8) Tuesday, February 13. Woodrow Wilson and the Great War

Story Line:
World War One is a short but major turning point in defining modern America as a strange mixture of organization and idealism. How did Americans build their first industrial-military complex? What did it mean for Americans to "make the world safe for democracy"?

Review Questions for Discussion V

 

[Lecture 7] Outline [Lecture 9]

Readings for lecture 8

  • Document Number: DJ2113102101;
  • Document Number: DJ2113102102;
  • Document Number: DJ2113102103
  • Woodrow Wilson's 14 points, 1918
  • Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929
  • John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers, 1921
  • General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces, 1919

Images for lecture 8:


Lawrence Sperry in Flight, 1914
Pershing Disembarking at Boulogne-Sur-Mer in France, 1917
American Troops in Paris, Rue de Rivoli, 1918

If You Cannot Enlist-Invest, c.1917
Are You 100% American?
Gassed (detail)
Lecture Outline [return to top]

 

I. Who Was Woodrow Wilson?

II. Place of the United States in the World at the Time of the Wilson Presidency

III. From United States Neutrality to Declaration of War

1) Chronology of United States intervention

2) Wilson as Commander in Chief and the 14 points (January 8, 1918).

IV. Domestic Consequences of the War

1) War Propaganda

2) Strengthening the IRS.

3) Building the military and an intelligence community.

4) World War One as Dress Rehearsal for the Military Industrial Complex

Pictorial interlude

V. United States Intervention

1) The battlefield

2) Germany's Exclusion from the Bargaining Table

3) The Treaty Was Ambiguous

VI. The Long Run. Will Wilsonianim Outlive the War?

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