By Emily Vasas

Speculative fiction depicting society’s future has existed in popular format since the eighteenth century but did not truly gain mass popularity until the late nineteenth century. During this period, the powder keg of the Balkan states and rivalries between great powers like England and Germany sowed fear among Europeans. This fear resulted in the expansion of speculative fiction, and the creation of an entirely new sub-genre: the Imagined War sub-genre, which contemplated what a great war between the powers of Europe would be like. Writers of this genre predicted different aspects of World War I, sometimes with frightening accuracy. The existence of the Imagined War sub-genre shows that Europeans knew World War I would occur and that it was only a matter of time, and the fictional stories they wrote about what such a war would be like were a way to cope with that perceived inevitability. This is something society does to try to give people an idea about the future, as seen with modern science fiction portrayals of the future, ranging from the hopeful idealism of Star Trek to the stark bleakness of 1984. It was during the years leading up to World War I that this type of speculative fiction came into its own with Imagined War stories.

Imagined War stories commonly involved England and Germany as the main adversaries; however, they rarely considered the size and scale World War I ended up involving. This is likely due to the fact that World War I was the first war of its size and scale, and fiction writers of the period based their works on previous wars. These writers did often accurately predict the technological advancements and fallout of the conflict, though, possibly because of the rapid developments of the industrial revolution. Many of these involved invasions of England, such as William Le Queux’s 1906 serialization, The Invasion of 1910, or Germany, as seen in Karl Eisenhart’s 1900 book Die Abrechnung mit England (The Reckoning with England).

These stories typically enjoyed relative success among audiences, if not critical acclaim. This is curious as oftentimes they involved the defeat or invasion of the writer’s nation at the hands of a more powerful opponent. Stories of defeat, hopelessness in the face of the war machine, and the peril of the outbreak of war being as common as they were indicates the level of fear and worry present in Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These stories’ existence parallels the peril present in speculative fiction today – dystopias depicting the dangers of corrupt politics and the destruction of our environment reflect the fears of today’s society. The fears of European Society before World War I reflected in its speculative fiction involve the specter of foreign domination and a loss of native culture and values. European Imagined War writers could not conceive of the scale of the conflict or its capability to wipe out their way of live, but they were capable of fearing that possibility nonetheless. They expressed their fears of this in stories where their nations and cultures were stamped out by more advanced powers because their home nations lacked economic or military prowess, or loyal nationalism. This is in contrast to the Imagined War fiction of the United States of America, where Americans are never defeated. Even before The United States emerged as a true world power in the wake of World War II, Americans retained a sense of moral and national superiority. As such, American speculative war stories viewed the United States as a generator of peace, a hero, a technological power, whereas European stories felt much more dystopian and told more cautious tales of the dangers of the arms race. American stories were heavily patriotic because they depicted America as a great power, while European stories featured patriotism and nationalism in two ways: as a way to protect their own nation’s interest, or as a danger from other nations trying to impose their cultures upon the author’s native country.

Also in contrast to American speculative war fiction is the focus placed most commonly on men – men as soldiers, workers, politicians, and bystanders. Women rarely entered the picture except as supporting characters. This is likely due to two connecting factors. First, the Imagined War sub-genre was a mainly European phenomenon leading up to World War I, and in Europe, women had not played many active parts in wartime yet. Women’s involvement in European war theaters would begin during World War I, as they took on the roles of nurses and industrial workers and couriers as men went off to fight. Until World War I occurred, women were not expected to involve themselves in war, and so even speculative fiction rarely involved them in such roles. A similar sub-genre had developed in the United States around the time of the American Civil War. However, due to Americans’ history with war and women’s involvement in conflicts as nurses, women featured more in American Imagined War fiction than did European women. The most prominent stories to feature American women were illicit romances – stories where lovers were forced to cross cultural divides between North and South in order to be together. If American fiction had featured Imagined War stories in the years preceding World War I, it is possible that stories about women such as Alma Clark, the American nurse who volunteered in French orphanages during World War I, and who kept a scrapbook of her travels, might have featured.

European Imagined War stories were stark cautionary tales of what a speculated Great War could do to the European continent and how nationalism and the arms race could decimate nations. Despite the fact that authors of stories in this sub-genre could not have imagined the scope of the eventual “war to end all wars,” the stories the wrote and their focus on nationalism and the arms race as both means of protection and dangers that caused the war predicted much of the war itself.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

“Alma A. Clarke Papers.” Alma A. Clarke Papers. Accessed November 7, 2015. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/almaclarke

Katz, Demian. “Imagined Wars: Envisioning the War to Come.” Home Before the Leaves Fall: The Great War. Accessed November 7, 2015. https://wwionline.org/articles/imagined-wars/

Matarese, Susan M. American Foreign Policy and the Utopian Imagination. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2001.

Taylor, Amy Murrell. The Divided Family in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

By Emily Sabol

Alma Clarke, Einer Smestad, Edward Foreman, and Frank Steed all shared the common experience of Americans serving near or on the Western Front during the Great War. As their personal accounts demonstrate, these individuals chose to document their involvement through scrapbooks, photographs, and postcard correspondences. Their constructed souvenirs from the war offered Clarke, Smestad, Foreman and Steed a chance to look back on their experiences once the conflict ended. What about the soldiers who did not come home from the war? How were the individuals who died, the fallen soldiers, remembered by those they left behind? As the poems and photographs in Alma Clarke’s scrapbooks indicate, remembering fallen soldiers and their sacrifice was a common and cross-cultural experience during the Great War. Clarke’s scrapbook includes various printed excerpts, propaganda, poems, and  personal drawings that highlight the importance of remembering and honoring the war dead.

Behind the poetic interpretations of war and sacrifice, the grim realities of death remained. Bodies needed to be recorded and buried, often during times of intense fighting. The destroyed landscapes of the trenches made burying the dead especially challenging, but proper burial of bodies was necessary for the psychical and psychological health of the living soldiers. Temporary crosses or other identifiers were constructed to mark the bodies that were placed in shallow graves by the soldiers on burial duty. Documentation was a particularly difficult challenge: limited resources and scarce information created a less than ideal environment for record keeping and reports. Body density maps were created to account for the suspected number of soldiers buried in a given area, should be the bodies need to exhumed. Frank Steed’s work with the Army’s Casualties Department exhibits the intermediary between the management and realities of the dead at the fronts and the American families back home.

When conflict began in 1914, concern and debate arose about proper burials, cemeteries, and repatriation of soldiers’ remains. Once Americans entered combat, the American public faced these difficult questions as well. A divide developed in American opinions of burial and memorial; some families wanted to mourn their fallen sons, husbands, and friends at home in their own communities. They wished to eliminate the trans-Atlantic travel necessary to visits their loved ones’ graves. These families petitioned the U.S. government and War Department to exhume and repatriate the remains of A.E.F. soldiers.

Other Americans accepted burial along the foreign fronts, believing it might be more respectful to have their loved ones remain with their fallen comrades and leave the bodies undisturbed. Additionally, some Americans supported foreign cemeteries for their political value,  hoping the graves served as a grim reminder of America’s sacrifice in the international conflict. Attempting to appease the demands from loved ones, the government delegated the responsibility of transporting and re-burying the A.E.F. remains to the Graves Registration Service. To conserve resources, remains would not be repatriated until after the conflict ended. The Casualties Department and the Graves Registration Service worked for years to provide information to grieving families.

Even after the war, controversy remained. The political and financial ramifications of exhuming bodies directly conflicted with grieving Americans who wanted bodies of their loved ones on American shores. To address both sides of this delicate issue, new legislation was passed. American families were able to choose between foreign or domestic cemeteries for the remains of loved ones. The government further responded to the demands of the American public by creating the American Battle Monuments Commission agency in 1923.  The ABMC, which still operates today, was directed to construct and maintain the cemeteries, chapels, and monuments to honor American soldiers and service.

Ultimately, the burial and repatriation of A.E.F. soldiers evolved into a clash between politics, daily life, and time. The political issues of demonstrating American sacrifice in Europe and its military clout would not be outweighed by the desire to mourn the American dead in their U.S. communities. The pristine war cemeteries of today took decades to create. Families of missing soldiers yearned for information about their loved ones. In some instances, families waited  decades for the confirmation of their sons’ whereabouts or their location of their burial. Some never received concrete answers. The dates of American Battle Monuments Commission dedications, most occurred as late as 1937, attest to the time and resources needed to create cohesive cemeteries and public memorials (both in the United States and abroad).

The issues regarding burial, remembrance and cultural memory have not faded with time. Memory of the Great War lives on in the landscapes of French, German and Belgian battlefields and with the remains of unknown soldiers that are still being discovered and excavated today. One hundred years later, these bodies reaffirm the soldiers’ century-old sacrifices and the dedication of thousands of workers to bring some of their comrades home. It is best to end with a sample of Steed’s correspondence from his superior officer in the Causalities Department. “Our part in the Great Adventure concerned itself in large measure with the work of collecting and properly recording causalities of the A.E.F. This was one of the most trying and important tasks of the war.”

Additional Resources:

• The Guardian’s interactive WWI documentary particularly “Part 5 – Slaughter”
• The American Battle Monuments Commission website 
• Alan Taylor’s photo essay for The Atlantic, “World War I in Photos: A Century Later“

Media:

• National WWI Museum and Memorial Images 1926.28.562, 1985.47.48, 1985.53.1
• CriticalPast Burial Footage
• American Cemetery Headstones Image

Bibliography and Works Cited:

“English WWI Scrapbook.” Triptych Tri-college Digital Library. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/almaclarke/id/178.

Hanson, Neil. Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War. New York: Knopf, 2006.

“History.” American Battle Monuments Commission. https://www.abmc.gov/about-us/history.

Hodgkinson, Peter E., “Clearing the Dead.” WWI Resource Center. 2009 http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/clearingthedead.html.

Trout, Steven. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. “Commemoration and Remembrance (USA).” 2014 http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/commemoration_and_remembrance_usa.

Villanova Falvey Memorial Library. “Manuscript Journals of Frank R. Steed US Soldiers in WWI France, 1918-1919, v.1” http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:285876.

By Andreina Soto

Select, copy, paste, and create. Whether for a historical project or a personal story, this is a common process we do almost instinctively. We select the information that can help us explain better what is in our minds. Then, we copy extracts from those texts and images and paste these patches of information into a canvas to make our story more compelling and enriching. Finally, we create a narrative by arranging and constructing the information according to our point of view. These are common steps we learned at school and that we can apply easily in our computers when browsing the web. These were also recurrent stages in the way individuals produced narratives in the past. People from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries might not owned computers to do it, but they had scrapbooks.

Scrapbooks are a method of preservation and display for different types of memorabilia used to recreate a history or personal experience. Along with items such as family pictures, drawings, letters, and notes, scrapbooks integrate ephemera selected by the makers due to a particular meaning. Commercial photographs, pamphlets, menus, stickers, newspapers clips, postcards, and maps are some of the mundane objects used for the creation of scrapbooks. Once the makers decide to integrate certain media in their scrapbooks, they are “writing” a narrative using material culture. This process changes the aesthetic and historical value of the artifacts. By transforming mass-produced objects to evidences of an individual rationale, the maker is “anchoring and performing personal memory and domesticating the iconic status of some images.” Hence, scrapbooks can be personal and particular, yet they also reflect a broader tradition in the U.S. history of collecting and displaying. From family stories, travels, and warfare, scrapbooks are a compelling resource that have helped to organize and display memories, a story that does not require writing with words.

A Revolutionary Tradition

The increased popularity of scrapbooking in the U.S. came hand-in-hand with the age of the industrial revolution and the printing technology by the turn of the nineteenth century. The use of the rotary steam presses, introduced by Friedrich Koening in 1810, replaced hand operated machines, speeding the time production of newspapers. The manufacture of chromolithographs and other color printings also became a fad among collectors and increased the variety of materials for the composition of scrapbooks. The development of printing technologies and paper manufacturing made the media cheaper and more accessible, expanding the speed and circulation of the information in the global context. It also increased the value of collecting printed jobs that, due to their textual or visual content, were too precious to discard.

By the mid-nineteenth century, scrapbooking was a well-known activity that demanded the creation of particular technologies for its improvement. In 1873, Mark Twain attended these needs with the Patent #140245. Twain, an avid maker of scrapbooks, was tired of the inconveniences the glue produced and invented a self-pasting book especially designed to facilitate the creation of scrapbooks. The self-pasting pages prevented the troubles. This enhanced the methods in which common people engaged in the process of collecting and reusing the widespread information, using the Mark Twain Scrapbooks as their canvas.

From the Households to the Battlefield

Scrapbooking is considered a household activity used to preserve family memories. Mothers, fathers, and children gathered in their books ephemera related to their own interests: housekeeping, recipes, poetry, news, etc. Due to its strong correlation with the household, it is a common belief that scrapbooking was solely a female activity, linked with traditional roles of the women as the pillar of the nuclear family. Nonetheless, several nineteenth and twentieth-century scrapbooks suggest the contrary. Mark Twain, for example, was an enduring producer and keeper of scrapbooks. Twain took his scrapbooks with him everywhere and filled them with souvenirs, pictures, and articles about his books and presentations.

Beyond these gender assumptions, the tradition of scrapbooking was common between different women and men. Moreover, this activity recorded different experiences and themes outside the domestic

environment. Scrapbooking became a popular activity in the public education movement. Master educators encouraged teachers to keep anthologies of clippings and artworks to use in the instruction of the students. From 1860 to 1930, “the training of kindergarten teachers included making albums with geometric designs.” Educators also promoted the teaching of scrapbooking among their students as a strategy to learn art skills, to sort and categorize. The making of scrapbooks became so widespread by the mid-nineteenth century that several authors also published periodicals to describe their purpose and methods. Hartford Connecticut, for example, circulated The Scrapbook, a publication that contained detailed information about the formats for displaying newspapers clips and pictures in scrapbooks.

By the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Americans explored the world for business and pleasure and returned home with memorabilia used for making scrapbooks.The Brooklyn financer, William Vaughn Tupper, created a set of forty six handmade scrapbooks to record his travels to Europe and North Africa between 1891 and 1895. Tupper used mass-produced printing media to describe and delineate his journeys, which embellished with detailed annotations and drawings.

In a similar way, scrapbooking also took a significant place in the way Americans rememorized the battle fields. Since the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), families devoted to collect, cut, and paste printed to leave traces of the battle. They also did it to create connections with their love ones fighting the in the frontline.

This tradition also remained in the way we remembered the participation of the country in the WWI. After the war ended, Alma Clarke and Frank Steed returned home carrying with them a wide scope of material culture about their experience in Europe. Through photographs and documents, Alma Clarke “wrote” her time in France as a volunteer helping French orphans and as a nurse for the American Red Cross. Her collection of patriotic material also documents U.S. and France position about the war.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the conflict, Frank Steed, an Army field clerk in the Casualty Division of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, created scrapbooks using material culture from his travels to different European cities. Steed integrated personal documents and pictures with ephemera that reflect leisure and quotidian activities in the midst of the war, such as photographs, menus, brochures, transportation tickets, and touristic pamphlet.

Similarly to Tupper, Steed and Clarke narrate their experiences as participants and observers of a foreign land. With the war, the experience of collecting and preserving crossed the barriers of the household and the quotidian space, displaying elements that documented those moments and ideas that reshaped the country itself. These scrapbooks document a particular vision of the global history and reflect the ever-changing meaning of the material culture through a method that trespassed the barriers of the industrial revolution.

Bibliography and Works Cited

Alma Clarke Papers Collection. Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/almaclarke

Bang, Laura. “Blue Electrode: Sparking between Silicon and Paper. Frank R. Steed in WWI Paris.” Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University. http://blog.library.villanova.edu/digitallibrary/2013/06/29/frank-r-steed-in-wwi-paris/

Dolbier, Alison E. “Scrapbooks.” Home Before the Leaves Fall. The Great War, 1914-1918. https://wwionline.org/resources/materials/scrapbooks/

Garvey, Ellen Gruber. Writing with Scissors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Manuscript Journals of Frank R. Steed US soldier in WWI France, 1918-1919, vol. 1 and 2. Digital Library, Villanova University. http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Collection/vudl:290235

“Mark Twain Interactive Scrapbook,” by PBS. http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/

Nordström, Alison. “Making a Journey: The Tupper Scrapbooks and the Travel they Describe.” In Photographs Objects Histories. Edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, 81-85. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Oswald, Brandi. “Mark Twain, Scrapbook Innovator,” West Virginia University Libraries, 2015. https://lib.wvu.edu/about/news/2015/02/23/mark-twain-scrapbook-innovator/

Ott, Katherine et al. “An Introduction to the History of Scrapbooks.” In The Scrapbook in American Life. Edited by Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia Buckler, 1-21. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2006.

Piechota, Irene. Means of human communication though time, 2002. http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/paievoli/finals/505Sp_03/Prj1/irene_piechota.htm

By Helen Gassmann

Introduction
As an American soldier stationed in France from 1917 to 1918, Frank Steed immersed himself in the culture surrounding him. His personal scrapbooks, which memorialize his experiences in World War I, include opera programs, theater playbills, and guides to tourist sites. War did not stop culture in France, nor in Steed’s home country. Day-to-day life went on despite worldwide warfare. In America, trends in music, dance, and fashion were in flux. Some social activities were paused as the Great War raged, while others evolved. WWI had a profound influence on its contemporary culture, as the conflict and its soldiers were represented in the popular culture of the day. This was a period of cultural transition. During World War I, many Americans relied on popular culture to make sense of global affairs.

Music
World War I was a transition point for two popular forms of music. The pre-war years were marked by ragtime while the post-war years gave birth to the Jazz Age. Both styles grew from African American traditions and are a direct result of African American contributions. Ragtime became popular in the 1890s and reigned until the late 1910s. After the close of the war, jazz replaced it as the dominant style of popular music.

While ragtime was fading into jazz, war songs were the most prevalent form of popular music. Even before the United States officially entered WWI, the conflict was inspiring music. From 1917-1919, these types of tunes were the pop anthems of the day. In general, they were more like patriotic odes than protest songs. Their moods range from jubilant (“Over There”) to hesitant (“Don’t Send My Darling Boy Away”) to anti-German (“Bing! Bang! Bing ‘Em on the Rhine”). Other songs depict the everyday lives of soldiers, such as Irving Berlin’s “Oh How I Hate Getting Up In the Morning” and “I Don’t Want to Get Well,” a duet by Arthur Fields and Grace Woods. Love is another common theme. In songs like “If He Can Fight Like He Can Love, Goodnight Germany,” female performers sing to their sweethearts overseas. Some songs give a voice to women’s wartime roles overseas. In “Oh Frenchy,” an American nurse serving in Paris falls in love with her patient. War songs came from many points of view and reflected a unique mixture of sentiments. These are just a few examples from a musical movement that created a massive song library.

“Over There,” Bill Murray

“Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” Irving Berlin

Dance
Ragtime was the pre-war dance craze. The style developed on dance floors across the United States as a response to the ragtime trend in popular music. Irene and Vernon Castle are credited with introducing the style overseas during their 1911 honeymoon in Paris, making ragtime a worldwide phenomenon. Popular dances within the ragtime movement include the Fox-Trot, the Tango, and the One-Step. By 1915, ragtime dance’s popularity dwindled. With men overseas in combat, dance floors quickly became deserted. Social dance picked up again in 1919 after fighting had ceased. However, ragtime was seen as old-fashioned, a relic from a distant and innocent pre-war past. The Jazz Age ushered in new dance crazes, most notably the Charleston. However, the Fox-Trot and the Tango continued to enjoy popularity and saw updates that kept them current to post-war dancers.

Film & Theater
Silent films were a popular form of entertainment in the 1910s. To avoid being deemed a “nonessential industry” by the government, the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry partnered with the federal government and agreed to aid the war effort in any way possible. Not all movies produced during the war years centered on WWI. Many love stories, comedies, and dramas make no reference to the war, and westerns remained a popular genre.
Patriotic tales became more prevalent by 1917. Love affairs were often metaphors for the war, as in 1917’s The Little American. Set explicitly in WWI, popular movie star Mary Pickford played an American nurse serving in France who fell in love with two men: a French soldier and a German soldier. War films could also take on a comedic tone. Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms was notable for satirizing the war as a whole, mocking Germans, Americans, and the culture of warfare. Ultimately, the film industry benefited from World War I as a result of its partnership with the federal government and the positive, patriotic reputation it gained in the eyes of Americans.

Even as the film industry took off, vaudeville remained popular during WWI. It became part of the war effort as performance troupes volunteered to travel overseas and put on live shows for soldiers.

Fashion
During World War I, many men and women decided that dressing in a gaudy, elaborate manner was inappropriate considering global affairs. As a result, very little innovation occurred in fashion for either gender during the war years. That doesn’t mean that fashion was completely stagnant. Women adapted current styles to make them more functional for their wartime work, phasing out fads like double-skirts and dressing to a more tailored look. Clothing became more practical and comfortable. In the post-war years of the Jazz Age, fashion for fashion’s sake found it voice again. In the 1920’s, women would begin to push the boundaries of socially acceptable dress.

Sports
Sports had a waning influence during the war years. In the United States, most professional sports teams shut down due to World War I. Athletic men were needed for the war effort. “Work or fight” orders compelled professional athletes to join the military. Public opinion turned against athletes who chose to stay in the United States and play ball rather than join their fellow countrymen in combat. Professional baseball came under scrutiny when both the American and National Leagues decided against suspending their 1918 seasons. Game play was paused indefinitely on September 2, 1918, after the Boston Red Sox defeated the Chicago Cubs, but only for a few months as the war ended the following November. Despite the negative effects this controversy had on professional baseball’s reputation, attendance increased by over 50% during the 1919 season. This suggests that post-war Americans were eager to return to life and leisure as usual.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

Berlin, Edward. “Ragtime.” Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History 2006: 1872-1875.

Berlin, Irving. “Oh How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning.” 1918. https://archive.org/details/VirvingBerlin-OhHowIHateToGetUpInTheMorning.

“The Castle Walk (1915).” Youtube video, 1:13. Posted March 1, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lms5OxZlGBw.

“Charles Chaplin – Shoulder Arms.” Youtube video, 44:53. Posted December 15, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj6DIm119-g.

Hensler, Paul. “”Patriotic Industry”: Baseball’s Reluctant Sacrifice in World War I.” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 21, no. 2 (2013): 98-106.

Horner, Carl. “1918 Boston Red Sox.” Heritage Auction Gallery, licensed under Public Domain via Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1918_Boston_Red_Sox.jpg#/media/File:1918_Boston_Red_Sox.jpg.

Keil, Charlie, and Ben Singer. American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variations. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Murray, Bill. “Over There.” 1917. https://archive.org/details/BillyMurray-OverThere1917.

Paris, Michael. The First World War and Popular Cinema: 1914 to the Present. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

“Popular Songs of WWI.” USCB Cylinder Audio Archive. University of California Santa Barbara Library. http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/wwi-radio.php.

Powers, Richard. “Dance in the Jazz Age.” Stanford University. https://socialdance.stanford.edu/Syllabi/jazz_age.htm.

Powers, Richard. “Social Dances of the Ragtime Era.” Standford University. https://socialdance.stanford.edu/Syllabi/ragtime_dance.htm.

Laver, James. The Concise History of Costume and Fashion. New York: Scribner, 1969.

Ritzenhoff, Karen A., and Clémentine Tholas-Disset. Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture During World War I. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Additional Resources:

Campbell, Donna. “Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music, and Movies 1910-1919.” Washington State University. http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/1910m.html.

Golden, Eve. Vernon and Irene Castle’s Ragtime Revolution. The University Press of Kentucky, 2007.

Layson, Hannah and Patricia Scanlan. “World War I in Popular Culture.” The Newberry. http://dcc.newberry.org/collections/world-war-i-in-us-popular-culture.

Watkins, Glenn. Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

By Brianna M. Quade

As Americans, we are fascinated by war. While this idea may seem ridiculous to believe, war is an essential characteristic in the fabric of American life and society. World War I was no exception. Almost a century since our entrance to the war, it is still a topic of discussion among historians. How does war, especially World War I, remain prevalent? It was a war that transformed American society. Mass production and a new revolutionary culture that evolved out of the war keeps the legacy of our fight against Germany alive and kicking. We can look back on this period and see the rise and fall of American society and economy. Propaganda during war time created a community among Americans as they were solicited to support the war effort and defend the home front against Germany and the Central Powers. Not only did the economy grow, but Americans contributed to this growth. How did this happen? A simple answer: propaganda. In times of war, propaganda was used to recruit not only soldiers, but Americas as well. 

Propaganda painted a image of the enemy in numerous ways, such as villains, robbers of American freedom, or a threat of American society among other themes. As these images of were plastered around the country, the message was clear: we need to defend the country against the Germans.

How was this accomplished? Buying war bonds. Americans, similar to World War II, were recruited through these posters to work in factories and buy bonds. As depicted in this poster,

The country was needed to avenge the helpless countrymen by supporting the war effort. As stated by Eric Van Schaack, as the United States entered the war, Germany became our enemy. Propaganda produced at this time was able to take the vision of the Hun and capitalize on American fears of attack. In turn, government and agencies that produced propaganda turned these fears into a money making opportunity. The image of a dangerous Hun could easily be defeated if Americans bought war bonds.

Propaganda depicted sometime violent images or outrageous caricatures; it was also used to appeal to people’s emotions, and in the words of Leslie Hahner, “patriotic hysteria.”  Propaganda in a sense was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, our fears were exposed. Americans saw the dangers of the Germans and the threat they caused to American security and the home front. Government agencies that produced these posters and flyers played on the fear of Americans by showing what would happen if they did not buy bonds or support the war effort.  On the other hand, these posters represented the formation of a nation against a common enemy. In this, there was a growing sense of nationalism. In times of war or tragedy, community members, Americans or the like, feel the same sense of tragedy and compassion. The nation is united against whatever enemy it is facing. Whether far or near, everyone shares in the same fear or enjoyment. Media and news are some of the main ways this sense of community is formed. In the case of World War I, propaganda also created this community. As reflected by Benedict Anderson, this sense of nationalism created a nation where it did not exist before. As Anderson explained, symbols such as propaganda created an identifiable marker in society that bound people together.

This image reflects Anderson’s sentiments. This symbol of our “great mother” was just one image printed to create a sense of nationalism among Americans. They were able to turn to these images to feel proud of buying a bond and supporting the war.

In addition, images also showed the necessity of support for the troops.

This image reflects this need to support the troops. What can be seen in this poster and posters printed throughout the war was a nationalist mentality that if we work together we can defeat the Germans.

While life in America was full of fear and mass production and increasing prosperity, life in France also reflected this increased prosperity. Frank Steed, an Army clerk during the war, documented his travels throughout the country. His scrapbooks reflect a burgeoning art culture. Along with his Army documentation,  he also has several opera tickets and ephemera. Among this, were numerous pictures of the Gaumont-Palace  where it appears that many of these performances took place.

At the time, the Palace was the place to be. Here is a brief video on the Gaumont-Palace.

Like the United States, in France, there were symbols of a national identity. While there does not appear to be any evidence of why Steed took in so many shows it is interesting to examine the culture at the time.

Propaganda continues to be relevant in American society in times of war and in general. World War I helped to created this national identity that we continue to remember 100 years later.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso Press, 2006.

“Avenge this!! Buy a bond,” c1918, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/item/2002718074/.

“Culture : Le Gaumont Palace de Paris,” YouTube.com, https://youtu.be/h3TvGxiNvbY.

Foringer, A. E., “The greatest mother in the world,” 1915,  Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/item/2001700434/.

Hahner, Leslie, “The National Committee of Patriotic Societies and the Aesthetics of Propaganda.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 17, no. 1 (2014): 35-65.

Kealey, E. V., “Back them up. Invest in the war loan,” Hill, Siffken & Co. (L.P.A. Ltd.), Grafton Works, London, 1915  Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/item/2003675223/.

Van Schaack, Eric, “The Coming of the Hun! American Fears of a German Invasion, 1918.” Journal of American Culture 28, no. 3 (2005): 284-292.

By Elizabeth M. Motich

“One of the most heartening and cheering things about this whole business of war making is the infinite capacity for mutual friendship that exists between the children of France and the soldiers of America.” —The Stars and Stripes: American Expeditionary Forces Newspaper, November 29, 1918

Typically, when we commemorate World War I, we think of great battles and haunting scenes of European cities’ destruction. The stories of the war’s victims, orphaned children from France and Belgium, are now often forgotten. Although orphaned children are seldom mentioned today, they played an important role in boosting troop morale and lending humanity to the war’s devastation. Their images decorated posters and their stories were told in advertisements in well-known newspapers like The New York Times. These orphaned “Children of the Frontier” as they were called in France and Belgium had truly incredible stories. The relief efforts that took place to assist the children were even more extraordinary, brought about by thousands of concerned citizens from France, Britain, and America.

Servicemen of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) encountered a multitude of orphaned children when they joined the war in 1917. Prior to that date, relief organizations’ advertisements estimated that as many as 200,000 children were orphaned or left with one parent in France. Volunteer Red Cross war nurse and orphans’ relief worker Alma A. Clarke’s French scrapbook features many images of children evacuating along a trail from Normandy to Versailles, stopping at major railway depots like the Gare du Nord to be collected and sent to orphanages. Many of these orphanages were supervised by nuns and maintained by Catholic charities.

Grassroots orphans’ relief efforts sprang up in France as early as 1914. A 1916 advertisement in The New York Times stated that in August of 1914, a group of drafted factory workers demanded that an organization should be formed to care for their potentially parent-less children. This first charity was founded by M. Vilta, the head of the Paris Université Populaire. It was known as the Association Les Orphelins de la Guerre (War Orphans’ Association), a society “founded in the most informal fashion, without rules, regulations, funds or officers to meet the pressing need of a group of mechanics” to aid French and Belgian children from underprivileged backgrounds.

Children of the society were reportedly housed in haphazard accommodations, “in bakers’ beds, in train conductors’ beds, in any corner where a good woman was found who would give them a scrap of food.” Despite this strange housing, the charities’ advertisement reported that the children soon received more than adequate care, becoming educated and learning trades appropriate to their genders. Most of the children in Clarke’s images and other photographs appear to be happy and well-fed despite their uprooting and the horrors that they may have witnessed. Newspaper advertisements and one British nurse’s letters describe the tragic sights of bombed houses and burning villages young children viewed in the hardest hit area of Ypres, France during 1915-1917.

What the French and Belgian children may not have known was that their rescue, care and supervision reached across the Atlantic ocean, supported by a broad network of charitable donors and private citizens. A committee of eminent United States figures including philanthropist William D. Guthrie, Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal Farley, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Howard Douglass White, and French ambassador William H. Sharp (among other dignitaries) spearheaded one of these organizations, the American Society for the Relief of French War Orphans, which solicited funds from Yale University.

In August of 1914, a group of New York-based philanthropists, and several former French residents including August F. Jaccacci, Mrs. Cooper Hewitt and Frederick René Coudert Jr. began the most wide-reaching orphans’ relief organizations, the Franco-American Committee for the Protection of Children of the Frontier. The Committee was greatly assisted by the Service de Transport France-Amerique, a shipping service for transferring goods across the ocean to help the French, and by the American Red Cross. The children were also aided by the Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic charity in Paris.

American relief workers and wealthy philanthropists assisted in supplying French and Belgian children with goods. The Committee’s outreach efforts were substantial. Many small American communities banded together to help the orphans. Even American children from the “domestic science departments of many schools” contributed provisions and supplies to the war orphans. Women throughout the United States formed sewing circles and contributed knitted garments for the orphans. By December 1, 1917, the Committee recorded that they had aided 1,365 children.

The Committee’s fundraising efforts began to spread and advertisements were printed in publications like the Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune advertisement, similar to the ad produced by the Association Les Orphelins de la Guerre stated that children from the Franco-American Committee were housed in “colonies…established in country places which kind-hearted French people have loaned for [the orphans’] use.” The “country places” mentioned were far-flung locations outside urban centers like Normandy, Versailles, and Touraine, although orphans also inhabited residences in Paris. Children had fled from areas closest to the Front, such as Ypres and Poperinge.

Funds collected from the solicitation on the orphans’ behalf by the American public through the newspaper and magazine advertisements were delivered to orphanages and ensured that they received medical care and food. Each orphan’s care and education reportedly cost “16 cents a day.”

In addition to these relief agencies’ fundraising campaigns, the US Red Cross hosted several large-scale Child Welfare Expositions in Saint Etienne, Lyons, and Marseilles in 1917 to raise awareness and funds for children’s and maternal health initiatives. Orphans’ care and maintenance was not only valuable to the Belgian and French children and their families; relief efforts to aid the orphans also served the important purpose of boosting troop morale.

French orphans like the children shown in this newsreel clip were unlikely mascots for American soldiers at the Front. However, toward the end of the war, numerous editions of the American Stars and Stripes American Expeditionary Forces’ official newspaper discuss The Red Cross’s orphan relief campaigns and suggests ways that individual soldiers could help orphaned children. The presence of cared for children in occupied areas was mutually beneficial, Stars and Stripes stated; soldiers were reminded of their children at home and orphans received food and candy from the Allied troops. Army regiments and companies went so far as to adopt children as official mascots and ensure their long-term care. A columnist for the April 12, 1918 Stars and Stripes reported that 38 children were adopted by various Infantry companies and one sergeant potential to be aided throughout their childhoods.

Orphaned children were a sad reminder of destruction along the Western Front in the Great War. Despite the children’s tragic circumstances, the efforts of hundreds of private citizens, American companies, philanthropists, religious charities, and members of the Red Cross and US Army resulted in a huge international campaign to ensure that these children of Belgium and France would be cared for, even in the midst of war.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

For more information about orphans in World War I, please view the following list of resources:

“Appeal for Children of French Soldiers Who Have Died In The Defense of France”. Yale Alumni Weekly. Sept. 22, 1916, vol. XXVI, no. 1, 475.

“Children of the Frontier: Comite Franco-Americain pour la protection des Enfants de la Frontiere, Third Annual Report”. Jan. 1, 1918. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/childrenoffronti00comi/childrenoffronti00comi_djvu.txt

“The Child Welfare Exposition”. Till I’ve Done All That I Can…http://almaaclarke.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-child-welfare-exposition–/the-child-welfare-exposition

Clarke, Alma A. “French WWI Scrapbook”. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections Library. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/almaclarke/id/450

“Gare du Nord”. Paris-Architecture.info.http://www.paris-architecture.info/PA-080.htm

“French War Orphans To Be Made Good Citizens”. New York Times. Feb. 6, 1916, v, p. 10.

McCutcheon, John T. “Franco-American Committee for Protection of the Frontier Children”. Chicago Tribune. Nov. 4, 1915. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1915/11/04/page/13/article/franco-american-committee-for-protection-of-the-frontier-children

33 More War Waifs Adopted As Mascots By American Units,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-04-12/ed-1/?sp=1

“294 War Orphans Taken By A.E.F. In Banner Week of Campaign,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-11-29/ed-1/?sp=3

Storr, Katherine Excluded from the Record: Women, Refugees, and Relief: 1914-1929. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010, 127-129.

Young, Robert J., Editor. Under Siege: Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000, 61-63.

“US Servicemen with Adopted French Children in Brest, France at the Close of World War I,” CriticalPast, YouTube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXrb1gbDZnk

By Ann Shipley

While the American Red Cross may seem like a timeless organization, it was still in its infancy as World War I broke out in Europe. In 1881 Clara Barton founded the American chapter after observing a Swiss model for the Red Cross she encountered while traveling in Europe during the American Civil War. Their mission was (and is) to “[prevent and alleviate] human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.” Before World War I, the American Red Cross (ARC) worked in the Spanish-American War but on a much smaller scale than what was seen during WWI. During the early years of WWI, the American Red Cross struggled to send aid, support, and supplies as the American people were technically neutral. However, once the Americans joined the fight, citizens back home rushed to show their support and patriotism. The growth of the Red Cross ballooned as America entered WWI as individuals created and joined local chapters. Almost ⅓ of the American population claimed membership (20 million adults and 11 million youth) or volunteered (8 million adults) with the Red Cross by the end of the War.

Alma Clarke left her Pennsylvania roots for France where she served as a Red Cross Auxiliary Nurse. She served in hospitals and, according to photographs in her scrapbooks, looked after some French children’s healthcare needs. The care of war orphans and infants in France were some of the top concerns for Red Cross workers. The Junior Red Cross, formed during the war years, focused on providing services to Europe’s children. Infections and tuberculosis were a main threat as wartime hygiene was difficult to maintain. Nurses and ARC volunteers even put on the famous Baby Show where 177,000 people attended a week long exhibit on “American methods of public health.”

The Red Cross set up hospitals and convalescent homes in large countryside homes and estates–think Downton Abbey Season 2. Although some professional nurses found it difficult to be treated with respect and authority during the war with the military atmosphere. Nursing could often be “invisible” work, only seen by those sick or directly involved. While nurses can be seen as angels in white dresses, doctors assistants, or someone to listen to, nurses were the ones directly dealing with the administration of medicine and possibly saw themselves as the ones running the hospital’s daily function.

Nursing was a relatively new professional career and many nurses were semi-trained or volunteers when they traveled to the front. Some women were able to serve in France, where Catholic nuns previously were serving as the country’s main form of nurse, if they were unable to find work back in America or Britain. There were some who faced criticism for the way they nursed, either too distant or too emotionally invested, and many struggled with understanding the trauma of what they witnessed. One of the most pressing areas of need was facial reconstruction after explosions or gas attacks distorted soldier’s faces. Nurses served with plastic surgeons or worked on making masks for the men to wear. However, while the war effort was coming to a close, the Red Cross faced a new challenge as the Spanish Influenza broke out across Europe and America. Post-war relief programs staffed and estimated 3,953 personnel working on both medical and social programs. Red Cross nurses were essential to the war effort and saving the lives of injured soldiers; while they may have smiled and put on a cheery front for the soldiers, the work they did was difficult and risky.

While many female volunteers were nurses, women could find themselves working a variety of jobs while overseas. The Red Cross set up Canteens along railway and road systems to serve food and refreshments to traveling soldiers. There were also recreational tents and volunteers helped with correspondence back home, financial aid, showed movies and held dances. One account from a Red Cross male volunteer in France described one of these dances as a bit of patriotic fun: “Attendance at dances came to be regarded in the light of a religious duty, and the girls danced their young heels off for the delectation of Uncle Sam’s soldiers.” Although these men and women were dealing with the traumas of war on a daily basis, it seems that their attitude was to make the best of any situation. The Red Cross also famously passed out cigarettes and chocolate to soldiers on trains, “with that touch of sympathy which only a woman can give.” Regardless of where these women found themselves working, the Red Cross gave women an unprecedented role in the fight and, for many, a sense of high responsibility and duty in the role they served.

For many women, volunteering for the Red Cross probably helped to give them a sense of purpose during these troubling years. They were able to help their country, their soldiers, and humanity as a whole through their care and aid. The work was difficult, gruesome, and often dangerous–330 women died while volunteering–yet these women are remembered as being positive and helpful. WWI can be seen as one of the first true tests of the capability of the Red Cross,and the organization came through as one of the greatest examples of humanitarian aid the world has ever seen.
Bibliography Works Cited:

“World War I and the American Red Cross.” American Red Cross. Accessed November 18, 2015. http://www.redcross.org/about-us/history/red-cross-american-history/WWI.

“The American Red Cross.” Home Before the Leaves Fall. Accessed November 18, 2015. http://wwionline.org/articles/american-red-cross/.

“English WWI Scrapbook.” Alma A. Clarke Papers. Accessed November 18, 2015. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/almaclarke/id/178

Gavin, Lettie. American Women in the World War. Niwot: University of Colorado Press, 1997.

Hallett, Christine E. Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War. New York: Manchester University Press, 2009.

Harrison, Carter H Captain A.R.C. With the American Red Cross in France: 1918-1919. Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Publisher, 1947.

Pictures from: ww1propaganda.com

By Anna L. Fitzpatrick

In April 1918, the United States formally entered World War I, joining the nations of Europe in their struggle against the Axis powers. Young men and women rushed to answer the call to serve their nation, as the government prepared to send them overseas to fight and serve as nurses. For those being sent to the front, and for their loved ones staying at home, the separation imposed upon the soldiers and nurses and their friends and family was surely daunting. To help cope with the separation and the anxiety produced by war, letters exchanged between those on the front lines and those at home provided assurance and a sense of normalcy during the war, while after the war, these same letters embodied wartime memories.

The content of letters from the front varies widely, but a common theme running through many letters is that of offering the loved ones a sense of assurance that those at the front were well and happy. For example, Nora Saltonstall, who served as a nurse during the war, did tell her family of her work experiences, but she also wrote cautiously as a consequence of the censorship of letters, and “because she did not want her worried father to insist that she come home.” Likewise, Corporal Anthony Dicello wrote a letter to “Frank” in 1918 with the express purpose of informing Frank that “I am well,” even though he had recently been wounded. Dicello requested that Frank keep the information about his wound from his parents’ knowledge, but then quickly offered Frank additional assurance in the closing lines: “Being in hospital is just like being at home. We sure do get treated fine.”

Nevertheless, not all soldiers were as stoic as Dicello. In a letter to his mother dated January 30, 1919, Charles Stanley Lamb apologized for having distressed her in a former letter. He continued, “I’m afraid my letters have been a bit gloomy and as I look back at my[?] experiences I now see no reason for my giving you the details I did. It was apart of my trouble that the effort to appear bright and cheery was beyond my strength.” Although Lamb expressed additional frustrations in the rest of the letter, he also assured his worried mother that time on leave had refreshed him.

Just as letters from the front gave those at home assurance of their loved ones’ well-being, those on the front lines eagerly waited for assurance and normalcy in letters from home. Receiving letters from home connected the men and women at the front with the reality of home life and assured them that their waiting families had not forgotten them and still loved them. Unfortunately, though, letters from home frequently took weeks to reach those at the front, and they were often destroyed after being read because of security matters. Nevertheless, soldiers and nurses longed for news from home, as expressed by Pvt. Harry C. Williams, when he wrote, “Uncle Sam has quite a big problem in delivering letters here in France so we are all thankful to receive them no matter how old they are for it really is our chief pleasure to get news from back home in the good old USA.” John A. McGill’s letters to his mother, though somewhat terse, also reveal a similar desire for news from home. In his letter dated June 23, 1918, he asked his mother to “Tell Laura I would like to see the baby. Write me all the news.”

Private James Henschel wrote to his parents about placing their pictures in a photo book they had previously sent, followed by the injunction, “so you must not stop sending them [pictures]. Nothing is more welcome — except the letters themselves.”

Just as news from home and photographs assured soldiers and nurses of their families’ affection and maintained a sense of normalcy, the letters soldiers and nurses wrote home also tried to maintain this sense of normalcy. Oftentimes, censorship of letters meant that soldiers could write very little about the war, requiring that family members try “to read between the lines.” Some soldiers, however, were able to get information past the censors, thereby trying to maintain normal family relationships of openly sharing news. The sailor Conrad Ostroot described “antisubmarine tactics” in one of his letters, which “somehow got through military censors.” However, many soldiers, like Harry Ralston, who later married the lady he wrote to during the war, knew that those tasked with censoring the letters would first read the communications, and thus a degree of propriety guided Ralston’s sentiments. Even though soldiers had to be cautious because of censorship, some tried to maintain a sense of normalcy by focusing on matters of daily life. William Beans’s letter to his mother and wife, written while he was still stateside in December of 1917, is a perfect example of how soldiers frequently wrote about “normal” topics, like food.

Upon the war’s conclusion, the precious letters that bridged the divide between the front lines and the home front became a way of preserving memories of the war. With many of theses letters now carefully preserved in collections, they are a rich resource for historians writing on the war. Memories were also preserved through postcards, which soldiers sometimes used instead of letters for a quicker means of communication. These postcards are valuable not only for the sentiments contained in them, but also for the photographs, which visually document the memories of wartime experiences.

Now preserved in archives and, in some instances, digital collections, postcards and letters exchanged between the home front and the front lines demonstrate that soldiers, nurses, and their families wrote to each other for a sense of assurance and normalcy. These same documents are now a wealth of memories, which can bring the war to life for historians and descendants of the letters’ authors.

Bibliography and Works Cited

Primary Sources

Bean, William James. Personal Correspondence. Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.24749/#vhp:personal.

Collection of Postcards From Edward D. Forman, Digital Library, Villanova University. http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:336023.

Henschel, James Edward. James Edward Henschel to Mother and Dad, France, February 11, 1918. The National World War I Museum and Memorial. http://theworldwar.pastperfectonline.com/archive/253DCB62-5EFD-4C2F-A2F6-612852052030.

Lamb, Charles Stanley. Personal Correspondence. Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.01627/.

McGill, John A. Personal Correspondence. Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.84785/.

McGill, John A. Photo Album. Veterans History Project, Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.84785/album.

Published Collections of Letters

Bonfiglioli, Margaret, and James Munson, eds. Full of Hope and Fear: The Great War Letters of an Oxford Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Graham, Judith S., ed. “Out Here At the Front:” The World War I Letters of Nora Saltonstall. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

Harvey, William C., and Eric T. Harvey, eds. Letters From Verdun: Frontline Experiences of an American Volunteer in World War I France. Philadelphia: Casemate, 2009.

Lee, Daniel E. Letters From a Sailor: America At War 1917-1918. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011.

Richards, J. Stuart, ed. Pennsylvanian Voices of the Great War: Letters, Stories, and Oral Histories of World War I. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002.

Secondary Sources

Acton, Carol. “Writing and Waiting: The First World War Correspondence between Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton.” Gender & History 11, no. 1 (April 1999): 54-83.

Dempsey, Hugh A., ed. “Mary Warren’s Letters from the Home Front, 1916-1917.” Alberta History (Winter 2015): 2-15.

Hanna, Martha. “War Letters: Communication between Front and Home Front.” In 1914-1918-Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2014. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10362.

Robertson, Megan. “Epistolary Memory: First World War Letters to British Columbia.” BC Studies no. 182 (Summer 2014): 125-150.

By Riley Hubbard

America did not formally enter World War I until April of 1917 although the Great War, as it was called in Europe, officially started in 1914.  The assignation of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian led to the Austria-Hungary Empire declaring war on Serbia one month later. Austria-Hungary was backed by an alliance with Germany. Germany declared on Russia, who had had an alliance with France. France started to mobilize their troops. By August, Great Britain had declared war on both Germany and Austria-Hungary. This formed the Allied Powers of France – Russia and Great Britain against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

United States President Woodrow Wilson took a stance of neutrality when war in Europe broke out. By the choosing neutrality President Wilson was keeping friendly ties with both sides, however, trading between the two sides did change. Trade with Great Britain and France almost doubled while trade with Germany did decrease.

The war in Europe was not just fought in Europe but also in Africa in German held territories there. During World War I, soldiers not just from the major countries but also their empire from all over the world joined the war. Great Britain called on Australia, New Zealand and Canada, while France called upon India and territories in Africa to join the effort.  Japan, fresh off a win against Russia, helped launch attacks against Germany in the Pacific.

World War I was a new kind of war, different from what many soldiers had experienced before.  During this war new kinds of tactics were being used such as poisonous gases.

America (President Wilson) had a gradual change from neutrality towards the Allied powers. This change came from the sinking of passenger boats by German submarines known as U-Boats. In May of 1915, a German U-Boat sank a passenger boat, the Lusitania, killing more than 1,200 people including at least 128 Americans. In 1916, the United States came to an agreement with Germany known as the Sussex Pledge after the sinking of the unarmed Sussex. With the Sussex Pledge, President Wilson threatened to cut all diplomatic ties with Germany if they continued to sink unarmed ships. By January of 1917, Germany was violating the pledge in hopes to win the war faster.

This did not lead to an automatic entry of the United States into the war. On February 3, 1917, President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress stating that diplomatic ties with Germany had been cut. On February 26, the President asked Congress for the ability to arm United States merchant ships with Navy personal and equipment. This request was filibustered in the Senate until the end of their session. President Wilson passed the act through an executive order.

In an attempt to get the United States to join the war, Great Britain passed along a telegram they had decoded sent to Mexico known as the Zimmerman Telegram. The telegram was sent from Germany to Mexico promising Mexico that Germany would help them get their land back from the United States in exchange for support in the war. This was the first time an attack on US soil could be seen as a possibility.

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress  asking them to declare war on Germany. The Senate passed the act on April 4th; the House of Representatives passed the act just 2 days later. The United States has officially entered the war. Finally on December 7, 1917, the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary.

In July 1918, the Allied Powers launched the One Hundred Days Offensive; it was a series of attacks against German. The attacks slowly pushed the Germans east. Before Germany was invaded, an armistice was signed leading to a cease fire on November 11, 1918. That date is now remembered as Veterans Day in the United States. Official peace came in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Not all of the American forces returned home right away. Some stayed during the time of demobilization in Germany as well as helped to occupy the region around neutral Koblenz. The United States Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States did not actually sign the peace treaty. The United States was still technically at war with Germany until 1921 when a separate peace was signed and all troops were withdrawn by the end of January 1923.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

United States Department of State. “U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917.” Accessed November 15, 2015. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi

United States Army Europe. “WWI.” Accessed November 14, 2015. http://www.eur.army.mil/organization/history.htm

BBC. “Word War One: The Global Conflict that Defined a Century.” Accessed November 14, 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zqbhn39

U.S. History. “America in the First World War.” Accessed November 10, 2015. http://www.ushistory.org/us/45.asp