American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th EditionChapter 21:
AMERICA AND THE GREAT WARMain themes of Chapter Twenty-one: - America's embrace of a much more assertive and interventionist foreign policy, especially in the Caribbean and Latin America
- The gradual involvement of the United States in WWI, from leaning toward the Allies since the outbreak of hostilities to eventually being drawn into full participation in the war
- The decisive impact of American intervention on land and sea in tipping the balance of victory for the beleaguered Allied forces
- The war mobilization of the Wilson administration - how they financed the war, managed the economy, and encouraged public support of the war effort
- The idealistic aims and bitter defeats suffered by Woodrow Wilson internationalist foreign policy after World War I
- The profound economic, social, and racial significance of America's involvement in the Great War
A thorough study of Chapter Twenty-one should enable the student to understand the following:- The new direction of American foreign policy introduced by Roosevelt, especially in Asia and the Caribbean
- The similarities and differences between Taft's and Roosevelt's approaches to foreign policy
- The reasons for the continuation of American interventionism in Latin America under Wilson
- The unfolding of the diplomatic crisis between Mexico and the United States in the years before American entry into WWI
- The background factors and the immediate sequence of events that caused the United States to declare war on Germany in 1917
- The contributions of the American military to Allied victory in World War I
- The extent of government control of the economy during World War I and the results of that control
- The use of propaganda under George Creel and the CPI to further the WWI effort
- The announced American objectives in fighting the war, Wilson's Fourteen Points
- Woodrow Wilson's motives, successes, and failures at the Paris Peace Conference
- The circumstances that led the United States to reject the Treaty of Versailles
- The economic problems the United States faced immediately after the war
- The reasons for the Red Scare and the upsurge of racial unrest that afflicted postwar America in 1919
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