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CC USH Ep 08 — America and World War I

CrashCourse US History · Episode 08 (approximate) Era: USH Unit 2 — Imperialism & WWI Standards: US.6_12.5 · US.6_12.2 · ELA R.9 · W.4

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Episode Summary

This episode covers WWI from the American angle — why the US stayed neutral until 1917, what changed (the Zimmermann Telegram, unrestricted submarine warfare, economic ties to Britain), and what the war did to American society once the country entered. Green examines the propaganda machine that turned public opinion, the suppression of dissent through the Espionage and Sedition Acts, and the experience of soldiers who arrived on the Western Front to find a war nothing like what they'd been told. He also covers what the war did at home: the Great Migration begins as Black Americans move north for war industry jobs; women enter the workforce in large numbers. Green's argument: America's entry into WWI reshaped both the war and American society in ways that outlasted the armistice.

Standards Alignment

Standard Connection
US.6_12.5 Causes and effects — why the US entered, what the war produced
US.6_12.2 War propaganda as ideology — how governments shape public belief
US.6_12.3 Civil liberties under pressure — Espionage Act, Sedition Act
US.6_12.4 The Great Migration; women in the workforce
ELA R.9 WWI propaganda as argument — analyze how it worked
ELA W.4 Argument about whether US entry was justified or avoidable

Key Concepts

  • American neutrality 1914–1917 — economic ties to Britain, Wilson's "too proud to fight"
  • Zimmermann Telegram — Germany proposes Mexico attack the US; intercepted by Britain
  • Unrestricted submarine warfare — Germany sinks Lusitania (1915) and resumes sinking US ships (1917)
  • War propaganda — Committee on Public Information; "Four Minute Men"; Liberty Bond posters
  • Espionage Act (1917) / Sedition Act (1918) — criminalizes anti-war speech
  • The Great Migration — 500,000 Black Americans move north for war industry jobs 1916–1920
  • Wilson's Fourteen Points — America's vision for post-war world; Senate rejects League of Nations

Watch Prompts

  1. Green argues there were multiple causes for American entry into WWI. What does he identify as the most important? Do you agree?
  2. How did the US government use propaganda to build public support for the war? What techniques did it use?
  3. The Espionage and Sedition Acts criminalized anti-war speech. How does Green frame this — as necessary wartime measure or as overreach?
  4. Who benefited from the wartime economy? Who paid the costs?

Key Lines

"The Zimmermann Telegram is one of history's great intelligence coups — and one of Germany's great blunders."

"The government didn't just ask Americans to support the war. It made opposition illegal."

"The Great Migration is one of the most significant demographic shifts in American history — and it happened because of a war."

Pairs With

Why This Is Relevant Today?

American entry into WWI established patterns that have repeated in every subsequent war: the transformation of public opinion through propaganda campaigns, the suppression of dissent through wartime legislation (the Espionage Act and Sedition Act — both still on the books and used in prosecutions today), and the gap between stated war aims and actual geopolitical interests. The Espionage Act used to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers was passed in 1917. The same Act was used in the prosecution of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Understanding the WWI-era origins of these laws matters for evaluating how they're being applied today and whether the suppression of dissent they enabled then is what their contemporary application is producing now.

Full Transcript

Auto-generated captions, pulled July 7, 2026. Punctuation follows YouTube's auto-captioning; minor transcription errors may remain.

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course US History, and today we're finally going to make military history buffs happy. That's right. Today, we're going to talk about how the United States with its superior technology, innovative tactics, and remarkable general ship turn the tide of World War I. Mr.

Green. Mr. Green. Finally. I've been waiting for months to learn about tanks and airplanes and Ernest Hemingway.

Well, that's a shame me from the past because I was kidding about this being an episode full of military details, but I do promise that we will mention Ernest Hemingway. And in a few weeks I will tell you about how he liberated the martinis of Paris. Americans were only involved in the Great War for 19 months and compared with the other belligerents, we didn't do much fighting. Still, the war had profound effects on America at home, on its place in the world, and it also resulted in an amazing number of war memorials right here in Indianapolis. So, the Great War, which lasted from 1914 until 1918 and featured a lot of men with hats and rifles, cost the lives of an estimated 10 million soldiers.

Also, the whole thing was kind of horrible and pointless, unless you love art and literature about how horrible and pointless World War I was, in which case it was a real bonanza. So, when the war broke out, America remained neutral because we were a little bit isolationist, owing to the fact that we were led, of course, by President Wilson. But many Americans sided with the British because by 1914, we'd pretty much forgotten about all the bad parts of British rule, like all that tea and monarchy. Plus, they're so easy to talk to with their English. But there were a significant number of progressives who worried that involvement in the war would get in the way of social reforms at home.

In fact, Wilson courted these groups in the 1916 presidential campaign, running on the slogan, "He kept us out of war and will continue to keep us out of war until we reelect him and then he gets us into war." But for that slogan to make sense, there had to have been some way in which war was avoided. Which brings me to one of the classic errors made by American history students. What? I haven't even said anything yet. But you were about to me from the past because if I had asked you what event led the US to enter World War I, you would have surely told me that it was the sinking of the cruise ship Lucatania by German submarines. 124 American passengers died when the ship, which had been carrying arms and also guns, was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland.

Even though Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had warned Americans not to travel on British, French, or German ships, Wilson refused to ban such travel because, you know, freedom, Brian promptly resigned. So, how do I know it wasn't the immediate cause of our involvement in the war? Because the United States declared war on Germany and the central powers on April 2nd, 1917, almost 2 years after the sinking of the Lucatania. So why did the United States declare war for only the fourth time in its history? Was it the Germans decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917?

Was it the interception and publication of the Zimmerman telegram in which the German foreign secretary promised to help Mexico get back California if they join Germany in a war against the US? Or was it the fall of the Tsarist regime in Russia which made Wilson's claims that he wanted to fight to make the world safe for democracy a bit more plausible? Yes. Yes. And yes.

Also, there was our inclination to help Britain to whom we had loaned $2 billion. That's the thing about wars. They never start for easy simple reasons like lucataneous sinking stupid truth always resisting simplicity. Oh, it's time for the mystery document. The rules here are simple.

I guess the author of the mystery document. I'm either right or I get shocked. I or possibly one open covenants of peace openly arrived at after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. I I I'm starting to think these are Roman numerals. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters alike in peace and in war except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

Three, the removal so far as possible of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. And 14, I'm going to guess we skipped some. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity of great and small states alike. Stan, thank you for throwing me a softball. That's my favorite kind of ball.

Other than you, Wilson. With its mention of self-determination, freedom of the seas, open diplomacy, and liberal use of Roman numerals. I know it is Woodrow Wilson's 14 points. our second consecutive Woodrow Wilson week and my second consecutive non-shock. Given all of his quasi imperialism, there's something a little bit ideologically inconsistent about Wilson, but his 14 points are pretty admirable as a statement of purpose. Most of them deal specifically with colonial possessions and were pretty much ignored.

But I suppose if we've learned anything, it's that in American history, it's the thought that counts. America's primary contribution to the Antant Powers winning the war was economic as we sent all sorts of arms and money over there. Troops didn't arrive until the spring of 1918 and eventually over 1 million American doughboys served under General John J. Persing. Not all of these people saw combat.

They were much more likely to die of flu than bullet wounds, but their sheer numbers were enough to force the defeat of the exhausted Germans. And now, as promised, I will mention Ernest Hemingway. He served as an ambulance driver, which gave him a close-up view of death and misery and led to his membership in the so-called lost generation of writers who lived in Paris in the 1920s and tried to make sense of everything. Turns out it's pretty hard to make sense of and you're just going to end up with a lot of six-toed cats and then eventually suicide. Okay, so I said earlier that a lot of American progressives were anti-war, but certainly not all of them.

Like according to Randolph Bourne, war is the health of the state. And for progressives like him, the war offered the possibility of reforming American society along scientific lines, instilling a sense of national unity and self-sacrifice and expanding social justice. Let's go to the thought bubble. World War I made the national government much more powerful than it had ever been. Like in May of 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which required 24 million men to register for the draft and eventually increased the size of the army from 120,000 to 5 million.

The government also commandeered control of much of the economy to get the country ready to fight, creating new agencies to regulate industry, transportation, labor relations, and agriculture. The War Industries Board took charge of all elements of wartime production, setting quotas and prices and establishing standardized specification for almost everything, even down to the color of shoes. The Railroad Administration administered transportation, and the fuel agency rationed coal and oil. This regulation sometimes brought about some of the progressives goals like the war labor board for instance pushed for a minimum wage, 8-hour work days, and the rights of workers to form unions. Wages rose substantially in the era.

Working conditions improved and union membership skyrocketed. But then so did taxes and the wealthiest Americans ended up on the hook for 60% of their income. Also, in World War I, as never before, the government used its power to shape public opinion. In 1917, the Wilson administration created the Committee on Public Information, which only sounds like it's from an Orwell novel, headed by George Creel, the CPI's team created a wave of propaganda to get Americans to support the war, printing pamphlets, making posters, and advertising in swanky motion pictures. The best known strategies were the speeches of 75,000 4-minute men, who in that amount of time delivered messages of support for the war in theaters, schools, and other public venues.

The key concepts in the CPI propaganda effort were democracy and freedom. Creole believed that the war would accelerate movement toward solving the age-old problems of poverty, inequality, oppression, and unhappiness because obviously war is the most effective anti-depressant. Thanks, thought bubble. So, the affforementioned Randolph Bourne might have had good things to say about war, but he was also correct when he suggested that the war would encourage and empower the quote least democratic forces in American life. World War I may have been a war to make the world safe for democracy, but according to one historian, the war inaugurated the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known.

War suppressing civil liberties, eh, I'm glad those days have passed. Speaking of the repression of civil liberties, the NSA is about to start watching this video because I'm about to use the word espionage. The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited spying, interfering with the draft, and quote false statements that might impede military success. Even more troubling was the Sedition Act passed in 1918, which criminalized statements that were intended to cast contempt, scorn, or disrepute on our form of government or that advocated interference with the war effort. So basically, these laws made it a crime to criticize either the war or the government.

In fact, Eugene Debs, the socialist who ran for president in 1912, was one of those convicted for giving an anti-war speech. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and he served three of them. but he ran for president from prison and got 900,000 votes. Fortunately, thanks to checks and balances, you can turn to the courts. Unfortunately, they weren't very helpful. Like in Shank versus the US, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a guy named Shank for encouraging people to avoid the draft and ruled that the government can punish critical speech when it presents a clear and present danger to the state and its citizens.

This was when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes introduced the famous exception to free speech that it is not okay to shout fire in a crowded theater. nor apparently is it okay to shout we shouldn't be in this war I don't think just my opinion but some went even further 250,000 strong American Protective League helped the Justice Department identify radicals by harassing people in what were called slacker raids good thing those stopped before you got to high school right me from the past slacker in Bisby Arizona vigilantes went so far to put striking copper miners in box cars shipped them out to the middle of the desert and left them there also raised the question of what it meant to be a real American like public schools Americanized immigrants and sought to implant in their children so far as can be done the Anglo-Saxon conceptions of righteousness, law and order and popular government. Many cities sponsored Americanization pageantss, especially around the 4th of July, which the CPI in 1918 recristened loyalty day. Hamburgers, a German word, became liberty sandwiches. World War I certainly didn't create anti-immigrant feeling in the United States, but it was used to justify it. like IQ tests introduced to screen army applicants were soon used to argue that certain immigrant groups were inferior to white Protestants and could never be fully assimilated into the United States. Now, of course, those tests were tremendously biased, but no matter.

But to return to the questions of disscent and free speech, the suppression continued after the war with the 1919 Palmer raids, for instance, named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and headed up by a young J. Edgar Hoover. To be fair, someone did try to blow up Palmer, so there was some dissent related to the suppression of disscent. Also, more than 4 million workers engaged in strikes in the United States in 1919, but that didn't legally justify the arrest of more than 5,000 suspected radicals and labor organizers.

Most of them were arrested without warrants and held without charge, sometimes for months. And it's difficult to imagine that all of this would have happened without the heightened sense of patriotism that always accompanies war. However, there were a handful of good things to come out of the Great War. are in not just the stylings of Irving Berlin. Like students are often taught that the war led directly to the passage of the 19th amendment, although a number of states had actually granted the franchise to women before the war. In Montana, for instance, women didn't just vote, they held office.

Congresswoman Janette Rankin voted against the declaration of war in 1917 and was the only member of the House to vote against the Declaration of War against Japan in 1941. New opportunities in wartime industry also provided incentives for African-Americans to move north, thus beginning the so-called great migration and the growth of black populations in northern cities like Chicago and New York. The biggest gain was in Detroit, where between 1910 and 1920, the black population rose from 5,741 to 40,838, a 611% increase. So, it's true that World War I provided some new opportunities for African-Americans and women, but if World War I was supposed to be an opportunity for America to impose its progressive ideas on the rest of the world, it failed. The Versailles Peace Conference, where Wilson tried to implement his 14 points, raised hope for a new diplomatic order.

But the results of the treaty made the 14 points look hypocritical. I mean, especially when Britain and France took control of Germany's former colonies and carved up the Arabian provinces of the Ottoman Empire into new spheres of influence. Wilson's dream of a League of Nations was realized, but the US never joined it, largely because Congress was nervous about giving up its sovereign power to declare war, and disappointment over the outcome of World War I led the US to, for the most part, retreat into isolationism until World War II. And there in lies the ultimate failure of World War I. It's not called the World War.

It's called World War I because then we had to go and have a freaking other one. We'll talk about that in a few weeks, but next week we get to talk about suffrage. Yes, we finally did something right. I'll see you then. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Mueller.

Our script supervisor is Meredith Denko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raul Meer, Rosanna Rojos, and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Cafe. Every week there's a new caption for the Libert.

If you'd like to suggest one, you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today's video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome. Stan, can you do some movie magic to get me out of here? Perfect.

CrashCourse US History Ep 08 — SDA Commons Wiki · South High School