Ch.12, Sec.1- The Road to War

Causes of World War I

• Even though the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie officially started the Great War, or World War I, there were also many other causes well before this. They are imperialism, militarism, nationalism, and alliances.

The Conflict Expands

• Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the actions of one individual, and declared war on Serbia. This led to Russia coming to their aid, and France coming to help Russia. Also, Germany came to aid Austria-Hungary. Germany tried to enact a strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a quick sweep through France to knock the French out of the war and prevent fighting a war on two fronts. To reach France, Germany had to invade Belgium, which drew Britain into the war. There were now two opposing sides in the war. Germany and Austria-Hungary were the Central Powers, and Russia, France, Serbia, and Great Britain were the Allies.

Stalemate

• France and Britain had entered a stalemate with German forces as the Germans came within 30 miles of Paris. They then began fighting by trench warfare. Because of victories by the Russians in the east, the Germans had to send troops to the Eastern Front, preventing them from winning the west.

• At the end of 1914, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, and Italy and Romania joined the allies in 1915.

Modern Warfare

• Even if the soldiers survived the shells raining down on them, there were 450 rounds a minute being fired out of the machine guns in no man’s land. However, generals continually believed sending the troops “over the top” in high numbers would bring them victory. Instead it brought them a lot of dead bodies.

The American Response

• Even though the British printed a lot of false propaganda to try to get the Americans to fight with them in this war, on Aug.4, 1914, President Wilson officially declared the U.S. a neutral country.

Sec.2- The United States Declares War

German Submarine Warfare• The Germans began using submarines called U-boats

against the British. The British were defenseless against these submarines until they later invented a device called hydrophones that could hear the submarine underwater. The British cut the transatlantic cable connecting Germany to the U.S., leaving all the information of the war to be coming from London. The Americans became very angry when the Germans sank the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. The Germans were right about the ship carrying weapons for the allies, but 128 Americans died on that ship. When the Americans warned the Germans to stop its submarine warfare, the Germans agreed they would no longer sink a passenger ship without warning. However, they sunk a French passenger ship, the Sussex, on March 24, 1916, killing 2 Americans. The Germans again promised they would not sink a passenger ship without warning. This was called the Sussex Pledge.

The Zimmerman Note

• Germany informed the U.S. that it would end the Sussex pledge and resume unrestricted submarine warfare on January 31, 1917. The Germans gambled they would be able to defeat the British before the U.S. entered the war.

• The British then told the U.S. of a note they had intercepted from Author Zimmerman, Germany’s foreign secretary, telling Mexico if they declared war on the U.S., they would reward them with American land in the Southwest. Neither Mexico nor the U.S. took the note seriously. Between March 16-18, 1917, Germany sank the U.S. ships City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia. On April 6, 1917, the U.S. officially declared war on Germany.

Sec.3- Americans on the European Front

Preparing for War

• Congress passed a Selective Service Act in May, 1917 authorizing a draft of young men for military service. By November 1918, more than 24 million men registered for the draft. A lottery then picked 3 million to serve in the war. Volunteers and National Guardsmen made up the rest of what was called the American Expeditionary Force (AEF).

The Convoy System

• The military now began training all these men to go fight.

• Most of the troops traveled in a convoy, or a group of unarmed ships surrounded by a ring of destroyers, torpedo boats, and other armed naval vessels equipped with hydrophones. The German U-boats did not sink a single U.S. troopship traveling to Europe.

American Soldiers in Europe

• More than 300,000 African-Americans who volunteered or were drafted served in segregated units. The Marines refused to accept African-Americans altogether.

• The 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Harlem Hell Fighters, wanted to fight. They persuaded their white officers to loan them to the French.

Turning the Tide of War

• Lenin and the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty on March 3, 1918. Germany received territories in western Russia, and Germany no longer had to fight a war on two fronts.

• The Americans stepped in and helped the French save Paris, and sent the German troops retreating at the Second Battle of the Marne, ending any hopes of a victory the Germans might have.

Allied Counterattack

• About 250,000 American troops were arriving in France each month. The tank was a new weapon that allowed the Allies to break through the German lines. On Aug. 8, at the battle of Amiens, the Allied troops stopped the Germans and helped to win the war for the Allies. About 500,000 American troops and about 100,000 French troops participated in the final Allied assault, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, on September 26, 1918. Over a million AEF troops drove the Germans out of France.

The Influenza Epidemic

• In the Spring of 1918 American troops carried with them a string of a virus called influenza, which killed 500,000 German troops on the first wave. This virus killed so many people that they couldn’t dig graves fast enough. In a little under a year, the virus had killed as many soldiers as battle did. Overall, 500,000 Americans and 30 million people worldwide died from this virus.

Results of the War

• About 50,000 Americans died in battle and even more from disease. The total Europeans that died was about 8 million, which means an average of 5,000 soldiers died each day.

Sec.4- Americans on the Home Front

Financing the War

• The most major way the U.S. funded the war was through the sale of Liberty Bonds, which could later be redeemed for their original value plus interest.

• The Lever Food and Fuel Control Act began the practice of daylight savings time, or turning clocks ahead one hour for the summer, which increased the number of daylight hours available for work and reduced the need for artificial light and lowered fuel consumption.

Hate the Hun!

• People after the war began calling Germans Huns, in reference to people who had brutally invaded Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries. High schools stopped teaching German, books by German authors were removed from the shelves, German composers were banned from symphony concerts, German measles became liberty measles, and a hamburger, which was named after Hamburg, a German city, became a Salisbury steak. Even German Shepherds began being called police dogs. A German-born citizen named Robert Prager was lynched in St. Louis in April 1918.

Repression of Civil Liberties

• The Sedition Act was passed by Congress in 1918, which made it illegal to obstruct the sale of Liberty Bonds or to discuss anything disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive about the American form of government, the Constitution, or the army or navy. Even though this violated the 1st Amendment, most American believed it was necessary. Eugene V. Debs, a former presidential candidate, was put in jail for 10 years for criticizing the American government.

Sec.5- Global Peacemaker

Wilson Forced to Compromise

• Wilson, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy were called the Big Four. Wilson produced a plan for the League of Nations, in which the most major part of it was an attack on one country in the League would be an attack on all of them.

Redrawing the Map of Europe

• The Ottoman Empire now only consisted of Turkey. The British gained Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. France took Syria and Lebanon. To convince Italy to join the Allies in the war in 1915, Britain secretly promised Italy several pieces of territory controlled by Austria-Hungary. At the conference, Wilson and other allied leaders refused to support Italy’s claims, so Italy gained much less territory than they expected.

War Guilt and Reparations

• The Allies, against Wilson’s wishes, said in 1921 that Germany must pay the Allies 33 billion dollars for reparations or payment for economic injury suffered during the war. The allies presented this treaty to Germany on May 7, 1919. At first they refused to sign, but gave in when the French threatened to invade them if they didn’t. This treaty was known as the Versailles Treaty.

Difficult Postwar Adjustments

• The U.S. was now the world’s largest creditor nation, with European countries owing 11.5 billion dollars to the U.S., making the U.S. the most powerful nation in the world.

• As soldiers began coming back from war, women left their jobs so the men could have their jobs back. Even though African-American soldiers came back to a heroes welcome, they were not so well accepted when it came to getting a job. They still faced discrimination in housing and employment, and lynchings and race riots continued.

Ch.13, Sec.1- Society in the 1920s

The Flapper Image

• In 1920, young women began wearing dresses nine inches above the ground. By 1927, they would rise to knee length or higher. These girls also cut their hair very short. They also began wearing close fitting hats and lots of make-up, which used to only be something actresses or prostitutes did. These women also began drinking strong drinks and smoking.

Women Working and Voting• Most women who worked were single, although in 1930, 29%

of married women had jobs. Women may have come a long way, but they still were not given the same opportunities to have a professional job like a man or paid the same as a man. Employers typically expected a woman to quit if she got married or became pregnant.

• As of 1920, all women could vote. However, only 35% of women voted that year, and the one’s that did typically voted the same way as their husbands. When asked why most of them did not vote, one-third said they lacked interest, and 11% said they did not think women should be allowed to vote at all. Also, women did not vote because they either had to watch after the children, their families told them not to, or they just weren’t comfortable voting.

• Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman to serve in either house of Congress.

Rural-Urban Split

• In 1920, for the first time in the nation’s history, more Americans lived in urban areas instead of rural areas. This led to twice as many children making it to high school because children no longer had to work on the farms.

African-Americans in the North

• More African-Americans began to move North because there was more opportunities for jobs in the North. However, 80% of all African-Americans still lived in the South in 1930, and the ones up North faced anger and hatred form the whites who believed they would either lower their wages or take their jobs.

American Heroes

• On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh climbed into his plane the Spirit of St. Louis, to be the first person to fly across the Atlantic and claim a $25,000 prize. After 33 ½ hours, he landed in an airfield outside Paris after leaving from New York.

• In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger. In 1932, she was the first woman to make the flight on her own. She then became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. This flight had killed many people before her. Finally, she and Fred Noonan attempted to be the first people to fly around the world. Two-thirds of the way into the trip, they disappeared and were never seen again.

Sports Heroes

• A fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier broke the record for ticket sales, taking in 1 million dollars. Another hero was Jim Thorpe, who was a Native American who the first president of the NFL. The most famous of all the sports figures of this time was the “the sultan of swat, George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Also, in 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, breaking the men’s record by nearly 2 hours.

Sec.2- Mass Media and the Jazz Age

Movies

• Even though the population was only about 125 million, there were roughly 80 million ticket sales each week, making the movie business the 4th largest business in the country. In 1927, the first film with sound premiered, titled The Jazz Singer. Famous actors and actresses were Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, and Charlie Chaplin, who continued to make silent movies even after movies with sound came out.

Radio

• In 1920, Frank Conrad started the first radio station from his garage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, called KDKA. By 1922, there were more than 500 stations on the air. Stations like NBC linked many stations together.

• Because of the popularity of Jazz at this time, even though older people thought this was a rebellious music, the 1920s were called the Jazz Age.

Jazz Clubs and Dance Halls

• One of the most famous places for jazz clubs was Harlem, where about 500 jazz clubs had famous jazz singers who were black perform for predominately white audiences. Famous jazz singers at this time were Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Benny Goodman had a quartet in 1936 which was the first racially mixed jazz group. The famous dance of the time was the Charleston.

• Sinclair Lewis was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

The Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem became the home of an African-American literary awakening of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance. James Weldon Johnson was a leading writer of the group, with his most famous book, God’s Trombones. Famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance were Claude McKay and Countee Cullen, who wrote Harlem Shadows and Color. The most famous of all though was Langston Hughes.

Sec.3- Cultural Conflicts

Bootlegging

• Liquor, beer, and wine could no longer be sold, manufactured, or transported due to Prohibition. Therefore, people started looking to bootleggers, or suppliers of illegal alcohol. Some bootleggers operated stills, or devices used to produce alcohol from corn, grain, potatoes, or other fruit and vegetable sources. Others smuggled it in from Canada or by ship from the Caribbean. The smugglers would put the alcohol into speed boats and outrun the Coast Guard.

• There were illegal bars called speakeasies which usually had a large gate with a guard. If you did not have a membership card or the guard did not recognize you, you would not be allowed to enter.

Organized Crime

• The huge profit from bootlegging led to gangsters controlling the operation. Gangsters began joining forces and using machine guns or sawed-off shotguns to fight for control. These gangsters also began other illegal activities like gambling, prostitution, and racketeering. In one kind of “racket”, gangsters bribed police or other government officials to ignore their illegal operations. In another, gangsters forced local businesses to pay a fee for protection. Those who refused to pay would be gunned down or have their business blown up.

Al Capone

• The major gangster organizations was in Chicago. In 1925, a young gangster murdered his way to the top of Chicago’s organized crime network. His name was Al Capone, nicknamed “Scarface”. Capone was making roughly $60 million a year from bootlegging, so he easily bought the cooperation of police, city officials, politicians and judges. The FBI, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, started taking down these gangsters. In 1931, Capone was convicted of income-tax evasion and sent to prison.

Fundamentalism

• Some scholars were saying that the Bible was a document written by humans and that it contained contradictions and historical inaccuracies. In response, between 1910 and 1915, religious traditionalist published a series of 12 pamphlets called The Fundamentals. The beliefs of God inspired the Bible so it cannot contain contradictions or errors, and that the Bible is literally true and that every story in it actually took place as described is called fundamentalism. The most famous fundamentalist preacher was Billy Sunday.

Evolution and the Scopes Trial

• When Tennessee passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools in 1925, John Scopes, a science teacher, challenged it as unconstitutional and was arrested for teaching evolution. This began the trial called the Scopes Trial. This trial was the first ever broadcast over American radio. Scopes admitted he had been teaching evolution and was fined $100.

Violence Against African Americans

• The summer of 1919 was known as “Red Summer” because of all the blood that was spilled. The worst riot was in Chicago, where stones were being thrown at the whites and blacks at Lake Michigan. A 17 year old black boy accidentally floated into the whites only section. One white person threw a rock at the boy and it hit him and he drowned. Blacks accused the whites of killing him, and more fights broke out.

Revival of the Klan

• In 1915 a former Methodist preacher from Atlanta, Colonel William J. Simmons revived the organization. By 1924, the Klan had roughly 4 million people. The state with the greatest number of Klansmen was Indiana. The group now not only focused on blacks but anyone who seems un-American. The Klan would beat, whip, or even kill their victims. In 1927, the Klan once again diminished.

The Garvey Movement

• Marcus Garvey gathered $10 million for a steamship company the Black Star Line, that would carry his followers back to the motherland. However, corruption and mismanagement plagued the shipping line, and in 1925, Garvey was put in jail on mail fraud charges. He was then deported to Jamaica in 1927, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) fell apart.