World War I

Major Questions:• Why did the United States finally get involved in a European war when we had resisted them for so long?
• How did our involvement in World War I change the United States at that time?
• Did it in any way change us permanently?

Monday, 3/24; The Road to War: Read pages 688-694.
1. What factors caused the war?
2. How did the U.S. government and public respond to the war?
3. What challenges were there to the U.S. remaining neutral? Were we ever really neutral?
4. Why did the U.S. enter the war? Why did we enter on the side of Britain and France? 

Tues, 3/25; The War and American Society: Read 696-710.
1. How did the U.S. raise an army?
2. What did the federal government do to supply the troops with the proper material and food? What long-term effect might this have had?
3. How did the war affect the economy?
4. What effect did U.S. troops have on the war? What effect did the war have on American soldiers?
5. What did the government do to get Americans to support the war?
6. Who opposed the war? What happened to those who opposed the war? Why? Was the government responsible?

Wed, 3/26; The Search for a New World Order: Read 710-719 and handouts
1. What were Wilson’s Fourteen Points generally aiming at doing? Was this a new idea? Was it a good idea?
2. Why did Wilson fail to get his Fourteen Points into the Treaty of Versailles?
3. Was the League of Nations a good idea? Why did the Senate reject it? Was it the Senate’s fault, or Wilson’s?

Explain the significance of the following:
Lusitannia; Sussex; Jane Addams; George Creel; General John Pershing; Eugene V. Debs; Bernard Baruch; Herbert Hoover; Zimmermann note; Selective Service Act; Committee on Public ; Information; Espionage and Sedition Acts; Industrial Workers of the World ; “Wobblies”; War Information Board; War Industries Board; National War Labor Board; Sixteenth Amendment; Eighteenth Amendment; Nineteenth Amendment; Food Administration; Russian Revolution; Bolshevism; Big Four; Henry Cabot Lodge; collective security; Irreconcilables; Reservationists; Fourteen Points; self-determination; Treaty of Versailles; Article 10; League of Nations.