Firmly maintaining neutrality when World War I began in 1914, the United States entered the war against Germany only after German U-boats announced that unrestricted submarine warfare would proceed against neutral shipping and the U.S. discovered that the Germans had attempted to ask Mexico to go to war against the United States in case the United States went to war with Germany. Sympathies among many politically and industrially influential Americans had favored the British and French cause from the start of the war; however, a sizable number of citizens (which included many of Irish and German extraction) were staunchly opposed to U.S. involvement in the European conflict (at least on the British side), and the vote in Congress, on April 6, 1917, to declare war was far from unanimous.

Domestically, anything German, including language and culture, was shunned during the war (for example, sauerkraut was dubbed "liberty cabbage"). Some German-Americans who spoke out against the war or otherwise displeased their fellow citizens were subject to harassment or arrest. Unknown numbers of German-Americans may have anglicized their names and hidden their cultural roots during this period so as not to stick out from the mainstream.

More generally, the Wilson administration created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to not only control war information, but also to provide pro-war propaganda. The private American Protective League, working with the federal Bureau of Investigation, was one of many private right-wing "patriotic associations" that sprang up to support the war and, at the same time, fight labor unions and various left-wing and anti-war organizations. Not far behind, the U.S. Congress passed, and Wilson signed, the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. The Sedition Act criminalized any expression of opinion that used "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language" about the U.S. goverment, flag or armed forces. Government police action, private vigilante groups and public war hysteria seriously compromised the civil liberties of many loyal Americans who simply disagreed with Wilson's policies.

On the battlefields of France, the arriving fresh American divisions proved crucial in bolstering the weary Allied armies, in the Summer of 1918, as they turned back the powerful final German offensive (Second Battle of the Marne) and advanced in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive). With victory over Germany achieved a few months later on November 11, 1918, Britain, France and Italy imposed severe economic penalties on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. The United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles; instead, the United States signed separate peace treaties with Germany and her allies. The Senate also refused to enter the newly-created League of Nations on Wilson's terms, and Wilson rejected the Senate's compromise proposal.

Despite Wilson's calls for treaty terms more agreeable to Germany, the economic impact of the reparations mandated from Germany by the Versailles Treaty was severe and a direct cause of the rise of Hitler and, thus, World War II in Europe. The additional failure of the Treaty to meet Japan's imperial and colonial demands helped lay the groundwork in Japan for the rise of the Japanese military dictatorship and, thus, World War II in the Pacific.History of the United States (1918-1945)

Era Overview

The after-shock of Russia's October Revolution resulted in real fears of communism in the United States, leading to a three year Red Scare.

The United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles imposed by its Allies on the defeated Central Powers; instead, the United States signed separate peace treaties with Germany and her allies. Disillusioned by the failure of the war to achieve the high ideals promised by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points, the American people chose isolationism. They turned their attention inward, away from international relations, toward domestic affairs.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity: prices for agricultural commodities and wages fell at the end of the war while new industries grew. Rural areas fell increasingly behind urban and suburban areas which saw dramatic improvements in housing and urban planning. The boom saw an extension of credit to a dangerous degree, including in the Stock Market, which rose to dangerously inflated levels.

In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by an amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition ended in 1933 by another change to the constitution: it is considered to have been a failure.

The Stock Market crash in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression led to government efforts to re-start the economy and help its victims.

The recovery, however, was very slow. The nadir of the Great Depression was in 1933, but the economy showed very little improvement through the end of the decade, and remained grim until the increase in U.S. military spending leading up to World War II.

Isolationist sentiment in America had ebbed, but the United States at first declined to enter the war, limiting itself to giving supplies and weapons to Britain, Nationalist China, and the Soviet Union. After the sudden Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States quickly joined the British-Soviet alliance against Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, known as the "Axis Powers". Even with U.S. participation, it took nearly four more years to defeat Germany, Italy and Japan.

Red Scare from 1918 to 1920

The roots of the Red Scare lie in the efforts of the U.S. government to suppress dissent and engineer pro-war opinion in the preparation for the American entry into World War I. The war years continued to see a limited expression of anti-war sentiments. In response, the U.S. Congress and Wilson administration saw to the passage of the Sedition Act of 1918, making it illegal to speak out against U.S. government and giving the Postmaster General power to deny mail of citizens who were suspected "dissenters".

After the war, fear and hysteria abated for a few months, but did not cease. It soon resumed in the context of Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the Red Scare, and domestic labor and racial stife. To many Americans, this was a time of uncertainty and fear over the prospects of a revolution in the United States.

The Seattle General Strike, in Feburary 1919, was a general work stoppage by over 65,000 individuals in the city of Seattle. Dissatisfied workers in several unions began the strike to gain higher wages after two years of World War I wage controls. Most other local unions, including members of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), joined the walkout. Although the strike lasted less than a week, the American establishment was very disturbed by the prospect of workers shutting down major cities. Paranoia that the strike had been organized by foreign anarchists and communists, or that it shared their goals, helped lead to the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920.

During 1919, a series of more than 20 riotous and violent black-white race-related incidents occurred. These included the Chicago, Omaha, and Elaine Race Riots.

On May 1, 1919, a May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio, protesting the imprisonment of the Socialist leader, Eugene Debs, erupted into the violent May Day Riots. A series of bombings in 1919 had further enflamed the situation. The mayor of Seattle received a homemade bomb in the mail on April 28, which was defused. Senator Thomas W. Hardwick received a bomb the next day, which blew off the hands of his servant who had discovered it, severely burning him and his wife. The following morning, a New York City postal worker discovered sixteen similar packages addressed to well-known people of the time, including oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. On June 2, a bomb partially destroyed the front of the house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Palmer organized and conducted the Palmer Raids, a series of raids and arrests of socialists, anarchists, radical unionists, and immigrants. By 1920, over 10,000 people had been arrested; aliens caught up in these raids were deported.

Government action was accompanied by a public surge of patriotism, often involving violent hatred of communists, radicals, and foreigners; the government jailed many, based only upon suspicion. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar proposed sending radicals to a penal colony in Guam; General Leonard Wood called for placing them on "ships of stone with sails of lead"; evangelist Billy Sunday clamored to "stand [radicals] up before a firing squad and save space on our ships." In the Centralia massacre, a Wobblie was dragged from a town jail and hanged.

In the Wall Street bombing, on September 16, 1920, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (230 kg) of fragmented steel exploded in front of the offices of the J.P. Morgan Company, killing 40 people and injuring 300 others. Anarchists have long been suspected as initiating the attack, which followed a number of letter bombs that targeted Morgan himself. However, the identity of the bombers has never been determined.

With the 1920s, the scare dissipated as public interest moved on to other areas.

Aftermath of World War I

A popular Tin Pan Alley song of 1919 asked, concerning the United States troops returning from World War I, "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On the Farm After They've Seen Paree?". In fact, many did not remain "down on the farm", as there was a great migration of formerly rural population to the cities. However, agriculture became increasingly mechanized with widespread use of the tractor, so fewer farmers were needed to produce a greater harvest of food.

US President Woodrow Wilson campaigned for the U.S. to join the new League of Nations without success, as the mood of the nation rejected Wilson's brand of foreign interventionism. Lack of U.S. participation in the League left that putative peace-keeping organzation fatally crippled, helpless to deal with the rise of international aggression in the 1930s.

War reparations from the Treaty of Versailles left post-World-War-I Germany in a state of turmoil and no payments flowing to the Allies. Thanks to the American-sponsored Dawes Plan, Germany regained a degree of prosperity in the mid-1920s and seemed on its way to becoming a stable democracy. After the Great Depression hit, it was clear that Germany could not again pay reparations. The Young Plan then replaced the Dawes Plan. After the German election of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Germany repudiated all reparations.

After a long period of agitation (beginning in 1869), U.S. women were able to obtain the necessary political support to obtain the vote. In 1919, Wilson successfully urged Contress to pass the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was ratified by the States in time for women to participate in the 1920 Presidential and Congressional elections. Women still lacked various legal rights in many U.S. jurisdictions and continued to be subject to various forms of open and covert discrimination.