Progressivism and the Republican

Roosevelt, 1901-1912
Progressive Roots

There were nearly 76 million Americans in 1900; a reform movement

right convulsed the ethnically and racially mixed American people after the
twentieth century had dawned

The roots of the new reformist wave went back the Green Labor party
and Populists and to the mounting unrest as grasping industrialists
concentrated more and more power in fewer hands

Progressive theoristssociety could no longer afford the luxury of

laissez-faire policy

Populists branded the bloated trusts with the stigma of corruption and
wrongdoing

Henry Lloyd charged into the Standard Oil Company with Wealth
Against Commonwealth

Jacob Riis shocked middle-class with How the Other Half Lives, an
account of the NY slums

Theodore Dreiser battered promoters and profiteers in The

Financier and The Titan

Socialists began to register appreciable strength at the ballot box

Messengers of the social gospel promoted a brand of progressivism

(using religious doctrine)

Feminists added social justice to suffrage on list of needed reforms

(Jane Addams, Lillian Wald)

Raking Muck with the Muckrakers

By 1902 the exposing of evil became a flourishing industry among

American publishers

A group of aggressive ten- and fifteen-cent magazines surged to the

front; editors financed extensive research and encouraged writing by reports
branded muckrakers by Roosevelt

Lincoln Steffens unmasked the corrupt alliance between big business

and municipal government and Ida Tarbell published a devastating factual
expose of the Standard Oil Company

Muckrakers roasted the beef trust, the money trust, the railroad
barons, and corrupt fortunes

The most effective fire of the muckrakers was directed at social evils
prostitution, slums, industrial accidents, subjugation of American blacks, and
abuses of child labor

The muckrakers signified much about the nature of the progressive

reform movement

To right social wrongs, they counted on publicity and an aroused public

conscience

Political Progressivism

Progressive reformers were mainly middle-class men and women felt

pressure from new giant corporations, restless immigrant hordes, and the
aggressive labor unions

The progressives sought two goals: to use state power to curb the trusts

and to stem the socialist threat by generally improving the common persons
conditions of life and labor

Progressivism was less a minority movement and more a majority mood

An objective was to regain the power that had slipped from the people
into those interests
They favored the initiative so that voters could directly propose

legislation themselves, referendum, which would place laws on the ballot for
final approval by the people, and recall, which would enable voters to remove
faithless elected officials
Rooting out graft became a prime goal of earnest progressivesthe

secret Australian ballot was being introduced more widely in the states to
counteract boss rule
Direct election of U.S. senators became a favorite goal of progressives

Millionaires Club
Partly as a result of such pressures from state legislatures, the

Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution (1913) established the direct

election of United States senators
Woman suffrage received powerful new support from the progressives

early in the 1900s

Political reforms believed that womens votes would elevate the political

tone

Many states, especially the liberal ones in the West, gradually extended
the vote to women

Progressivism in the Cities and States

Frustrated by inefficiency and corruption of government many localities

followed example of Galveston, Texasin 1901 it had appointed expertstaffed commissions to manage urban affairs

Urban reforms likewise attacked slumlords, juvenile delinquency

Progressivism bubbled up to the state level, notably in Wisconsin, which

tested new reform

Governor Robert La Follette wrested considerable control from the

crooked corporations and returned it to the peoplehe perfected a scheme for
regulating public utilities

States marched steadily toward the progressive camp, as they

undertook to regulate railroads and trusts, chiefly through public utilities
commissionsOregon and California followed

Progressive Women

A crucial focus for womens activism was the settlement house

movementdoor to public life

They exposed middle-class women to problems in cities: poverty,

corruption, and conditions

The womens club movement provided a broader civic entryway for

many middle-class women

Literary clubs set aside literature for social issues and current events
(moral and maternal issues)

Nineteenth-century notions of separate spheres dictated that a

womans place was at home

Most female progressives defended their new activities as an extension

of traditional roles

Female activists agitated through organizations like the Womens Trade

Union League, the National Consumers League, and federal agencies
Childrens Bureau and Womens Bureau

Campaigns for factory reform and temperance particularly attracted

women (unsafe)

Muller v. OregonSupreme Court accepted constitutionality of laws

protecting women workers

Reformist progressive wave finally washed up into the judiciary and in

1917 the Court upheld a ten-hour law for factory workerslaws regulating
factories were worthless if not enforced

Fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in NYC forced stricter legislation

on factory work

Corner saloons attracted the ire and fire of progressiveslink between

alcohol and men abandoning their families

Antiliquor campaigners received support from the Womens Christian

Temperance Union (WCTU) founded by Frances E. Williard, who allied with
the Anti-Saloon League

Some states passed dry laws, which controlled, restricted, or

abolished alcohol

Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 floored, temporarily, demon rum and

alcohol

TRs Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt feared that the public interest was being

submerged in indifference

Roosevelt demanded a Square Deal for capital, labor, and the public
his program embraced three Cs: control of corporations, consumer protection,
and conservation of natural resources

In 1902, a crippling strike broke out in the anthracite coal mines of

Pennsylvania

Long exploited, the workers demanded a 20 percent increase in pay and

a nine-hour workday

Mine owners, confidence the public would react against the miners,
refused to negotiate

As coal supplies dwindled, Roosevelt summoned representatives of

striking miners and owners

Roosevelt threatened to seize the miens and operate them with federal
troops

Faced with the first-time-ever threat to used federal bayonets against

capital, the owners consented and a compromise decision ultimately gave
mines a 10% increase and 9 hour day

Roosevelt urged Congress to create the new Department of Commerce

and Labor (1903)

An important arm was the Bureau of Corporations, which was

authorized to probe businesses engaged in interstate commercehighly
useful in helping break stranglehold of monopoly

TR Corrals the Corporations

The Interstate Commerce Commission (1887) proved woefully

inadequate

Spurred by Roosevelt, Congress passed effective railroad legislation

Elkins Act of 1903

This curb was aimed at the rebate evil and heavy fines could now be
imposed both on the railroads that gave rebates and on the shippers that
accepted rebates

The Hepburn Act of 1906 severely restricted free passes, with the hint of
briberythe Interstate Commerce Commission was expanded to include
express, sleeping car, and pipeline companies

Roosevelt concluded that there were good trusts, with public

consciences, and bad trusts, which lusted for powerhe was determined to
respond to the popular outcry against trusts

As a trustbuster, he burst into headlines with an attack on the Northern

Securities Company

In the Northern Securities decision, the Northern Securities Company

had to be dissolved

Roosevelts big stick crashed down on other giant monopolies (beef,

sugar, fertilizer, harvest)

TR believed the hallmarks of the age to be combination and integration;

by assaulting industry was symbolic: to prove conclusively that the
government, not private business, ruled the country

Roosevelt felt that the threat of dissolution would allow for easier federal
regulation (Roosevelts successor, William Howard Taft, actually Busted
more trusts than TR did)

Caring for the Consumer

American big meatpackers were being shut out of European markets

because of tainted meat

Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle, helped bring in reform concerning

slaughterhouses

Backed by the public, Roosevelt induced Congress to pass the Meat

Inspection Act of 1906, which decreed that preparation of meat shipped over
states was subject to federal inspection

The largest packers accepted it as an opportunity to drive our fly-bynight competitors and at the same time, they could receive the governments
seal of approval on their exports

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was designed to prevent
mislabeling of foods/drugs

Earth Control

Western ranchers and timbermen were especially eager to accelerate

the destructive process

A first step toward conservation was the Desert Land Act of 1877, under
which the federal govt sold arid land cheaply on the condition that the
purchaser irrigate the soil in three years

The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized the president to set aside
public forests as national parks and reserves; the Carey Act of 1894
distributed federal land to states to be settled/irrigated

A naturalist, Roosevelt seized the banner of leadership and charged into

the fray with his prestige

Congress responded to whip of the Rough Rider by passing the

landmark Newlands Act of 1902

Washington was authorized to collect money from the sale of public

lands in the western states and then use these funds for the development of
irrigation projects (Roosevelt Dam, Salt River)

Roosevelt pined to preserve the nations shrinking forestonly about

25% of timber remained

He set aside in federal reserves 125 million acres, earmarked millions of

acres of coal deposits

Roosevelts conservation was buoyed by a concern about the

disappearance of the frontier

Jack Londons Call of the Wild and other books about nature (Boy
Scouts of America)

The Sierra Club dedicated itself to preserving the wildness of the

western landscape

Preservationists lost a major battle in 1913 when the federal government

allowed SF to build a dam for its municipal water supply in the Hetch Hetchy
Valley in Yosemite National Park

Pinchot, Roosevelts chief forester, and Roosevelt wanted to use the

nations natural endowment intelligentlyagainst greedy commercial interests
and against romantic preservationists

Under TR, professional foresters developed a policy of multiple-use

resource management

They sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed

protection, stock grazing

Many westerners at first resisted the federal management of natural

resources but soon adapted

The Roosevelt Panic of 1907

Roosevelt entered his new term in 1904 buoyed by his enormous

personal popularity
Conservative Republican bosses considered him as dangerous and

unpredictable as a rattlesnake His second term called for regulating

corporations, taxing incomes, and protecting workers
After his election in 1904, Roosevelt declared that he would run for a

third termlost influence

Panic in 1907 featured frightened runs on banks, suicides, and

indictments against speculators

The financial world blamed Roosevelt for the stormbranded the

Roosevelt panicRoosevelt accused wealthy of engineering the monetary

crisis to force govt to relax assaults on trusts
The panic of 1907 laid need for fiscal reformsCongress formed the

Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which authorized national banks to issue emergency

currency backed up by collateral
The path was thus smoothed for the momentous Federal Reserve Act of

1913

The Rough Rider Thunders Out

Still popular in 1908, Roosevelt could have almost certainly won the
election but was bound

The departing president choose William Howard Taft, secretary of war

and mild progressive

As the successor who would carry out his policies (control of party
machinerysteamroller)

William Jennings Bryan was chosen again for the Democrats and the
majority of voters chose stability with Roosevelt-endorsed TaftEugene Debs
amassed half a million votes for Socialists

Roosevelts adversaries branded him as a radicalTRs enthusiasm

and youthfulness appealed

He served to protect capitalists against popular indignation and against

socialism

Roosevelt enlarged the power and prestige of the presidential office, he

helped shape the progressive movement, his Square Deal was the precedent
of the New Deal of FDR, and TR opened the eyes of Americans to the fact
that they shared the world with other nations

Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole

William Howard Taft, the biggest of Presidents, was personally popular

and inspired confidence

Roosevelt had led conflicting elements of Republican party by sheer

force of his personality but Taft generally adopted an attitude of passivity
toward Congresspoor judge of public opinion

Peaceful Bill was a mild progressive but he was more wedded to the
status quo than to change

The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat

Taft used the level of American investments to boost American political

interest abroad, an approach to foreign policy that his critics denounced as
dollar diplomacy

Washington encouraged bankers to use surplus dollars into foreign

areas of strategic concern

By preempting investors from rival powers, bankers would strengthen

American defenses and foreign polices, while bringing further prosperity to
their homelanddollar supplanted big stick

Chinas Manchuria was object of Tafts most spectacular effort to inject

the dollar into Far East

Taft saw Manchurian railway as a possible strangulation of Chinese

economic interest but when Secretary of State Knox proposed that US buy
Manchurian railroads, Japan and Russia declined

Another trouble spot was the revolution-riddled Caribbeanthe US

under the Monroe Doctrine would not permit foreign nations to intervene, and
felt obligated to put money in the Caribbean

Sporadic disorders in Cuba, Honduras, and the Dominican Republican

brought American forces to these countries to restore order and protect
American investmentupheaval in Nicaragua

Taft the Trustbuster

Taft managed to gain some fame as a smasher of monopolieshe

actually brought on more suits

The most sensational judicial actions during the Taft regime came in
1911 when the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the Standard Oil

Company, which was judged to be a combination in restraint of trade in

violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890

The Court also handed down its famous rule of reason, a doctrine
which held that only combinations that unreasonably restrained trade were
illegalhole in govt antitrust net

Taft Splits the Republican Party

Lowering the barriers of the protective tariff was high on the agenda of
the progressive members of the Republican partyat first they thought they
had a friend and ally in Taft

The House passed a moderately reductive bill but senatorial

reactionaries tacked on upward tariff revisions (Taft had promised to reduce
tariffs and approached Congress in 1909)

Taft signed the Payne-Aldrich Bill betraying his campaign promises and
outraging the progressive wing of his party, heavily drawn form the Midwest
(Tafts poor conservation)

He established the Bureau of Mines to control mineral resources,

rescued millions of acres of coal lands, and protected waterpowers sites from
private development

Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel erupted in 1910 and erased his

accomplishments from the public mind

Secretary of the Interior Ballinger opened public lands in Wyoming,

Montana, and Alaska to corporate development and was criticized by Pinchot,
chief of Agriculture Departments Forestry

Taft dismissed Pinchot on insubordination and protest arose from

conservationists and Roosevelt

The reformist wing of the Republican party was now up and Taft was
being pushed into the embrace of the Old Guardin 1910, the Grand Old
Party was split wide open

Roosevelt returned and proclaimed his new doctrine of New

Nationalist, which urged the national government to increase its power to
remedy economic and social abuses

Weakened by internal divisions, Republicans lost badly in the

congressional elections of 1910

The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

In 1911, the National Progressive Republican League was formed with

Senator La Follette of Wisconsin its leading candidate for Republican
presidential nomination but Roosevelt seized the Progressive banner and the
Rough Rider came clattering into the presidential primaries

A Taft-Roosevelt explosion was near in 1912 when Republican

convention met in Chicago

The Roosevelt supporters were about 100 delegates short of winning

the nomination

Most of these contests were arbitrarily settled in favor of Taft

(challenging right of seats)

The Roosevelt adherents in the end refused to vote and Taft triumphed

Roosevelt refused to quit the game and was on fire to lead a third-party
crusade

Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and

Abroad, 1912-1916
NEXT CHAPTER

The Bull Moose Campaign

The Democrats needed to capitalize on the Republican brawl at the

convention in Chicago
Such a leader appeared in Woodrow Wilson, a mild conservative turned

militant progressive
Wilson entered politics as New Jersey governor, expected to follow NJ

bosses lead
Wilson waged a reform campaign assailing trusts and promised to turn

state govt to the people

He drew forward-looking measures making NJ one of the more liberal

states

Filled with fury, zeal, eloquence, leadership, Wilson appealed to the

sovereign people

Wilson was nominated by the Democrats in 1912 with the aid of William
Jennings Bryan

Roosevelt was thrust to the fore as a candidate for president for the
Progressive Republicans

Symbolizing the rising political status of women, as well as Progressive

support for the cause of social justice, settlement-house pioneer Jane
Addams placed Roosevelts name for nomination

Roosevelt, nominated, boasted that he felt as strong as a bull moose

Roosevelt and Taft, by dividing the Republican vote, virtually guaranteed

a Democratic victory

The overshadowing question of the 1912 campaign was which two

varieties of progressivism would prevailRoosevelts New Nationalism or
Wilsons New Freedom

Both advocated a more active government role in economic and social

affairs

Roosevelt and Croly (Promise of American Life) both favored continued

consolidation of trusts and labor unions, paralleled by growth of powerful
regulatory agencies in Washington

Wilsons New Freedom favored small enterprise, entrepreneurship, and

the free functioning of unregulated and unmonopolized marketsDemocrats
pinned economic faith on competition

The keynote of Wilsons campaign was fragmentation of big industrial

combines (antitrust laws)

Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a fanatic and had to suspend

campaigning for two weeks

Woodrow Wilson: A Minority President

Wilson won handily with 435 electoral votes; Roosevelt finished second,
and Taft, last

Wilson with only 41 percent of the popular vote was clearly a minority
president

Progressivism rather than Wilson was the runaway winner (Wilson and

Roosevelt votes)
Eugene V. Debs also amassed up 900,672 votes as the Socialist

candidate
The Progressive party had no future because it had elected few

candidates to state/local offices

In 1921 Taft became chief justice of the Supreme Court after defeat

Wilson: The Idealist in Politics

Woodrow Wilson was the second Democratic president since 1861

From the South, Wilson sympathized w/ Confederacys gallant attempt

to win its independence, a sentiment that inspired his ideal of selfdetermination for people of other countries
Wilson shared Jeffersons faith in people and was a moving orator

(sincerity and moral appeal)

Wilson was convinced that Congress could not function properly unless

the president led

Wilson lacked the common touch and could be cold and standoffish in

public

Wilsons burning idealismhis desire to reform ever-present wickedness

(compromise difficult)

Wilson Tackles the Tariff

Wilson called for an assault on the triple wall of privilege: the tariff, the
banks, and the trusts

Tackling the tariff first, he summoned the Congress in 1913 and

appeared in person, presenting his appeal with eloquence and effectiveness
(precedent-shattering move, no message)

The House passed the Underwood Tariff Bill, which provided for a
substantial reduction of rates

The force of public opinion aroused by the presidents oratory secured

final approval

The new Underwood Tariff substantially reduced import fees and was a
landmark in tax legislationsrecently ratified Sixteenth Amendment
graduated income tax

Wilson Battles the Bankers

A second bastion was the antiquated and inadequate banking and

currency system

Its most serous shortcoming, exposed by the panic of 1907, was the
inelasticity of the currency

Banking reserves were heavily concentrated in cities and could not be

mobilized quickly

In 1908 Congress authorized an investigation headed by senator Aldrich

(R) and three years later, the commission recommend a gigantic bank with
numerous branches (3rd Band of US?)

Louis D. Brandeis Other Peoples Money and How the Bankers Use
It (1914)

Wilson endorsed Democratic proposals for a decentralized bank in

government hands, as opposed to Republican demands for a huge private
bank with branches (June 1913)

In 1913 he signed the Federal Reserve Act under which the Federal
Reserve Board oversaw a nationwide system of twelve regional reserve
districts, each with its own central bank

The board was empowered to issue paper money (Federal Reserve

Notes) backed commercially

The Federal Reserve Act carried the nation through the financial crises
of the First World War

The President Tames the Trusts

Early in 1914 Wilson went before Congress again to battle the trusts

Congress responded with the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914

the new law empowered an appointed commission to turn a searchlight on
industries engaged in interstate commerce

The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914, which lengthened the Sherman Acts
list of business practices that were deemed objectionable (price
discrimination, interlocking directorates)

The Clayton Act also conferred long-overdue benefits on labor and

sought to exempt labor and agricultural organizations from antitrust
prosecution (legalizing strikes and picketing)

Under Samuel Gompers the act legally lifted human labor our of the
category of a commodity or article of commerce but conservative judges
continued to slow the union movement

Wilsonian Progressivism at High Tide

Standing at the peak of his powers at the head of progressive forces,

Wilson pressed ahead

The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 made credit available to farmers at
low rates of interest

The Warehouse Act of 1916 authorized loans on the security of staple

crops (both Populist ideas)

Other laws benefited rural America by providing for highway construction

and the establishment of agricultural extension work in the state colleges;
laborers also made gains from progressivism

Sailors were given relief by La Follette Seamens Act of 1915 that

required treatment and living wages on American merchant shipscrippling of
Americas merchant marine (freight rates)

Workingmens Compensation Act of 1916 granted assistance to federal

civil-service employees during periods of disabilityact restricting child labor
invalidated by Supreme Court

The Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour day for all

employees on trains in interstate

commerce, with extra pay for overtimeWilson earned the disapproval

of businesspeople

Progressive Wilson also nominated Louis D. Brandeis for the Supreme

Court (first Jewish man to be nominated)

He appeased businesspeople by making conservative appointments to

the Federal Reserve board and the Federal Trade Commission, but devote
most of his energies toward progressive support

Thunder Across the Sea

A Serb patriot killed the heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungary in

Sarajevo in 1914 and an outraged Vienna government presented an ultimatum
to neighboring Serbia

Serbia was backed by Russia, which began to mobilize its war machine;
Germany struck suddenly at France through unoffending Belgiumin order to
concentrate on Russia

Great Britain was thus compelled into the conflagration on the side of
France

One side was the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey,

and Bulgaria

The Allies were France, Britain, Russia, and later Japan and Italy
(America was safe)

A Precarious Neutrality

Wilson issued the routine neutrality proclamation and called on

Americans to be neutral

Both sides wooed the United States but Britain had an upper hand with
the cables

The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians counted on the natural

sympathies of their countrymen

Most Americans were anti-German from the outsetKaiser Wilhelm II

seemed the embodiment of arrogant autocracy; image tarnished by attempted
violence to American factories and ports

German plans for industrial sabotage were discovered and publicized

wanted to stay out of war

America Earns Arms Manufacturing Money

When Europe burst into flames in 1914 the United States was bogged
down in business recession

British and French war orders soon pulled American industry out of the
morass of hard times

Part of this boom was financed by American bankers and J.P. Morgan
($2.3 billion advanced)

The Central Powers protested bitterly against the immense trade

between America and the Allies

Trade between Germany and America had to move across the Atlantic
but Britain controlled the sea-lanes and the British began forcing American
vessels off the high seas into their ports

The trade between Germany and the United States virtually ceased; in
retaliation for the British blockade, Berlin announced a submarine war area
around the British Isles in February 1915

The submarine was a weapon so new that existing international law

could not be made to fit it; the old rule that a warship must stop and board a
merchantman could not apply

The marauders posed a dire threat to the US and Wilson continued to

claim neutral trading rights

The German submarinesU-boatsbegan their deadly work and sank

many ships including the British passenger liner Lusitania that sank on May 7,
1915 killing 128 Americans

The eastern US wanted war but the rest of the country showed strong
distaste for hostilities

After another British liner was sunk, Berlin agreed not to sink unarmed
and unresisting passenger ships without warning and this pledge was
apparently violated with the Sussex

Wilson gave the Germans an ultimatum and threatened to break

diplomatic relations; Germans agreed not to sink passenger ships and
merchant vessels without giving warning but reused to persuade the Allies to
modify what Berlin regarded as their illegal blockade

Wilson won a temporary but precarious diplomatic victory

Wilson Wins Reelection in 1916

Both the Progressives and the Republicans met in Chicago and the
Progressives renominated Theodore Roosevelt who in refusing to run,
sounded the death knell of the Progressive party

They drafted Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes, an

intellectual and governor of NY

The Republican platform condemned the Democratic tariff, assaults on

the trusts, and Wilsons wishy-washiness in dealing with Mexico and Germany;
anti-German areas assailed Wilson

Wilson was nominated by acclamation at the Democratic convention

He kept us out of war

Democratic orators warned that by electing Charles Hughes, the nation

would be electing a fightwith a certain frustrated Rough Rider leading the
charge; Hughes swept the East

Mid-westerners and westerners, attracted by Wilsons progressive

reforms and antiwar policies, flocked to the polls for the presidentthe final
result hinged on California, which Wilson won

The pro-labor Wilson received strong support form the working class
and from renegade bull moosers, whom Republicans failed to lure back into
their camphopeful expectations smashed

The War to End War, 1917-1918

NEXT CHAPTER

War by Act of Germany

At the end of 1916, Wilson made one last attempt to mediate between
the embattled belligerents restating Americas neutrality and declaring that
only peace without victory would be durable

On January 31, 1917, Germans announced their decision to wage

unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking all ships, including Americas, in the
war zone

Germanys leaders decided that the distinction between combatants and

noncombatants was a luxury they could no longer affordthe Germans called
Wilson bluff (no war yet)

To defend American interests, the president asked Congress for

authority to arm American merchant shipsband of midwestern senators
blocked the measure (American isolationism)

The Zimmermann note was intercepted and published on March 1, 1917

German foreign secretary Zimmermann had secretly proposed a

German-Mexican alliance

After this provocation, German U-boats sank four unarmed American

merchant vessels in March

Revolution in Russia could allow America to fight for democracy on side

of the Allies

Wilson stood before Congress on April 2, 1917, and asked for a

declaration of war ( 4/6/17)

President Wilson drew a clear line and the Germans chose to cross it
American war declaration

Wilsonian Idealism Enthroned

Wilson shattered one of the most sacred of traditions by engaging in a

distant European war

To galvanize the country Wilson declared the twin goals of A war to end
war and a crusade to make the world safe for democracyAmerica did not
fight for riches or territorial conquest

Holding aloft the torch of idealism, the president fired up the public mind
to a fever pitch

Wilsons Fourteen Potent Points

Wilson was recognized as the moral leader of the Allied causefame

Fourteen Points Address

One of his primary purposes was to keep reeling Russia in the war
holding alluring promises

The first five points: a proposal to abolish secret treaties, freedom of the

seas, removal of economic barriers among nations, reduction of armament

burdens, adjustment of colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples
and the colonizerspleased many of the countries
The other points held out the hope of independence to oppressed

minority groups
The capstone point, number fourteen, foreshadowed the League of

Nationsan international organization that Wilson dreamed would provide a

system of collective security
Certain leaders of Allied nations were less than enthusiasticwere not

universally applauded

Creel Manipulates Minds

Mobilizing peoples minds for war was an urgent task facing the

Washington authorities
Committee on Public Information was created and was headed by

George Creelsell America on war and sell world on Wilsonian war aims
Creel organization with 150,000 workers
Four-minute men, posters splashed on billboards, leaflets, propaganda

books, and movies

The entire nation, caught the frenzied spirit of a religious revival, burst

into song (Over there)

American war mobilization relied more on aroused passion and

voluntary compliance than laws

But he oversold the ideals of Wilson and led the world to expect too

much

Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent

German-Americans numbered over 8 million out of 100 million and most

proved loyal to the US

People were quick to spread tales of spying and sabotagehatred of

Germans swept the nation

Both the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 reflected
current fears about Germans and antiwar Americans1,900 prosecutions
under these laws (antiwar Socialists and members of the radical Industrial
Workers of the WorldIWW)

Socialist Eugene V. Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act of

1918 and sentenced to ten years in jail and IWW leader William D. Haywood
and 00 associates were similarly convicted

Virtually any criticism of the govt could be censored and punished

breaking 1st Amendment?

Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court affirmed their

legality, arguing that freedom of speech could be revoked when such speech
posed a clear and present danger to the nation

The Nations Factories Go to War

Pacifistic Wilson had began some preparedness with creation of Council

of National Defense

Wilson also launched a shipbuilding program and endorsed a regular

army of 100,000

Sheer ignorance was among the biggest roadblocks that confronted

economic mobilizers

Old ideas proved to be liabilitiestraditional fears of government efforts

to control economy

Late in the war, Wilson succeeded in imposing some order in this

economic confusion

In March 1918 he appointed Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries

Boarddissolved after war; American preference for laissez-faire and a weak
central government

Workers in Wartime

Spurred by slogan, Labor Will Win the War, American workers

triumphedin part they were driven by War Departments work or fight rule
of 1918, threatened unemployed male w/ draft

The National Labor Board (Taft) headed off labor disputes that might
hamper war effortpressed employers to grant high wages and eight-hour
day but did not guarantee right to organize

Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of Labor loyally

supported the war; the IWW engineered some of the most damaging industrial
sabotageWobblies victims of conditions

At wars end the AF of L had more than doubled its membership to over
3 million

Recognition of the right to organize still eluded labors grasp (war-time

inflation threatened)

Not even the call of patriotism and Wilsonian idealism could defuse all
labor disputes

In 1919 the greatest strike in American history rocked the steel industry
more than 250,000 workers left their jobs in a bid to force their employers to
recognize their right to organize

30,000 African-American strikebreakers were called in and after

confrontations the strike collapsed, a grievous setback that crippled the union
movement for more than a decade

Tens of thousands of southern blacks were drawn to the North in

wartime by the magnet of war-industry employmenttheir sudden appearance
in all-white areas sparked interracial violence

Explosive riot in St. Louis, Missouri and race riot that ripped through
Chicago (racial tension)

Suffering Until Suffrage

Thousands of female workers flooded into factories and fields, taking up

jobs vacated by men

Many progressive-era feminists were pacifists and opposed participation

of women in war effort

National Womans party lead by Quaker activist Alice Paul were pacifists

The larger part of the suffrage movement, the National American

Woman Suffrage Association, supported Wilsons warleaders echoed
Wilsons justification for fighting by arguing that women must take part in the
war effort to earn a role in shaping the peace (democracy)

War mobilization gave new momentum to suffrage fightWilson

endorsed woman suffrage

In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving all American

women the right to vote

Womens wartime economic gains proved fleeting; Congress affirmed its

support for women in their traditional role as mothers when it passed the
Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act of 1921, providing federally financed
instruction in maternal and infant health care

Feminists campaigned for laws to protect women in the workplace and

prohibit child labor

Forging a War Economy

For democracy, America had to feed itself and its allies; the man chosen
to head the Food Administration was Quaker-humanitarian Herbert C. Hoover
(relied on voluntary compliance)

Hoover rejected ration cards and waged a whirlwind propaganda

campaign (voluntary basis)

Congress restricted the use of foodstuffs for manufacturing alcohol and

self-denial helped accelerate the wave of prohibitionpassage of Eighteenth
Amendment in 1919

Farm production increased by one-fourth and food exports to the Allies

tripled in volume

Fuel Administration, Treasury DepartmentLiberty Loan drives (netted

$21 billion, taxes)

Pressures of various kinds were used to sell bondsVictory Loan

campaign in 1919

The government reluctantly exercised its sovereign formal power (seized

merchant vessels)

Washington hustled to get its hands on ships and launched a few

concrete ships

Making Plowboys into Doughboys

For fighting, America would use its navy to uphold freedom of the seas
it would continue to ship war materials to the Allies and supply them with
loans (finally totaled nearly $10 billion)

By 1917, a huge American army would have to be raised, trained, and

transported

Conscription was the only answer to the need for raising an immense
army with all speed

The proposed draft bill ran into a barrage of criticism in Congresssix

weeks after declaring war, Congress grudgingly got around to passing
conscription

The draft act required the registration of all males between the ages of
eighteen and forty-five and no draft dodger or slacker could purchase his
exemption or hire a substitute (key industries)

The draft machinery worked effectively; within a few months, the army
grew to over 4 million

Women served for the first time and African-Americans also served in
the armed forces

Recruits were supposed to receive six months of training and tow more
months overseas but so great was the urgency that many doughboys were
swept swiftly into battle

Fighting in FranceBelatedly

Russias collapse underscored the need for haste; the communistic

Bolsheviks ultimately withdrew their beat country from the capitalistic war
early in 1918

This sudden defection released hundreds of thousands of Germans

from the eastern front facing Russia for the western front in France were they
now had a superiority in manpower

Berlin planned to knock out Britain after unlimited submarine warfare

and no real effective American fighting force reached France until about a year
after declaration of war

France gradually began to bustle with American doughboyssmall

detachments sent into other areas such as Belgium, Italy, and notably Russia
(Bolsheviks resented capitalistic interventions)

America Helps Hammer the Hun

The dreaded German drive on the western front exploded in the spring
of 1918 (500,000 troops)

The allied nations for the first time united under a supreme commander,
French marshal Foch

Late in May 1918, German juggernaut smashed to within forty miles of

Paris (defeat France?)

Newly arrived American troops were thrown into the breach at ChteauThierry and this was a historic momentthe first significant engagement of
American troops in a European war

American weight in the scales was now being felt; by July 1918, the
German drive had spent its force and American men participate in a Foch
counteroffensive in Second Battle of the Marne

This engagement marked the beginning of a German withdrawal that

was never really reversed

The Americans demanded a separate army and received one under

General Pershing

Pershings army undertook the Meuse-Argonne offensive from 9/26/18

to 11/11/18

Victory was in sight but American armies in France were in grave

danger of running short

German allies were deserting them, the British blockade was causing
critical food shortages, and the sledgehammer blows of the Allies rained down
relentlessly (Wilsonian promises)

The Fourteen Points Disarm Germany

Berlin was now ready to hoist the white flag; warned of imminent defeat
by the generals, it turned to the presumably softhearted Wilson in October
1918, seeking peace

In stern responses, Wilson made it clear that the Kaiser must be thrown
overboard before armistice could be negotiated and the Germans forced the
Kaiser to flee to Holland

On November 11, 1918, the Germans laid down their arms and
American burst into rejoicing

The United States main contributions to the ultimate victory had been
foodstuffs, munitions, credits, oil for first mechanized war, and manpower
prospect of endless U.S. troop reserves

Britain and France had transported a majority of the doughboys to

Europe

Wilson Steps Down form Olympus

Woodrow Wilson had helped to win the war and expectations ran

extravagantly high
The American president towered at the peak of his popularity and power

and at this fateful moment, his sureness of touch deserved him and he made
a series of tragic fumbles
During war, Politics Is Adjourned was the slogan and partisan political

strife had been kept below the surface during the war crisis; Wilson broke the
truce by appealing for a Democratic victory in the congressional elections of
November 1918move backfired and (R) majority
Wilsons decision to go in person to Paris to help make the peace

infuriated Republicans; he snubbed the Senate in assembling his peace

delegation and neglected to include a Republican senator in his official party
logical choice of Henry Cabot Lodge of MA but not included
Lodge would have been problematic for the presidentthey hated each

other

An Idealist Battles the Imperialists in Paris

Woodrow Wilson received tumultuous welcomes from masses of

France, England, and Italy; the Paris Conference of great and small nations
fell into the hands of the Big Four

Wilson represented the richest great power and was joined by Premier
Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, and
Premier Georges Clemenceau of France

Speed was urgent when the conference opened on January 18, 1919

Wilsons ultimate goal was a world parliament to be known as the

League of Nationsthe victors would not take possession of conquered
territory outright but would receive as trustees

The Big Four agreed to make the League Covenant, Wilsons brainchild,
an integral part of the final peace treatyassembly of seats for all nations and
a council controlled by many powers

Hammering Out the Treaty

To certain Republican senators, the League was a useless circle or

over-potent super-state

Thirty-nine Republican senators proclaimed that the Senate would not

approve the League of Nations and difficulties delighted Wilsons Allied
adversaries in Parisbargaining position

France secured the Security Treaty, in which both Britain and America
pledged to come to its aid in the event of another German invasionpact
pigeonholed by the U.S. Senate (alliances)

Wilson battled with France over Rhineland, Italy over Fiume, Japan over
Chinese peninsula

The Peace Treaty That Bred a New War

A completed Treaty of Versailles was handed to the Germans in June

1919 (only 4 points)

Allied powers were torn by conflicting aims, many sanctioned by secret

treaties

Wilson saved the pact from being an old-time peace of grasping

imperialism and he had to do away with many of his points in order to salvage
the more precious League of Nations

The Domestic Parade of Prejudice

Returning to America, Wilson sailed straight into a political typhoon;

isolationists raised a whirlwind of protest against he treaty, especially Wilsons

commitment to League of Nations
German-Americans, Italian-Americans were aroused because the peace

settlement was not sufficiently favorableIrish-Americans denounced the

League (gave Britain influence)
Wilsons Tour and Collapse (1919)

A strong majority of the people still seemed favorable; Senator

Lodge had no real hope of defeating the Treaty of Versaillesonly to
amend it to Republicanize it

Lodge effectively used delay to muddle and divide public opinion;

the pact was bogged down in the Senate and Wilson decided to go to the
sovereign people as he had often in the past

The campaign was started in the face of protests (frail health) and
the Midwest received Wilson lukewarmly while two senators followed him
and crowds answered their attacks on Wilson

The Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific Coast welcomed him
with heartwarming outbursts on the return trip at Colorado, Wilson
collapsed from exhaustion and lay sick in the White House

Defeat Through Deadlock

Senator Lodge, now at the helm, came up with fourteen formal

reservations to the treaty

The treaty alarmed critics because it morally bound the United States to
aid any member victimized by external aggressionCongress wanted reserve
war-declaring power

When the day for voting in the Senate came, he sent word to all true
Democrats to vote against the treaty with Lodge reservations attached; Wilson
was still able to obstruct

Loyal Democrats in the Senate blindly did Wilsons bidding; the nation
was too deeply shocked to accept the verdict as final; so strong was public
indignation that the Senate had to vote twice

The lodge-Wilson personal feud, traditionalism, isolationism,

disillusionment, and partisanship all contributed to the confused picturehe
asked for all or nothing and got nothing

The Solemn Referendum of 1920

Wilson proposed to settle the treaty issue in the forthcoming presidential

campaign of 1920 by appeal to the people for a solemn referendumsheer
folly because it was impossibility

The Republican platform appealed to both pro-League and anti-League

sentiment in the party

They choose Senator Warren Harding of Ohio and Governor Calvin

Coolidge of MA for election

With newly enfranchised women swelling the vote totals, Harding was
swept into power with a prodigious plurality of 7 million votes (16 million to 9
million for Cox)Debs: 920,000 votes

People were tired of Wilsonismthe professional high-browism, starreaching idealism, bothersome do-goodism, moral overstrain, and constant
self-sacrificeeager to lapse back

Republican isolationists turned Hardings victory into a death sentence

for the League

The Betrayal of Great Expectations

The Republic had helped to win a costly war, but kicked the fruits of
victory under the table

The ultimate collapse of the Treaty of Versailles must be laid at

Americas doorstepthis complicated pact was a top-heavy structure
designed to rest on a four-legged table (US)

No less ominous events were set in motion when the Senate spurned
the Security Treaty with Francethe French built a powerful military force and
Germany began to rearm illegally

In the interests of its own security, the United States should have used
its enormous strength to shape world-shaking eventsinstead it permitted
itself to drift towards a Second World War

American Life in the Roaring

Twenties, 1919-1929
Seeing Red

Americans turned inward in the 1920s shunning diplomatic

commitments to foreign countries, denouncing radical foreign ideas,
condemned un-American lifestyles, and clanged shut the immigration gates
against foreign peoplesboom of the golden twenties showered benefits

New technologies, new consumer products, and newer forms of leisure

made the twenties roar

Hysterical fears of red Russia followed the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

(Communist party)

Tensions were heightened by an epidemic of strikes that convulsed the

Republic at wars end

Americans jumped to the conclusion that the Bolsheviks fomented labor

troubles

The big red scare of 1919 -1920 resulted in a nationwide crusade

against left-wingers whose Americanism was suspectMitchell Palmer, the
Fighting Quaker, seeing red

Alien radicals deported on Buford to Russia, Wall Street bomb killing 38

people

A number of State legislatures passed criminal syndicalism lawsmade

unlawful the mere advocacy of violence to secure social changemere words
were not criminal deeds

The red scare was a godsend to conservative businesspeoplebroke

backs of unions

Anti-redism and Anti-foreignism were reflected in notorious case

regarded as a judicial lynching

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of two murders

and the jury/judge were prejudiced in some degree against the defendants
because they were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers
liberals/radicals rallied to their defense but they were electrocuted (martyrs)
Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

A new Ku Klux Klan, spawned by the postwar reaction, spread

fearsomely in the early 1920s

It was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist,

anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, antievolution, anti-bootlegger,
antigambling

It was pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-native American, and pro-Protestant

(ultraconservative uprising)

The Klan spread rapidly in the Midwest and the Southpeak in the mid1920s with 5 million

Capitalized on American love of adventure, camaraderie, and secret

ritualconclaves, huge flay-waving parades, and the chief warning was the
blazing cross (reign of hooded horror)

The movement collapsed in the late 1920s with a congressional

investigationinitiation fee
Stemming the Foreign Flood

Immigrants began to flood into the country as peace settled in the

1920s; some 800,000 stepped ashore in 1920-1921, about two-thirds of them
from southern and eastern Europe

Congress plugged the breach with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921
newcomers from Europe were restricted in any given year to a definite quota
(set at 3 percent of the people of their nationality who had been living in the
U.S. in 1910favorable to southern/eastern Europeans)

The Immigration Act of 1924 replaced the stopgap legislation of 1921

quotes were cut from 3% to 2% and the national-origins base was shifted from
the census of 1910 to that of 1890

Comparatively few southern Europeans had arrived there and the door
was shut absolutely against Japanese immigrants (hate rallies in Japan);
exempt were Canadians and Latin Americans

The quote system was a departure in American policyimmigration

dwindled to a mere trickle

The Immigration Act of 1924 marked the end of virtually unrestricted

immigration (by 1931)

America was patchwork of ethnic communities separated (language,

religion, customs)

Efforts to organize labor unions repeatedly founded on the rocks of

ethnic differences; ethnic variety thus undermined class and political solidarity
did not have a common language
The Prohibition Experiment

The last pillar of the progressive reform was prohibition, loudly

supported by crusading churches and by many womenEighteenth
Amendment in 1919 as implemented by the Volstead Act

The legal abolition of alcohol was especially popular in the South and
West (Southern whites wanted to keep blacks in place and West led an attack
on all vices associated with saloons)

Prohibitionists overlooked the tenacious American tradition of strong

drink and of weak control by the central government, especially over private
livesmajority of people were hostile to it

Slaking thirst became a cherished personal liberty; frustrated soldiers

complained about prohibition; workers bemoaned their loss of cheap beer;
flaming youth of the jazz age drank

State/federal agencies were understaffed and snoopers, susceptible to

bribery, were underpaid

Both men and women drank hard liquor in staggering volumecases

leaked from Canada

Home brew and bathtub gin became popular but some produced
blindness, even death

Bank savings increased, absenteeism in industry decreased, less

alcohol was consumed than in the days before prohibition, though strong drink
continued to be available
The Golden Age of Gansterism

Lush profits of illegal alcohol led to bribery of the police; violent wars
broke out in the big cities between rival gangs who sought to corner the rich
market in booze (bootlegging competitors)

Arrests were few and convictions were even fewergangsters covered

for one another (code)

Chicago was by far the most spectacular example of lawlessness;

Scarface Al Capone, a grasping and murderous booze distributor, began six
years of gang warfare netting millions

Capone could not be convicted of the St. Valentines Day massacre of

1929 but served ten years in jail for income-tax evasiongangsters moved to
gambling and narcotics

Honest merchants were forced to pay protection moneyorganized

crime became big business

The kidnapping for ransom and eventual murder the son of aviator-hero
Charles A. LindberghCongress passed the Lindbergh Law in 1932, making

interstate abduction in certain circumstances a death-penalty offense (annual

take of underworld was $12 to $18 billion
Monkey Business in Tennessee

Education made giant strides in the 1920s; more and more states were
requiring young people to remain in school until age sixteen or eighteen, or
until graduation from high school (one in four)

Professor John Dewey made the most revolutionary contribution to

educational theory

He set forth the principles of learning by doing that formed the

foundation of so-called progressive educationhe believed that the
workbench was essential (education for life)

A massive public-health program, launched by the Rockefeller

Foundation in the South in 1909, had virtually wiped out the affliction of
hookworm by the 1920sbetter nutrition and health care

Science and progressive education were subjected to unfriendly fire

from the Fundamentalists

They charged Darwinian evolution was destroying faith in God and the
Bible (moral downfall)

Numerous attempts were made to secure laws prohibiting the teaching

of evolution in the public schools and three southern states adopted such
shackling measures (included Tennessee)

The Monkey Trial in Tennessee involved a high school teacher, John T.

Scopes, who was indicted for teaching evolutionnationally known attorneys
defended Scopes

William Jennings Bryan, a Fundamentalist, joined the prosecuted and

soon died of a stroke

Clash between theology and biology proved inconclusive (Scopes found

guilty and fined $100)

The Fundamentalists at best won only a hollow victorythe Bible still

remained a vibrant force
The Mass-Consumption Economy

Prosperity put much of the roar into the twenties; the economy
advanced for seven years

Both the recent war and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellons tax
policies favored the rapid expansion of capital investmentingenious
machines greatly increased the productivity

Assembly-line production reached perfection in Henry Fords plant

(automobile in 10 seconds)

Supplying electrical power for the new machines became a giant

business in the 1920s

Above all, the automobile now became the carriage of the common
citizen (30 million in 1930)

American manufacturers seemed to have mastered the problems of

production; responding to this need, a new arm of American commerce
emerged, advertising (persuasion, ploy, seduction)

Founder of this new profession was Bruce Barton, who wrote The Man
Nobody Knows (Jesus)

Sports became big business in the consumer economy of the 1920s

sports icons were far better known than most statesmen (Babe Ruth, the
Sultan of Swat and Jack Dempsey, boxing)

Buying on credit was another innovative feature of the postwar economy

(people in debt)
Putting America on Rubber Tires

A new industrial revolution slipped into high gear in America in the

1920s

Of all inventions of era, the automobile cut the deepest mark (assemblyline, mass production)

Americans adapted rather than invented gasoline engine and a few

daring American inventors and promoters, including Henry Ford and Ransom
Olds were developing the automotive industry

An enormous industry sprang into being, as Detroit became the

motorcar capital of America, which owed much to the stopwatch efficiency
techniques of Frederick W. Taylor (inventor)

Best known of new crop of industrial wizards was Henry Fords who put
America on rubber tires

Fords Model T was cheap, rugged, and reasonably reliable, though

rough and clattering

So economical were his methods that in the mid-1920s he was selling

the Ford roadster for $260

Fords were phenomenal and by 1930 the total had risen to 20 million
from 0.5 million in 1914

The Advent of the Gasoline Age

A gigantic new industry emerged, dependent on steel but displacing

steel from its kingpin role

Employing about 6 million people by 1930, it was a major wellspring of

the nations prosperity

New industries boomed lustily; the petroleum business experienced an

explosive developmentstates expanded wondrously and the wilderness
frontier became an industrial frontier

Speedy marketing of perishable foodstuffs was accelerated; a new

prosperity enriched outlying farms, countless new roads ribboned out to meet
demand of the American motorist

Zooming motorcars were agents of social change; they changed from a

luxury to a necessity

Leisure hours could not be spent more pleasurably and women were
further freed from men

Autobuses made possible the consolidation of schools and to some

extent of churches and the sprawling suburbs spread out still farther from the
urban corenation of commuters

The demon machine exacted a terrible toll by catering to the American

mania for speed

The morals of flaming youth sagged correspondingwhat might young

people get up in a car?

The automobile contributed notable to improved air and environmental

quality despite its later notoriety as a polluterautomobile brought
convenience, pleasure, and excitement
Humans Develop Wings

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, performed the miracle at Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright took aloft a feebly engined plane
that stayed airborne for 12 seconds and two obscure bicycle repairmen
launched the air age

The public was made increasingly air-minded by unsung heroes and

airplanes were used with marked success for various purposes during the
Great War of 1914-1918

In 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh electrified the world by the first solo westto-east conquest of the AtlanticLindberghs exploit swept Americans off their
feet (genuine hero?)

Lindberghs achievement gave a strong boost to the infant aviation

industry

The airship provided the restless American spirit with yet another
dimensionby the 1930s and 1940s, travel by air on regularly schedule
airlines was significantly safer than on the highways

The floundering railroad received another setback through the loss of

passengers and mail
The Radio Revolution

Gugleilmo Marconi, invented wireless telegraphy in the 1890s and his

brainchild was used for long-range communication during World War Inext
came the voice-carrying radio

A red-letter day was posted in November 1920 when a Pittsburgh radio

station broadcasted news

Later miracles were achieved in transatlantic wireless phonographs,

radiotelephones, and televisionby the late 1920s, technological
improvements made long-distance broadcasting possible, and national
commercial networks drowned out much local programming

The radio was drawing Americans back to the home (radio knitted the
nation together)

Educationally and culturally, the radio made a significant contribution

sports were further stimulated and politicians were now able to deliver their
speeches over the radio (music)
Hollywood Filmland Fantasies

The flickering movie was the fruit of numerous geniuses, including

Thomas A. Edison

It was available in the 1890s in naughty peep-show penny arcades but

the real birth of the movie came in 1903 when the first story sequence
reached the screen (The Great Train Robbery)

Hollywood, in southern California, quickly became the movie capital of

the world; an outraged public forced the screen magnates to set up their own
rigorous code of censorship (propaganda)

A new era began in 1927 with the success of the first talkieThe Jazz
Singer

Movies eclipsed all other new forms of amusement in the phenomenal

growth of popularity

Much of the rich diversity of the immigrants Old Country cultures was
lost, but the standardization of tastes and of language hastened entry into the
American mainstream
The Dynamic Decade

The census of 1920 revealed that for the first time most Americans no
longer lived in the countryside but in urban areas; women continued to find
opportunities for employment in cities

An organized birth-control movement, led by feminist Margaret Sanger,

openly championed the use of contraceptives and Alice Pauls National
Womans party campaigned for Equal Rights

Fundamentalist champions of the religion lost ground to the Modernists

(God was a good guy)

Advertisers sold everything from soap to car tiresmaidens now

proclaimed their new freedom as flappers in bobbed tresses and dresses

Adventuresome females shocked their elders when they sported the

new one-piece bathing suits

If the flapper was the goddess of the era of wonderful nonsense, jazz
was its sacred music

Jazz moved up from New Orleans along with the migrating blacks during
World War I

A new racial pride blossomed in the northern black communities that

burgeoned during/after war

Harlem in New York City was one of the largest black communities in
the world (Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey: United Negro Improvement
Association to promote resettlement back)

The race pride that Garvey inspired among the 4 million blacks who
were UNIA followers at the movements height helped newcomers to northern
cities gain self-confidence and self-reliance
Cultural Liberation

By the dawn of the 1920s, most of the custodians of an aging genteel

literary culture had died

In the decade after the war, a generation of writers burst upon the
scene; many of them hailed from ethnic and regional backgrounds different
from that of the Protestant New Englanders who traditionally had dominated
American cultural life (exhibited the energy of youth, the ambition of excluded
outsiders, and in many cases the smoldering resentment of ideals betrayed)

Architecture also married itself to the new materialism and functionalism

architects like Frank Lloyd Wright were advancing theory that buildings
should grow from their sites and not imitate
Wall Streets Big Bull Market

Signals abounded that economic joyride might end in a crash

hundreds of banks failed annually

Florida boom that culminated in 1925 involved the selling of numerous

underwater lots at preposterous sumswildcat scheme collapse when
peninsula was devastated by a hurricane

The stock exchange provided even greater sensationsspeculation ran

wild and an orgy of boom-or-bust trading pushed the market up to dizzy peaks
(Be a bull on America)

As the 1920s lurched forward, everybody seemed to be buying stocks

on marginwith a small down payment (rags-to-riches Americans worshiped
at the altar of the ticker-tape machine

Little was done by Washington to curb money-mad speculators (national

debt sky-rocketed)

A businesslike move toward economic sanity was made in 1921, with

the creation of the Bureau of the Budgetassist president in preparing careful
estimates of receipts and expenditures for submission to Congress as the
annual budget (prevent haphazardly extravagant appropriations)

The burdensome taxes inherited from the war were distasteful to the
Secretary of the Treasury Mellontheir theory was that such high levies
forced the rich to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in the factories
that provided prosperous payrolls (high taxes discouraged business and also
brought a smaller net return to the Treasury than moderate taxes)

Mellon helped engineer a series of tax reductions from 1921 to 1926

and Congress followed by repealing excess-profits tax, abolishing gift tax, and
reducing excise taxes, surtax, income tax, and estate taxes (Mellons sparethe-rich policies shifted tax burden to middle-income groups)

True he reduced the national debt by $10 billion (to $16 billion) but he
was accused of indirectly encouraging the bull marketsingle-mindedly pro
business regime that dominated political scene

The Politics of Boom and Bust, 19201932

NEXT CHAPTER

The Republican Old Guard Returns

The United States retreated from its brief international fling during World
War I and resumed with vengeance traditional foreign policy of military unpreparedness and political isolationism

Warren G. Harding, inaugurated in 1921, looked presidential, exuded

graciousness and love of people; Harding quickly found himself beyond his
depth in the presidency (weak, inept)

Harding, like Grant, was unable to detect moral corruption in his evil
associates and hated to hurt peoples feelingsHarding had promised to
gather about him the best minds of the party

Charles Evans Hughes brought to the position of secretary of state a

dominating if somewhat conservative leadership; the secretary of the Treasury
was Andrew Mellon and Herbert Hoover became secretary of commercebut
the best minds were largely offset by two of the worst

Senator Albert B. Fall of NM, a scheming anticonservationist, was

appointed secretary of the interior and was the guardian of the nations natural
resources; Harry M. Daugherty was a big-time crook in the Ohio Gang
(cabinet) and was the attorney general

GOP Reaction at the Throttle

Harding was a perfect front for enterprising industrialists; a McKinleystyle old order settled back into place at wars end, crushing reform seedlings
that had sprouted in the progressive era

The Old Guard hoped to improve on the old business doctrine of

laissez-fairtheir plea was not simply for government to keep hands off

business, but for government to help guide business along the path of profits
courts and administrative bureaus into safekeeping of stand-patters

Harding was president for less than three years but he appointed four of
the nine justices of the Supreme Court; several were reactionaries but for chief
justice he chose ex-president Taft, who not only performed his duties ably but
surprisingly was more liberal than some other associates

In the first years of the 1920s, the Supreme Court axed progressive
legislation by killing federal child-labor law, stripping away labors gains and
restricting govt intervention in the economy

In the landmark case of Adkins v. Childrens Hospital (1923) the Court

reversed its won reasoning inMuller v. Oregon and because women now had
the vote, they were legal equals to man and invalidated a minimum-wage law
for womenframed gender differences

Antitrust laws were often ignored, circumvented, or feebly enforced and

the Interstate Commerce Commission came to be dominated by men who
were personally sympathetic to big businesses

Big industrialists had free hand to set up trade associations

encouraged by Secretary Hoover

His sense of efficiency led him to condemn competition and his

commitment to voluntary cooperation led him to usage businesses to regulate
themselves rather than be regulated by govt

America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens

The US, having rejected the Treaty of Versailles, was still technically at
war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary nearly three years after the armistice
In July 1921 Congress passed a simple joint resolution that declared that
the war officially ended

Isolation was enthroned in Washington, the new world body was still
regarded as dangerous

Harding couldnt completely turn his back on outside world, especially

the Middle East where a sharp rivalry developed between America and Britain
for oil-drilling concessions (black gold)

Secretary Hughes eventually secured for American oil companies the

right to share in the exploitation of the sandy regions oil riches and
disarmament was an international issue

A deadly contest was shaping up with Britain and Japan, which watched
with alarm as the oceans filled with American vesselsBritain still
commanded the worlds largest navy

Public agitation in America brought about the Disarmament

Conference in 1921-1922 and invitations went to all major naval powers-naval
disarmament and the situation in the Far East

Secretary Hughes startled the delegates with a comprehensive,

concrete plan for declaring a stoppage for ten years on construction of
battleshipsproposed that the scaled-down navies of America and Britain
would have battleships and aircraft carriers with Japan in ratio of 5:5:3

The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 embodied Hughes ideas on ship

ratios but only after compensation was offered to the insecure Japanese
fortifying Far Eastern possessions by British and Americans but Japanese
were not subjected to such restraints in their possessions

The Four-Power Treaty bound Britain, Japan, France and the US to

preserve status quo in Pacific and the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922, whom
agreed to nail open the Open Door in China

No restrictions had been placed on small warships and other powers

churned ahead with ships

Congress declared it was making no commitment to the use of armed

force of any kind of joint action and the Americans were seemingly content to
rely for their security on words and thinking

Calvin Coolidges secretary of state, Frank B. Kellogg, signed the

Kellogg-Briand Pact under which defensive wars were still permittedfalse
sense of American security in the 1920s

Hiking the Tariff Higher

A lack of realism afflicted foreign economic policy in the 1920sprotect

American economy

Tariff walls were flung up around the US spurred into action by their fear
of a flood of cheap goods from recovering Europe, especially during the sharp
recession of 1920-1921

In 1922 Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Lawboost

schedules from the average of 27 percent under Wilsons Underwood Tariff of
1912 to an average of 38.5 percent

Duties on farm produce were increased and the principle was

proclaimed that the general rates were designed to equalize the cost of
American and foreign production (Tariff Commission)

Presidents Harding and Coolidge authorized thirty-two upward changes,

including on their list vital commodities like dairy products, chemicals, and pig
ironwith only five reductions

The high-tariff charted by the Republican regimes set off an ominous

chain reactionEuropeans products felt the squeeze; Europe needed to sell

its manufactured goods to the US and America needed to give foreign nations
a chance to make a profit so they could repay their debts

The American example spurred European nations to pile up higher

barriers themselves and they hurt not only American-made goods but the
products of European countries as well

The Stench of Scandal

Loose morality/get-rich-quickism of Harding era manifested themselves

in a series of scandals

In 1923 Colonel Charles Forbes was caught with his hand in the till and
resigned as head of the Veterans Bureauhe looted the govt to the tune of
about $200 million in veterans hospitals

Most shocking of all was the Teapot Dome scandal, an affair that
involved priceless naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome (Wyoming) and Elk Hills
(California)In 1921, Albert B. Fall of the Interior Department received these
valuable properties and Harding signed the secret order

Fall then leased the lands to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L.
Doheny, But not until he received a bribe (loan) of $100,000 from Doheny
and $300,000 in all from Sinclair

Details of the transaction began to leak out in March 1923 and they
were indicted in 1924 but the case dragged through the courts until 1929Fall
was founded guilty of taking a bribe

The smudge from Teapot Dome polluted the prestige of the Washington
government

The acquittal of Sinclair and Doheny, the bribe givers, undermined faith
in the courts

Persistent reports of Attorney General Daugherty prompted a Senate

investigation in 1924 of the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permitshe was
forced to resign; they failed to convict him

While news of the scandals was beginning to break, he embarked upon

a speech-making tour across the country and on the return trip, he died in San
Francisco in August 1923 of pneumonia

The brutal fact is that Harding was not a strong enough man for the
presidencyhe admitted it

Silent Cal Coolidge

News of Hardings death was sped to Vice President Coolidge

homespun setting of Coolidge whom embodied New England virtues of
honesty, morality, industry, and frugality

Silent Cal was a staunch apostle of the status quo and he became the
high priest of the great god Businesshis thrifty nature caused him to
sympathize fully with Secretary of the Treasury Mellons efforts to reduce both
taxes and debtshe was no foe of industrial bigness

Coolidge slowly gave the Harding regime a badly needed moral

fumigation; the public was shocked by the scandal at first, but Americas moral
sensibility was being dulled by prosperity

Frustrated Farmers

While the fighting had raged, farmers had raked in money hand over
(price of wheat very high)

But peace brought an end to government-guaranteed high prices and to

massive purchases by other nations, as foreign production reentered the
stream of world commerce

Machines also threatened to plow the farmers under their own

overabundant cropsthe gasoline-engine tractor was working a revolution on
American farms, steel mule, and reaper

Wheat belt of the upper Midwest; more machines equals even more
surplus

Farm bloc from the agricultural states coalesced in Congress in 1921

and succeeded in laws

The Capper-Volstead Act exempted farmers marketing cooperatives

from antitrust prosecution

The farm blocs favorite proposal was the McNary-Haugen bill that
sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy
and sell surplusesspecial tax on farmers

Congress passed it and Coolidge vetoed; farm prices stayed down and
farmers political temperatures stayed high, reaching fever pitch in the election
of 1924

A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924

Self-satisfied Republicans nominated Silent Cal for presidency at their

convention in 1924

Democrats had more difficulty choosing a candidatethe party was split

between wets and drys, urban and farmers, Fundamentalists and
Modernists, northern liberals/southern stand-patters, immigrants/old-stock
Americansfinally choose John W. Daviscorporation lawyer

La Follette from Wisconsin led a new Progressive grouping and gained

the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and enjoyed the
support of the Socialist party (farmers)

La Follettes new Progressive partys platform called for nationalization

of railroads, relief for farmers, lashed out at monopoly and antilabor
injunctions, and urged a constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme
Courts power to invalidate laws passed by Congress ( Coolidge)

La Follette polled nearly 5 million votes but the Republicans slipped

easily back into office

Foreign-Policy Flounderings

Isolation continued to reign in the Coolidge erathe Senate proved

unwilling to allow America to adhere to the World Courtthe League of
Nationsa glaring exception to the inward looking

US armed interventionism in the Caribbean and Central America; troops

withdrawn from the Dominican Republic, remained in Haiti, and troops were
taken out and sent back into Nicaragua

American oil companies clamored for a military expedition to Mexico in

1926 when the Mexican government began to assert its sovereignty over oil
reserves (Coolidge defused Mexican crisis)

Overshadowing all other foreign-policy problems in the 1920s was the

knotty issue of inter-national debs, a complicated tangle of private loans, Allied
war debts, and German reparations

Almost overnight, World War I had reversed the international financial

position of the US; in 1914, America had been a debtor nation and by 1922 it
had become a creditor nation $16 billion

American investors loaned some $10 billion to foreigners in the 1920s

though even this huge river of money could not fully refloat the war-shelled
world economy

The key knot in the debt was the $10 billion that the U.S. Treasury had
loaned to the Allies during and immediately after the warAllies protested that
demand for repayment was unfair

America, the argued, should write off its loans as war costs, just as the
Allies had lost lives

The effect of their borrowed dollars had been to fuel the boom on
wartime economy in America and USs postwar tariff walls made it impossible
for them to sell goods to pay their debts

Unraveling the Debt Knot

Americas insistence on getting its money back helped to harden the

hearts of the Allies against conquered Germany and the French and British
demanded that the Germans pay $32 billion back

The French seeking to collect reparations payments, sent troops into

Germans industrialized Ruhr Valley in 1923 and Berlin let its currency to
inflate astronomically

German society teetered on the brink of mad anarchy and house of

financial cards was weak

Sensible statesmen now urged that war debts and reparations be

drastically scaled down or even canceled outrightthe Washington
administration proved unrealistic in its insistence

Reality finally dawned in the Dawes Plan of 1924, which rescheduled

German reparations payments and opened the way for further American
private loans to GermanyU.S. bankers loaned money to Germany, Germany
paid reparations to France and Britain, and Allies paid money to USflow of
American credit until the great crash in 1929, which all debtors defaulted

The United States never did get its money, but it harvested a bumper
crop of ill will

The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928

Calvin Coolidge bowed out of the 1929 presidential race and his logical
successor was Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, unpopular with
political bosses, but much admired by the masses

The Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York and

was an alcoholic

New Yorker Smith was a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly

Protestant land and the Democrats saddled the wet Smith with a dry running
mate and a dry platform (Happy Warrior)

Radio figured prominently in this campaign for the first time and it
helped Hoover more than Smith; the New Yorker had more personal sparkle
but could not project it through the radio

Hoover came out of the microphone better than he went in (grassrootish and statesmanlike)

Herbert Hoover was an orphan boy who worked his way though
Stanford and was a businessman

Experiences abroad strengthened faith in American individualism free

enterprise and small govt

Hoover did not adapt readily to the necessary give-and-take of political

accommodation, but his real power lay in his integrity, his humanitarianism, his
passion for the facts, his efficiency, his talents for administration and his ability
to inspire loyalty in close associations (the Chief)

Hoover recoiled fro anything suggesting socialism, paternalism, or

planned economy yet he endorsed labor unions and support federal
regulation of the new radio broadcasting industry

Below-the-belt tactics were employed to a disgusting degree by lowerlevel campaigners

Smiths Catholicism still won Deep South states but not his home state
of New York

Hoover triumphed in a landslide and won all the states except the Deep
South and he proved to be the first Republican candidate in 52 years (except
Harding) to carry a state that had seceded

President Hoovers First Moves

Prosperity in the late 1920s smiled broadly as the Hoover years began
soaring stocks on the bull market continued but two immense groups of
citizens were not getting their share of the riches flowing: unorganized wage
earners and especially the disorganized farmers

Hoovers administration responded to the farmers with The Agricultural

Marketing Act (1929) that was designed to help the farmers help themselves
and set up the Federal Farm Board with its revolving fund of half a billion
dollars at its disposalmoney was lent to farm organizations

In 1920 the Farm Board created both the Gratin Stabilization

Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporationthe prime goal was to
bolster sagging prices by buying up surpluses

But the two agencies were soon suffocated by a avalanche of farm

produce

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1920 started as a fairly reasonable

protective measure, designed to assist the farmers but it had acquired about a
thousand amendments by the time it was passed

It turned out to be the highest protective tariff in the nations peacetime

history (60 percent)

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff was a blow below the trade belt to foreigners
economic warfare on the entire outside war and it reversed a promising
worldwide trend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the trade gapstit
plunged American and nations deeper into the terrible depression

It increased international financial chaos and forced the United States

further into the bog of economic isolationismplaying directly into the hands
of German demagogue, Adolf Hitler

The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties

When Herbert Hoover took the presidential oath on March 4, 1929, the
long boom seemed endless with the painful exception of the debt-blanketed
farm belt

Americas productive colossus (automobile, radio, movie) were roaring

alongprosperity

The speculative bubble was actually near the bursting point; prices on
the stock exchange continued to spiral upward; Hoover tried to curb
speculation through the Federal Reserve Board

A catastrophic brash came in October 1929it was partially triggered

by the British, who raised their interest rates in effort to bring back capital lured
abroad by American investments

Foreign investors and speculators began to dump their insecurities and

an orgy of selling followedtension built up to Black Tuesday of October 29,
1929 (16 million shares sold)

Losses, even in blue-chip securities, were unbelievable; by the end of

1929, stockholders had lost $40 billion paper valuescollapse heralded a
business depression, at home and abroad

By the end of 1920, more then 4 million workers in the United States
were jobless (tripled, 1932)

When employees werent discharged, wages and salaries were often

slashed

Over five thousand banks collapsed in the first three years of depression
(most severe setback)

Bread lines formed, soup kitchens dispensed food; men often blamed
themselves for their plight

Hooked on the Horn of Plenty

What caused the Great Depression? One basic explanation was

overproduction by both farm and factorythe depression of the 1930s was
one of abundance, not want

The nations ability to produce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to
consume or pay for them

Too much money was going into the hands of a few wealthy people, who
invested on industry while not enough was going into salaries and wages
should have revitalized purchasing power

Overexpansion of credit through installment plan buying overstimulated

production; paying on such easy terms caused many consumers to dive in
beyond their depth (unemployment)

The Continent had never fully recovered from the upheaval of World War
I; depression in America was given a further downward push by a chainreaction financial collapse in Europe, following failure in 1931 of a prominent
Vienna banking house (reparations, war debts, loans)

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 had hastened the drying of

international trade

A terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley in 1930thousands

of farms sold at auction for taxes and farm tenancy was spreading at an
alarming rate among both whites and blacks

By 1920 the depression had become a national calamity; a host of

industrious citizens had lost everything and they wanted to work but there was
no work (self-respect were stifled)

Tin-and-paper shantytowns sprang up in many cities cynically named

Hoovervilles

Rugged Times for Rugged Individualists

Hoovers exalted reputation as a wonder-worker and efficiency engineer

crashed about as dismally as the stock marketthe president was impaled on
the horns of a cruel dilemma

As a humanitarian he was distressed by the widespread misery but as a

rugged individualist, he shrank from the heresy of government handouts
industry, thrift, and self-reliance were virtues

As the depression worsened, Hoover was forced to turn from his rugged
individualism and accept the proposition that welfare of the people in a
catastrophe is a direct concern of the govt

The president worked out a compromise between hands-off philosophy

and the direct dole being used in Englandhe would assist the railroads,
banks, and rural credit corporations, in the hope of restoring financial health
that would trickle down the economic pyramid to unemployment

Commentators remarked that the Great Humanitarian was willing to

lend govt money to the big bankers, who allegedly had plunged the country
and to agriculture but not the people

Hoovers efforts probably prevented a more serious collapse than did

occur and his expenditures for relief, revolutionary for that day, paved path for
federal outlays of his New Deal successor
Herbert Hoover Battles the Great Depression

President Hoover, with trickle-down philosophy, recommended that

congress vote immense sums for useful public workshe secured from
Congress $2.25 billion for such projects

Most imposing of the public enterprises was the Hoover Dam on the
Colorado Riverit was voted under Coolidge, begun in 1930 under Hoover
and completed in 1936 under Roosevelt

Hoover fought all schemes that he regarded as socialisticMuscle

Shoals Bill designed to dam the Tennessee River because he opposed the
govt selling electricity to private companies

Early in 1932 Congress established the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation (RFC)

With a capital of about half a billion dollars, this agency became a govt
lending bank and was designed to provide indirect relief by assisting insurance
companies, banks, agricultural organizations, railroads, and even hardpressed state and local governments

But to preserve individualism and character, there would be no loans to

individuals

The organization was established many months too late for maximum
usefulness

Hoovers administration also provided some indirect benefits for labor

Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932 that
outlawed yellow-dog (antiunion) contracts and forbade the federal courts to
issue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and picketing

Herbert Hoover did inaugurate a significant new policyby the end of

his term he had started down the road toward government assistance for
needy citizens (hostile congress and a depression-cursed electorate reduced
the Republican majority that the Democrats controlled the new House and
almost controlled the Senateinsurgent R combined with D to harass Hoover)

Routing the Bonus Army in Washington

Many veterans of World War I were numbered among the victims of the
depression and the thoughts of the former soldiers naturally turned to what the
government owed them for their services in 1917-1918drive for premature
payment of the deferred bonus (payable in 1945)

Thousands of impoverished veterans prepared to move on to

Washington to demand the Congress the immediate payment of their entire
bonusthe Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF)

Converging in 1932 these supplicants set up camps in a gigantic

Hooverville and created a menace to the public health, while attempting to
intimidate Congress by their presence

Following riots, Hoover responded to the demands of Washington by

ordering the army to evacuate the unwanted guests and the eviction was
carried out by General Douglas MacArthur with bayonets and tear gas with far
more severity that Hoover had planned on the Bonus Army

This brutal episode marked downfall of the American opinion of Hoover

(Hoover depression)

Japanese Militarists Attack China

Militaristic Japan stole the Far Eastern spotlight; in September 1931 the
Japanese imperialists, nothing that the West was in a depression, lunged into
Manchuria (coveted Chinese province)

This flagrant violation of the League of Nations covenant as well as

other international agreements led Americans to urge strong measures
ranging from boycotts to blockades

The League was handicapped in the nonmembership of the US and

Washington rebuffed initial attempts in 1931 to secure American cooperation
in applying economic pressure on Japan

The Stimson doctrine proclaimed in 1932 that the US would not

recognize any territorial acquisitions achieved by forcerighteous indignation
would substitute for solid initiatives

Smarting under a Chinese boycott, the Japanese bombed Shanghai in

1932 and Americans launched informal boycotts of Japanese goods but there
was no real sentiment for intervention

Collective security died and World War II was born in 1931 on the plains
of Manchuriathe League members had the economic and naval power to
halt Japan but lacked the courage to act

One reason was that they could not count on Americas support

Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy

Hoovers arrival brought a more hopeful turn to relations with Americas

southern neighbors

After his election in 1928, Hoover took a goodwill tour of Latin America;
following the stock-market collapse of 1929, Americans had less money to
invest abroad

Economic imperialism became much less popular in the United States

(loosing money abroad)

Hoover strove to abandon the interventionist twist given to the Monroe

Doctrine by Theodore Roosevelt and negotiated a new treaty with the republic
of Haiti in 1932, which provided for the complete withdrawal of American
platoons by 1934; troops left Nicaragua in 1933

Herbert Hoover happily engineered the foundation stones of the Good

Neighbor policy

The Great Depression and the New

Deal, 1933-1939
NEXT CHAPTER

FDR: Politician Despite Physical

Challenges

Franklin Roosevelts courageous fighting from polio schooled him in

patience, tolerance, compassion, and strength of willRoosevelts personal
and political asset was his wife, Eleanor

FDRs political career was as much hers as it was his own; she was to
become the most active First Lady in historyshe powerfully influenced the
policies of the national government

Always she battled for the impoverished and the oppressedinfidelity

between husband/wife

Franklin Roosevelts political appeal was amazinghis commanding

presence, golden speaking voice, belief that money, rather than humanity, was
expendable; he revealed a deep concern for the plight of the forgotten man
and was assailed by the rich as a traitor to his class

Democrats nominated Roosevelt in 1932 and the Democratic platform

for repeal of prohibition, assailed Hoover depression, and promised a
balanced budget, social and economic reforms

Presidential Hopefuls of 1932

Roosevelt seized the offensive with an attack on the Republican Old

Dealersconsistently preached a New Deal for the forgotten man, but was
annoyingly vague and contradictory

The Brains Trust, a small group of reform-minded intellectuals, who

were predominantly college professors authored much of the later New Deal
legislation, wrote many of his speeches

The high spirits of the Democrats found expression in Happy Days Are
Here Again

Herbert Hoover remained in the White House battling the depression

advocating Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner, The Worst Is Past, and It
Might Have Been Worse
Hoovers Humiliation in 1932

One striking feature of the election was the beginning of a distinct shift
of blacks, traditionally grateful to the Republican party of Lincoln, over to the
Roosevelt camp (worst sufferers) and by the election of 1932, they became a
vital element in the Democratic party (cities in North)

Hard times unquestionably ruined the Republicans; an overwhelming

majority voiced a demand for a new dealany upstanding Democratic
candidate probably could have won

The preinauguration lame duck period ground slowly to an end and

Hoover was still president until up to March 4, 1933tried to hold meetings
with Roosevelt to discuss war-debt muddle

With Washington deadlocked, the American economic machine clanked

to a virtual halt; one worker in four tramped the streets, banks were locking
their doors all over the nation

FDR and the Three Rs: Relief,

Recovery, Reform

On Inauguration Day, March 4, 1933, Roosevelt provided Americans

with inspirational hope

He declared a nationwide banking holiday, March 6-10, as a prelude to

opening the banks on a sounder basis and he summoned Congress into

special session to cope with national emergency
For the Hundred Days, members cranked out remedial legislation

Roosevelts New Deal programs aimed at three Rsrelief, recovery, and

reform of current abuses (overlapped)

Measures that Roosevelt called must legislationall the new bills

Congress gave the president extraordinary blank-check powers

legislative authority to Pres.
Roosevelt was delighted to exert executive leadershiphe was inclined

to act by intuition
The Hundred Days Congress passed many reforms, which owed much

progressive movementNew Deal embraced pre-WWI progressive ideals of

unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, minimum-wage,
conservation/development of national resources, and restrictions on child
labor

Roosevelt Tackles Money and

Banking

Congress in an incredible eight hours had the Emergency Banking

Relief Act of 1933 ready

The new law invested the president with power to regulate banking
transactions and foreign exchange and to reopen solvent banksRoosevelt
turned to the radio to deliver fireside chats

Through them, he gave assurances that it was now safer to keep money
in a reopened bank than under the mattressconfidence returned an banks
began to unlock their doors

The Emergency/Hundred Days Congress supported public reliance on

the banking system by enacting the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act, a
measure that provided for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which
insured individual deposits up to $5,000

Roosevelt moved to protect the melting gold reserve and to prevent

panicky hoarding; he ordered all private holdings of gold to be surrendered to
the Treasury in exchange for paper currency and then took the nation off the
gold standardmanaged currency was well on its way

The goal of Roosevelts managed currency was inflation, which he

believed would relieve debtors burdens and stimulate new productiongold
buying and increasing value of gold

The gold-buying scheme came to an end in February 1934, when FDR

returned the nation to a limited gold standard for purposes of international
trade onlyincreased amount of $ circulation

Creating Jobs for the Jobless

One out of every four workers was jobless when FDR took his inaugural
oath (highest ever) and used federal money to assist the unemployed and
primed the pump of industrial recovery

The Hundred Days Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps

(CCC), a law that provided employment in government camps for about 3
million young men (driven away from crime)

Their work included reforestation, fire fighting, flood control and swamp
drainage, conservation

The first major effort of the new Congress to tackle adult unemployment
was the Federal Emergency Relief Act that aimed for immediate relief rather
than long-range recovery

The resulting Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was

headed by Harry Hopkins and granted about $3 billion to the states for wages
on work projects and dole payments

The HDC created the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which made
available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages and
the Home Owners Loan Corporation, was designed to refinance mortgages
on nonfarm homes (bailed out mortgage-holding banks)

FDR established the Civil Works Administration (CWA) late in 1933

under Hopkins that was designed to provide temporary jobs during the cruel
winter emergency
A Day for Every Demagogue

Relief from Washington to needy families helped pull the nation through
winter of 1933-1934

One danger signal was the appearance of various demagogues, notably

Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest whose slogan was Social Justice
broadcasted on radio and was anti-New Deal

Notorious among agitators were those who capitalized on popular

discontent to make promises

Senator Huey (Kingfish) Long of LA who publicized his Share Our

Wealth program, which would make Every Man a Kingevery family was to
received $5,000 at expense of wealthy

Another was Dr. Francis Townsend of California who had the support of
5 million senior citizens and his plan provided for every sixty year old to
receive $200 a month

Congress authorized the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935,

the objective of which was employment on useful projectslaunched under
Hopkins, this agency spent about $11 billion on thousands of public buildings,
bridges, and hard-surfaced roads (9 million jobs)

Agencies of the WPA found part-time occupations for high

school/college students and for such unemployed white-collar workers as
actors, musicians, and writers (art work, too)

A Helping Hand for Industry and

Labor

The Emergency Congress attempted to stimulate a nationwide

comeback with the National Recovery Administration (NRA)designed to
assist industry, labor, and the unemployed

Individual industries were to work out codes of fair competition, under

which hours of labor would be reduced so that employment could be spread
over more people (minimum wages)

Workers, under the NRA, were formally guaranteed the right to organize
and bargain collectively though representatives of their own choosing, the
antiunion contract was forbidden

A blue eagle was the symbol of the NRA and the slogan was We Do
Our Part

Too much self-sacrifice was expected of labor, industry and the public
for such a scheme to work

Complete collapse was imminent when in 1935, the Supreme Court shot
down the dying eagle in famed Schechter sick chicken decisioncongress
could not delegate legislative powers to the president and congressional
control of interstate commerce could not apply to local business

The same act of Congress that formed the NRA authorized the Public
Works Administration (PWA) intended both for industrial recovery and for
unemployment relief (under Harold Ickes)

Long-range recoveryover $4 billion was spent on some 34,000

projects including the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River (irrigation,
electrical power) and public buildings

Special stimulants aided the recovery of the liquor industryimminent

repeal of prohibition amendment afforded an opportunity to raise needed
federal revenue and provide employment

HDC legalized light wine and beer with alcoholic content not above 3.2
percentprohibition was officially repealed by the 21st Amendment late in
1933 and saloon doors swung open

Paying Farmers Not to Farm

Since 1918, farmers had suffered from low prices and overproduction,
especially in grain

During the depression, conditions became desperate as innumerable

mortgages were foreclosed

The Emergency Congress established the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration (AAA)

Through artificial scarcity this agency was to establish parity prices

for basic commodities

Parity was the price set for a product that gave it the same real value
from 1909 to 1914 and the AAA would eliminate price-depressing surpluses
by paying growers to reduce their crops

The millions of dollars needed for these payments were to be raised by

taxing of farm products

The AAA was begun after planting of cotton crop for 1933, plants
plowed, pigs slaughtered and much of their met was distributed to people on
reliefsinful destruction of food

The Supreme Court killed the AAA in 1936 by declaring its regulatory
taxation provisions unconstitutional but the New Deal Congress passed the
Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 and withdrawal of
acreage from productionshifted to conservation

The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 continued conservation

payments

Dust Bowls and Black Blizzards

Late in 1933 a prolonged drought struck the states of the transMississippi Great Plains

Rainless weeks followed by winds turned the area that stretched from
eastern Colorado to western Missouri into the Dust Bowlsun was darkened
by powdery topsoil

Drought and wind triggered the dust storms but there were other factors
high grain prices led to more land under cultivation, dry-farming techniques
and mechanization had revolutionized Great Plains agriculturestream tractor
and disk plow left the powdery topsoil to be swept away

Tens of thousands of refugees fled their ruined acres and in five years
350,000 Okies and Arkies trekked to southern California (portrayed by John
Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath)

The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act (1934) made possible a

suspension of mortgage foreclosures for five years, but the Supreme Court
voided itrevised law was upheld (3 years)

In 1935 Roosevelt set up the Resettlement Administration, charged with

the task of removing near-farmless farmers to better landmore than 200
million young trees were planted in prairie

Inspired by the Pueblo Indians of NM, Commissioner of Indian Affairs

John Collier promoted the Indian Reorganization Act of 134 that encouraged
tribes to establish local self-govt and to preserve their native crafts and
traditionsstop loss of Indian lands; other Indians refused

Battling Bankers and Big Business

Reformists were determined to curb the money changers who had

played with investors before the Wall Street crash of 1929HDC passed
Truth in Securities Act (Federal Securities Act) which required promoters to
transmit information regarding the soundness of stocks and bonds

In 1934 Congress authorized the Securities and Exchange Commission

(SEC), which was designed as a watchdog administrative agencyNew
Dealers directed fire at public utility holding companies, those
supercorporationsexample of the collapse of Samuel Insulls empire

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 delivered a death

sentence to this type of bloated growth, except where it might be deemed
economically needful
The TVA Harnesses the Tennessee River

The electric-power industry attracted the fire of New Deal reformers

(growth to $13 billion)

As a public utility, it reached directly and regularly into the pocketbooks

of consumers and New Dealers accused it of using excess ratesTennessee
River provided a rare opportunity

The river contained some 2.5 million of the most poverty-stricken people
in America; by developing the hydroelectric potential of area, Washington
could combine immediate advantage of putting thousands to work with a longterm project for reforming the power monopoly

The Hundred Days Congress passed an act creating the Tennessee

Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933 and this enterprise was largely a result of
Senator George Norris of Nebraska

This new agency was determined to discover precisely how much the
production and distribution of electricity costutility corporations lashed back
at this low cost of TVA power

The gigantic project brought to the area not only full employment and
cheap electric power, but low-cost housing, abundant cheap nitrates,
restoration of eroded soil, reforestation, flood control

Conservative reaction against the socialistic New Deal would confine

the TVA to Tennessee

Housing Reform and Social

Security

To speed recovery and better homes, Roosevelt set up the Federal

Housing Administration (FHA) as early as 1934the building industry was to
be stimulated by small loans to householders, both from improving their
dwellings and for completing new ones

Congress bolstered the program in 1937 by authorizing the United

States Housing Authority (USHA)an agency designed to lend money to
states or communities for low-cost construction

New deal efforts to expand the project collided with opposition from real
estate promoters, builders, and landlordsthe slum areas in America ceased
growing and even shrank

Success of New Dealers in field of unemployment insurance and old

age pensions

The Social Security Act of 1935 provided for federal-state

unemployment insurance and to provide security for old age, categories of
retired workers were to receive regular payments from Washington that was
financed by a payroll tax on both employers and employees (dependents)

Republican opposition to the sweeping new legislation was bitter

Social security was largely inspired by the example of some of the more
highly industrialized nations of EuropeAmerican workers had to be
employed to get coverage

A New Deal for Unskilled Labor

The NRA had been a godsend to organized laborwalkouts occurred in

the summer of 1934, including a paralyzing general strike in San Francisco,

broken by vigilante tactics
Fruit of Congress deliberations was the Wagner or National Labor

Relations Act of 1935, which recreated a powerful new National Labor

Relations Board for administrative purposes and reasserted the right of labor
to engage in self-organization and to bargain collectively
Encouraged by the NLRB, a host of unskilled workers began to organize

into effective unions

The leader of this drive was John L. Lewis and in 1935, he succeeded in

forming the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the ranks of the
skilled American Federation of Labor
In 1936, the older federation suspended the unions associated with the

new organization
The rebellious CIO moved on a concerted scale into the huge

automobile industry; late in 1936, workers resorted to a technique known as

the sit-down strike and refused to leave the factories
The CIO won a resounding victory when General Motors recognized its

union

The US Steel Company granted rights of unionization to its CIOorganized employees but the little steel companies found back savagely
Memorial Day massacre in Republic Steel Company

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (Wages and
Hour Bill) and industries involved in interstate commerce were to set up
minimum wage and maximum-hour levels

Labor by children under sixteen was forbidden and these reforms were
bitterly opposed by many industrialists, especially by southern textile
manufacturers who profited from low-wage labor

The CIO surged forward, breaking completely with the AF of L in 1938

and became known as the Congress of Industrial Organization under the
presidency of John L. Lewis (4 million)

Landon Challenges the Champ

in 1936

As the presidential campaign of 1936 neared, the New Dealers were on

top of the worldthe exultant Democrats renominated Roosevelt on a platform
squarely endorsing the New Deal

Republicans settled on governor of Kansas, Alfred M. Landon whose

platform condemned the New Deal for its radicalism, experimentation,
confusion, and frightful waste

Backing Landon, ex-president Hoover echoed the American Liberty

League (conservatives)

Roosevelt denounced the economic royalists who sought to hide

behind the flag

A landslide overwhelmed Landon as the Republicans carried only two

states (VT, Maine)

The battle of 1936 bore out Republican charges of class warfarethe

needy economic groups were lined up against the greedy economic groups
(CIO contributed much to Roosevelt)

Blacks had now shaken off their traditional allegiance to the Republican

party

FDR won primarily because he appealed to the forgotten man

coalition of the South, blacks, urbanites, and the poormarshaled the support
of the New Immigrants

Nine Old Men on the Supreme

Bench

Roosevelt took the president oath on January 20, 1937, instead of the
traditional March 4

The 20th Amendment to Constitution had been ratified in 1933, which

swept away postelection lame duck session of Congress and shortened by six
weeks the period before inauguration

Roosevelt interpreted his reelection as a mandate to continue New Deal

reforms

In nine major cases involving the New Deal, the Roosevelt

administration had been thwarted seven times and he grew impatient to the
obstruction conservatism of the Court

Democracy, in his view, meant rule by the peopleSupreme Court

should reflect public opinion

Early in 1937, Roosevelt caught the country by surprise bluntly asking

Congress for legislation to permit him to add a new justice to the Supreme
Court for every member over seventy who would not retirethe maximum
membership could then be fifteen (injecting new blood)

The Court Changes Course

Congress and the nation were promptly convulsed over the scheme to
pack the Supreme Court with a dictator billRoosevelt was vilified for
attempting to upset the balance in govt

Justice Owen J. Roberts began to vote on the side of his liberal

colleaguesupheld principle of state minimum wage for women, upheld
Wagner Act and the Social Security Act

Congress voted to pay for justices over seventy who retiredreplaced

by Justice Hugo Black

Congress finally passed a court reform bill, a version that applied only to
lower courtsRoosevelt suffered his first major legislative defeat at the hands
of his own party in Congress

The Court, as he had hoped, became markedly more friendly to New

Deal reformsa succession of deaths and resignations enabled him in time to
make nine appointments to the tribunal

FDR aroused conservatives of both parties in Congress that few New

Deal reforms were passed after 1937; Roosevelt squandered much of the
political goodwill that had carried him previously

The Twilight of the New Deal

Unemployment persisted in 1936 at about 15 percent and recovery had

been modest

In 1937 the economy took another sharp downturn, a severe

depression-within-the-depression that the presidents critics quickly dubbed

the Roosevelt recessiongovernment policies had caused the nosedive as

social security taxes bit into payrolls and balanced budget problems

Roosevelt at last embraced the recommendation of the British

economist John Maynard Keynes

In April 1937, Roosevelt announced a bold program to stimulate the

economy by planned deficit spendingKeynesianism became the new
economic orthodoxy and remained so for decades

Roosevelt in 1937 urged Congress to authorize a sweeping

reorganization of the national administration in the interests of efficiency
issue became tangled up with ambitions but in 1939, Congress passed the
Reorganization Act (limited powers for administrative reforms)

The Hatch Act of 1939 barred federal administrative officials, except the
highest policy-making officers, from active political campaigning and soliciting
and forbade the use of government funds for political purposes as well as the
collection of campaign contributions from people receiving relief payments
broadened in 1940 to limit campaign contributions/expenditures

By 1938 the New Deal had clearly lost most of its early momentum; in
the congressional elections of 1938, Republicans cut heavily into the New
Deal majorities in Congress

New Deal or Raw Deal?

Foes of the New Deal condemned its alleged waste, incompetence,

confusion, contradictions, and cross-purposes-Roosevelt was accused by
conservations of being Jewish and tapping Jews

They accused Roosevelt of confusing noise and movement with

progressbureaucratic meddling and regimentation were also bitter
complaints of anti-New Dealers

The federal government became incomparably the largest single

business in the country

The national debt had stood at an enormous figure of $19 billion in 1932
and $40 billion by 1939

US stood for unlimited spendingbusiness was bitter; business

people declared that they could pull themselves out of the depression if they
could only get the federal govt off them

Private enterprise was being stifled by planned economy, creeping

socialism

States rights were being ignored while the govt were competing in
business with its citizens

Heavy fire was directed AT Roosevelts attempts to browbeat the

Supreme Court and to create a dummy Congressthe most damning
indictment of the New Deal was that it had failed to cure the depressiongap
between production and consumption was not closed

Millions of men and women were still unemployed in 1939 not until WWII
did prosperity return

FDRs Balance Sheet

The New Deal had relived the worst of the crisis in 1933; it promoted the
philosophy of Balancing the human budget and accepted the principle that
the federal govt was morally bound to prevent mass hunger and starvation by
managing the economy

The Washington regime was to be used, not fearedFDR had been

patron to business tycoons

Roosevelt purged American capitalism of some of its worst abuses and

the New Deal helped stifle the American Socialist partyRoosevelt provided
bold reform without a revolution

He has been called the greatest American conservative since Hamilton

he exercised that power to relieve the erosion of the nations greatest
physical resourcesits people

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow

of War, 1933-1941
NEXT CHAPTER

The London Conference

Americans in the 1930s tried to turn their backs on the worlds problems

But as war seemed imminent in Europe, Roosevelt eventually concluded

that the United States could no longer remain aloofevents gradually brought
the American people around to his thinking: no nation was safe in an era of
international anarchy

The 66-nation London Economic Conference, meeting summer of 1933,

revealed how Roosevelts foreign policy was subordinated to his strategy for
domestic economic recovery

The London Conference hoped to organize an international attack on

the global depression

Exchange-rate stabilization was essential to the revival of world trade

(gone by 1933)
Roosevelt sent an American delegation to the conference (SS Hull) but

the president wanted to pursue gold and inflationary policies at home as a

means of stimulating American recovery
Roosevelt was unwilling to sacrifice the possibility of domestic recovery

and he scolded the conference for attempting to stabilize currencies, declaring

Americas withdrawal
The delegates adjourned empty-handed, amid cries of American bad

faith

The collapse of the London Conference strengthened the global trend

toward extreme nationalism, making international cooperation more difficult in
the 1930s

The persistence of American isolationism played directly into the hands

of dictators

Freedom for (from?) the Filipinos

and Recognition for the Russians

Roosevelt matched isolationism from Europe with withdrawal from Asia

(Far East imperialism)

In hard times, Americans were eager to drop their expensive tropical

liability in the Philippine Islands (low-wage Filipino workers and Philippine
competition in the sugar industry)

Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934 that provided for the
independence of the Philippines after a twelve-year period of economic and
political guidanceby 1946

The US agreed to relinquish its army bases but not its naval bases

The American people were not so much giving freedom to the

Philippines as they were freeing themselves from the Philippinesproposed
to leave the Philippines to their fate

American isolationists rejoiced while Japanese militarists calculated that

they had little to fear from an inward-looking America that was abandoning its
principal possession in Asia

Roosevelt formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933over the

protest of anticommunist conservatives, as well as Roman Catholics offended
by Kremlins antireligious policies

He was motivated in part by the hope of trade with Soviet Russia, as

well as by the desire to bolster the Soviet Union as a counterweight to the
threat of German power and Japanese power

Becoming a Good Neighbor

Roosevelt said, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the Good
Neighbor

Roosevelts withdrawal suggested that the US was giving up its ambition

to be a world power

The Great Depression had cooled off Yankee economic aggressiveness

and now the hated marines were protecting fewer dollarsRoosevelt was
eager to line up the Latin Americans to help defend the Western Hemisphere
by renouncing armed intervention (Monroe Doctrine)

At the Seventh Pan-American Conference, the US formally endorsed

nonintervention
The last marines departed from Haiti in 1934 and in the same year,

Cuba was released from the Platt Amendment, Panama was given uplift in
1936, as Washington relaxed its grip
The Good Neighbor policy was tested in Mexico when the Mexican govt

seized Yankee oil properties in 1938 but Roosevelt worked out a settlement in
1941

Roosevelts policy paid rich dividends in goodwill among the peoples to

the south

Impulses Toward Storm-Cellar

Isolationism

Post-WW I and post-Great Depression, spawned the ominous spread of

totalitarianism

The state was everythingthe Communist USSR led the way with
dictator Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, a Fascist, seized the reins of power in
Italy and Adolf Hitler held control in Germany

Hitler was the most dangerous of the dictators because he combined

tremendous power with impulsivenesshe secured control of the Nazi party
by making political capital of the Treaty of Versailles and Germanys
depression-spawned unemployment (Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936)

International gangsterism spread in the Far East, where Japan ruledit

resented the Treaty of Versailles and demanded additional space for its
teeming millions, on its crowded island nation

Tokyo gave notice in 1934 of the termination of the twelve-year-old

Washington Naval Treaty and at London a year later, it ended all hole of
effective naval disarmament (accelerated ships)

Mussolini, seeking glory and empire in Africa, brutally attacked Ethiopia

in 1935; the League could have crushed Mussolini but the League did not
want to risk global hostilities

Isolationism received a strong boost form these alarms abroadthey

remembered their debts

In 1934, Congress passed the Johnson Debt Default Act, which

prevented debt-dodging nations from borrowing further in the U.S.have-not
powers were out to become have powers

Strong nationwide sentiment welled up for a constitutional amendment

to forbid a declaration of war by Congressexcept in case of invasion
unless there was a favorable popular referendum

Congress Legislates Neutrality

As 1930s lengthened, the press condemned the munitions

manufacturers and a Senate committee, headed by Senator Nye of ND was
appointed in 1934 to investigate the blood business

Because the munitions makers had made money out of the war, many
citizens leaped to the illogical conclusion that these soulless scavengers had
caused the war in order to make money

Responding to overwhelming popular pressure, Congress made haste

to legislate the nation out of warNeutrality Acts of 1935-1937 stipulated that
when the president proclaimed the existence of a foreign war, certain

restrictions would automatically go into effectno American could legally sail

on a belligerent ship, sell or transport munitions, or make loans to belligerent

This legislation in effect marked an abandonment of the traditional policy

of freedom of the seas

The Neutrality Acts were tailored to keep the nation out of a conflict like
World War I

America falsely assumed that the decision for peace or war lay in its
own hands, not in those of the forces already unleashed in the world
enormous power to shape international events

Statutory neutrality was of dubious morality; it actually overbalanced the

scales in favor of the dictators, who had armed themselves to the teeth
declining to use its vast industrial strength to aid its democratic friends and
defeat its totalitarian foes, it helped goad the aggressors

Appeasing Japan and Germany

In 1937, Japan touched off the explosion that led to an all-out invasion
of Chinastart of WW II

Roosevelt refused to call the China incident an officially declared warif

he had, he would have cut off the munitions on which the Chinese were
desperately dependentJapanese still bought

In Chicago President Roosevelt delivered his Quarantine Speech in

the autumn of 1937he called for positive endeavors to quarantine the
aggressorswith economic embargoes

The speech triggered a cyclone of protest from isolationists and other

foes of involvementRoosevelt retreated but in December 1937, Japanese

aviators sank an American gunboat, the Panay, in Chinese waters but Tokyo
hastened to make the necessary apologies and pay

In 1935 he flouted the Treaty of Versailles by introducing compulsory

military service in Germany; the next year he brazenly marched into the
demilitarized German Rhineland

Hitler undertook to persecute and then exterminate the Jewish

population in the areas under his controlin the end he wiped out about 6
million innocent victims (military machine)

In March 1938, Hitler occupied Austria and he began to make demands

for the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and the leaders of Britain and France
sought to bring the dispute to the table

A conference was finally held in Munich, Germany in September 1938

and the Western European democracies, unprepared for war, betrayed
Czechoslovakia to Germany

Appeasement of the dictators turned out to be merely surrender and in

March 1939, Hitler suddenly erased the rest of Czechoslovakia from the map,
contrary to his solemn vows

Hitlers Belligerency and U.S.

Neutrality

Joseph Stalin was a key to the peace puzzle and in the summer of
1939, the British and French were negotiating with Moscow, hopeful of
securing a mutual-defense treaty to halt Hitler

The Soviet Union astounded the world b signing, on August 23, 1939, a
nonaggression treaty with the German dictatorthe Hitler-Stalin pact meant

that Hitler could now wage war on Poland and the Western democracies,
without fear of the Soviet Union turning against him

The Soviet dictator was plotting to turn his German accomplice against
the West democracies, the two warring camps would then kill each other, and
leave Stalin bestriding Europe

With the Nazi-Soviet pact, Hitler demanded from Poland a return of the
areas wrested from Germany after WW I and failing to secure satisfaction, he
invaded Poland on September 1, 1939

Britain and France, honoring the commitments to Poland, promptly

declared war; but they were powerless to aid Poland, which succumbed in
three weeks to Hitlers smashing strategy of terror

Stalin came in on the kill for his share of old Russian PolandWorld
War II had now started

President Roosevelt issued the routine proclamations of neutrality

Americans were overwhelmingly anti-Nazi and anti-Hitlerthey believed that
the forces of righteousness would triumphill prepared Britain and France
urgently needed American airplanes and other weapons

Neutrality Act of 1937 raised a sternly forbidding hand; Roosevelt

considered lifting embargo

The Neutrality Act of 1939 provided that European democracies might

buy American war materials, but only on cash-and-carry basistransport
money bought munitions on own ships

Roosevelt was now authorized to proclaim danger zones in which

American merchant ships would be forbidden to enterthis law clearly favored
the democracies against the dictators

Overseas demand for war goods brought a sharp upswing from the
recession of 1937-1938 and ultimately solved the decade-long unemployment
crisis

The Fall of France

The months following the collapse of Poland were known as the phony
war as Hitler shifted his victorious division from Poland for a knockout blow at
France

The Soviets attacked Finland in an effort to secure strategic buffer

territory; the debt-paying Finns were granted $30 million by Congress for
nonmilitary supplies but Finland surrendered

An end to the phony war came in April 1940 when Hitler overran
Denmark and Norway and the next month he attacked Netherlands and
Belgium, followed by a paralyzing blow at France

By late June France was forced to surrender but a successful

evacuation from the French port of Dunkirk saved the bulk of the British
shattered and partially disarmed army

The crisis brought forth an inspired leader in Prime Minister Winston

Churchill

Frances sudden collapse shocked Americans; the Britons were all that
stood between Hitler and the death of constitutional govt in Europe
possibilities seemed to pose a dire threat to US

Roosevelt moved with electrifying energy and called upon the nation to
build huge airfleets and a two-ocean navy, which could also check Japan
appropriated a sum of $37 billion in a year

Congress passed a conscription law, approved 9/6/1940 and under this

measure, provision was made for training each year 1.2 million troops and
800,000 reserves (first peacetime draft)

At the Havana Conference of 1940, the US agreed to share with its

twenty New World neighbors the responsibility of upholding the Monroe
Doctrine (bracing Latin America bulwark)
Bolstering Britain with the Destroyer Deal (1940)

As Britain alone stood between Hitler and his dream of world

domination, the wisdom of the neutrality seemed increasingly questionable;
Hitler launched air attacks Britain in August 1940 in preparation for invasion in
September and for months the Battle of Britain raged in the air over the British
Isles; Royal Air Forces tenacious defense led Hitler to postpone invasion

Debate intensified in the US over what foreign policy to embrace

Sympathy for Britain grew, but it was not sufficient to push the United
States into war

Roosevelt faced a historic decision: whether to assumed a Fortress

America defense posture or to bolster beleaguered Britain by all means short
of war itselfboth sides had their advocates

Supporters of aid to Britain formed propaganda groupsCommittee to

Defend America by Aiding the Allies (direct succor to the British and could
appeal for assistance to the democracies)

The isolationists organized the America First Committeethey

contended that America should concentrate what strength it had to defend its
own shores, lest Hitler cross Atlantic (Lindbergh)

Britain was in critical need of destroyers, for German submarines were

threatening to starve it out with attacks on shippingRoosevelt moved in
September to transfer to Great Britain fifty destroyers left over form World War
I (British gave US eight defensive base sites in NA and SA)

The exchange was achieved by a simple presidential agreement;

condemnation arose form America Firsters and other isolationists, as well as
from anti-administration Republicans

Shirting warships from a neutral US to a belligerent Britain was a

flagrant violation of neutral obligations; most Americans were determined to
provided British with all aid short of war
FDR Shatters the Two-Term Tradition (1940)

The two leading Republican aspirants was Senator Robert Taft of Ohio
and Thomas Dewey of New York but the convention was swept off its feet by
Wendell L. Willkie

He had been a Democrat and had been a head of a huge public utilities
corporation but his great appeal lay in his personality, for his trustful and
honest homespun, Lincolnesque way

Delegates finally accepted this political upstart as the only candidate

who could beat Roosevelt

The Republican platform condemned FDRs alleged dictatorship, was

well as the New Deal while Democratic critics branded him the rich mans
Roosevelt

Roosevelt delayed to the last minute the announcement of his decision

to challenge the sacred two-term tradition; he thought he owed his experience
hand to the service of this country

The Democrats realized that only the Champ could defeat Willkie and
drafted him unanimously

Willkie made over five hundred speeches, criticizing Roosevelts aid-toBritain policies; he refrained from assailing the presidents interventionism
because he saw eye-to-eye with FDR

Both promised to stay out of the war; both promised to strengthen the
nations defenses so Willkie hit hard at Roosveltian dictatorship and the third
termRoosevelt triumphed

Voters generally felt that should war come, the experience hand of the
tired leader was needed

Congress Passes the Landmark

Lend-Lease Law

By late 1940, Britain was near the end of its financial end; Roosevelt
was determined to eliminate the need for debts and had the scheme of
lending/leasing American arms

The Lend-Lease Bill was praised by the administration as a device that

would keep the nation out of the war rather than drag it init would send a
limitless supply of arms to the victims of aggression, who in turn would finish
the job and keep the war on their side of the Atlantic

Most of the opposition came from isolationists and anti-Roosevelt

Republicans (blank-check bill) but the bill was approved in March 1941 by
sweeping majorities in Congress

America had thus pledged itself to bolster those nations that were
indirectly defending it by fighting aggressionat the end of the war, America
had sent about $50 billion worth of arms

The Lend-Lease Bill marked the abandonment of any pretense of

neutrality; the bill would involve a grave risk of war, but most Americans were
prepared to take that change

Lend-lease had result of gearing US industry for all-out war production

(increased capacity)

Hitler saw lend-lease as an unofficial declaration of war (no more

avoiding attacking US ships)

Hitlers Assault on the Soviet

Union Spawns the Atlantic
Charter

Two events marked the course of World War II before the assault on
Pearl Harbor in December 1941; one was the fall of France in June 1940 and
the other was Hitlers invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (Hitler and
Stalin had been uneasy allies under the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939)

They could not decide on how to divide potential territorial spoils

between them, but Stalin balked at dominant German control of the Balkans
so Hitler decided to crush his ally

On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a devastating attack on his Soviet

neighbor; Roosevelt quickly promised assistance and backed up his words by
making some military supplies available

He extended $1 billion in lend-lease (of a total $11 billion) and

meanwhile, the valor of the red army, combined with the paralysis of an early
Russian winter, had halted Hitlers invaders

The Atlantic Conference was held in August 1941; British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill secretly met with Roosevelt on a warship off of
Newfoundland and this was the first of a series of history-making conferences
that discussed such things including Japan in the Far East

This get-together formed the eight-point Atlantic Charter, covenant that

outlined aspirations of the democracies for a better world at wars end
(accepted by Roosevelt, Churchill, Soviet Union)

Opposing imperialistic annexations, it promised self-determination

concerning territorial changes, affirmed the right of a people to choose their
own form of government, and declared for disarmament and a peace of
security, pending a permanent system of general security

It was gratifying to subject populations but the agreement was roundly

condemned in the United States by isolationists and others hostile to
Rooseveltnation was no longer neutral

U.S. Destroyers and Hitlers Uboats Clash

Roosevelt made the fateful decision to convoy in July 1941the

president issued orders to the navy to escort lend-lease shipments as far as
Iceland where the British would take them

Inevitable clashes with submarines ensued even though Hitlers orders

were to strike at American warships only in self-defense (after the US
destroyer Greer was attacked in September 1941, Roosevelt proclaimed a
shoot-on-sight policy; Kearny andReuben James attacked)

Congress, responding to public pressures and confronted with a

shooting war, voted in mid-November 1941 to pull the teeth from the now-

useless Neutrality Act of 1939 (merchant ships could now be legally armed
and they could enter the combat zones with munitions for Britain)
Surprise Assault on Pearl Harbor

Japan had been Germanys ally since September 1840; Japan was
bogged by the China incident and its war machine was dependent on
immense shipments from the US

Washington, late in 1940, finally imposed the first of its embargoes on

Japan-bound supplies and the blow as followed in mid-1941 by a freezing of
Japanese assets in the US

Japanese leaders could knuckle under to the US or break out of the

embargo with an attack

Tense negotiations with Japan took place in Washington during

November and early December 1941 and the US insisted that Japanese clear
out of China to renew trade relations but they choose the swordbut the
United States as a democracy, could not shoot first

Japanese bombers attacked on the Black Sunday morning of

December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor

About three thousand Americans died, many aircraft were destroyed,

the battleship fleet virtually wiped out but the three priceless aircraft carriers
happened to be outside the harbor

Germany and Italy, allies of Japan, spared Congress the indecision of

debate by declaring war on December 11, 1941 and that challenge was
accepted on the same day by unanimous vote

Americas Transformation from

Bystander to Belligerent

Japans gamble in Hawaii paid off only in the short run; the Pacific fleet
had been largely destroyed, but the sneak attack aroused and united America
(many had not wanted war)

This treacherous attack was but the last explosion in a long chain
reactionthey wished to half Japans conquests in the Far East, which
menaced not only American trade and security but international peace as well
Roosevelt administration felt compelled to extend unneutral aid

Rather than let democracy die and dictatorship rule supreme, most
citizens were evidently determined to support a policy that might lead to war
and that it did

America in World War II: 1941-1945

NEXT CHAPTER

Introduction

Get Japan first was the cry that rose from millions of infuriated
Americans

Regarded Americas share in the global conflict as a private war of

vengeance in the Pacific

Washington in the ABC-1 agreement with Britain had earlier adopted the
grand strategy of getting Germany firstAmerica could not afford to divert its
main strength to the Pacific

If Germany was knocked out first, the combined allied forces could be
concentrated on Japan

The get-Germany-first strategy was the solid foundation on which all

American military strategy was built, but it encountered much ignorant
criticism from Americans who wanted revenge

The Allies Trade Space for Time

The Allies had the great mass of the world population; the US was the
mightiest military power on earth and America came close to losing the war to
the well-armed aggressors

Time was the most needed munition; the overpowering problem

confronting America was to retool itself for all-out war productionAmerica
had to feed, clothe, and arm itself, as well as transport its forces to regions as
far separated as Britain and Burma

It also had to send a vast amount of food and munitions to its hardpressed allies
The Shock of War

National unity was no worry thanks to the blow by the Japanese at Pearl
Harbor (Communists supported the war and millions of Italian-Americans and
German-Americans were loyal)

Americas ethnic communities were now composed of well-settled

members, whose votes were crucial to FDRs Democratic partyno
government witch-hunting of minority groups

An exception was the plight of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans,

concentrated on the Pacific coast; Washington herded them together in
concentration camps (saboteurs for Japan?)

A wave of post-Pearl Harbor hysteria temporarily robbed many

Americans of their good sense and justice; the internees lost basic rights,
property and foregone earnings

The wartime Supreme Court in 1944 upheld the constitutionality of the

Japanese relocation in Korematsu v. US; but the US govt officially apologized
in 1988, paying reparations of $20,000

The conservative Congress elected in 1942 wiped out many programs

of the New Deal (CCC, WPA, and NYA); he announced the end of the New
Deal and replacement by win the war

The govt did propagandize at home but the accent was on action
(Atlantic Charter didnt matter)

Building the War Machine

The war crisis caused the drooping American economy to snap to

attention (massive military orders) almost instantly soaked up the idle
industrial capacity of the lingering Great Depression

Under the War Production Board, American factories poured forth an

avalanche of weaponry

Miracle-man shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser was a prodigy of ship

construction (14 days to build)

The War Production Board assigned priorities from transportation and

access to raw materials

Farmers increased outputheavy investment in agricultural machinery

and fertilizers

Wonders of production brought economic strains: full employment and

scarce consumer goods fueled a sharp inflationary surge in 1942Office of

Price Administration brought ascending prices under control with extensive

regulationsrationing of critical goods (War Labor Board)

Labor unions (13 million workers during war) resented the govt-dictated
wage ceilings

A rash of labor walkouts plagued the war effortUnited Mine Workers

under John L. Lewis

Threats of lost production through strikes became worrisome that

Congress, in June 1943, passed Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Actauthorized
federal govt to size and operate tied-up industries

American workers, on the whole, were commendably committed to the

war effort

Manpower and Womanpower

The armed services enlisted nearly 15 million men in World War II and
some 216,000 women, who were employed for noncombat duties; women in
armsWAACs, WAVES, SPARs

As the draft net was tightened after Pearl Harbor, millions of young men
were taken from their homes and clothed in GI (govt issue) outfits
exempted key industrial/agricultural workers

The draft left the nations farms and factories so short of personnel that
new workers had to be found; an agreement with Mexico in 1942 brought
thousands of Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, across the border
to harvest cropsfixed part of economy in western states

More than 6 million women took up jobs outside the home (over half had
never earned wages)

The govt was obliged to set up some 3,000 day-care center; Rosie and
many of her sisters were in no hurry to put down their tools and wanted to
keep on working and often did after the war

The great majority of American women did not work for wages in the
wartime economy but continued in their traditional roles; at wars end, twothirds of women war workers left the force

Many were forced out but others voluntarily quitbaby boomers in the
decade after 1945

Wartime Migrations

Many of the 15 million men and women in uniform chose not to go home
again at wars end

War industries sucked people into boomtownsLos Angeles, Detroit,

Seattle, and Baton Rouge

Californias population grew by nearly 2 million; on the other hand, the

South experienced dramatic changesRoosevelt accelerated the regions
economic development ($6 billion)

Some 1.6 million blacks left the South to seek jobs in the factories in the
West and North

National issue of race relationsexplosive tensions over employment,

housing, and segregated facilities (Black leader A. Philip Randolph demanded
equality in war jobs and armed forces)

Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in dense

industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission
(FEPC) to monitor compliance with his edict

Blacks were drafted into the armed forces but were assigned to service

branches rather than combat unitsone exception were the Tuskegee

Airmen who did not lose a single bomber
In general the war helped to embolden blacks in their long struggle for

equality (Double Vvictory over the dictators abroad and over racism at
home; NAACP, CORE)
The northward migration of African-Americans accelerated after the war

due to the invention of the mechanical cotton picker that did the work of fifty
people at about one-eighth the cost
The Cotton Souths need for cheap labor disappeared; some 5 million

black tenant farmers headed north in the three decades after the war (by 1970
more than half lived outside the South)
The war prompted an exodus of Native Americans from the

reservations; thousands found war work in the major cities; some 25,000
Native American men served in the armed forces
Comanches in Europe and Navajos in the Pacific made especially

valuable contributions as code talkersthey transmitted radio messages in

their native languages (incomprehensible)
Sudden bringing together of unfamiliar peoples produced some

distressingly violent friction

Mexican-Americans attacked in Los Angeles in 1943 and Detroit race

riots

Holding the Home Front

Americans on the home front suffered little from the war; in American
the war invigorated the economy and lifted country out of a decade-long
depression, vaulted the gross national product

Disposable personal income, even after payment of wartime taxes, more

than doubled

When price controls were lifted in 1946, Americas lust to consume

pushed prices up 33 %

The war pointed the way to the post-1945 era of big-government

interventionism (leadership)

War, not enlightened social policy, cured the depression (warfarewelfare state)

The wartime bill amounted to more than $330 billionten times the
direct cost of World War I and twice as much as all previous federal spending
since 1776 (income-tax net rose to 90%)

Only about two-fifths of the war costs were paid from current revenues
and the national debt skyrocketed from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in
1945 (about $10 million an hour)

The Rising Sun in the Pacific

With the assault on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched widespread

and uniformly successful attacks on various Far Eastern bastions (American
outposts of Guam, Wake, and Philippines and British port of Hong Kong and
British Malaya, which provided critically important supplies)

The Japanese soldiers plunged in jungles of Burma (Burma Road) while

Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese ruler was still resisting the Japanese invader in
China; Dutch East Indies fell as well

General Douglas MacArthur tried to define the Philippine islands but the
American surrender was inevitable and General MacArthur secretly headed off
to Australia to head resistance there

POWs treated with vicious cruelty in the eighty-mile Bataan Death

March (Corregidor defeated)

Japans High Tide at Midway

Japan invaded the island of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to
threaten Australia; their onrush was finally checked in a naval battle fought on
the Coral Sea in May 1942 where an American carrier task force inflicted
heavy losses on the victory-flushed Japanese (aircraft)

Japan then undertook to seize Midway Island (northwest of Hawaii) but

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz at Midway from June 3-6, 1942 directed a victory
against the invading fleet

Midway was a pivotal victoryUS success along with the Battle of the
Coral Sea halted Japan

Thrust of Japanese into eastern Pacific aroused fear of an invasion of

the US from northwest

American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo

In August 1942, American ground forces gained a toehold on

Guadalcanal Island; after several desperate sea battles, the Japanese troops
evacuated Guadalcanal in February 1943 (20,000 lost)

American/Australian forces, under General MacArthur held onto New

Guinea as the scales of war gradually began to tip as the American navy,
including submarines, inflicted losses on Japanese supply ships and troop
carriers (control of New Guinea completed by August 1944)

The U.S. Navy with marines and army divisions had been leapfrogging
the Japanese-held islands in the Pacificreduce the fortified Japanese
outposts on their flank

The new strategy of island hopping called for bypassing some of the
most heavily fortified Japanese posts, capturing nearby islands, setting up
airfields, and then using heavy bombing

Brilliant success crowned the American attacks when Admiral Nimitiz

coordinated the efforts of naval, air, and ground units (Attu, Kiska, Gilbert
Islands, Marshall Islands; suicidal fights)

Especially prized where the Marianas, including Americas conquered

Guam

The assault on the Marianas opened on June 19, 1944 and the next
day, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, 250 Japanese aircraft and carriers
were destroyed (never recovered from losses)

Victory was a combination of combat superiority with the Hellcat fighter

plane and the new technology of the antiaircraft proximity fuse that destroyed
so much aircraft

Major islands of the Marianas fell to US attackers in July and August

1944 (bombing of Japan)

The Allied Halting of Hitler

There were early setbacks for America in the Atlantic as Hitler entered
the war with a formidable fleet of ultramodern submarines, which operated in
wolf packs with frightful effect

The tide of subsea battle turned with agonizing slownessold

techniques of escorting convoys of merchant vessels and dropping depth

bombs were strengthened by air patrol, the newly invented technology of

radar, and bombing of submarine bases (British code-breakers cracked the
Germans Enigma codes and therefore pinpoint the locations of the U-boats
in the Atlantic)

Britain won the Battle of the Atlantic and was not forced undervictory
was narrow

At wars end, Hitler was about to mass-produce a new submarine that

could remain underwater

The turning point of the land-air war against Hitler had come late in 1942
(raid on Cologne)

Germans under Marshal Erwin Rommel had driven eastward across

North Africa into Egypt, perilously close to the Suez Canala breakthrough
would have spelled disaster for the Allies

In October 1942 British general Bernard Montgomery delivered a

withering attack at El Alamein

In September 1942 the Russians stalled the German steamroller at

Stalingrad (Red army success)

In November 1942 the Russians unleashed a crushing counteroffensive

that was never reversed

A Second Front from North Africa to Rome

Soviet losses were staggering in 1942: millions of soldiers and civilians

lay dead and Hitlers armies had overrun most of the western USSR (at wars
end about 20 million Soviets perished)

Many Americans were eager to begin a diversionary invasion of France

in 1942 because they feared that the Soviets might make a separate peace as
they had in 1918 in WW I

Face with British indecision and lack of resources, Americans

postponed an invasion of Europe

An assaulted on French-held North Africa was a compromise second

front; American general Dwight D. Eisenhower headed the secret attack
started in November 1942a joint Allied operation involving 400,000 men and
850 ships, the invasion was the largest waterborne effort

The German-Italian army was finally trapped in Tunisia and surrendered

in May 1943

At the Casablanca conference in Morocco, January 1943, the Big Two

(Roosevelt and Churchill) agreed to step up the Pacific war, invade Sicily,
increase pressure on Italy, and insist upon an unconditional surrender of the
enemyit steeled the enemy to fight a last-bunker resistance

The Allied forces turned against Europe and Sicily fell in August 1943;
shortly before, Mussolini was deposed and Italy surrendered unconditionally
soon after in September 1943

Hitlers well-train troops stubbornly resisted the Allied invaders in Italy

and now Italy declared war on Germany in October 1943Italy became
almost deadlocked and became a sideshow

While the Italian second front opened Mediterranean and diverted some
Germany divisions, it delayed the main Allied invasion of Europe by many
monthsallowing Soviet army to advance

D-Day: June 6, 1944

Time approached for Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin to meet in person

coordinate the promised effort; Joseph Stalin refused to leave Moscow;
Teheran, the capital of Iran, was finally chosen as the meeting place
discussions ran from November 28 to December 1, 1943

Agreement on broad plan for launching Soviet attacks on Germany from

the east simultaneously with the prospective Allied assault from the west
(cross-channel invasion of France)

Britain prepared nearly 3 million fighting men but the US provided most
of the Allied warriors

French Normandy was pinpointed for the invasion assault and on D-Day,
June 6, 1944; the operation started and encountered resistance from
Germans but had mastered air over France

Most spectacular were the lunges across France by American armored

divisions, commanded by General George S. Pattonretreat of German
defenders was hastened when an American-French force landed in August
1944 on the southern coast of France and swept northward

Paris was liberated in August 1944; Allied forces rolled irresistibly toward
Germany and the first important German city (Aachen) fell to the Americans in
October 1944

FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944

The presidential campaign of 1944 came most awkwardly as the awful

conflict roared to climax

Victory-starved Republicans met in Chicago with enthusiasm and

nominated Thomas E. Dewey

As a governor of New York, he was a liberal and was for

internationalism; he was put with isolationist Senator John W. Bricker
platform called for an unstinted prosecution of war and for the reaction of a
new international organization to maintain peace

FDR was the indispensable man of the Democrats, but an unusual

amount of attention was focused on the vice presidency; Henry Wallace had
served four years as vice president and desired a renomination but the vice
president went to Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri who had attained
national visibility as the efficient chairman of a Senate committee on the war

Roosevelt Defeats Dewey

Dewey took the offensive while Roosevelt was too consumed with
directing the war to spare much time for speechmaking; Dewey criticized
FDRs reign and promised to fight the war better

Substantial assistance for Roosevelt came from the new political action
committee of the CIO, which was organized to get around the law banning the
direct use of union funds for politics

CIO members rang doorbells and championed Roosevelts involvement

in the Great Depression

Most newspapers were against Roosevelt but he still won a sweeping

victory

Roosevelt won primarily because the war was going well; foreign policy
was a decisive factor

The Last Days of Hitler

By mid-December 1944, Germany seemed to be wobbling on its last

legs; the Soviet surge had penetrated eastern Germany and Germany western
front seemed about to buckle under pressure

Hitler staked everything on one last throw of his reserves; on December

16, 1944, Hitlers objective was the Belgian port of Antwerp, key to the Allied
supply operation

The ten-day penetration was finally halted after a decision stood firm at
Bastogne and the last gasp Hitlerian offensive was stemmed in the Battle of
the Bulge (US troops to Rhine River)

Conquering Americans found the concentration camps where German

Nazis had engaged in mass murder of undesirables, including an estimated
6 million Jews

The Washington govt had long been informed about Hitlers campaign
of genocide against the Jews and had been slow to take steps against it;
Roosevelts govt had bolted the door against large numbers of Jewish
refugees but until wars end, the full holocaust had not been known

Soviets reached Berlin in April 1945 and captured the city; Adolf Hitler
then committed suicide in an underground bunker on April 30, 1945 while
tragedy struck in the United States

President Roosevelt suddenly died from a massive cerebral hemorrhage

on April 12, 1945 while Vice President Truman took the helm; On May 7, 1945,
the German govt surrendered unconditionally and May 8 was proclaimed V-E
(Victory in Europe) Day

Japan Dies Hard

American submarines were sending the Japanese merchant marine to

the bottom extremely fast

Giant bomber attacks reduced the enemys fragile cities to cinders

massive fire-bomb raid on Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945, gutted a quarter of the
city and killed an estimated 83, 000 people

General MacArthur headed northwest for the Philippines but the

Japanese navy wiped out his transports and supply ships and still won the
clashes at Leyte Gulf (October 23-26, 1944)

Japan was through as a sea power as American fleets now commanded

the western Pacific

MacArthur proceeded to capture Manila, which fell in March 1945

(60,000 American deaths)

Americas steel vise was tightening mercilessly around Japanassault

of Iwo Jima (March)

Okinawa was next on the list and the fighting dragged on for three
months in which Japanese soldiers fought with incredible courage from their
cavesJapanese suicide pilots caused deaths

The Atomic Bombs

Strategists in Washington was planning an all-out invasion of the main

islands of Japanan invasion that would cost hundreds of thousands of
American casualties (Tokyo foresaw defeat)

Bomb-scorched Japan still showed no outward willingness to surrender

unconditionally to the Alliesthe Potsdam conference in July 1945 sounded
the death knell of the Japanese in which President Truman met with Joseph
Stalin and British leaderssurrender or be destroyed

Roosevelt had earlier been persuaded by American and exiled scientists

(Albert Einstein) to push ahead with preparations for unlocking the secret of
an atomic bomb (funded $2 billion)

Fears of Germany, which eventually abandoned its own atomic project

as too costly

The war against Germany ended before the American weapon was
ready but Japan suffered the fate of being the first nation subjected to atomic
bombardment (only Americans ever used)

In a desert in NM on July 16, 1945, the experts detonated the first

atomic device

With Japan still refusing to surrender, the Potsdam threat was fulfilled
and on August 6, 1945, a lone American bomber dropped one atomic bomb
on the city of Hiroshima, Japan180,000

Two days later, Stalin entered war against Japan and Soviets overran
Manchuria and Korea

American aviators on August 9, dropped a second atomic bomb on the

city of Nagasaki80,000

On August 10, 1945, Tokyo sued for peace on one condition that
Hirohito remain on his throne

The Allies accepted this condition on August 14, 1945 and formal end
came on 9/2/45; V-J Day

The Allies Triumphant

Americans suffered some 1 million casualties (1/3 deaths) but the

proportion killed by wounds and disease was sharply reduced; America had
emerged with its mainland unscathed

This complex conflict was the best-fought war in Americas history

better prepared

American military leadership proved to be of highest order

Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall

Assembly lines proved as important as battle linesmore men, more

weapons, more machines, more technology, and more money than any enemy
could hope to match

An unusual amount of direct control was exercised over the individual by

Washington during war but the American people preserved their precious
liberties without serious impairment