World War I

Causes of the Great War

1. Secret Treaties Triple Alliance

2. Arms Build-up Triple Entente

3. Nationalism Archduke Francis Ferdinand/Black Hand

Gavrillo Princip

Dreadnaught/U-Boat/Nerve gas

Events & Strategy

1914: Battle of Tannenburg

Siege of Liege

Battle of the Marne

Schlieffen Plan

Western Front

American Policy

1.  Neutrality

2.  Free Trade

1915: Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

British blockade of continent

Lusitania crisis

Arabic sunk

William Jennings Bryan resigns as Sec. of State

Issue: Unarmed merchant ships and passenger liners as military targets

1916: Sussex struck by German torpedo

Germany agrees to the Sussex Pledge

Colonel Edward House (U.S. diplomat in London): Peace objective

American loans

$3 Billion = France + Britain

1916 Election Politics

Democrat slogan “He Kept Us Out of War”

Critics: Theodore Roosevelt + Henry Cabot Lodge

Republican opponent: Charles Evans Hughes

Republican strength: East + Big Business

Democrat strength: South + West/Rural America

1917: Russian Revolution

Vladimir Lenin + the Bolsheviks

Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare

Zimmerman telegraph

5 American merchant ships sunk in the Mediterranean

“Make the World Safe for Democracy”

“Peace Without Victory”

Woodrow Wilson

So, why did American opinion shift toward the Allies?

American Domestic Policy

Wartime Economy (Bernard Baruch)

War Industries Board

Government expanded regulation

1. Railroads

2. Shipbuilding

Food Administration (Herbert Hoover)

Victory gardens

Meatless Tuesdays/Wheatless Wednesdays

Selective Service Act (1917)

Drafted 2.8 million/age 21 yrs. -30 yrs. Old

Civil Liberties

Committee on Public Information (George Creel)

Minute Men/”Over There”/”Hate the Hun” propaganda

American Protective League

Espionage Act

Sedition Act

Schenck v. United States (1919)

“Clear and Present Danger”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Social Trends

African Americans 400,000 serve in the military

African Americans migrate north with expanded job opportunities

Women employed in factories and shipyards

1918: Military Operations (General John J. Pershing)

Chateau-Thierry

Allied offensive in the Argonne Forest

U.S. combat deaths = 112,000 (includes flu epidemic)

The Treaty of Versailles

The Big Four

David Lloyd George

Georges Clemenceau

Vittorio Orlando

Woodrow Wilson

Wilson’s 14 Points

1.  Self-determination

2.  League of Nations

3.  Freedom of the Seas

4.  No secret treaties

5.  Reduction in national armaments

6.  Impartial adjustment of all colonial claims

The Peace Terms

1.  Germany was to disarm

2.  Germany stripped of colonies

3.  Germany sign a “war guilt” clause

4.  Germany pay a large war debt to the Allied nations

5.  Self-determination applied to territories once controlled by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia

6.  League of Nations organized

Politics and the Treaty of Versailles

The Senate Ratification Debate

Irreconcilables: William Borah, George Norris, Robert La Follette, Hiram Johnson, Albert Fall

Reservationists: Henry Cabot Lodge + Article 10

Major Reasons for the Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles

1.  Wilson’s political mistakes

2.  Partisan party animus

3.  Wilson’s health + western tour

4.  Isolationism

5.  Irish Catholic and German Americans opposed the treaty.

The United States would sign a separate treaty with Germany in 1922.

The United States would not join the League of Nations.

The United States government and private banking interests would help Germany pay the war debt noted in the Treaty of Versailles (132 billion gold marks).