American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Chapter 21: AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR

Main 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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