made “He kept us out of war” a campaign slogan.

• The slogan proved effective against Wilson’s Republican opponent, Charles Evan Hughes, whose close ties to Theodore Roosevelt seemed to place him in the pro-war camp.

• Wilson won by a narrow margin of 277 to 254.

“Peace without Victory”

• Encouraged by his electoral triumph, Wilson intensified his quest for peace by sending peace notes to belligerent nations.

• The notes asked each nation to consider ending the conflict and, to that end, to state their terms for peace.

• Wilson appeared before the Senate on January 22, 1917, to outline his plan for peace and argued for a “peace without victory.”

• Only a peace settlement that refused to crown a victor or humiliate a loser would ensure the equality of the combatant nations and “only a peace between equals can last.”

• Additionally, Wilson listed the crucial principles of a lasting peace:

• freedom of the seas

• disarmament of all nations

• the right of every people to self-determination, democratic self-government, and security against aggression

German Escalation• Wilson’s rhetoric of peace came to late.

• Sensing the imminent collapse of Russian forces on the eastern front, Germany had decided, in early 1917, to throw its full military might at France and Britain.

• On land Germany planned to launch a massive assault on the trenches.

• At sea Germany prepared to unleash its submarines to attack all vessels heading for British ports.

• Germany knew this last action would compel the United States to enter the war, but was gambling on crippling Britain’s economy and isolating France before significant American troops could reach the European shores.

• On February 1, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.

German Escalation• All hopes for peace ended on February 25, when the British

intercepted and passed on to the president a telegram from Germany’s foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German minister in Mexico.

• The infamous “Zimmermann telegram” instructed the minister to ask the Mexican government to attack the United States in the event of war between Germany and the United States.

• In return, Germany would pay the Mexicans a large fee and regain for them the “lost provinces” of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

• Wilson, Congress, and the American public were outraged by the story.

• In March, new arrived that Tsar Nicolas II’s autocratic regime in Russia had collapsed and had been replaced by a liberal-democratic government under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky.

Zimmermann Telegram

The telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, “no other

single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences.”

It is his opinion that “never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a

secret message.”

German Escalation• The fall of the tsar and the need of Russia’s fledging

democratic government for support gave Wilson the rationale he needed to justify American intervention.

• Appearing before a joint session of Congress on April 2, Wilson declared that the United States must enter the war because “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

• Inspired by his words, Congress broke into thunderous applause and voted in favor of declaring war on April 6:

• House of Representatives – 373 to 50

• Senate – 82 to 6

German Escalation• The United States thus embarked on a grand experiment to

reshape the world.

• Wilson had given millions of people around the world reason to hope, both that the terrible war would soon end and that their strivings for freedom and social justice would be realized.

• Wilson understood all to well the risks that he was undertaking:

• The American people, once at war, will “forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of out national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.”

American Intervention

• The entry of the United States into the war gave the Allies the muscle they needed to defeat the Central Powers, but it came almost too late.

• Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare took a frightful toll on Allied shipping.

• From February through July 1917, German U-Boats sank almost four million tons of shipping – more than one-third of Britain’s entire merchant fleet.

• American intervention ended Britain’s vulnerability in dramatic fashion:

• American and British naval commanders now grouped merchant vessels into convoys and provided them with warship escorts through the most dangerous trenches of the North Atlantic.


• Destroyers armed with depth charges were particularly effective as escorts.

• American and British navies had begun to use sound waves (later called sonar) to pinpoint the location of underwater craft.

• This new technology increased the effectiveness of destroyer attacks as well.

• By the end of 1917, the tonnage of Allied shipping lost each month to U-boat attacks had declined by two-thirds, from almost one million tons in April to 350,000 tons in December.

• The increased flow of supplies stiffened the resolve of the exhausted British and French troops.


• The German strategy of defeating the Russians on the Eastern Front then shifting for a final assault on the weakened British and French lines on the Western Front finally manifested in the winter and summer of 1918.

• A second Russian revolution in November 1917 had overthrown Kerensky’s liberal-democratic government and brought into power a revolutionary socialist government under Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party.

• Lenin pulled Russia out of the war on the grounds that the war did not serve the best interests of the working classes.

• In March 1918, Lenin signed a treaty at Brest-Litovsk that gave Germany additional territory and resources and enabled Germany to shift focus to the Western Front.

Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction, orchestrated the October Revolution in 1917, which established the world’s first constitutionally socialist

state.

Following his death in 1924, Lenin was embalmed and

permanently exhibited in Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow.


• Russia’s exit from the war hurt the Allies in numerous ways.

• It exposed British and French troops to a much larger German force.

• It also challenged the Allied claim that they were fighting a just war against German aggression.

• Lenin had published the secret texts of the Allied treaties showing that Britain and France, like Germany plotted to enlarge their nations and empires through war.

• The revelation that the Allies were fighting for land and riches rather than democratic principles outraged large numbers of peoples throughout Europe.

• Additionally, it demoralized Allied troops and threw the British and French governments into disarray.


• The treaties also embarrassed Wilson, who had brought America into the war to fight for democracy, not territory.

• Wilson quickly moved to restore the Allies’ credibility by unveiling in January 1918, a concrete program for peace.

• His Fourteen Points reaffirmed America’s commitment to an international system governed by laws rather than might and renounced territorial gains as a legitimate war aim.

• This document provided the ideological cement that held the Allies together at a critical moment.

Arousing Patriotic Ardor

• In 1917, to arouse public support for the war, Wilson established a new agency, the Committee on Public Information (CPI), to popularize the war.

• Under the direction of George Creel, the CPI distributed seventy-five million pamphlets explaining American war aims in several languages.

• Creel wanted to give the people the “facts” of the war, believing that well-informed citizens would see the wisdom of Wilson’s policies.

• The CPI trained a force of 75,000 “Four-Minute Men” to deliver brief, uplifting war speeches to numerous groups in their home cities and towns.

• Additionally, it papered the walls of virtually every public institution with posters and placed advertisements in magazines and newspapers.

Arousing Patriotic Ardor

• Americans everywhere learned that:

• the United States entered the war “to make the world safe for democracy”

• to help the world’s weaker peoples achieve self-determination

• to bring a measure of justice into the conduct of international affairs

• The CPI imparted to many a deep love of country and a sense of participation in a grand democratic experiment.

• In America, this sparked a new spirit of protest in those experiencing poverty and discrimination:

• Industrial workers, women, European immigrants and blacks.

Raising an Army• To raise an army, the Wilson administration committed itself

to conscription by means of the Selective Service Act of 1917.

• Conscription is the drafting of most men of a certain age, irrespective of their family’s wealth, ethnic background, or social standing.

• By the war’s end, local Selective boards had registered twenty-four million men age eighteen and older and had drafted nearly three million of them into the military; another two million volunteered.

• Relatively few men resisted the draft, even among recently arrived immigrants.

• Foreign-born men = 18% of the armed forces

• Blacks = 10% of the armed forces

Raising an Army• The U.S. Army, under the command of Chief of Staff Peyton

March and General John J. Pershing, faced the difficult task of fashioning these ethnically and racially diverse millions into a professional fighting force.

• Teaching raw recruits to fight would be a difficult task but it would be much easier than teaching them to put aside their prejudices.

• Rather than integrate the armed forces, March and Pershing segregated black soldiers from white; assigning African-American troops to all-black non-combat units.

• Given the apparent differences among American troops and the short period of time to train recruits, the performance of the American Expeditionary Force was impressive.

John J. PershingPershing is the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to

the highest rank ever held in the United States Army.

He was regarded as a mentor by the generation of American

generals who led the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II,

including George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar

Bradley, and George Patton.

Raising an Army

• The United States increased the army from a mere 100,000 to five million in little more than a year.

• In combat, American troops became known for their tremendous sharpshooting skills.

• The most decorated soldier of the AEF was Sergeant Alvin C. York of Tennessee, who captured thirty-five machine gun posts, took 132 prisoners, and killed seventeen German soldiers with seventeen bullets.

Securing a Work Force

• War increased the demand for industrial labor; however, million of workers were being conscripted into the military.

• European immigrants had long been the most important source of new labor for American industry but during the war they stopped coming.

• Manufacturers responded to the labor shortage by recruiting new sources of labor:

• 500,000 blacks from the rural South migrated to northern cities between 1916 and 1920.

• 500,000 southern whites followed the same path during the same period.

• Approximately 40,000 northern women found work customarily reserved for men.

• These workers alleviated but did not eliminate the nation’s labor shortage.

Americans in War• In March and April 1918, Germany launched a massive assault

against British and French positions, sending Allied troops reeling.

• A ferocious assault against French lines on May 27 met with little resistance – German troops were advancing ten miles a day – until they reached the Marne River, within striking distance of Paris.

• This was a much faster pace than any on the Western front since the earliest days of the war.

• As the French government prepared to evacuate the city, a large, fresh, and well-equipped American army arrived to reinforce what remained of the French lines.

• Pershing ordered his “doughboys” – as they were called – into battle to counter the German spring offensive in 1918 and they fought well.

“Doughboys”The term “doughboy” originates from the Mexican-American War

of the 1840s.

Observers noticed the U.S. infantry forces were constantly covered with white chalky dust

from marching in the dry terrain of northern Mexico, giving the appearance of unbaked bread.

Americans in War• Many American soldiers fell, but the German ground

offensive came to a halt.

• Paris was saved and Germany’s best chance for victory slipped from its grasp.

• Strengthened by this show of AEF strength, the Allied troops launched a major offensive of their own in late September:

• Millions of Allied troops (including more than one million from the AEF) advanced across the 200-mile-wide Argonne forest in France, cutting German supply lines.

• Faced with an invasion of their homeland and with rapidly mounting popular dissatisfaction with the war, German leaders asked for an armistice.

Battle of the Argonne ForestDuring the Hundred Days Offensive, the Allies launched an offensive attack, which would become the largest battle in

American military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers.

This forty-seven day engagement was the principle battle for the AEF during the First World War.

A “Total” War• The Allies ended the war on November 11, 1918 – the

carnage was finally over.

• Compared to Europe, the United States suffered little from the war.

• The deaths of 112,000 Americans soldiers paled in comparison to European losses:

• 900,000 by Great Britain

• 1.2 million by Austria-Hungary

• 1.4 million by France

• 1.7 million by Russia

• 2 million by Germany

• The American civilian population was spared most of the war’s ravages.

A “Total” War• Millions of Europeans were affected by:

• the destruction of homes and industries

• the shortages of food and medicine

• the spread of disease

• Only with the flu epidemic that swept across the Atlantic from Europe in 1919 to claim approximately 500,000 American lives did Americans briefly experience wholesale suffering and death.

• The war still had a profound impact on American society because the First World War was different.

• It was a “total” war to which every combatant had committed virtually all of its resources.

The Paris Peace Conference

• In the month following Germany’s surrender, Wilson was confident about the prospects of achieving a just peace.

• To capitalize on his fame and to maximize the chances for a peace settlement based on his Fourteen Points, Wilson broke with diplomatic precedent and decided to head the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919.

• Some two million enthusiastic Europeans lined the parade route to catch a glimpse of “Wilson, le juste,” “The Savior of Humanity,” and “The Moses from Across the Atlantic.”


• Although representatives of twenty-seven nations began meeting in Paris on January 12, 1919, to discuss Wilson’s Fourteen Points, negotiations were controlled by the “Big Four:”

• President Woodrow Wilson of the United States

• Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain

• Premier Georges Clemenceau of France

• Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy

• When Orlando quit the conference after a dispute with Wilson, the “Big Four” became the “Big Three.”

• Wilson quickly learned that his negotiating partners’ support for the Fourteen Points was much weaker than he had believed.


• Wilson did win partial endorsement for his principle of self-determination and numerous new nations were created:

• Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Syria.

• Nor could Wilson blunt the drive to punish Germany for its wartime aggression:

• France acquired the Saar basin.

• Denmark acquired portion of northern Germany while Czechoslovakia and Poland acquired portions of eastern Germany.

• Germany was stripped of virtually its entire navy and air force, and forbidden to place soldiers along the Rhine.

• Germany was also forced to admit its responsibility for the war – in accepting the “war guilt” clause, Germany agreed to compensate the victors in cash.


• The German people, after their nation’s 1918 defeat, had overthrown the monarch who had taken them to war and reconstituted their nation as a democratic republic – the first in their country’s history.

• On June 28, 1919, Great Britain, France, the United States, Germany, and other European nations signed the Treaty of Versailles.

• In 1921, an Allied commission notified Germany that they were to pay $33 billion, a sum well beyond their resources.

• Wilson had won the approval of the most important of his Fourteen Points; yet the League of Nations provision would spark an intense and fiery debate.

• The League’s success depended on Wilson’s ability to convince the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.


• Wilson’s dream of a new world order died on March 8, 1920, after the Senate voted against the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.

• Two things hampered Wilson’s efforts:

• He refused to negotiate with the Republicans and announced that he would carry his case directly to the American people.

• He suffered a near-fatal stroke on October 2 that left the left side of his body paralyzed, his speech slurred, his energy level low, and his emotions unstable.

• Wilson bore little resemblance to the hero who, barely fifteen months before, had been greeted in Europe as the world’s savior.

• He filled out the remaining twelve months in office as an invalid.

Education

War and society, 1914-1920