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Transcript
0:00 · good afternoon everybody and let me add my welcome to NSS week into Carlisle barracks and to the great state of
0:05 · Pennsylvania my home state I'm gonna give this lecture today they've asked me to also let you know that this is going
0:11 · to be put on the army war colleges YouTube channel in case you don't get enough of it once and you want to see it again you have that option what I want
0:18 · to talk about is America's entry into the first world war in 1917 which happened just over a hundred years ago
0:24 · this month and it's a subject that we as a community of historians I think have treated particularly badly there's not a
0:31 · lot of research on it what does exist is mostly focused on Woodrow Wilson who as I hope to show you here is really not
0:37 · all that relevant to the story and the tale that I like to tell folks my daughter came home a couple of years ago
0:42 · with a homework she had to do for high school asking what event led to America entering the First World War and she was
0:48 · so excited that she was studying something that I was interested in and she came to me and said dad what do I Circle and I said well they're all wrong
0:55 · but circles see because that's the one your teacher wants which confuses a 10th
1:01 · grader but for the record see was of course the sinking of the Lusitania which occurred in May of 1915 which
1:08 · almost by definition therefore can't be a proximate cause of something that happens two years later now as I hope to
1:14 · show you here the Lusitania is important but not because it led the United States into the first world war what I'd like
1:20 · to do is take you on a little bit of a journey and the man that I want to use for this is a North Carolina newspaperman named Walter Hines Paige
1:26 · who became Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to Great Britain in 1914 now Paige had
1:32 · no background in diplomacy he had absolutely no background in foreign affairs he went there because he had
1:38 · been one of the earliest supporters of Wilson in a critical State North Carolina when the war broke out in
1:44 · August of 1914 Walter Hines page wrote a letter to Woodrow Wilson that ended like this now whenever I thank heaven for the
1:51 · Atlantic Ocean thank God we are out of it in other words this is none of our concern it doesn't affect us in any way
1:57 · we're gonna help the people who are disadvantaged by this war Walter Hines page is pro-british and pro-french when
2:04 · the war begins in his mindset that is he wants Britain and France to win the war but it's not our fight just over a year
2:10 · later he wrote another letter to Wilson which he said if Germany wins the Monroe
2:16 · Doctrine will be shot through we shall have to have a great Army and Navy and I always pause here to remind folks he
2:22 · meant this negatively he meant that the United States which had paid almost nothing for its Army and Navy had had
2:30 · its security on the cheap was now gonna have to invest in a conscript army like the German and a modern Navy like the
2:36 · British and he thought that was bad in another letter written about the same time he said we're going to have to make
2:41 · a choice to build one battleship or one University per month and it was quite clear he preferred the University but
2:48 · suppose that England wins we shall then have merely an academic dispute with her it is a matter of life or death for
2:56 · english-speaking civilization and what I was really interested in in putting the book together that this talk is based on
3:01 · is how the United States went for now and ever I think heaven for the Atlantic Ocean thank God we're out of it so now
3:07 · it's a matter of life and death what's happened in those 1415 months now I
3:12 · could have picked a lot of people that went through this similar arc Walter Hines page to me is the most interesting
3:18 · both because of how vehement he is about this how early he is in this process and
3:24 · what he did next he left London came to the United States hoping to get some
3:29 · time with Woodrow Wilson to convince him that this war would eventually drag the United States in and that he as
3:35 · president better start doing something about it he got to the White House to find out that Wilson was doing everything he
3:41 · could to avoid him wouldn't meet with him so Walter Hines page went down to shadow Lawn which was Wilson's residence
3:47 · on the Jersey Shore it's no longer there near Long Beach Island New Jersey and literally sat on the president's front
3:53 · porch until Wilson showed up that's how convinced page was that something was going on here so what I want to do is
4:00 · kind of take you through that arc and then carry it a little bit further now the first thing I want to do is dispel a couple of myths the most important of
4:06 · which is the idea that still pops up in American history textbooks now and again that the American people were just
4:12 · ignoring the First World War just weren't paying any attention to it when the first world war broke out in July
4:18 · August of 1914 European government started selling their security started selling the stocks that they owned in
4:24 · American companies converting that money dollar for dollar into gold which was legal in 1914 and then trying to get
4:31 · that gold back to Europe the United States government recognizing that if that continued the US would quite
4:37 · literally run out of gold took the extraordinary step of ordering the New York Stock Exchange the Chicago Stock
4:44 · Exchange and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange all to be closed and they stayed closed until after Thanksgiving
4:50 · 1914 you can imagine what that did to Americans even those that don't own stocks what a shock that was and you
4:58 · could also see this by taking just a simple look at American newspapers which are covering the First World War
5:03 · covering the events in Europe constantly you're gonna see a lot of things here from Pittsburgh both because that's
5:09 · where I'm from and because welcome that's the only reason really this is an ad from the Pittsburgh Gazette times a
5:15 · newspaper that no longer exists it's now part of the Pittsburgh post-gazette I guess it does exist advertising that they had signed on with the New York Sun
5:22 · to get the war reports of Richard Harding Davis who was then the most famous of the American war
5:27 · correspondents somebody everybody in America would have known a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt's he's actually at
5:32 · San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt in the spanish-american war he covered the Russell Japanese war 1904-1905
5:39 · and when this war breaks out he went to New York City he got on the first boat he could book passage on it turns out to
5:45 · be the Lusitania to get to Europe as quickly as he possibly can and here is the Pittsburgh is at times telling its
5:52 · readers we have Richard Harding Davis it's also the case that very early on in
5:57 · the war most Americans are sympathetic to the British in the French and there are plenty of reasons for that that we
6:03 · can talk about very few Americans want to do anything about it but their sympathies are clearly pro-british and
6:09 · prevention that's going to continue and I'll show you a little bit of why that is so important as this goes on this is
6:15 · even true among many communities that are pro-german that are German excuse me or are Irish and we'll talk a little bit
6:23 · more about this as things go on but from the beginning there's a clear distinctive measurable obvious sympathy
6:28 · with the two democracies of Britain and France against the military societies of Germany and austria-hungary russia
6:35 · here's a little bit of a difficult exception because russia is one of the allies but it too is militarist and
6:40 · autocrat so that's a little bit of a complicating factor and as I'll talk about in a little bit America's entry into the war
6:46 · comes shortly after the Russian Revolution that takes the tsar out of the picture it's that event that allows
6:53 · Woodrow Wilson to make the claim that this is a war to make the world safe for democracy he can't use those words until
6:59 · the Tsar is deposed and I want to tell you a story about another Pittsburgh person she's from Sewickley Pennsylvania just outside Pittsburgh this is Mary
7:06 · Roberts Rinehart in her day she was known for writing mysteries like this one the circular staircase probably her
7:12 · best-known book as a good historian I read it it's not very good she was also a muckraking progressive political
7:19 · reporter and very very very well known in her day the story goes in as soon as
7:25 · the war had broken out right about September of 1914 The Saturday Evening Post invited her to come to New York
7:31 · City for a big dinner and the editors surprised her by saying I have arranged for you to go to the great capitals of
7:39 · Europe to meet the president and his wife and Paris the Kaiser and his wife in Germany the Emperor and his wife in
7:46 · Vienna and the king and queen in London I've also arranged for you Mary Roberts Rinehart to be the first female
7:52 · correspondent allowed into the trenches and I'll pay you $1,000 per dispatch if
7:57 · you'll do it which is an enormous sum of money it's not bad even today for a journalist to get the story goes that
8:04 · her husband stood up and said my wife isn't going I forbid it and Mary Roberts Rinehart then stood up
8:10 · looked her husband right in the eye and said the greatest thing in the history of my life is not going by without me
8:15 · being a part of it then the husband said to the editor of The Saturday Evening Post give me a $10,000 insurance policy on
8:22 · her life and I'll let her go be that as it may be that as it may
8:28 · Mary Roberts Rinehart went to Europe in the fall and early spring of 1914 and
8:33 · 1915 and the things that she saw and the things that she did are really important
8:38 · in the dispatches that she wrote back to Europe and what I want to do is cover really four themes in her writing that
8:44 · are important and again she comes back just before the sinking of the Lusitania just literally weeks before first she
8:52 · wrote in The Saturday Evening Post as did Richard Harding Davis and any other of the great reporters that
8:57 · they were gonna go to Europe and condemn both sides but this war was an idiocy perpetuated by everybody nevertheless
9:04 · the more Mary Roberts Rinehart was there the more Richard Harding Davis was there
9:09 · the more they started writing about how the Allies were in fact in the right that France was in the war for the most
9:16 · just reason of all another army had crossed its border that Britain was in
9:21 · the war to defend the international rule of law to defend the borders of Belgium to
9:26 · defend the principles that the international system was built upon the second thing she argued is that the
9:33 · British media was nevertheless lying to the American people they were telling
9:38 · atrocity tales that weren't true they were trying to inflate the bad things
9:43 · that the Germans were doing so she said as did Richard Harding Davis don't believe them believe what we Americans
9:50 · have seen with our own eyes Richard Harding Davis was in the belgian university city of Leuven when the
9:55 · Germans burned it they locked him in a railway car to try to prevent him from seeing what was going on nevertheless he
10:01 · manages to kind of push the boards apart and pierce through and whatever and can see what's happening then they release
10:07 · him and he can walk through the town he can talk to German officers who say yeah we torched this town to teach these Belgians a lesson notice we didn't touch
10:14 · the American consulate see we're okay we're good right American reporters are telling Americans what we've seen what
10:20 · we can prove is bad enough don't believe the British atrocity stories third she
10:27 · argued that if the United States had to get involved in the war Americans should fight for American goals the United
10:34 · States should under no circumstances be tricked into fighting this war merely to rescue the British and the French from
10:40 · their own mistakes if however this war were to affect American interests the
10:46 · United States should fight it and forth she argued again this is right before the Lusitania America should start
10:53 · thinking about this problem now it is not a good idea to wait and hope that as
10:59 · she described it the fire in your neighbor's house won't reach your roof it's time to start thinking about this
11:05 · now and those are themes from Mary Roberts Rinehart they're all so themes from Richard Harding Davis a
11:10 · bunch of others there were even a couple of American war correspondents who tried to sign up and join the French army
11:15 · while they were over there only to be talked out of it by their editors that's how strongly they come to feel for the
11:21 · British and French side the more that they see it this is a page from her diary as you can see there it's kind of
11:28 · had difficult handwriting to read but that's another great challenge of the historian to read that kind of stuff
11:33 · this sense the first face of America's involvement with the First World War for the purposes of this lecture ii happens
11:39 · when she comes back and then the Lusitania is sunk by the Germans and we can talk much more about it if anybody
11:44 · is interested the bottom line is that 128 Americans are killed on a cruise liner that no German sea captain could
11:52 · have mistaken for any other ship the Lusitania is one of a kind the question
11:57 · is how do you want to respond as Americans the recently Lusitania
12:02 · appeared as see on my daughter's homework is because the sinking of the Lusitania now raises this question now
12:10 · you can't just sit on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and pretend that this won't affect you now you have to make a
12:16 · decision and there are at least three schools of thought one is the former American President Theodore Roosevelt
12:22 · who says now is the time to cut diplomatic relations with Germany now is the time to internationally define them
12:29 · as an outlaw and now is the time to start getting ready to send an American army and navy into this war if we have
12:35 · to do it to protect American interests at the other end of the spectrum is the American Secretary of State William
12:41 · Jennings Bryan who says no the way to approach this is to ban Americans from traveling into a war zone the way to
12:48 · keep Americans safe is to keep us as far away from this as we possibly can Woodrow Wilson is going to try to chart
12:55 · a middle ground as he's going to try to do for about three years make the Germans admit that they did something
13:00 · wrong but don't risk war and it appears that his was the most popular course of
13:06 · action in 1915 there's no enthusiasm if you scan American newspaper editorials look at members of Congress look at what
13:13 · even Mary Roberts Rinehart is saying there's no enthusiasm for going to war however there is every desire for the
13:21 · United States to make point that Germany can't get away with this that's what Wilson's trying to do
13:26 · and that's the original line of debate that starts to get set up William Jennings Bryan at the one end resigned
13:32 · as Secretary of State because he couldn't stomach Wilson's policy he thought it was too aggressive on the other end of the spectrum Theodore
13:38 · Roosevelt and a bunch of his friends in the Republican Party started criticizing Wilson openly for having acted to tame
13:46 · Lee Wilson stuck in the middle of this the Germans also get blamed in the
13:53 · United States for a rash of other things besides the Lusitania they get blamed
13:58 · for the Armenian Genocide this is a cartoon from the New York Herald which shows the gudgeon york tribune
14:03 · excuse me which shows Kaiser Wilhelm wearing an ottoman Fez and carrying an ottoman scimitar which is dripping with
14:09 · blood and the caption reads alum it tunes a take-off on the German belt buckles got mittens God is with us
14:15 · American newspapers argued that the Ottoman Empire would never have been
14:20 · able to massacre that many Armenian Christians without at least the German saying that it was okay now we know now
14:27 · that there were many German officers who are thoroughly appalled by what the Ottomans were doing but what actually happened matters less than what people
14:33 · believe is happening right there was a sabotage campaign here in the United
14:38 · States run by German agents we know about it although we've largely forgotten it today if you go to New York City to Liberty State Park in New Jersey
14:44 · that used to be the black Tom railway depot where all the munitions and all the steel and all the everything made in
14:51 · Cleveland and Pittsburgh in Chicago all came to Jersey City to be shipped overseas in July 1916 while the German
14:58 · army was fighting the Battle of the Somme against the British where most of those weapons were destined to end up to
15:03 · German agents blew it up and then managed to get to Mexico before they could find out deadliest act of
15:09 · terrorism in American history before 9/11 you can still go to Liberty State Park beautiful view of Manhattan but if
15:15 · you go to the back of the park you can still see the piers where the Germans did this there was a railway bridge between Vance borough Maine and Nova
15:21 · Scotia that the Germans tried to blow up before police caught them there's a series of these things there were two German officials one as a naval attache
15:29 · one's a commercial attache that Wilson finally had to declare persona non grata and expel them from the United States
15:35 · one of them is a man by the name of Franz von Papen who was the last Chancellor of Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler right a major sabotage
15:42 · campaign that's going on the first year I was here at the War College I went down to the New York City trip we went we all the whole class goes to New York
15:48 · for a couple of days and I had the address of the building the Germans ran the spy operation out of and I thought
15:54 · well I'm gonna be in downtown New York let's see what it is today it is the international headquarters of Deutsche Bank today so there you go
16:03 · the question again is what should the United States do about this what should the United States do and
16:10 · that cartoon I had at the beginning of the dogs than neutral dogs now the image
16:16 · that Americans start to use it's a curious image is that what the United States ought to do instead of being a neutral dog what the United States ought
16:23 · to become as a porcupine an animals strong enough to defend itself but of no
16:28 · threat to anybody else that can't hurt the other animals in the jungle there are other Americans who are starting to
16:33 · use this phrase of preparedness they are arguing that the United States has to
16:39 · build what they sometimes call a peace army build something strong enough so
16:45 · that the Germans the French the British the Russians anybody out there has to take the United States seriously have a
16:52 · military strong enough that nobody would dare sink a ship that has 128 Americans sitting on it and this begins this
16:59 · program called preparedness and for lots of reasons that I'd be happy to talk about in QA it's a fascinating
17:04 · fascinating thing the US government is happy to spend money on ships navies are
17:10 · easier to spend money on than armies are the argument can be that they're out there projecting American power and
17:16 · they're protecting the coastlines if on the other hand you want to build a very large army the question that then comes
17:22 · is what are you going to do with it and some of you may know some of the things that come out of this Theodore
17:28 · Roosevelt and his friend General Leonard Wood and the United States Army General decide that if the United States
17:33 · government isn't gonna do this we'll do it and they create these things called the Plattsburgh camps in upstate New
17:39 · York in 1915 and 1916 where young men most of them college students at elite universities spend their own money go up
17:47 · to Plattsburgh New York and get yelled by retired army officers voluntarily they do this now again Theodore
17:53 · Roosevelt doesn't think this is going to create the basis of a wartime army what he thinks it will do is shame Woodrow
17:59 · Wilson into doing something about it the United States Army comes up with a plan
18:05 · called the Continental Army plan very famous at least in its day the Continental Army plan begins from the
18:11 · presumption that the United States Army as currently organized is a mess in 1916
18:18 · the United States Army was basically one central army the US Army and 48 State
18:23 · National Guard's meaning that if the US Army had to go to war it would technically have 49 commanders-in-chief
18:30 · 49 systems of training 49 standards of weaponry 49 different ways of doing
18:36 · business the Secretary of War a New Jersey Presbyterian minister named
18:42 · William Lindley garrison no military experience at all a progressive reformer took a look at that and said that's
18:47 · ridiculous what we have to do is replace all those National Guard's get rid of all of them and replace them with one
18:54 · Continental Army of 500,000 men the initial work is done by the US Army War
18:59 · College on how you would do this so I have a headline somewhere if it slides somewhere with a headline that says Army War College wants 500,000 man army right
19:08 · just so you know right you guys were doing this even then even a hundred years ago garrison pitches the plan to Wilson he
19:15 · probably leaked it to the media as well and 48 governors and most of the House
19:20 · of Representatives lose their minds you can't have one central army we want this
19:26 · done through the National Guard garrison went to Wilson and said you got to do something about this you're the President of the United States we can't
19:33 · fight the German army with 49 different systems Wilson said I can't support the Continental Army plan there isn't enough
19:39 · political support and I'm not putting my political capital behind it garrison and his Assistant Secretary of War Henry
19:44 · Breckinridge both resigned in protest in the middle of a presidential election the result is something called the 1916
19:52 · National Defense Act which says that the National Guard stays in place but can be federalized in the event of an emergency
19:58 · it ends the Plattsburgh program in favor of something that becomes called Reserve Officer Training Corps program
20:04 · to educate young men at the American universities and campuses and to
20:09 · Garrison's absolute fury it took the money he wanted for the modernization of
20:14 · the United States Army and gave it to the state National Guard's to modernize them as a result the United States Army
20:22 · is not prepared for this war when it began in 1917 there's also a very nasty end of this to garrison believed if the
20:30 · US Army was going to get to 500 or 600 thousand men it had to recruit those men
20:35 · irrespective of race it had to recruit African Americans and white soldiers and
20:40 · immigrants on an equal basis this is at a time when only two states in the united states allowed african-americans
20:46 · to serve in their National Guard's Illinois New York that's it both both in segregated companies I
20:52 · might add right so there is a race too element to this that Wilson was also unwilling to accept what happens to me
20:59 · is fascinating to me it's absolutely fascinating when it becomes obvious that preparedness is not gonna do what
21:06 · American needs it to do when it becomes obvious that there's going to be a lot of parades but little else American
21:13 · corporations step in this is an ad from AT&T
21:18 · it has in the semi circle there Paul Revere making his midnight ride in 1775
21:24 · and on the right it has hopefully an Army War College graduate 1916 in front
21:31 · of a map of the Bell Telephone system and the ad says in it's wonderful preparedness to inform its citizens of a
21:37 · national need the United States stands alone and unequaled it can command the entire Bell Telephone system which
21:43 · completely covers our country with its network of wires individual American companies stepped up the Pennsylvania
21:51 · Railroad then the largest corporation in the world its CEO said any employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad that wants to
21:57 · take military training we will guarantee them their job will continue to pay their salary and will pay the cost of
22:03 · the training Thomas Edison formed a committee for American scientific preparedness to get science organized
22:10 · Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic formed a committee of American medical preparedness
22:16 · it's all done to say to the US government why aren't you doing more why aren't you organizing it at the
22:22 · federal level right and my favorite example of all Columbia University whose president was a pacifist sent a memo out
22:31 · to the Columbia University faculty saying the army is organized by g1 g2 g3 put your name on this form which of
22:38 · those G things you can help if the country finds itself in a national emergency and every member of the
22:45 · Columbia faculty put their name on that form the history department the history department led daily calisthenics on the
22:52 · green at Columbia hoping to inspire young men to work out and get in better shape right believe me the history
22:57 · departments not the organization you want running that money of course plays
23:03 · a role in this this is a fabulous cartoon I stumbled across almost by accident in Chicago in the Newberry
23:10 · Library this is from John mcCutchan who won the first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in the United States this is called coming our way
23:16 · April 1915 and if you look at it very closely you'll see the docks of New York
23:23 · City are literally magnets pulling the hard currency of Europe over to the United States while the bankers in
23:30 · Berlin in Paris and London look on exasperated Americans make an
23:36 · unbelievable amount of money off of the first world war both because of the products that the u.s. can sell to the
23:43 · Europeans and because certain products that Americans used to buy in Europe they now buy in the United States 1915
23:51 · and 1916 are the two best years in the history of American Bible sales because
23:56 · American families are no longer buying their Bibles in Europe the same thing is true of bicycles pencils eyeglasses
24:03 · whatever you can manufacture lower the American trade balance when the war
24:09 · breaks out we have a net negative trade balance with Europe look how fast that changes by December of 1914 there's one
24:16 · study that connects America's attitudes towards the war in 1914 and argues that
24:22 · the only parts of America that are not pro British and French are the parts of
24:28 · America not getting in on this and that is mostly cotton communities in the American South because the British
24:34 · blockade cotton shipments to Germany I could talk a little bit more about that if anybody wants this raises a moral
24:41 · issue for a lot of Americans here's Mary Roberts Rinehart after Pittsburg Westinghouse corporation signed a major
24:46 · contract right Pittsburgh's trying to get the new Amazon headquarters right now the rhetoric is similar when America
24:52 · signs that cons when Pittsburgh signs that contract Mary Roberts Rinehart wonders that the her home town is fattening on catastrophe in Nashville I
24:59 · found a series of lectures given by the sermons given by Tennessee ministers it's a common theme in 1916 what does it
25:07 · say about America if we want Britain and France to win this war but our role is mostly just to make money what does that
25:13 · make us who are we now of course some Americans did more than just sit back
25:19 · this is an ad advertising serbian day at the amusement park that I went to
25:24 · growing up Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh they still do Serbian day today it's people of Serbian descent who go and
25:29 · have a day in 1916 it meant that all profits from Kennywood on that day went
25:35 · to the relief of Serbia Americans gave enormous amounts of money my colleague
25:40 · Julia Irwin at the University of South Florida estimates that one in three Americans gave money in the First World
25:47 · War and 95 percent of that money goes to three countries France Belgium and
25:52 · Serbia all members of the Allies John Wanamaker the great Philadelphia industrialist raised one hundred million
25:59 · dollars for Belgium alone Philadelphia raised enough money in three hours to
26:04 · fund two entire field hospitals for the French army right enormous amounts of money that are going from the United
26:11 · States to Europe and they are going almost exclusively to the Allies some
26:17 · people were willing to put their lives on the line delwyn star one of the great American football heroes a Harvard star
26:23 · in 1916 killed on the Western Front fighting in the British Army these men are members of an American air squadron
26:30 · the Lafayette Escadrille another Pittsburgh guy Billy thaw thats him right there son of one of the executives
26:36 · of the Pennsylvania Railroad got the idea what we'll do is we Americans will volunteer to fly in a squadron for the
26:42 · French Air Force we almost of them had their own planes Billy thoughts the first private pilot's license in the United States flew an
26:49 · airplane underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in 1912 these guys get together and they
26:54 · form a volunteer air squadron for the French army Theodore Roosevelt Cornelius Vanderbilt loved it so much that they
27:01 · write checks to these guys and tell them here's some money do whatever you want with it so they throw lavish parties
27:07 · they have whiskey and soda - lion cubs as their mascots everybody who's anybody
27:13 · comes to a Lafayette Escadrille party I think this is the origin of the American fighter pilot culture I mean this I mean
27:20 · this sincerely the American army doesn't want to discipline or cannot discipline these guys the French army doesn't want
27:26 · to as long as the combat record is great which it is the PR record is
27:31 · unbelievable the PR value is incredible why do anything to discipline them the
27:38 · the nice side note of this is when the United States got involved in the war the US Army rejected many of these guys
27:43 · on health grounds and wouldn't let them fly so they stayed inside the French army okay so a lot of Americans as you
27:51 · know some very famous people are over there JP Morgan's daughter and Morgan is over there she builds a chateau rebuilds
27:57 · a chateau for the care of women or orphans and widows it's still there it's now the museum at Blair incor dedicated
28:04 · to Franco American friendship Ernest Hemingway goes over there as you know as an ambulance driver first in Italy later
28:10 · on other places as well there are Americans fighting in the armies of the British and the French there's a new
28:16 · study out of Canada that estimates that as many as 70,000 7-0 thousand members
28:22 · of the Canadian Army might have been Americans the easiest way to join the British Army is to walk across the
28:27 · border in Canada claim that you were born in Ontario and put your name and sign the thing right there's a research
28:33 · team in Canada that's actually going back and finding the birth certificates of these guys 70,000 they estimate were
28:39 · in fact born in the United States the French consulate in New Orleans opens up an office specifically for Americans who
28:45 · want to fight for France right at first the US government threatens to take away citizenship and all this stuff right
28:51 · then they realize they can't do it they can't stop it so I've explained to you why the United States is sympathetic to
28:56 · the Allies what I have yet done is explain why we enter the war and that's what I'd like to do in the 15 minutes or so that is left and that'll
29:02 · be happy to take your questions sometimes when you're doing research you come across something and it just stops you in your tracks this is it this is
29:11 · the cover of Life magazine On February 10th 1916 I'd like you to note the date please
29:17 · February 10th 1916 this is early on I
29:22 · hope it's not too hard to see in the back there the the publisher of my book would not let me use this image as the
29:28 · cover image because they said it was too busy right I think it's actually beautiful this is the cover of the of the magazine
29:33 · most of the United States has labeled as new Prussia von papen and boy ed city
29:40 · the two diplomats that Wilson had expelled get cities named for them out in the West New Berlin is right there
29:47 · Krupps burg slaughterhouse Florida is turqu onea the west coast is japonica
29:55 · Baja California is Austria Anna my personal favorite I'll explain this in
30:03 · just a minute I don't think this is a reference to Canadians I don't think this is a reference to Canadians they're
30:08 · generally lovely people I don't think that's what this is the province of Mexico with Bill Helms Berg as its
30:14 · capital okay this is a fear that is running through American culture in
30:19 · early 1916 and here's what it is by doing nothing the United States can put
30:26 · itself in an absolutely untenable strategic position let's say in 1916 the
30:32 · Germans put enough pressure on the British and French that it looks like they can win the war one way Britain and France can get out
30:39 · of that dilemma is by doing what the Europeans have always done with the Americas they can trade parts of their
30:46 · American empire for gains in Europe that's how this part of the world went from being French to being English
30:53 · here's the fear it is not that the barbarians are that the Canadians are barbarians the fear is that the British
31:01 · might give to the Germans in order to get out of the war the base in Esquimalt
31:06 · out here Halifax out here maybe Toronto right there the French have two bases two islands up
31:14 · here sent Pierre and Miquelon they also have possessions in the Caribbean as do the British the Panama Canal opened in
31:20 · 1914 the fear that Americans have is one that the British and French might
31:26 · sacrifice all of this stuff in order to give it give them a way out of the war
31:31 · in in the East and then Europe excuse me that's one fear it's for this reason that in 1916 the United States bought
31:39 · the Danish Virgin Islands from Denmark and renamed them the United States Virgin Islands the fear was that Germany
31:45 · would invade Denmark or blackmail Denmark and take the Virgin Islands and create a base right there from his
31:52 · retirement William Jennings Bryan proposed buying Canada from the British the British need money we don't want
31:59 · them to give Canada to the Germans give them a hundred million dollars for Canada it's a safe secure investment
32:05 · it'll protect our northern flank this is the fear that's running around you can see here my favorite there's a little
32:12 · American reservation right there with goose-step as its capital right there are also fears in the
32:19 · American body politic that what Germany might do is try to ally with Japan and Mexico in an anti-american alliance and
32:27 · all of this could happen because the United States did not prepare on my bookshelf at home is a
32:35 · wonderful teen fiction book it's the Red Dawn of 1916 called the defense of Pittsburg it's one of three books the
32:41 · defence of Washington defense of Pittsburgh defense of Cincinnati aimed at a teenaged audience and at the end of
32:47 · the book when they're holding down the line in Cincinnati one teenager says to the other at least we know that we
32:54 · didn't start this war and the other teenager says yes we did because we weren't prepared right their
33:01 · preparedness arguments right again I don't think most Americans were afraid that the Germans were going to come
33:06 · marching down st. Louis but this kind of a scenario where Halifax Esquimalt
33:11 · Martinique with Mexico joining the Germans doesn't look quite so far-fetched Ryan's here from New Zealand
33:18 · New Zealand sends the highest proportion of people to the Western Front with no conscription something like seventeen
33:24 · percent of eligible men the new theory in New Zealand is the reason that is is not
33:29 · because New Zealanders really cared so much about England they knew that if Germany won the war New Zealand could
33:35 · become a German colony they're not fighting for London which is thousands of miles away they're fighting for their
33:41 · own communities now you could quite reasonably in America look at somebody who believed
33:48 · this stuff and say you're out of your mind you could reasonably do that then things
33:53 · like this start happening Pancho Villa raids New Mexico he brought along with
33:58 · him an American woman named Maude Hawkes who he then released Maude Fox when she
34:04 · was interviewed by American newspapers said quote via bragged about his plans to kill everybody in the United States
34:11 · and said that he would be helped by the Germans and the Japanese James Gerard the American ambassador in Germany
34:17 · reported back to the United States quote most Germans think that America's Mexico troubles are to their advantage I am
34:24 · sure that Pancho Villa's attacks are made in Germany every night fifty million Germans cry themselves to sleep
34:29 · because Mexico has not risen against us a belief that all of these things are
34:35 · linked together right and the Americans know for sure for a fact that those
34:40 · German spies who committed this a Batoche act in New Jersey who committed the sabotage act in New Brunswick they
34:47 · on they end up in Mexico right Mexico is then what we would today call a failed state going through a revolution the
34:53 · Germans have picked a different side than the United States has picked right it's starting to look like this stuff isn't quite so far-fetched then things
35:01 · start to accelerate in late February of 1917 Great Britain intercepted this
35:08 · document the so-called Zimmermann telegram it's a very famous story there's a great story behind it the
35:14 · technical details of it it's a wonderful story what's important about it it's what it says it says we intend we the
35:22 · Germans intend to begin on the 1st of February unrestricted submarine warfare we shall endeavour in spite of this to
35:28 · keep the United States of America neutral in the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of
35:34 · Alliance on the following basis make war together make peace together generous financial
35:40 · support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to read conquer the lost territories of Texas New Mexico and
35:47 · Arizona you will inform the president of Mexico of the above as soon as the outbreak of
35:53 · war with the United States is certain and add the suggestion that he should on his own initiative invite Japan to
36:00 · immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and Germany now
36:05 · that document seems quite clearly to prove this right very famously
36:13 · zimmerman's at a press conference in Berlin hey the Americans in British claim they have this telegram that says
36:19 · that you're gonna do an alliance with Mexico and Japan aimed at the United States and that you're gonna take away three states from the United States and
36:25 · give it to Mexico you didn't write that did you and simmerman says yeah I did I
36:30 · did they got me there's no point denying it they have it right three events that
36:36 · happen back to back to back Germans announced on restricted submarine warfare which leads the United States to break diplomatic relations the
36:43 · revelation of the Zimmermann telegram which is by far the most important of the three events and then the revolution
36:49 · in Russia which occurred the first revolution in Russia which occurs at roughly the same time late February early March which takes the tsar out it
36:56 · doesn't yet put the Communists in it puts in place a government by name mminton by a man named alexander
37:01 · kerensky this allows Wilson and most Americans most Americans to argue that maybe this
37:09 · war will destroy autocratic governments and leave Europe a society only of democracies and if that happens then
37:17 · maybe this war actually is worth fighting maybe something positive will come out even many German Americans make this
37:23 · argument they're all non prescience or mostly non Prussians they're Bavarians they're vertibirds they're Hanoverians
37:29 · their argument is if this is a war that will take the Prussian government out and give Germany a representative
37:36 · democracy then there's no conflict between America's goals and Germany's goals these are men like John Pershing
37:43 · Dwight Eisenhower Eddie Rickenbacker all of whom are German Americans all the former German Americans
37:49 · all right why do I think this matters I think it matters for a couple of reasons one we have misunderstood why the United
37:55 · States went to war in 1917 I would argue I did argue the American people believe
38:01 · that they're going to war to prevent that Life magazine map that I showed you earlier they're going to war to prevent
38:07 · this this war is for the United States not about Belgium it is not about the
38:15 · security of France although those are nice to haves it is about protecting the threat they're fighting against the
38:21 · threat that is made to the United States it is about the threat to America's borders this is why when President
38:29 · Wilson entered the first world war he was careful to say that we are not a member of the Alliance we are an
38:34 · Associated power to that alliance because our goals are not their goals it
38:39 · is also why as I'll show you in just a bit when the war ends they would want
38:45 · the American people think that the war ends much earlier than do the Europeans much differently and then do the
38:52 · Europeans what the Americans want is an end to the threat what the Americans want is an end to the possibility that
39:00 · by having done nothing they can find themselves in a much worse position than when they went in last slide moreover
39:07 · with that great German with his hands up what I'd like you to note and I know you can't see it from back there is the date
39:13 · on this this is the New York Evening world November 7th 1918 November 7th 1918 nothing's been
39:21 · signed yet all that happened on November 7th is that the news broke in the West
39:26 · that the Germans had asked for an armistice that's it to the Americans
39:32 · that means the war is over and if the war is over that means the United States should start demobilizing its army and start
39:39 · bringing our boys back home our sons our husbands our lovers our brothers whatever and bring them back home this
39:46 · is why we commemorate the end of the first world war on November 11th 1918 the date that the Armistice gets signed
39:53 · but the Armistice didn't end anything the war doesn't end until the peace
39:58 · conference the Paris Peace Conference produces the Treaty of Versailles On June 28 1919
40:03 · five treaties that it produces right for my view the way I think of this the
40:09 · image that I've been using when the first world war broke out it's like an hourglass there's a lot of diversity of
40:15 · opinion in the United States in 1914 about what the United States ought to do by the spring of 1917 all of those
40:21 · options have gone away except for litzler belligerence that doesn't mean the American people were enthusiastic about going to war it means that they
40:28 · understood that they had just one choice remaining then starting on November 7th
40:34 · four days before the Armistice in 1911 now they start diverging again about what they ought to do in the post-war
40:40 · period that's why the fight over the Treaty of Versailles is as bitter as it is in the United States and as most of
40:46 · you know that's a treaty that the United States never did sign the United States Senate never did ratify right what the
40:52 · Americans agree on is ending this nightmare what they do not agree on is
40:58 · what ought to come next thank you for your attention I'll be happy to take any questions I think we're about ten
41:04 · minutes or so for questions don't we Scott yeah if you please you microphone
41:14 · yeah you said previously that almost exclusively the investment and American
41:20 · money will go into the allies what percentage of investment from us was going to support Germany so we think
41:26 · it's a little hard to tell we think it's less than ten we think it's about eight and the reason I say that it's hard to
41:31 · tell is that what the Germans were doing is using the neutral States on their border Holland Norway Denmark to try to
41:37 · disguise some of that trade that's coming through so what the British did in the United States kind of followed its lead the British Board of Trade did
41:44 · they actually had these very sophisticated economic models if Holland took in 10,000 tons of coal in 1905 and
41:52 · now they're taking in 12,000 tons of coal the presumption is those extra two thousand are actually intended for
41:58 · Germany right so the British blockade of Holland of a neutral state blockades anything above what the
42:03 · British estimate they had in the last line of data extrapolated out we think the numbers around 8 percent what that
42:10 · tells me is that America's money and its sympathies are actually headed in the same direction
42:17 · any other questions sir all the way in the back well that's Jim that's not sir hey Mike Jim to Krakow yeah hey question
42:23 · I've got about this maps very very interesting and you mentioned Californians the west coast's
42:30 · essentially being according to Life magazine being occupied by Japan now I
42:35 · know that Japan was an ally in World War one so why why would they have this they're not an ally of the United States
42:42 · they're an ally of Great Britain which is a very important distinction when this map is being done the United States
42:47 · is neutral the United States has no relationship with Japan what I think is happening here it is a reflection of
42:53 · course of the West Coast's own anti-asian racism this is the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act when Chinese
42:58 · weren't allowed to come to the US or buy property this is the era of the so-called gentleman's agreement which is negotiated renegotiated by the American
43:05 · Secretary of State in 1915 by which the Japanese will prevent Japanese from leaving Japan to come to the United
43:11 · States so the US doesn't have to exclude them the way they excluded the Chinese so I would be careful with the
43:17 · distributive property that the US has allied to Britain Britain is allowed to Japan therefore the US is allied to
43:22 · Japan that's not the case right and many Americans are already talking in 1915
43:27 · 1916 about a post-war world in which Japan emerges as the greatest threat to the United States Billy Mitchell
43:34 · believed this that that's what's going to come out of this Japan will be the problem so be careful what else is on
43:41 · your mind yes sir hey sir Brian Kirk so along the lines that you just spoke about was feelings toward Japan tied to
43:49 · this sort of the domestic terrorism he started off with and the leadership that remain in power elite going into World
43:55 · War two was that sort of what led to some of the internment of japanese-americans and things did we
44:00 · learn a lot wrong lesson from the domestic terrorism you know in World War one were those things connected so
44:05 · there's never any allegation against Japanese living in the United States of domestic terrorism there's never any allegation the interesting point you're
44:12 · raising of course in my view and anybody that's had me in class for five seconds probably heard me say this to me it's
44:17 · the same war it's a thirty years war right with anti Asian racism being a
44:22 · dimension of American policy not the only one certainly but a dimension so you may know japanese-americans in
44:29 · Hawaii are never put during tournament right where you would think the threat would be greatest they're put under internment in Oregon
44:36 · chip in Washington California places where there's an economic incentive to inter them and where the anti Asian bias
44:43 · is deepest so I don't know that you can draw a direct line between the specific events of World War one though there are
44:49 · some specific tensions between the u.s. and Japan at the end of World War one but you can see a consistent thread of
44:55 · anti Asian policy that's running through that is accumulating here we talked at least in a couple of the tws seminars
45:01 · about enabling factors right that Wars enable certain conditions to happen that don't happen in others this is an
45:06 · enabling condition World War two is an enabling condition how would you how
45:16 · would you classify the German escalation of the submarine warfare effect on
45:21 · Wilson entering the war so it goes in kind of waves so the German decision in February 1917 to resume unrestricted
45:28 · submarine warfare Wilson gives a very gives a speech in Philadelphia which he gets blasted for in which he says look I
45:34 · know what the Germans have said but I'm gonna await their overt act in other words I don't believe they're actually
45:40 · gonna sink anything and then the Germans keep sinking ships and Wilson has to say it's like the Obama red line comment in
45:46 · a way right he gets criticized well you said this now what are you gonna do right there's a very famous American reporter named Floyd Gibbons who's
45:53 · actually on one of the ships that gets torpedoed the Laconia and he's in a lifeboat and a British guy rose up to
45:58 · him knows who he is rose up to him and says hey is this your presidents bleeding over and act or not like what
46:03 · are you guys doing about this right and Gibbons looks at him Gibbons fully wants the United States involved in this war
46:09 · now and Gibbons says I don't have any idea what the president will do he's a weak character and I don't know what
46:14 · he'll do Theodore Roosevelt's daughter Alice says the same thing like how many overt acts is he gonna wait for so in my view Wilson is hoping
46:21 · beyond hope for some deus ex machina he's hoping for some solution that will fall down from the skies and solve this
46:27 · problem for him I don't think he's pushing the United States into this war at all I think he's looking for whatever he can find his own son-in-law and
46:34 · another member of the American cabinet come to him and say if you don't go before Congress and ask for a declaration of war they're gonna ask
46:40 · they're gonna pass one without you and if that happens you're presidency is done you have to do this
46:45 · so he's still hoping that there's a way out of this what that's gonna be nobody knows Hank you showed your head
46:53 · that's get the British perspective in here that's very kind I'm just curious actually about the impact socially back in in the u.s.
47:01 · given the number of European immigrants that were in the u.s. at that time and given the fact that the u.s. entered the
47:07 · war not long after the uprising the Easter uprising in Ireland and Irish
47:13 · sympathies what sort of impact it did the did that dynamic in the US have on decisions to enter the war yeah thank
47:19 · you for that question it's a big topic so I didn't want to put it into this lecture there's a whole chapter in the book if anybody's really interested I look at three groups in particular
47:25 · German Americans Jewish Americans and Irish Americans all of whom are at strongly neutral or even pro central
47:32 · powers when the war begins what I argue is four reasons both because they're Americans and because of their ethnic
47:38 · identity that view changes to a pro allied one so let me take the Irish one since you mentioned it Easter Rising is
47:44 · when the Germans encouraged the Easter Revels to rise up against the British government the British come in and put
47:49 · it down with incredible viciousness so that even American Anglo files are opposed to British policy what happens
47:56 · in the Irish American community is that they they actually come to the the logical flow this way Germany is not
48:01 · gonna help Ireland become independent they showed that by their ham-fisted nature in the rising the only way that
48:08 · Ireland gets something out of this the only way is if the United States wins
48:14 · Britain wins the war with the United States having a dominating voice in the post-war peace if Wilson really believes
48:20 · what he says about national self-determination then if the Allies win with the Americans having a dominant seat at the
48:27 · peace table Wilson can enforce national self-determination over the British which will then be okay for Ireland so
48:34 · what I argue in the book the same thing happens for Jews i arguing Italians to sand stefanos hear that right what happens is Italian Americans Irish
48:40 · Americans Jewish Americans their identities both as ethnics quote-unquote and as Americans come into alignment
48:46 · now what Irish American leaders didn't know is that Woodrow Wilson has decided that the Irish aren't a nation since
48:52 · they're represented through a democratic Great Britain right but they don't know that yet so something similar happens Italy
48:58 · enters World War one at almost the same time as the Lusitania sinking right so that there's no contradiction now
49:03 · between Italian American identity and a pro war or Pro intervention standpoint so I actually looked into the papers
49:10 · Philadelphia used to have these in Philadelphia New York Boston they all used to have these enormous fraternal
49:16 · orders where you know Italians arriving from Ischia a Capri they could find food and networks in America when Italy
49:24 · enters World War one they all changed their mission so that the hundred and fifty thousand italians living in the united states with military papers can
49:30 · get back to fight for italy right there's no contradiction in those two things anymore right which there had
49:36 · been at the beginning so I could talk much more about this you probably don't want me to it's in the book but what I
49:41 · argue is again that all of those things are coming into alignment in the same direction yeah right what were the
49:49 · Mexicans saying with respect to diplomacy around that the telegram and and the revelation and from that so
49:55 · officially the Mexican government comes out and says we renounce this telegram we don't want anything to do with it we
50:00 · didn't write this we didn't even mean to get it it's like we don't we don't want anything to do with this at all in
50:07 · reality what they're hoping is that the United States will be tied down by a war in Europe though they don't want to do
50:12 · anything to actually cause that because there's been this civil war in Mexico as I hope you all know the United States
50:18 · sent troops in several occasions Veracruz a lot of the Marines who win medals of Honor at Bella Wood had also
50:24 · won medals of Honor in Mexico so they are kind of hoping that this will take Wilson's mind away from Mexico which it
50:31 · does but they don't want to be an active agent in that Wilson's the guy who famously said I'm gonna teach the
50:36 · Mexicans to elect good men and the Mexicans would just assume that he stay away it's about this same time Porfirio
50:43 · Diaz the Mexican president one of my favorite quotations from history he said Mexico was a poor Mexico so far from God
50:50 · so close to the United States so technically they're trying to stay out of it maybe it's time for maybe one or two and
50:57 · then I'm happy to stick around a little bit yes sir great presentation as far as a hundred
51:04 · years or 100 years past this are there any inferences lessons that we
51:10 · can apply from a hundred years ago to our national security posture to yes so I don't want to draw these soo tight
51:16 · because every historical time period is its is distinct but it seems to me pretty clear that the American people
51:21 · will rally and support a war if they understand the way it affects their national interests if they understand
51:28 · the way that it affects their home communities it seems to me it's much more difficult to ask Americans to
51:33 · engage in broad global reform projects that are disconnected from those
51:39 · interests I think this helps to explain the difference in reaction to the 2001 operations in Afghanistan and the 2003
51:45 · invasion in Iraq just to cite one example or Korea Vietnam if you want to draw that analogy I think that's one and
51:52 · I personally believe as an historian this is a deeply held belief of mine as an historian if you try to understand
51:58 · these periods of war in periods of conflict by going top down by starting with the elites and then trying to
52:04 · figure out the rest you're gonna completely miss the point the way to understand what's happening in American society and the way to
52:10 · predict what will happen next on the basis of the thesis is in fact to look bottom-up and look at what's happening
52:16 · inside American communities as they're beginning to influence their leaders so I would I would go with those two
52:22 · takeaways you could do geopolitically to the danger of alliances the dangers of over commitment to alliances the dangers
52:28 · of imbalances all of that stuff but I think for the American case these are the two that I would that I'd been
52:34 · telling people when people ask me that question that's been my answer one last
52:39 · one maybe anybody else ma'am there could you further develop the two camps that
52:45 · were at the Treaty of Versailles for the American perspective quickly they are two and they are still well alive in
52:51 · America there is a group that believes that America will operate best as part
52:57 · of international organizations that America will have a large voice in if we don't necessarily dominate them so
53:03 · that's something like the World Trade Organization what becomes of course the United Nations these are in America's
53:08 · best interest because it allows America to interact with the world on terms favorable to the United States there's
53:14 · another group in 1919 they called themselves isolationist though the term is a little bit misleading who argued
53:20 · that American interests are best served since we are a great power by operating as independently as
53:25 · possible so the isolationists arguments against the League of Nations are in part because under the League of Nations
53:33 · the US and say Ecuador no offense to Ecuador get the same vote that's one
53:39 · reason that the League of Nations is so controversial the UN is not controversial because the u.s. gets a veto power in it so the debate
53:45 · ideologically is really those people who believe that America should encourage the growth of international multilateral
53:52 · institutions and those people who believe that America functions best when
53:57 · it's left alone that's essentially the the core of the debate Wilson obviously
54:02 · wants more international organizations with u.s. participation the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
54:07 · Henry Cabot Lodge actually believes that most of those organizations are unconstitutional because it gives powers
54:14 · that belong to the US Congress to an international body therefore they're unconstitutional therefore he won't even
54:21 · take the Treaty of Versailles forward to be voted on in my own view that debate is one of course that we're still having
54:26 · right how should the United States interact with international organizations should we interact with
54:32 · the one international organizations and what's the best way to guarantee American Security and Prosperity and that's a debate that really begins in
54:37 · earnest in 1918-1919 so once again welcome to Carlyle I'll be
54:42 · around for a little bit if anybody's any other questions but I know you're due back up in seminar so thanks a lot