Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (51 page)

April 20
The Easter Uprising begins. Organized with German assistance, the Irish rebellion is supposed to create a diversionary revolution in Ireland to distract Great Britain from the war in Europe. On Good Friday, April 21, both a German ship delivering arms to Ireland and a German U-boat carrying Sir Roger Casement to lead the uprising are captured by the British, who have discovered the plan through their intelligence reports. On Easter Monday, April 24, the Citizens’ Army strikes in Dublin without Casement’s leadership or the expected weapons, and takes over several buildings. A few days later, British troops recapture Dublin and put down the rebellion. Casement is quickly tried and hanged, as are fifteen of the rebels from Dublin. Seen as harsh “tyranny,” the executions are a severe blow to British prestige in America, while the German complicity is overlooked. American sentiment for England falls to its wartime low.

June 16
Wilson is renominated by the Democrats under the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” all the while preparing the nation for entrance into the war on the Allied side. Running on a platform of “Peace and Preparedness,” he is nearly defeated by Charles Evans Hughes, a Supreme Court justice and former governor of New York who has the bellicose Teddy Roosevelt’s still-influential support. It takes a week after Election Day to confirm that Wilson has carried California, where Hughes inadvertently snubbed the popular Republican governor, who then failed to campaign for him; this gaffe may have cost Hughes the state and the White House. By a thin popular and electoral margin, Wilson wins a second term. The East is solidly Republican, but the Democrat Wilson keeps the South and West. As a referendum on war policy, the election makes it clear that Americans want to stay out of the conflict. A few weeks after the election, Wilson asks the warring powers for their conditions for peace.

1917

January 22
In a speech to Congress, Wilson calls for a league of peace, an organization to promote the resolution of conflicts. But neither side is willing to agree to negotiations while holding on to the prospect of victory.

January 31
Having rapidly built its submarine fleet to over one hundred boats, Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare, believing it can starve the Allies into submission in six months.

February 3
Citing the German decision, Wilson breaks diplomatic relations with Germany.

February 24
In what will become known as the Zimmermann Telegram incident, the British Secret Service intercepted a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador in Mexico, attempting to incite Mexico to join Germany’s side in the event of war with the United States. In return, Germany promises to help Mexico recover Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The British have held the note until an appropriate moment when its revelations will presumably push Wilson over the brink of his wavering neutrality and into war. After the telegram is released, there is an angry public outcry over what is considered German treachery.

February 26
After asking Congress for permission to arm merchant ships, Wilson is told by his attorney general that he has that power. He issues the directive on March 9.

March 15
The Czar of Russia is forced to abdicate after the Russian Revolution. The U.S. government recognizes the new government formed by Aleksandr Kerensky.

March 12–21
Five more American ships are sunk, all without warning.

April 2
Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

WILSON’S
war request to Congress:

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at least free.

Wilson’s speech was met with wild applause, and Congress overwhelmingly approved war a few days later. After delivering the speech, Wilson told an aide, “My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.”

One of the only dissenting voices in Congress is that of Nebraska Senator George W. Norris, who speaks against the declaration of war, voicing the view of the war’s opponents that it is a fight for profits rather than for principles. Quoting from a letter written by a member of the New York Stock Exchange favoring the war and the bull market it would produce, Norris denounces the Wall Street view:

Here we have the man representing the class of people who will be made prosperous should we become entangled in the present war, who have already made millions of dollars, and who will make many hundreds of millions more if we get into the war. Here we have the cold-blooded proposition that war brings prosperity. . . . Wall Street . . . see[s] only dollars coming to them through the handling of stocks and bonds that will be necessary in case of war.

Their object in having war and in preparing for war is to make money. Human suffering and sacrifice of human life are necessary, but Wall Street considers only the dollars and the cents. . . . The stock brokers would not, of course, go to war. . . . They will be concealed in their palatial offices on Wall Street, sitting behind mahogany desks.

May 18
The Selective Service Act is passed, authorizing the registration and drafting of males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. (The Supreme Court upholds the government’s right of conscription in January 1918 under the constitutional power to declare war and raise and support armies.) General John J. Pershing will lead the first contingent of Americans, the American Expeditionary Force, to France on June 24. The Rainbow Division, under Colonel Douglas MacArthur, will reach Europe on November 30.

June
The Espionage Act is passed by Congress, ostensibly to prevent spying. However, it is used chiefly to silence American critics of the war. A year after its passage, Eugene Debs, the Socialist leader and presidential candidate, is arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for making a speech that “obstructed recruiting.” Debs actually ran for president again in 1920 from prison, and was eventually pardoned by President Harding after serving thirty-two months.

July 4
The first military training field for airmen opens. At the outset of war the army has fifty-five planes; by war’s end there were nearly 17,000 planes in service.

November 6
The Kerensky government is overthrown by the Bolsheviks, who make peace with Germany in March 1918. The United States denies recognition of the new government.

December 7
The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1918

January 8
Wilson’s Fourteen Points for Peace speech. The speech outlines a generous and liberal attempt to settle the war. The last of the points states, “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” (This point will form the nucleus of the League of Nations.) Allied reaction is tepid. French prime minister Clemenceau says the Fourteen Points “bore him,” and adds, “Even Almighty God has only ten.”

March 21
Attempting a final concentrated assault before U.S. forces are fully involved, German troops mass for an offensive on the western front. Their eastern front is safe after the November treaty with the Bolsheviks and the collapse of the Italian forces. After an initial thrust, the Germans force the Allied lines back forty miles.

April 14
Named commander of Allied forces, French General Ferdinand Foch pleads for more troops, and 313,000 soldiers arrive by July.

June 25
After two weeks of fighting, a U.S. Marine brigade captures Belleau Wood. Casualties are nearly 9,500, more than half the brigade’s entire strength.

July 17
The Allies halt the German drive in the second Battle of the Marne. A German offensive is repulsed, and an Allied counteroffensive at Soissons turns the tide.

August
Ten thousand American troops join in a Japanese invasion of Russian territory, occupying Vladivostok and some of Siberia. American troops become involved in the internal fighting as they join “White Russians” in the fighting against the Bolsheviks, and more than 500 Americans die fighting in Russia.

August 10
General Pershing establishes an independent American army with Allied permission. Colonel George C. Marshall is made operations officer.

September 14
American forces under Pershing take the salient at Saint-Mihiel.

September 26
More than 1 million Allied troops, including 896,000 Americans, join for an offensive in the last major battle of the war. Casualties reach 120,000. At the same time, British forces farther north crack the German line of defense, the Hindenburg Line.

October 3
Germany forms a parliamentary government as the army collapses and the navy revolts. The kaiser abdicates, and Germany begins peace overtures based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points.

October 30
Austria asks Italy for an armistice and surrenders on November 4.

November 11
Germany signs an armistice treaty at 5
A.M.
, and six hours later, at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,” fighting ends. (For years, the day would be honored in America as Armistice Day, but in 1954 it was changed to Veterans Day, a federal holiday honoring all Americans who have fought or served in defense of the United States.)

1919

June 28
The Treaty of Versailles is signed, under which Germany is required to admit guilt, return the rich Alsace-Lorraine region to France, surrender its overseas colonies, and pay reparations that total $32 billion—reparations that won’t be collected. (Germany spent more than $100 billion to finance the war.) Under the treaty, German rearmament is strictly limited, and the Allies take temporary control of the German economy. The League of Nations is accepted by all signatories, but a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, left out of the treaty negotiations by Wilson, refuses to ratify the treaty. Without American participation, the League of Nations is doomed to pointlessness.

September 25
On a cross-country tour to promote popular support for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, President Wilson suffers a stroke in Colorado. Only a few insiders are allowed to see him, including Wilson’s wife, Edith (who literally makes presidential decisions during his recovery), his doctor, his secretary, and Bernard Baruch. Wilson should have turned over the reins of government to his vice president, but doesn’t. By November 1, he is sufficiently recovered to appear in control once more. During his absence, the Senate has hardened against the treaty and refuses to ratify it.

What was the cost of World War I?

The cost of the “war to end all wars” was nightmarish. Some 10 million died on the battlefields of Europe. Almost an entire generation of young men was decimated in Russia and France. The Russian combat death toll was 1,700,000; 1,357,000 French soldiers died, and 908,000 British. On the Central Powers side, German dead numbered 1,800,000; Austrians 1,200,000; and 325,000 Turks died in combat. Those were the dead fighters—another 20 million people died of disease, hunger, and other war-related causes. Six million more were left crippled. American losses for its short-term involvement in the war were 130,174 dead and missing and more than 200,000 wounded. The American wartime bill totaled around $32 billion.

Given these losses, the Allies were not in a forgiving mood, and the Versailles Treaty showed that they expected Germany to pay for the war that everyone had helped to start. But far more dangerous than the impossible economic terms demanded of Germany, Austria, and Turkey under the postwar settlements was the reshaping of the world map. Hungary, once part of a huge empire, lost two-thirds of its lands and was reduced to fewer than 8 million people. The independent states of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, with a corridor to the Baltic, were arbitrarily carved out of former Austro-Hungarian and German territory. Almost 3 million Austro-Germans were incorporated into Czechoslovakia. They were known as Sudeten Germans, and that name would loom large a few years later when a rebuilt Germany decided to annex the Sudetenland. The other half of the former empire became tiny Austria. And in 1939, it, too, would become part of the rationale for Germany’s aggression.