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Aftermath of World War I · Saberian History Lectures

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So, when we look at World War I, World War I
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in many ways is one of the most transformative
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events in American history. It changes American
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life in a number of ways. It changes American
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life economically, militarily, and politically.
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Actually, I'm going to start with the militarily.
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Then I'm going to get to the economics. And then
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I'm going to get to the politics. Now, in many
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ways, the politics is kind of in all of it. And
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the economics is in all of it. So first of all...
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militarily you'll have in the first national
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draft of American history. Previous to the First
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World War, drafts were very much a local thing.
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So when they talk about the draft riots of the
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era of the Civil War, Those were local drafts
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to fill local units. So in the American First
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World War, you have, for the first time, a national
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draft. Which, how is that different from previous
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aspects of American life? How does a draft fly
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counter to American notions of freedom and independence?
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Do we have a draft today? We have a draft registration
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system, but do we have a draft? No. So I remember
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in June of 1998, I filled out my Selective Service
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card, sent it off, was given a number, and nobody
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has called me since. Because contrary to what
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I predicted back when I was your age, we did
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not get into a nuclear exchange with the Chinese.
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I'm going to say I've managed to live through
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some pretty disappointing apocalypses. 2012,
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Y2K. Still waiting. But anyway. But we do not
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have an active draft today. Why? We have an all
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-volunteer force. Yes? Because part of embedded
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in the notion of a country founded on liberty
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is the right to say no when it comes to one's
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own destiny. Does that make sense? And so in
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many ways, the draft is a gross abridgment on
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religious freedom. That means when Uncle Sam
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says you have to report somewhere, guess what?
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You have to report somewhere. So you have militarily,
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you have the draft, you also have changes in
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military technology, small arms equipment, tanks,
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airplanes. And so in many ways this is your first
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modern war. Actually kind of funny. Tanks were
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but barely in prototype phase. Actually one of
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the great ironies of history was the Germans
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had pioneered the use of the tank and a gentleman
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by the name of Erwin Rommel thought that World
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War I was the war to end all wars so he wrote
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a book called The Tank and Attack and it was
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widely published because this was the last war,
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right? Yeah, then World War II happened and guess
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what? Everybody read every copy of it. Erwin
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Rommel's Tank and Attack that was translated
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into English. Oops. And yet there were some people
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who didn't read the dude's playbook and got pwned
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by Rommel. But anyway. Alright. So, economically
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you have the War Industries Board taking control
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and controlling the means of production. You
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have... The draft as it affected the economy.
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In other words, you have four million men taken
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out of the workforce and those jobs had to be
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filled. Now I'm going to get into more about
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how those jobs were filled with the Great Migration
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so we can actually say that the draft triggered
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the Great Migration of the African Americans
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from the South to the cities of the North and
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the West. of the North and the Midwest. Okay?
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It also changes the nature of politics. Now,
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I don't necessarily mean that you have a forced
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type of bipartisanship or what we call a war
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consensus, which does invariably happen in American
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politics, which I'm going to call a war consensus.
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There we go. If I misspelled consensus, I'm sorry.
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You also have what you call the politically incorrect
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being taken out of circulation. And what I mean
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by the politically incorrect, these are people
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who fell outside the war consensus. Who would
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fall outside the war consensus? Who would not,
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as a matter of principle, wish to participate
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in the armed conflict? Say it again? Well, no,
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no. I'm talking about now that America has declared
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war, what elements of American society would
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not want to participate in the war effort as
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a matter of conscience? Your thinking class.
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Are there denominations in America of American
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Christians who believe that war is immoral, in
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complete generality, under no circumstances?
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So these are your pacifists, which you have intellectual
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pacifists, but you also have Quakers, you also
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have Jehovah's Witnesses, you have other denominations
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that believe that war is a manifestation of man's
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lust, and that they, as a matter of religious
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principle, would not participate. You also have
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socialists and communists. And so you have pacifists
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being arrested, And I'll get back to... Here
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we go. Under the Espionage and Sedition Act.
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Yeah. Under the Espionage and Sedition Act, it
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outlawed criticism of the United States during
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the war. And you have the creation of a domestic
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surveillance arm, the American Protective League,
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which employed 250 ,000 paid informants. Their
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job was to root out communists, pacifists, etc.
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You also have the creation of the Committee of
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Public Information, which is essentially a propaganda
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arm to manipulate the masses. Do you see how
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this changes things? Now, the draft itself, in
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addition to... moving 4 million men out of the
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workforce against their will, in addition to
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creating an urgency of this war consensus, the
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draft is also really the first national bureaucracy.
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As I had pointed out the other class, you did
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not have a national bureaucracy prior to the
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draft. In 1910 America, most children were not
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born in hospital, they were born at home. Their
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birth dates were recorded in family Bibles. Their
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death dates marked maybe on their tombstone,
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if that. In some films, they only had the death
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year on the tombstones because nobody knew when
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people were born. Think about that for a moment.
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You may have had records of such things in a
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church, but very often not in a state bureau
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of vital statistics. You don't have photo IDs
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or any of the other bureaucracies that we take
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for granted. And so, the... National registration
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system through the Selective Service Act is the
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first national bureaucracy. Now, let's go back
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for a moment. And I said this on Friday. What
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was the one bureaucracy that existed that we
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have then and we have now? Voter registration.
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So... What does that do to who gets drafted?
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They have to have the ability to what? Vote.
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In the American South, what don't the African
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Americans have the ability to do? Vote. And so
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what you wind up having to happen, or what winds
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up happening is a couple of things. And this
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is a minor detail to the text, but is a major
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detail to me. You actually have... really a three
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-tier system to the military apparatus. You have
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the National Army, which is the conscript army.
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Because unlike the Spanish -American War, they
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did not put out a call for volunteers. So you
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have the National Army. That was an army organized
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exclusively for the war, entirely of conscripts.
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So that's voters who were between the ages of...
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21 and 31. The reason they chose 21 is because
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that was the voting age in legal adulthood in
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the United States. Legal adulthood does not move
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down to 18 until the 1970s. You then had a series
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of volunteer units. Now typically, if you were
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in a volunteer unit, you were in that unit prior
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to June the 5th of 1917. So that is typically
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your National Guard. If you were in the National
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Guard before the war, you were in the National
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Guard during the war. Then you had one other
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type of unit, and these were what I call the
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professional units. These were people who were
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in military services before the war and were
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in military services after the war. So think
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about now, remember, for the United States, how
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long is the war? Two years if I include how long
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people are in country until the Treaty of Versailles.
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So, in the professional, you have the U .S. Army
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regulars, you have the Navy, and, of course,
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the U .S. Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine,
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but most of the ones that actually went to Europe
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is U .S. Marine units. These units do have within
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them, were there units for people of color in
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the U .S. Army prior to World War I? Yes. We
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had read about the Buffalo Soldiers. We had read
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about the Colored Regiments in the Civil War.
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Those units existed. So you had persons of color
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in the Army and in the Navy, but these were not
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in the draft unit and they were not in the volunteer
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units. They were in the professional units. Does
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that make sense? And so you do not have a large
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southern African American population being drafted,
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so they're still in the south. There are 4 million
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jobs that open up in the north and in the midwest,
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and so these African American families relocate
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from the deep south into Chicago, Detroit, St.
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Louis, Philadelphia, New York. This is why the
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major American cities... now have African American
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populations. There were no other drivers for
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those people to come into the cities the way
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you had with the dispossessed agricultural workers
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who came into the cities in the 1880s along with
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the immigrants who came in during the tumults
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of southern and eastern Europe. Does that make
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sense? So, we got into that. Okay. And then communism.
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Now before I go into the Bolshevik Revolution,
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let's talk first about what I would call the
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overall and broad sketches of communism itself,
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and then we'll get into the particulars of the
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Bolshevik Revolution. So first, communism as
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a political doctrine is based on the writings
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of one Karl Marx. Karl Marx and one of his disciples
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Engels. Now, Marxist sociology is still taught
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today. You can go to college and you can take
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advanced courses on Marx. Marx writes two really
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big books. You've got Das Kapital and The Communist
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Manifesto. Das Kapital is where he lays the groundwork
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for a lot of the different terms when we talk
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about... I was going to say, it's like I wonder
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if I should tell them they are being recorded.
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But anyway. So, if I can summarize Marx's manifesto,
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and again, this is very broad stroke. Marx paints
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a picture of the history of societies as one
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of a chain of exploitation. And so, he describes
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the world in a series of periods. So, one, you
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have an agrarian period where you have a landed
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elite exploiting its peasants. And of course,
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if you're a Marxist, you believe that it all
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came to a head in what was the classic example
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of the peasants overthrowing their aristocracy
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in world history. You had talked about it before.
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Or no, you hadn't. Okay, I need to go next door
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and yell at Mr. Thomas. Okay. French Revolution.
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Yes, this is all about revolution. And then you
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have a period of capitalism where the proletariat,
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which is the working class, both industrial...
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And agricultural, so we'll just say ag workers
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and industrial workers overthrow the bourgeoisie.
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The bourgeoisie are the people of capital. Give
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me a sec. Yes. Proletariat. It's the word that
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Marx coins for the working class. Now, to a communist,
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concepts of nationalism, concepts of religion,
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concepts of social class are all fictions used
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by elites for the control of the masses. That's
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the theory. Doesn't fit very well if you're a
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Mazini -ist nationalist, but hey, we'll get back
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to Mazini in a moment. And so, the third phase
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in the evolution is, and one historian points
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this out, that there is an element of the apocalyptic
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to it, that you do have this cataclysmic event
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where the working class overthrows their bourgeoisie
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masters and establishes a period of communism
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which is a classless, nationless, ethnicless
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society. That finally, The French revolutionary
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idea of liberté, égalité, and fraternité are
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actually one. Brotherhood, equality, and liberty
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are one. That was the dream. Good idea in theory,
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terrible idea in practice. Very much so. We'll
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get to the practice in a moment. So that was
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the theory. Now, if you're a communist, what
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do you think of a war based on nationalism and
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based on empire? Do you want a part of it? No.
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And so this explains the antipathy of American
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communists towards the war. Many of them were
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draft resistors, and the first people to defend
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them was the American Civil Liberties Union.
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the ACLU, started off as an organization to help
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draft resistors fight their cases. They won some.
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But now in 1917, the Bolsheviks stage an uprising
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and take over the Russian government. So, if
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you're Vladimir Lenin, and you have just overthrown
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the Tsar, And you're a communist. Do you want
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to maintain Russia's involvement in the imperialist
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war? No. And so, November the 6th through the
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7th, you actually have the provisional government
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taking over the country. At some point, they
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are going to assassinate the king and his entire
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family. Rather brutally, actually. The Russian
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government concludes a separate peace with Germany.
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That's the Treaty of Brest -Litovsk. You're Germany.
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The Russians have signed a deal. You are no longer
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fighting a war on two fronts. What do you do?
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You take your army that was on the Eastern Front,
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and what do you do? The exact same thing Frederick
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the Great did. You take your eastern army and
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you throw it and you stage an offensive in 1918.
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Okay. We have some big battles on there. The
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Battle of the Marne, the Battle of the Meuse
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-Argonne, and Flanders Field, which was the last
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cataclysmic battle of the war. I'm not going
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to get into too many particulars of the detail.
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I'll let you read them on the map. I'm going
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to get to the armistice in a moment. I actually
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want to show you the map first. So here we have
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some troops manning a machine gun when you have
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to put lead downrange in a hurry. So you have
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a German offensive in the spring of 1918. You
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have an Allied counteroffensive that repels them
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and tries to push it back. Because the basic
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idea is you have moving front lines that are
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pretty much stagnated thanks to trench warfare.
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Which, again, trench warfare makes it great for
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the defender, makes it horrible for the offender.
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All right. Now, getting back. The end of the
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war is the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th
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month in 1918. One of the things that when they
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started hammering out the armistice, you have
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to give your troops time to figure out that they're
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not killing each other because at this point
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you have instant communications. No, so they
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set aside a single time that the guns would fall
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silent. Now, kind of interesting, what are the
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modes of communication used in the First World
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War? First of all, do they have radio? Not widely
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and not for combat purposes. Do they have telegraph?
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Yes, but you have to string the wire. Here's
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your idea of mobile communication. Say it. Birds.
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Pigeons. I'm not kidding. So back in the... Your
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company would have, instead of a radio man, they
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would have a pigeon man. And so the pigeon man
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would have what was literally a bird coop on
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his back. And he would carry these pigeons, right?
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Now, if you wanted to send a message back to
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headquarters, your pigeons were trained to go
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back home. Because they were homing pigeons or
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passenger pigeons. And so what you would do is
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you would write a note on a piece of paper, attach
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it to the foot of the pigeon, throw the pigeon
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up, the pigeon would go home, and relay the message
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back. Now what could possibly happen? The pigeon
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might die. And if you're, oh, I don't know, if
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you're in a German trench and you see a pigeon
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go up, You shoot the pigeon. Now, also at this
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point, combat shotguns were still in use in World
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War I. So, you know, if you're trying to hit
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a pigeon, you get a little bit of scatter, does
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you pretty good. Or if you're really good and
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you manage somehow to manage the crack shot by,
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you know, landing a rifle round on the pigeon,
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okay, the pigeon didn't have a bad day because
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there's no pigeon to pick up. So you don't even
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intercept the message. You just have bits of
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pigeon flying all over the place. And that actually,
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the war, was one of the contributing features
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to the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Didn't
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the tanks actually have pigeons in them too?
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I don't remember that the pigeons were in the
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tanks, but I could see that level of human cruelty,
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or rather of animal cruelty. But anyway, so yes,
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pigeons. Now, the U .S. is the determining feature
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in winning the war in Europe. So, a couple of
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things happen. The U .S. claimed to have a mandate
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to help write the peace. Also, Woodrow Wilson,
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kind of being an intellectual who thought a little
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too much of himself, goes to Paris to help negotiate
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the peace, and he's trying to make a lasting
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peace. So I'm going to get into Wilson's 14 points.
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A couple of things kind of interesting about
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it. Wilson is the first U .S. president to leave
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the continent while president. Yeah. The 14 points.
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The first point. No secret treaties. Why would
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you not want secret treaties? Everyone's after
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you, Nelson. Because that's what got the war
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started in the first place. The second was freedom
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of the seas. Why would the Americans want freedom
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of the seas? Because U .S. shipping getting sunk
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in the Atlantic got the U .S. into the war. Now
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this one's interesting. Equality of trade. It
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called for free trade. Why? Not only the tariffs,
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but where is Wilson from? Not just America, but
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where? Virginia. He is the first Southern Democrat.
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And the one thing that had been the mantra of
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the Southern Democrats going all the way back
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to the War of 1812, Free trade. Arms reduction,
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this was primarily directed at England and Germany.
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Adjustment of colonial claims, again, renegotiating
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the borders in Africa, but also renegotiating
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the new borders of the newfound provinces of
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what used to be the Ottoman Empire. Germans getting
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out of Russia, Germans getting out of Belgium,
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Germans getting out of France. Adjustment of
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Italy's frontier. Actually, later in the war,
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Italy had jumped into the World War and fought
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a war between them and Germany and over their
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northern territory. I want to say Lombardy or
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Lombardia. The subject peoples of the Austro
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-Hungarian Empire, they would actually get their
24:00
own national freedom. The breakup of the Ottoman
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Empire, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro would
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be free. By the way, why would you want to free
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Serbia? Where did the Archduke get it? Sarajevo,
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when a Serbian nationalist killed him. So again,
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many of these points are addressing the causes
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behind the war. You have the breakup of the Ottoman
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Empire. Now I'm going to name some countries
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for you that got broken up. And when they drew
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the map, the British and the French and the Americans,
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by the way, they didn't invite the Russians,
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by the way, they didn't invite anybody from the
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countries that they were breaking up. drew the
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maps. Syria was the French colonial interest
24:44
in the Middle East. Iraq was one of the British
24:49
colonial interests in the Middle East, along
24:51
with another place that you might know for its
24:53
sunny, salty beaches, Palestine. So they drew
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the map without any regard to linguistic or ethnic
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lines, and look at how that happened. Where are
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the major war zones around the world? I think
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it turned out great. Alright. You have the creation
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of Poland and Czechoslovakia, but this was the
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deal breaker. Item 14. The creation of the League
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of Nations. A governing body for the adjudication
25:22
of conflicts between nations in peace. A single
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world government. Who might be upset by a single
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world government? And who has to say yes to an
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American treaty? An American Senate by a factor
25:43
of two over three. And there were some people
25:48
in the American Senate who had great misgivings
25:50
about yielding American sovereignty to a one
25:54
world government. So, Wilson comes back. I'm
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going to get to this map in a moment. Wilson
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comes back. Tries to fight for ratification.
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Goes on a whistle stop all throughout the country.
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Wears himself down. Has a stroke. Gets taken
26:10
back to the White House. The country is run by
26:12
his wife as his shadow. It's called the petticoat
26:14
presidency. And in 1918, actually from 1917 to
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1918, you have a massive pandemic flu outbreak
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that kills... Twice as many people as the war.
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The war only killed 9 million. The flu killed
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22. Consumer prices continue to rise. You have
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people coming home. By the way, if you were in,
26:39
say, Chicago and you went away to war, who took
26:41
your job? An African American took your job and
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would work for less. Are you happy to see those
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people? No. No. And so what breaks out in 1919?
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Race riots. Huh. Economics and racial tensions.
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All right. Here are some people. Right. Here
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we've got people leaving an area after a race
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riot. Also, you have people freaking out about
27:07
the communists. So you have the first Red Scare
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shortly after the First World War. And so I'm
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going to leave you with this line. World War
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I forever changes the relationship of the American
27:23
citizen to the state. You have a national bureaucracy.
27:28
You have a precedent for new national controls
27:31
over information, over industry. And it really
27:34
is a terrifying lesson. The lesson is this. Even
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a nation founded on the Lockean notion of life,
27:42
liberty, and property will, in the interests
27:46
of military expediency, resort to the Rousseauian
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concept of the life debt. The subject is bound
27:54
to the state in treasure and in blood, for it
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is only in the security of the state that he
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is allowed to live.