Read the Text Below the question and answer the questions below….

Question Answered step-by-step Read the Text Below the question and answer the questions below…. Read the Text Below the question and answer the questions below.1). Make a claim about the text below and explain your thought process?2). Make a thesis statement that you can support with historical evidence from the text below?The Drift to War: Peace activists became more vocal and active in their opposition to the war. Theodore Roosevelt, on the other hand, clamored for action. Preparedness leagues called attention to the pathetic state of American armed forces. • The election of 1916 gave Woodrow Wilson a razor-thin victory over the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes. With re-election confirmed, Wilson pursued a more vigorous foreign policy. • In January 1917 in a speech before the Congress, Wilson called for a “peace without victory” based on self-determination for all nations and the creation of an international organization to enforce peace. The Zimmerman Telegram provoked alarm in the West and fueled anti-Mexican sentiment. On the surface there were good reasons for the United States to enter the war. Wilson added that the U.S. had to enter the war so that she could influence the peace settlement. • On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson went to Congress to proclaim that American neutrality had failed. The only hope for preventing future wars, he claimed, was to place the United States in a position to dictate the peace. He urged Congress to vote for war on American terms. As the United States prepared for war a secret committee named Inquiry met to draw up plans for peace. Their fourteen recommendations fell into three categories: free trade, freedom of the seas, and ethnic determination. • On April 6 the Congress voted a declaration of war in spite of an assumption that a referendum would have failed. Congress then tackled the problems paying for the costs of war and deciding who would fight it. Despite opposition, a draft law was passed which required men between the ages of 18 and 45 to register with newly created draft boards. Mobilizing the Nation and the Economy: The nation mobilized for war. Three million men were needed for military service and they needed food, uniforms, ammunition, and equipment. The requirements of a nation at war placed heavy burdens on the American people and the economy. While soldiers in Europe fought to make the world safe for democracy, at home dissenters were quashed. Political and labor activists were imprisoned, and citizens who dared question America’s motives were arrested. • World War I saw the sophisticated use of propaganda designed to mold public opinion. The images portrayed the Germans as evil brutes; progress and patriotism were characterized in feminine figures. • World War I was fought to protect territory and national interests as well as values and ways of life and to do so required all of the resources of the combatant nations. In the United States this meant economic reorganization and centralized planning to manage military personnel and war Chapter 22 187 material. It also require that business and business’s priorities be subordinated to the government. • The draft took eligible workers from the workplace and the war in Europe prevented immigrants from moving to the United States. The labor shortage stimulated immigration from another source: rural America. African-American and white sharecroppers fled poverty for jobs in the cities. • Social and political change was often justified by the phrase “war effort,” and soon blacks and women employed the same argument. Advocates of social change soon demanded that the United States fight for democracy at home as well as abroad. Over There: American servicemen arrived in France certain they could change the war and the peace. The optimism, so characteristic of the American forces, was soon diminished. • The American Expeditionary Force under Commander John J. Pershing arrived in France in June 1917. Despite hopes to the contrary, America’s contribution to the war effort was soldiers. The race between the United States and Germany was to see who could place the most men on the western front in 1918. • The report written by Wilson’s private panel, called Inquiry, became the core of Wilson’s report to the Congress. The report became known as the Fourteen Points. There were four themes: national self-determination, freedom of the seas, enforcement of peace by a league of nations, and open, instead of secret, diplomacy. • Spring 1918 found most of Germany’s troops on the western front preparing for the final assault. Germany’s economy was exhausted and hunger and despair the common companions of Germans at home. The Americans hit the battlefield, succeeded in halting the German advance, but suffered enormous casualties. Germany announced it would accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for a truce and negotiations. The guns fell silent at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. The Black Cloud in the East: Back home the armistice was celebrated with parades and prayers. In Germany, revolutionaries took power and in eastern Europe revolutions broke out. From Flanders to the Sea of Japan, not a single government remained intact. In the United States, Americans experienced the first outbreak of a “Red Scare,” a conviction that communist-inspired revolution was imminent in the United States. • Woodrow Wilson was exhausted when the war in Europe ended and perhaps his exhaustion caused him to misplay his role in the victory. He tried to turn the victory to political advantage by encouraging American voters to vote Republican congressmen out of office. Secondly he went to Paris to lead the American peace delegation. The delegation was composed solely of Democrats even though, Republican-controlled Senate would have to ratify any treaty. Wilson saw his Fourteen Points dismantled and disregarded as the victorious nations expanded their imperial empires. • The Republican-controlled Senate received the Treaty of Versailles with closed arms. Wilson argued that the League of Nations would prevent future conflict; the Senate believed otherwise and went on record opposing it. Wilson hit the campaign trail hoping to garner public support for the treaty. A debilitating stroke silenced Woodrow Wilson and the progressive president was powerless to lead the Senate were it refused to go. The United States Senate voted to refuse ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. • The horrors of World War I, the revolution in Russia, and postwar political unrest in Europe caused Americans to be scared that the causes of social and political changes were occurring at home. Immigrants and unionized workers were lumped together with socialists, anarchists, communists, and labor unionists. The “Red Scare” had begun. Democratic freedoms, which had seemed so important as to be worth dying for in Europe, had taken leave of the United States. History US History HIST 1302 Share QuestionEmailCopy link Comments (0)