23

Woodrow Wilson

Europe before the Great War

Woodrow Wilson

Europe after the Great War

CONTENTS

■Colin Unwin Gill went to France to serve in World War I. He was twenty-three.

Four years later, he completed this painting that depicted the carnage caused by

an exploding artillery shell on a headquarters (“protected” by corrugated metal).

The man, seated on a chair in the lower right, a victim of shell shock, holds his head.

611

Just as American soldiers at the outset of the

twenty-first century could not have imagined that they

would be the victims of powerful explosions in

Afghanistan and Iraq, few Americans in the early twen-

tieth century thought it possible that they would get

caught up in a war in Europe. To be sure, in the early

1900s Americans heard ominous rumblings from across

the Atlantic Ocean. But even as European rivals spoke of

war, none of it had much to do with American imperial

interests in the Pacific and the Caribbean. But history

unfolds in unpredictable ways.

In 1914 a spark ignited the powder keg of ethnic ten-

sions in the Balkans. Soon, much of Europe was in flames.

As the armies of the major powers became bogged down

in a bloody stalemate, nonbelligerent nations were drawn

into the conflagration. Woodrow Wilson, who had cam-

paigned as a peace candidate, later called on the United

States to go to war. Eventually he embraced it with an

almost religious zeal. He recruited workers, farmers,

financiers, manufacturers, minorities, and women to help

in the war effort. He stamped out dissent. He also sought

to take advantage of the transformations wrought by the

war to promote various reforms—including creation of an

international body to mediate future conflicts. The

tragedy of the Wilson years was that none of it turned out

quite as he had imagined. ■

■Wilson’s “Moral” Diplomacy

■Europe Explodes in War

■Freedom of the Seas

■The Election of 1916

■The Road to War

■Mobilizing the Economy

■Workers in Wartime

■Paying for the War

■Propaganda and Civil Liberties

■Wartime Reforms

■Women and Blacks in Wartime

■Americans: To the Trenches

and Over the Top

■Preparing for Peace

■The Paris Peace Conference

and the Versailles Treaty

■The Senate Rejects the

League of Nations

■The Red Scare

■The Election of 1920

■Re-Viewing the Past:

Titanic

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