Saylor.org HIST212: "World War I's Domestic Legacy"

In today's lecture, we're going to discuss the domestic legacy of World War I and look at some of the domestic consequences that the war brings about in the United States. Probably one of the biggest consequences of the war itself is that there's a great sense of disillusionment among most Americans about the war in the sense that the United States had entered this war under false pretenses, that the war itself, while the U.S. had been among the victors, it hadn't been this glorious struggle that Woodrow Wilson as president had predicted it would be. And in a sense, there's a strong rejection of the sort of international engagement ideas that Woodrow Wilson had promoted in arguing that the United States should get involved in the war. And so as a consequence of the war, we see a number of issues that we're going to address today, including isolationism. There's also a growing rejection of certain American values, such as free speech that happens both during and after the war. We encounter what becomes known as the Red Scare. We'll discuss that more in just a minute. And lastly, there's a rejection of immigration following the war. So we're going to briefly address all of these issues in today's lecture. Part of this growing disillusionment at the end of the war comes from how President Woodrow Wilson handles the peace negotiations following the conflict. These take place at Versailles, which is in France, the old royal palace in France. Woodrow Wilson goes there at the end of the war, the first U.S. President to travel abroad for political purposes, as great as this, and he's treated as a hero by many of the people in Europe because he had been able to get America involved in the war. America had been sort of the factor that had turned the tide in the conflict in favor of the Western allies, Great Britain and France. And so he's treated as a hero in Great Britain, he's treated as a hero in France. But at the same time, he's not really taken seriously by these negotiators who meet at Versailles in 1919 and attempt to hammer out a peace treaty, a treaty that will end the war formally and that will sort of deal with the aftermath of the conflict. Wilson then traveled to Versailles with his 14 points, which was a number of these were ideas that he had about how to prevent future wars from taking place, things like diplomacy should be conducted in the open, nations, national, people in nations should have the opportunity to determine their own fate, he was very anti-colonial in that sense, and other sorts of policies. And Wilson presents these at Versailles, and they're very quickly rejected by the British and the French negotiators. Wilson is okay with this, as long as he gets support for his sort of big idea that he went to Versailles for, which was his League of Nations, in a sense, it's sort of a predecessor of the United Nations, and the goal of the League of Nations would be an open organization that would help nations settle conflicts, and avoid wars or other sorts of disputes. And so Wilson essentially sort of passes on most of his 14 points in exchange for getting favor of the League of Nations by these other European nations. Well, when Wilson brings his treaty back to the United States, big changes have happened, including there's a growing sense of frustration with internationalism, with the US being involved in international affairs, and the Republican Party has gained a lot of support in the House and in the Senate. And when Wilson presents the treaty to the Senate, because the US Senate has to ratify the treaty before it has the force of law, it's largely rejected. There are Republican senators who refuse to adopt the treaty because they don't like this League of Nations. They don't like the United States being drawn into this international organization where we would lose some of our sovereignty and some of our ability to act unilaterally, and they reject it. Wilson refuses to negotiate. There are opportunities for him to sort of modify the treaty or amend it in ways that would make the United States Senate much more favorable. He refuses to do so. It's an all-or-nothing arrangement. And as a result, the Senate rejects it, essentially rejects American participation in the League of Nations. And eventually, we pass a separate resolution in 1921, formally ending the war with Germany that had begun in 1917. So Wilson's international policies are roundly rejected as a result of his efforts to win over support for his ideas at Versailles and his failure to consider what the American public was saying, which was that they were not that interested in the United States remaining involved in the international community, and they wanted isolationism. They wanted the U.S. to isolate itself, not to be involved in international affair. Well, another issue that comes about during the conflict is violations of basic civil rights, including the rights of free speech, the rights of political association, being able to join political organizations or participate in rallies and protests. The progressives, including Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet who run the war, while they are very much in favor of freedom and equality and promoting equal rights, they also feel that Americans shouldn't protest the war. And in fact, they see protests against the war as being un-American, as being challenging to what they were trying to do, their war efforts. And so there's this growing sense during the conflict and its immediate aftermath that Americans shouldn't protest the war, they should be quiet, they should not engage in free speech. As this poster says, criticism of society is not free speech. And this is the attitude that Woodrow Wilson and his progressive cabinet take towards the conflict. And what we see during this conflict is there's an intense repression of civil liberties, to essentially make certain types of speech illegal. There are a number of laws that are passed that rule speech against the war as unconstitutional. That essentially is wrong. And these are actually upheld by the Supreme Court when people challenge these laws. And so as a result, what we end up seeing is that many of these laws are used to target people who are anti-war, including groups that were anti-war for political reasons or for other sorts of factors. So groups such as labor unions, the IWW, which is a group called the Industrial Workers of the World, who believed really strongly that workers around the world should unite in opposition to government. And they were anti-war. And they had many protests against the conflict. And many of them were arrested and imprisoned during the conflict for their taking a stand against the war. Another group that was strongly against the war was the Socialist Party. And socialists gave speeches, anti-war protests, and like the IWW members, many were arrested and imprisoned. This notion that Uncle Sam was going to deal with the traitors, that people who were against the war were inherently against the United States, and as a result, being targeted by the government. In other ways, we also see the emergence of kind of non-governmental anti-free speech organizations, including one group called the American Protective League, which is an organization that's created by common citizens to go after people who they viewed as being anti-war or in favor of Germany, since Germany was our enemy in this conflict. And they used violence and intimidation and all sorts of other very nasty measures to silence people who were against the war, protesting or giving speeches, to go after people who expressed support for Germany in this conflict, though that Germany was getting a raw deal by the United States, and other sorts of measures. So in all, there are these measures that are really targeted against basic American rights, such as free speech, freedom of political association, freedom to belong to political parties, and so forth. Well, one of the outcomes of this kind of frustration, disillusionment of the war, and also this intense repression of political rights during the conflict, is that at the end of the war, we have the first Red Scare, and the Red Scare is anti-communist, and communism was associated with the color red. And so this Red Scare is a way of referring to fear of communism in the United States. Well, why were people afraid of communism? Well, during the war, Russia, which had been a monarchy, had collapsed, and the Communist Party had taken over the government of Russia, and Russia had become the first communist nation in the world. And there were a lot of people around the world who were afraid that similar things could happen in their countries, and there were a lot of Americans who were terrified that people were trying to bring about an American communist revolution during and after this war, especially these socialists and these IWW people who were campaigning for rights for workers, rights for poor people, and a lot of Americans who didn't really know much about communism saw this as being promoting communism, as being really, really bad. And so immediately following the war, a wave of strikes and protests break out. A lot of workers had made a good amount of money during the war, and as soon as the war ended, all these companies that were employing them tried to cut wages. They were paying too much money, they felt, and they were forced to pay high wages during the war, and they wanted to cut back. And so a lot of workers began to go on strike against these cuts in their wages and cuts in their hours. And at one point, nearly 4 million workers were on strike in 1919. It's a year of waves and waves and waves of strikes. Many of these strikes are led by groups like the IWW, like the Socialist Party, and so among many middle-class and upper-class Americans, there's this growing sense of fear that this is all in some way some evil plot to bring about communism or to bring about an American communist revolution. Well, in response to this, the federal government and both—actually, federal government, state, and local governments get involved in combating this supposed communist revolution that's in the works. And the federal government especially begins a crackdown on political activists and also on what they call foreign radicals, in other words, people who were immigrants who had unpopular political views, radical views, views that were sort of anti-government in a way. And so the U.S. Justice Department launches a number of raids against labor unions like the IWW and political parties like the Socialist Party, and these are called the Palmer Raids after A. Mitchell Palmer, who's the attorney general at the time period. And hundreds of immigrants are arrested. Here's a picture of the raid that was conducted on the IWW party office, and hundreds are arrested. Maturos are confiscated, and they're used to round up these foreign, quote-unquote, foreign radicals so that they can be arrested and then later kicked out of the United States. And in fact, the U.S. kicks out hundreds of radicals and hundreds of labor organizers and deports them back to their home countries without any trial, without any due process. They're simply removed, arrested, and kicked out. And this is very popular among many Americans who view this as a good measure to save the United States in a sense from this threat of these foreigners and their foreign political movements like communism. And by and large, the Supreme Court actually upholds most of these deportations and most of these anti-civil rights measures that are taken in the 19-teens and early 1920s. The Supreme Court actually rules that these are essentially protected because they're preventing bad things from happening to the United States. So in a sense, the court upholds these violations of some basic civil rights that we in the United States hold dear, the right to trial, the right to have an opportunity to defend ourselves. And the Supreme Court essentially upholds most of these deportations as being justified given the circumstances. Well, following this period of kind of the Red Scare of 1919 to early 1920, what ends up happening is that there's this growing sense of people in the United States wanting to return to normalcy, wanting to return to a normal life before all the disruptions of the war and disruptions of the post-war period. And it's during this time period, this quote-unquote return to normalcy, that we see a lot of this anti-immigrant, anti-radical political movement attitudes developing in the United States. In 1920, the 1920 elections, the Republicans sweep the House and the Senate, they sweep the White House, and the Democrats and the progressives lose big time. Woodrow Wilson doesn't run for re-election because he's not in good health at this point, but the Democratic candidate who does run really polls very badly, and members of the House and Senate who have been in during the war lose their positions. The Republican presidential candidate, Warren G. Harding, wins a very, very good—wins quite handily in this election, and he's the one who coins this phrase, the return to normalcy. And his whole campaign is about getting things back to the way things were before the war disrupted everything and returning people back to a normal, everyday life. And this is really the attitude that many of these Republicans in Congress and also at the presidency take during the 1920s. They support rolling back a lot of the protectionist measures that the progressives had implemented in the 1900s, early 1900s and 1910s. They're much more pro-business. They lower taxes, and they try to undermine a lot of the progressive regulations that put in place on certain industries, railroad industry, steel industry, and so forth, because they're much more in favor of business than they are in labor. And that certainly shows they really do little to support the rights of workers during this time. They're much more supportive of business owners. So as a result, for the 1920s, it's a really good time period for many in the middle class and the upper class. It's not quite so good for people in the lower classes, because the government's really not supporting them in any way. It's not helping them out. Well, in addition to the Republicans, of course, being very pro-business and supporting factory owners and wealthy people over poor people and immigrants, we see this emergence of an anti-immigrant attitude in the United States. For instance, you see the emergence during this time period of the second Ku Klux Klan. The first Klan had emerged during Reconstruction in the 1870s, but the new Klan emerges in the 1920s. And the first Klan was mostly against African Americans. The new Klan was against African Americans, but they also included Jews, ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants of all sorts. And this whole notion of this modern sort of Ku Klux Klan was that they were against anybody who wasn't a diehard true American. The Klan was not afraid to march. Here we have a march down Pennsylvania Avenue, the U.S. Capitol in the background. Post-editorial cartoons were quite common during this time period, labeling these undesirable immigrants who were dangerous. There was a bomb into the fuse here, these sort of dangerous immigrants who wanted into the United States and measures being taken to prevent them from doing so. And one of the things that happens is that Congress in 1924 passes a major immigration bill. It's a major law that establishes very tight restrictions on immigration from Europe and from other places around the world. Here we have another editorial cartoon, this funnel, this siphon that essentially weeds out this mass who want to get in from the small number who are actually permitted. So this quota system that's established in 1924 establishes very small numbers of people who are allowed in from various parts of Europe. And in fact, in some cases, entirely—essentially bans certain groups like Chinese and the Japanese. They're essentially zeroed out. They have a zero quota. They're not allowed into the United States. And so this immigration restriction, just as part of this broader kind of reaction against immigration that had taken place in the early decades of the 20th century as a reaction against immigrants who are now seen as dangerous and threatening to the United States, is part of this broader movement of Americans to disengage themselves from the rest of the world, to isolate themselves politically, economically in some ways, and certainly socially from the rest of the world, and for America to focus on American issues, not to focus on the world issues. And so this is one of these profound consequences of the war and of the immediate aftermath of the war is this sense of rejection of internationalism, rejection of American involvement in international affairs politically and socially, and a growing sense of isolationism, of isolating and totally separating from what was going on in the rest of the world. And this certainly has a huge impact on the United States in the 20s and the 1930s and ultimately is in some ways responsible for bringing about some of these very strong militant political movements in Europe during the 1930s that promote the Second World War, which we'll look at in a few lectures. So isolationism certainly being kind of the buzzword of this time period that we talked about today. In the next lecture, we're going to look at social issues in the 1920s and talk about how American society changed in very profound ways during the decade of the 1920s.