What you’ll learn to do: describe American involvement in WWI and its effect on the home front

Figure 1. Recruiting soldiers for World War I.

Wilson might have entered the war unwillingly, but once it became inevitable, he quickly moved to use federal legislation and government oversight to ensure the nation’s success. First, he arranged for all logistical needs—from fighting men to raw materials for wartime production—to be in place and under government control. From legislating rail service to encouraging Americans to buy liberty loans and “bring the boys home sooner,” the government worked to make sure that the early war effort was coordinated and comprehensive. Then came the more nuanced challenge of ensuring that a country of immigrants descended from nations that were now both antagonists and allies fell in line as Americans, first and foremost. Aggressive propaganda campaigns, combined with a series of restrictive laws to silence dissenters, persuaded Americans to either support the war or remain silent. While some conscientious objectors and others spoke out, the government efforts were largely successful in silencing those who had favored neutrality.

The Great War remade the world for all Americans, whether they served abroad or stayed at home. For some groups, the war provided opportunities for advancement. Women and Black Americans took on jobs that had previously been reserved for White men. In return for a no-strike pledge, workers gained the right to organize. However, the end of the war came with a cultural expectation that the old social order would be reinstated. When newly empowered minority groups proved unwilling to give up these emerging opportunities, the results were often violent as supporters of the old hierarchies lashed out. The social changes precipitated by World War I were not always permanent, but most of them did reorganize American society in a lasting way.

Some reform efforts proved fleeting. President Wilson’s wartime agencies managed the economy effectively but closed immediately with the end of the war (although they reappeared in modified form a short time later as part of the New Deal). While patriotic fervor allowed Progressives to pass Prohibition, the strong demand for alcohol made the law unsustainable. Women’s suffrage, however, was a Progressive movement that came to fruition in part because of the circumstances of the war, and unlike prohibition, it remained. The end of the war and the return of Black veterans to a nation of lynchings and Jim Crow segregation also served to further the cause of civil rights and racial equality.