Name: Elvin Le Period: Due Date: Graded By:
U.S. History
Chapter 21 - World War I & Its Aftermath
Guided Reading and Analysis
Purpose
This guide is not only a place to record notes as you read, but also to provide a place and structure for reflections and
analysis using your noggin (thinking skills) with new knowledge gained from the Reading.
Directions
1. Pre-Read: Read the prompts/questions within this guide before you read the chapter.
2. Skim: Skim through the Yawp chapter. Look at images and read captions. Get a feel for
the content you are about to read
3. Read/Analyze: Read the chapter. If you are able, highlight key events and people as you read. The
goal is not to “fish” for a specific answer, but to consider questions in order to
critically understand what you read
4. Write: Write your notes and analysis in the spaces provided in ink =)
**Note: Full color copies of the reading guide can be found on Mr. Pink’s website and Schoology in case you need to
reference maps or drawings
I. Introduction
Read the two interpretations of the justification for U.S. involvement in World War I. After you finish the
chapter, come back and explain which one you find more accurate.
“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace “Let’s call a spade a spade. For most of its history, America
must be planted upon the tested foundations of political hasn’t given a darn about other democracies. There have
liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no been some heroic interventions –like WWI—but these were
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for really just heroic justification for protecting American trade
ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices (which America has always cared about). Over the decades,
we shall freely make.” the “preserving democracy” excuse was only trotted out
when the nation’s leaders needed to rally public opinion”
-Woodrow Wilson, War Message, April 2, 1917
-Erik Sass, The Mental Floss History of the United States
Which interpretation do you find more accurate?
The interpretation that I find more accurate is Woodrow Wilson's message. It is more accurate because when Wilson
was stating his reasons to go into war it was to congress.
II. Prelude to War
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- The British viewed the prospect of a
German navy (and an industrializing,
colonial Germany in general) as a strategic
threat.
- Jealous of a perceived lack of prestige in
the world, Germany pressed for access to
colonies and symbols of status suitable for
a world power
Look It Up: What does "entente"
- The alliance between Great Britain, France, mean?
and Russia became known as the Triple
Entente Entente means a friendly
understanding of informal alliance
- On June 28, 1914, after the assasination of between states or factions.
Austrian-Hungarian heirs to the throne,
vengeful Austrian nationalist leaders
believed the time had arrived to eliminate
the rebellious ethnic Serbian threat
- American attitudes toward international
affairs followed the advice given by
President George Washington in his 1796
Farewell Address, to avoid “foreign alliances,
attachments, and intrigues”
- In 1916, Pancho Villa, a popular
revolutionary in northern Mexico, raided
Columbus, New Mexico, after being
provoked by American support for his
rivals
- The conflict between the United States
and Mexico might have escalated into full-
scale war if the international crisis in Europe
had not diverted the public’s attention
- After the outbreak of war in Europe in
1914, President Wilson declared American
neutrality
- It was unclear, however, what “neutrality”
mean in a world of close economic_
connections. Ties to the British and
French proved strong, and those nations
obtained far more loans and supplies than
the Germans Why, despite its desire to
stay neutral, was the United
- Trade and financial relations with the States drawn into conflict in
Allied nations ultimately drew the United WWI?
States further into the conflict
They were drawn into WW1
- The unrestricted and surprise submarine because they still had
attacks from German submarines, such economical ties and financial
as on the RMS Lusitania, raised the ire of ties to other countries that
the public and stoked the desire for war were also allied with the
nations that were in the
- The Army seemed unprepared for conflict.
sustained overseas fighting. However, by
1914, the nation held the top position in
the global industrial economy
- The United States was producing
slightly more than one third of the world’s
manufactured goods, roughly equal to the
outputs of France, Great Britain, and
Germany combined
III. War Spreads through Europe
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- On July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on
Serbia for failure to meet all of the
demands
Look It Up: What was the
- Russia, determined to protect Serbia, nationality of Gavrilo Princip (the
began to mobilize its armed forces
man who assassinated Archduke
- On August 1, 1914, Germany declared Ferdinand and Grand Duchess Look up trench warfare in
war on Russia to support Austria Sophie)? WWI. Describe what
conditions were like for
- Germany planned to take advantage of He was a Bosnian- Serb. soldiers in the trenches.
sluggish Russian mobilization by
focusing the German army on France The trenches that the soldiers
were in were horrible and
- German armies moved rapidly by rail dirty, it looked like it lacked
to march through Belgium and into sanitation.
France. Belgium was neutral.
- On August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared
war on Germany for failing to respect
Belgium as a neutral nation
- By 1915, the European war had developed
into a series of bloody trench warfare
stalemates that continued through the
following year
IV. America Enters the War
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- Trench warfare and the Zimmerman Look It Up: To whom did Germany
Telegram inflamed public opinion in the send the Zimmerman Telegram?
United States. Congress declared war What did it promise?
on Germany on April 4, 1917
Germany sent the Zimmerman
- The United States was unprepared telegram to Mexico and they
in nearly every respect for modern war promised them financial support and
its territorial.
- Unlike the largest European military
powers of Germany, France, and Austria-
Hungary, no conscription existed in the
United States to maintain large standing
armed forces or during peacetime
- On May 18, 1917, Congress approved
the Selective Service Act, which avoided
the unpopular system of bonuses and
substitutes used during the Civil War
- The experience of service in the army
expanded many individual social horizons
as native-born and foreign-born soldiers
served side by side.
- Prevailing racial attitudes among white
Americans mandated the assignment of
white and black soldiers to segregated
units
- Black leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois
supported the war effort, saying that if black
soldiers fought and died on equal footing
with white soldiers, then white Americans
would see that they deserved full
citizenship
List one way WWI offered an
- The War Department, however, barred opportunity for a
black troops from combat and relegated marginalized group, and one
black soldiers to segregated service way in which an obstacle was
units where they worked as general still in place.
laborers
WW1 gave an opportunity for
- The War and Navy Departments different races to enter the
authorized the enlistment of women to fill war and show that they were
positions in several established capable but also many were
administrative occupations, giving women separated into different units
opportunities to don uniforms where none and used as laborers.
had existed before
- Approximately twenty-five thousand women
served in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps
for duty stateside and overseas
- The variety of service opportunities gave
women the ability to appear in public
spaces and promote charitable activities for
the war effort.
- Jim Crow segregation in both the military
and the civilian sector stood as a barrier
for black volunteers who wanted to give
their time to the war effort
V. On the Homefront
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- Wilson signed the Espionage Act in 1917
and the Sedition Act in 1918, stripping
dissenters and protesters of their rights to
publicly resist the war
VI. Before the Armistice
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- German submarines sank more than a
thousand ships by the time the United States
entered the war
- The rapid addition of American naval
escorts to the British surface fleet and the
establishment of a convoy system countered
much of the effect of German submarines
- In 1917 the Russian army disintegrated, Look It Up: What type of
the tsarist regime collapsed, and Vladimir government did Lenin bring about in
Lenin’s Bolshevik party came to power Russia?
- Russia soon surrendered to German He brought a republic government.
demands and the German military quickly
shifted hundreds of thousands of soldiers to
its Western front with France
- In March 1918, Germany launched a series
of five major attacks, but each and every What impact did American
one had failed to break through the Western forces have in World War I?
Front Did they "turn the tide"?
The impact that the
- On August 8, 1918, two million men of the American forces had in ww1
American Expeditionary Forces joined was that they did turn the
British and French armies in a series of tide. THey provided support
successful offsenioves that pushed the to the British and French
disintegrating German lines back which led to the Germans
Look It Up: What holiday is on getting pushed back across
- Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated at the request November 11? france. Because of this,
of the German military leaders and the new Veterans Day. Germany had to surrender.
democratic government agreed to an
armistice (cease-fire) on November 11,
1918
Look It Up: What holiday is on November
11? Veterans day
- The United States lost over one hundred
thousand men, but their terrible sacrifice,
however, paled before the Europeans’
- France had suffered almost a million and a
half military dead and Germany even more.
Both nations lost about ten percent of their
population to the war
VII. The War and the Influenza Pandemic
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- In the spring of 1918, a strain of the
influenza virus appeared in the farm country
of Haskell County, Kansas, and hit nearby
Camp Funston
- Between March and May 1918, fourteen Why is the name "Spanish
of the largest American military training Flu" misleading?
camps reported outbreaks of influenza
It is misleading because the
- Some of the infected soldiers carried the name suggest how the
virus on troop transports to Europe findings of the disease were
in Spain when the actual
- The virus struck down those in the prime findings of it was in the
of their lives: a disproportionate amount of United States.
influenza victims were between ages
eighteen and thirty-five
- The “Spanish Influenza,” was misnamed
due to accounts of the disease that first
appeared in the uncensored press of neutral
Spain
- The virus resulted in the deaths of an
estimated 50 million people worldwide
- During the war, more soldiers died from
influenza than in battle.
VIII. The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- The war brought an abrupt end to four
great European imperial powers: the
German, Russian, Austrian-Hungarian, and
Ottoman Empires
- After months of deliberation, the Treaty
of Versailles officially ended the war
- President Wilson offered an ambitious
statement of war aims and peace
terms known as the Fourteen Points
- The United States had entered the fray,
Wilson proclaimed, “to make the world
safe for democracy.”
- At the center of the plan was a novel Look It Up: How does collective
international organization—the League of security work?
Nations—charged with keeping the world
safe through "collective security" It works by when one state is
attacked then the others allies would
- America’s closest allies had varying also be involved.
interest in the League of Nations
- Britain was more interested in preserving How were the post-war
its imperial domain, while France wanted visions of the United States
reparations and limits on Germany’s future different from those of France
ability to wage war and Britain?
- The Treaty of Versailles was a They were different by that
complex document that included the United States wanted to
demands for German reparations, isolate itself while the other
provisions for the League of Nations, countries were more concern
and the promise of collective security about global peace and
limiting Germany.
- American critics of the treaty
demanded instead that the country deal
with its own problems in its own way,
free from the collective security
- President Wilson’s dream for the League
of Nations died on the floor of the Senate as
opponents successfully blocked America’s
entry into the League of Nations
- The League of Nations operated with
fifty-eight sovereign members, but the
United States refused to join, and refused to
provide it with the power needed to fullfill its
purpose
IX. Aftermath of World War I
Respond Look It Up Analyze
- The Ottoman Empire disintegrated into How do you think the
several nations, many created by redrawing of the map of the
European powers with little regard to ethnic Middle East after WWI
realities impacts the region today?
- Though allegedly for the benefit of the
people of the Middle East, the mandate It would create new states
system was essentially a reimagined form and cause a lot of conflicts.
of nineteenth-century imperialism
- The 1917 Russian Revolution,
meanwhile enflamed American fears of
Communism. Look It Up: What is the significance
of the color red in the phrase "Red
- Their arrest, trial, and execution of Scare"?
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, \
two Symbolizes communism and it
Italian-born anarchists, in 1920 epitomized a spread.
sudden American "Red Scare"
- In March 1918 the Allies planned to send
troops to northern Russia and Siberia to
prevent German influence and fight the
Bolshevik Revolution
- Wilson agreed, and, in a little-known
foreign intervention, American troops
remained in Russia as late as 1920
- Racial tensions culminated in the Red
Summer of 1919 when violence broke out
in at least twenty-five cities, including
Chicago and Washington, D.C.
- Thousands of black southerners traveled to
the North and Midwest to escape the traps
of southern poverty.
- The so-called Great Migration sparked
significant racial conflict as white northerners
and returning veterans fought to reclaim
their jobs and their neighborhoods from new
black migrants List two ways white
Americans responded to
- The overseas experience of black black resistance to the Red
Americans and their return triggered a Summer riots.
dramatic change in black communities,
but white Americans desired a return to One way was that some tried
the status quo to take legal actions against
the advocates and another
- During the Red Summer riots, recently way is to reposed with more
empowered black Americans actively violence.
defended their families and homes from
hostile white rioters, often with militant
force
HIPP
** reminder - don’t forget to go back to the Introduction section! **
Historical Context
The United States was looking for volunteers to enter WW1
and recruit people that were interested.
Intended Audience
The intended audience is for the public for those that
wanted to join the army and those that were eligible and
meet the requirements to join.
Author’s P.O.V.
The authors POV is that the public should join the army
to help with WW1 and represent America, this also
James Montgomery Flagg, “I Want You.” Ca. 1917, shows that the author advocates for the war and wants
Via Library of Congress (LC-USZC2-564). the United States to be more involved.
“War poster with the famous phrase “I want you for U.
S. Army” shows Uncle Sam pointing his finger at the
viewer in order to recruit soldiers for the American
Army during World War I. The printed phrase
“Nearest recruiting station” has a blank space below
to add the address for enlisting.” Author’s Purpose
– Library of Congress
The purpose of this article is to convince people to join the
army and get people involved in the war.
