Part two- 1890 to 1920 Impact of WW1
- Created by: H@r/3y
- Created on: 04-09-20 12:11
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- Intervention in WW1 changed course of conflict
- Unbreakable deadlock at end of 1916 - war no one knew how to win or to stop- became a decisive allied victory by Nov. 1918
- War changed US at home and abroad
- Huge army enlisted by conscription
- First time US troops fought overseas as part of an alliance
- War caused/sped up significant social change
- US intervention produced decisive outcome-led to fundamental change in world economy
- Late 19th century US = debator nation, borrowing from Europe
- From 1917 became creditor nation, loans worth billions of other countries, to fight the war and repair massive losses
- New world economy based on a web of debt totally dependent upon US financial resources
- 1914 and 1917- neutrality benefitted economy
- Dislocation of European food supplies meant agriculture boomed-farmers got high prices for everything
- Was a Demand of modern industrialised warfare -GB and France depended heavily on US for war supplies and loans to pay for them
- US was important economic force in one sided form of neutrality
- When entered the war, economy struggled to cope
- Was lots of confusion and inefficiency
- Massive infrastructure needed for bases where new mass army would be housed, trained, equipped
- Fed gov established new organisation to regulate the war economy
- Liberty loans to raise funds
- War Industries Board-coordinated war production
- Food and fuel act- set up food administration and a fuel administration-regulate and ration resources
- War revenue act for increased federal spending nationalisation of the railroads was required to control transportation
- Process was slow and uncertain at first, produced a formidable war machine & stimulated economic growth
- Exports rose
- Steel industry boomed
- Full employment
- When war ended- painful adjustments to peacetime conditions
- Démobilisation didn’t go smoothly
- Slowdown of the economy due to halting war production-Intense social and ethnic divisions 1919-20
- Brief economic recession persisted into 1921
- War strengthened US economic dominance
- War destroyed the Russian, German and Ottoman Empires pushes GB and France to edge of bankruptcy
- US=worlds new economic giant
- Economic dominance not only reason US was destined to take the lead in shaping the post war world
- Prestige of US democracy enhanced by war-Symbolised by image and ideals of President Wilson-dominant personality of peace conference, Paris Jan 1919
- Around world people believed that ‘wilsonian Idealism’ would make a better world after the war to end all wars
- Strong reasons for high hopes world places on Wilson 1919
- America-shining example of Republican democracy, was free of any guilt
- New economic and military potential
- US first among the great powers
- Anti colonial history -idea of clean hands and moral superiority
- Addressing congress in July 1919 Wilson announced ‘the stage is set our destiny is revealed. This destiny has come about by no plan of our own conceiving but by the hand of God’
- Peace conference established A post-war peace settlement based on the fourteen points proposed January 1918
- Not easy to convert these ideals into reality & complex issues
- Clashes of opinions with other Big four peace makers :France GB Italy- had different…
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