World War I began in 1914 but America remained neutral until its entrance into the war in 1917. The U-boats sinking of the British liner Lusitania in 1915, the sinking of five American ships in 1917, and the “Zimmerman telegram” sent from Germany to Mexico led up to America’s declaration of war. America’s involvement in World War I not only impacted the war front but also the home front.
When America entered World War I in 1917 the U.S. Government enforced many measures on its citizens. Some of these measures violated constitutional rights. The biggest measure inflicted on the American population was censorship. The formation of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and the passing of the Espionage Act and Sedition Amendment were the biggest contributors.
In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson recruited George Creel to head the CPI, a government agency established to spread pro-war propaganda to the country. The CPI defined patriotism as supporting the government’s policies, sacrificing for the good of the nation, and defending the country against its enemies. Creel sought the most talented and popular writers, artist, speakers, and singers to help inflame patriotism in the hearts and minds of the American people. The CPI’s propaganda used emotional appeal and demonization to win over Americans and promote patriotism. The success of the CPI’s propaganda ignited great dissension towards those opposed to the war. This led to an ideology that any American not in support of the war must be a traitor. Citizens took it upon themselves to enforce patriotism to those accused of disloyalty. Such enforcement included wrapping a woman in a flag and the deportation of striking copper miners in Arizona to the New Mexico de...
... middle of paper ...
... to freedom of speech.
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul S. et al. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume II: Since 1865, 7th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011, 2008), 682-692.
Digital History. “America at War: World War I.” Last modified April 4, 2011. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display_printable.cfm?HHID=531.
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress. “Loyalty.” Gerard, James W. Accessed April 5, 2011. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/nfor:@field%28SUBJ+@od1%28World+War,+1914-1918--Collaborationists--United+States+%29%29#text.
Snider, Christy Jo. "Patriots and Pacifists: The Rhetorical Debate about Peace, Patriotism, and Internationalism, 1914-1930," Rhetoric & Public Affairs Volume 8, Number 1 (Spring 2005): 59-83, accessed July 19, 2010, doi: 10.1353/rap.2005.0048
In the book, America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience, Robert H. Zieger discusses the events between 1914 through 1920 forever defined the United States in the Twentieth Century. When conflict broke out in Europe in 1914, the President, Woodrow Wilson, along with the American people wished to remain neutral. In the beginning of the Twentieth Century United States politics was still based on the “isolationism” ideals of the previous century. The United States did not wish to be involved in European politics or world matters. The U.S. goal was to expand trade and commerce throughout the world and protect the borders of North America.
With the conflicts on the other sides of the oceans, Americans would not witness the brutality, destruction, and suffering of civilians and soldiers alike. ?Only the United States was not both a destroyer and a victim of the destruction in the war.? (73) The civilians of the United States, therefore, relied on other sources to shape their view of World War II. ?Ads implied that if you bought a war bond your sacrifice was on par with that of the man in the front lines.? (74) The US government and industry played on Americans? sense of patriotism in order to get them to support the war or buy their products. However, ?it [advertising] is by nature emotional, rather than intellectual; it sells feelings rather than ideas.? (73) Government propaganda and business advertising were not the only factors in forming the inaccurate myth of the Second World War.
Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. D.C. Heath and Company, Mass. © 1990
It had seemed that ambiguity was arise in the forming nation, and was still establishing a central ideal for political issues to which it had no precedent. Would the strategy be to declare to the public a message of brutal warfare against a savage nation? Or the protection of the United States and its freedoms by a self-defensive action of declaring war against its former ally? Both would be approached vigorously by Ames to attempt to inform the public and gather a central and nationalized view in order to succeed against these heinous a...
When the United States entered WWI in 1917, Congress passed a law called the Espionage Act. The law stated that during wartime obstructing the draft and trying to make soldiers disloyal or disobedient were crimes against the United States (Schenck v. United States). Almost 2,000 people broke this law; they were accused of violating this law and were put on trial. Charles Schenck was one of them; he was against the war, and was the general secretary of the Socialist Party of America. He believed that the war had been caused by and would benefit only the rich, while causing suffering and death for the thousands of poor and working-class soldiers who would do the actual fighting in Europe. He mailed thousands of pamphlets to men who had been drafted into the armed forces. The government looked at this as a threat to the country and also to the people. These pa...
The scare of not being united under a time of war was the cause of the Espionage and Sedition acts. These acts immediately caused the unfair conviction of Schenek and put him in prison. Although he was utilizing his freedom of speech, the unfair laws passed through the government by Woodrow Wilson, Congress, and the Supreme Court forbade him his civil liberties.
Maier, Wendy A. "Adolf Hitler." In World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2005. Accessed February 4, 2014. http://worldatwar.abc-clio.com/.
The American Revolution was a time when colonial peoples were forced to develop a Patriot identity separate from that of the British. The evolution of espionage provides a paradigm case to support the shift in identity. The role of espionage is really only seen through the eyes of the British and the Patriots, the loyalists in the colonies are absent from the narrative. This paper argues that the use of espionage during the American revolution and the consequences that it brought developed a distinct American identity by analyzing the societal benefit it played in the colonies (the motivation that drove American’s to spy), the exclusion of members with loyalist sympathies found by John Honeyman and Enoch Crosby and its reputation within the colonial side.
Adams, Michael C. C. The "Best War Ever: America and World War II" Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 1994. Bailey, Ronald H. The Home Front, U.S.A. Time-Life Publishing, Chicago, IL. 1978 Bard, Mitchell G.
World War I may not have made the world safe for democracy, but it did help to lay the groundwork for a decade of American economic expansion. The war began in Europe in 1914, and the United States entered the fray in 1917. The 1920s saw the growth of the culture of consumerism. A significant reason for United States involvement in the war was the nation’s economic links to the Allied Powers, and especially to Great Britain. American soldiers returned home in May 1919 with the promise of a prosperous decade (Baughman 197).
Barnett, Correlli. World War II: Persuading the People. Orbis Publishing Limited, 1972. Pgs. 76 -- 102.
O'Neill, William L. World War II: A Student Companion. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
... was strictly a congressman’s war. “With all the silence and dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfishness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up and fold your arms.” She claimed that if Americans could strike against the war we could “Be heroes in an army of construction” (Keller, 4).
The events leading American to go to extreme measures to protect their democracy against a communist takeover did not first appear with the creation of the blacklist, it began in the late 1900’s and early 1920’s a result to the First World War. Americans were intensely patriotic and more than ever protective of the American way of life, capitalism, wage systems, and heirachary of social class. The concern of a government takeover effected the perception of labor strikes and social welfare program, and as a result they were conside...
Not four months earlier, the American people re-elected President Wilson, partly because of his success in keeping the United States out of this European war. However, a series of events, such as the Germans continuing submarine warfare and the attacks on five American ships, led President Wilson to sever diplomatic relations with Germany and send the United States into what would be labeled as World War I. As a result of the war, Government enacted the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 which led to the suppression of anti-war documents and sentiments, as well as the prosecution of over two-thousand individuals. # Despite earlier resistance to the war by the American people, once war was declared patriotism swept over the nation. However, patriotism rose to it?s peak and quickly turned into an intolerance for any kind of dissidence from the war. With a general intolerance for opponents of the war the government began to repress groups advocating against the war, as did private organizations.