World War I (1914-1919) - PDF

# Chapter 19: World War I (1914-1919) ## 1. Roots of the Conflict **Section Focus:** - World War I - Triple Alliance - Triple Entente - Central Powers - Allies - U-boat **Key Terms:** **Main Idea:** A complex system of alliances helped draw the nations of Europe into war in 1914, but the United...

# Chapter 19: World War I (1914-1919) ## 1. Roots of the Conflict **Section Focus:** - World War I - Triple Alliance - Triple Entente - Central Powers - Allies - U-boat **Key Terms:** **Main Idea:** A complex system of alliances helped draw the nations of Europe into war in 1914, but the United States declared its neutrality. While fighting deadlocked on the Western Front, submarine warfare threatened American trade and neutrality. **Objectives:** As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. What trends in Europe contributed to the outbreak of war? 2. What was trench warfare? 3. How did the United States deal with the nations at war? On June 28, 1914, Saratoga, Bosnia. Flags waved in the bright morning sun, and people gathered to celebrate the feast of St. Vitus. Happy crowds lined the streets as Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne and future leader of Bosnia, drove by. Suddenly, shots rang out. "It's nothing," murmured Franz Ferdinand, but within an hour he and his wife were dead. At first, the terrorist killings seemed little more than a minor tragedy. World leaders, including President Wilson, sent their condolences to Emperor Franz Josef in Vienna but did not expect anything more to come of the incident. A month later, however, what had begun as "nothing" triggered the worst war the world had ever known. In the end, World War I (1914-1918) would redraw national boundaries on three continents and shift the world balance of power. The United States, a reluctant combatant, would emerge as an economic and political giant. But the war would last four years, destroy much of Europe, and take more than 10 million lives in combat, disease, and famine. ## Causes Of The War The opening round of this cataclysmic carnage came from a small pistol. The assassin's motive, however, was a large and powerful idea- nationalism. By 1900 great waves of nationalist feeling were sweeping across Europe. The pan-German movement, led by Germany and including Austria, hoped to bring together all German-speaking peoples. The pan-Slavic movement, led by Russia, tried to unite Slavic peoples. Such passionately held beliefs were bound to lead to conflicts over territory. Bosnia, a small state in the Balkans, was one of these contested lands. Although many of its people were Slavs, it had been annexed by German-speaking Austria. Bosnia's annexation was part of another form of international rivalry-imperialism. For years, European nations had competed for territory throughout the world in search of raw materials and markets. They also competed for lands closer to home, creating flash points throughout Europe. Both Russia and Austria wanted power in the Balkans. Italy disputed Austria's claim to certain territories. France wanted to reclaim the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from Germany, while Germany wanted to expand eastward. To everyone, bigger meant better. To protect their growing empires and display their national pride, the European powers engaged in an enormous military buildup. Each nation (except Britain) had a conscription system requiring young men to serve in the military. The drafts produced huge standing armies. By 1914, Russia had more than 8 million men in uniform. Germany had the best-trained army, however, and raced to expand its navy to compete with Great Britain. All nations stockpiled new weapons and ammunition. Militarists-people who glorify the military-called on their governments to use force to settle international problems. Under the pressures of nationalism, imperialism, and militarism, the nations of Europe formed alliances to maintain a balance of power. Germany joined Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, while France, Russia, and Great Britain formed the Triple Entente. In each case, the countries agreed to aid their allies in a crisis. These international arrangements worked for a while; war seemed unthinkable. Yet the system of mutual defense agreements, designed to keep the peace in Europe, ultimately destroyed it. The web of entangling alliances turned a small shooting incident into global violence on an unprecedented scale. ## Chain Reaction Franz Ferdinand had been murdered by a Slavic nationalist who thought that Bosnia should belong to its neighbor Serbia. Austria blamed the government of Serbia for the killing and, with a pledge of support from Germany, declared war. Serbia's powerful ally, Russia, mobilized its armies to protect its fellow Slavs. To Germany, this mobilization meant only one thing-war. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, and two days later on Russia's ally, France. The Germans hoped to knock out the French quickly, then concentrate their forces on the East-ern Front against the massive Russian army. To ## Stalemate In The Trenches Everyone thought the war would be brief-"all over before Christmas," a British slogan said. But everyone misjudged the intensity of the fighting. The Germans swiftly pushed south to the Marne River 40 miles from Paris. By October Allied troops had forced them back to the Belgian town of Ypres (EE-pruh). Casualties were enormous, and winter was setting in. To consolidate the Allied position, French general Ferdinand Foch told his officers, "You must dig in; it's the only way of staying out of sight and cutting losses." From the North Sea south for 400 miles to Switzerland, Allied soldiers dug trenches in which to live and fight. German troops did the same. Sometimes the trenches were so close that soldiers could hear the enemy talking. Yet such near-ness did not bring the two sides any closer to peace. With the move to the trenches, fighting on the Western Front became a bloody stalemate that was to last nearly four years. "Nothing to see but bare mud walls, nowhere to sit but on a wet muddy ledge; no shelter of any kind against the weather except the clothes you are wearing; no exercise you can take in order to warm yourself." This was a soldier's life in the trenches. And as one soldier put it, "There doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving except in an ambulance." Daytime in the trenches was bleak, uncomfortable, and often boring. Action came at night. Under cover of darkness, troops and supplies were moved into the trenches. Soldiers repaired their dugouts and the barbed wire in front of them. ## New Instruments Of Death Such slaughter continued year after year because the generals clung to obsolete battlefield tactics. The combination of old ideas and new technology produced a bloodbath. The old tactic of charging enemy lines proved futile against machine guns and heavy artillery. Some machine guns had greater fire power than an entire company of riflemen. Field guns and howitzers rained destruction on their enemies. At the Battle of the Somme, 2,000 pieces of artillery fired 2 million shells from June to November 1916. So intense was their power that the shelling could be heard nearly 300 miles away in London! In an attempt to break the stalemate in the trenches, the Germans began using poison gas in 1915. Soldiers feared its deadly greenish-yellow cloud. "It burned in my throat," wrote a French survivor, "caused pains in my chest, and made breathing all but impossible. I spat blood and suffered dizziness. We all thought that we were lost." Against the horrors of artillery and gas, the British devised an ingenious weapon. From the Somme came this German report: When the German pickets crept out of their dug-outs... their blood chilled. Mysterious monsters were crawling towards them over the craters. The monsters approached slowly, hobbling, rolling and rocking, but they approached. Nothing impeded them. Tongues of flame leapt from the sides of the iron caterpillars. The "monsters" were tanks, which could smash through barbed wire and clear the way for waves of infantry. Yet the early tanks were unreliable, and commanders did not know how best to use them. Tanks did not decisively affect the war's outcome. Airplanes, too, played a part in the war. At first used only for observation, they were later equipped with machine guns. Brave pilots engaged in aerial dogfights with enemy planes. The most famous of these was the German ace, Manfred von Richthofen. Called the "Red Baron," he scored 80 victories before being shot down. ## The War At Sea Perhaps the most dreaded of the new weapons was the German submarine, or U-boat, for it changed the nature of war at sea. In defiance of international law, the U-boats attacked without warning, sinking both military and commercial ships. Germany used submarines to retaliate against the British naval blockade of the Central Powers. The British wanted to cut off supplies bound for Germany. They even searched and seized neutral vessels bound for neutral ports to prevent any food or weapons from reaching the enemy. In return, German submarines began sinking merchant ships in an attempt to starve the British, who depended on imported food. In February 1915, Germany declared a war zone around the British Isles. Enemy merchant ships were sunk without warning in this zone; neutral ships entered at their own risk. The effects were devastating. At one point, the English had only enough food to last three weeks. German submarines destroyed one-fourth of the British fleet. In one month alone they sank about one million tons of shipping. ## Submarines Threaten American Trade At the beginning of the war, President Wilson had declared American neutrality. He expected Americans to be "neutral in fact as well as in name." He also expected the countries at war to honor the rights of neutrals, under the principles of international law. One of these rights stated that warships were to warn neutral ships before attack, then take on surviving passengers. Submarines, small craft whose success depended upon surprise, could do neither. As a neutral nation, the United States sold arms, ammunition, and food to both sides. Because of the British blockade, however, the United States conducted much more trade with the Allies than with the Central Powers. The United States did hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the Allies, which greatly boosted the American economy. Submarines, however, threatened this trade and violated the rights of neutral nations. When the Germans declared their naval war zone, President Wilson warned that they would be held to "strict accountability" for any loss of American life or property. He further stated that the United States would take action to protect the rights of American citizens to travel on the high seas. All too soon his warning would be tested. ## 2. The United States Goes to War **Section Focus:** - Sussex Pledge - Zimmermann Note - American Expeditionary Forces - Convoy - Treaty of Brest-Litovsk **Key Terms:** **Main Idea:** No longer willing to remain neutral in the face of German provocations, the United States entered the war and helped bring victory to the Allies. **Objectives:** As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. What brought the United States into the war? 2. What did President Wilson hope to accomplish by joining the fight? 3. How did American troops help end the war? May 1, 1915. A dance band played as the luxury liner Lusitania sailed out of New York harbor, bound for England. Six days later, passengers filled the deck after lunch to look at the approaching coast of Ireland. Lurking beneath the surface, a German submarine spotted the ship. The Germans knew that the Lusitania, though a civilian ship, was secretly carrying munitions. The German captain took aim at the oncoming ship and fired a torpedo into its hull. Within 18 minutes the Lusitania went to the bottom, taking with it 1,198 passengers. Of these, 128 were Americans, most of them women and children. Americans were outraged. To many, the war had seemed a European problem, one in which the United States was wise to remain neutral. Yet the sinking of the Lusitania made the war a problem for Americans as well. Some, like Theodore Roosevelt, called for war, but President Wilson refused to abandon neutrality. Instead, he demanded from Germany an apology, money damages, and a commitment not to use submarines again. When Germany agreed to all but the last condition, most Americans were satisfied. For the next year Wilson tried to end the war through diplomatic ways. In the election of 1916, he appealed to most Americans' desire for neutrality with the campaign slogan "He kept us out of war." His opponent, Charles Evans Hughes of New York, did not want war either. But Hughes was hurt by splits within the Republican Party, and by support from prowar Theodore Roosevelt. Democrats ran this ad to win working class votes: You are Working; -Not Fighting! Alive and Happy; -Not Cannon Fodder! Wilson and Peace with Honor? or Hughes with Roosevelt and War? ## The United States Enters The War Wilson narrowly won the election in November and continued to work for an end to the war. In January 1917 he suggested that the European powers negotiate a "peace without victory," in which neither side gained territory or lost power. Wilson believed that "Only a peace between equals can last." But the Europeans rejected his idea-nothing less than victory would do after so much bloodshed. Events beyond America's borders would soon pull the United States into the war. The Germans won stunning victories over the Russians on the Eastern Front and then turned their attention to the west, where trench warfare was deadlocked. On February 1, 1917, they resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, gambling that they could crush the British at sea before the United States had time to enter the war. Thus the Germans violated the Sussex Pledge. In response, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and decided to arm American merchant ships with naval guns. The United States was now practicing "armed neutrality." Neutrality was strained to the limit when British intelligence intercepted a coded message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Mexico. It instructed him to offer Mexico a deal. If Mexico would join Germany in an alliance against the United States, Germany would restore territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico. Wilson made public the Zimmermann Note on March 1, 1917, causing a storm of anti-German feeling in the United States. Public opinion turned even more decisively against Germany when submarines sank several American merchant ships. Wilson faced a hard choice: keeping up his efforts for peace through diplomacy and armed neutrality or going to war against Germany. On the one hand, he hated war, believing that it would promote intolerance and weaken American democracy. On the other hand, he feared that a German military victory would destroy democracy altogether. A revolution in Russia in mid-March helped Wilson decide. Czar Nicholas II was overthrown, and a democratic government was set up. No longer a dictatorship, Russia became an acceptable ally for the United States. On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war. He presented the state of affairs not as an American problem but a world problem, the issue not one of politics but of morality. "The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind," Wilson said. "Our object is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples. The world must be made safe for democracy..." "The world must be made safe for democracy." -Woodrow Wilson, 1917 On April 6, 1917, Congress voted to go to war. The President hoped that it would be the war to end all wars. <start_of_image> Soldiers, most of them inexperienced, who fought in World War I. Pershing had earlier fought in Cuba, in the Philippines, and against Pancho Villa in Mexico. ## The Yanks Are Coming June 14, 1917. With flag-bedecked streets and brass bands playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," Paris greeted General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces. After a huge welcoming ceremony, Pershing wanted to make a small visit before he began his military mission. A few days later he drove to a cemetery on the outskirts of Paris. As Pershing placed a wreath on a marble tomb, his aide said quietly, "Lafayette, we are here." Repaying the French for their support of liberty in the American Revolution, American troops began arriving in France in the summer of 1917. British and American warships guarded troop carriers across the Atlantic. Through this convoy system soldiers and supplies reached Europe safely. Although their numbers were limited at first, the "Yanks," as they were called, bolstered the morale of the Allies. It was not until 1918 that the United States could send more than a million soldiers to Europe, and by then they were desperately needed. ## The Last Year Of The War Despite heavy fighting in 1917, the Germans remained in control of northern France and Belgium. Germany and Austria crushed Italy, a member of the Allies since 1915, at the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917. In November 1917, Russia shook with another revolution-the Bolshevik Revolution. Promising the war-weary Russians "Peace, Land, Bread," the Bolshevik wing of the Communist Party took control, under the leadership of V. I. Lenin. In March 1918, Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and dropped out of the fight. With no opposition in the east, the Germans then began an all-out assault on the Western Front. In one week in March 1918 they marched 30 miles to the west, more than either side had achieved since 1914. To help the British and French forces stop the German advances, the United States rushed troops across the Atlantic. By the end of March, 85,000 "doughboys," as they were also dubbed, reached Europe; 120,000 more came a month later. American forces would number 1 million by July 1, 1918, and 2 million by early November. On June 1, 1918, American soldiers helped block the Germans at Château-Thierry, about 50 miles from Paris. Intense Allied fighting throughout June and July stopped the German advance and began to push the enemy eastward. By August the tide of war had turned. ## Geography As Enemy The critical battle to end the war began in September. The goal was to cut off the German rail lines near Sedan, which supplied enemy troops. To do so required attacking through the Argonne Forest, a "vast network of uncut barbed wire, ... deep ravines, dense woods, myriads of shell craters, [obscured by] heavy fog," in General Pershing's words. For 47 days, 1.2 million American soldiers pushed toward the German lines, under heavy enemy fire. In one month, more ammunition was used than in the entire Civil War. Troops often moved at night in order to surprise the Germans. ## 3. On The Home Front **Section Focus:** - Selective Service Act - War Industries Board - Liberty Loan - Trading With the Enemy Act - Sedition Act - Espionage Act - American's Creed **Key Terms:** **Main Idea:** Efforts on the home front helped make Allied victory possible. Wilson won public support with a crusading appeal, but the need for wartime conformity led to some restrictions on civil rights. Wilson the idealist wanted to make the world safe for democracy, but Wilson the realist knew that winning the war would take an enormous effort from everyone in the United States. Soon after Congress declared war, he told the American people: In the sense in which we have been [used] to think of armies there are no armies in this struggle, there are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war-it is a Nation. Mobilizing troops and the nation's resources, industries, workers, and will to fight was a tremendous task. Its successful completion brought victory in Europe and profound changes at home. ## You're In The Army Now The Germans were counting on knocking out the British before the Americans were ready to fight. To defeat their plan, the United States had to raise an army fast. With no time to wait for enough volunteers, Congress voted to pass the Selective Service Act in May 1917. It required all men between ages 21 and 30 to sign up for military service. Historically, Americans had not liked the idea of conscription. There had been draft riots during the Civil War, and only volunteers had fought the war. Among the nearly 5 million men in uniform were 370,000 blacks. Women volunteered for the military by the thousands and served as clerks, stenographers, and radio operators. To prepare this overnight army, the War Department hastily built sixteen training camps throughout the nation-most were unfinished when the first trainees arrived in September 1917. Officers, mostly college students, were trained for duty in a short 90 days. Never was so much done so quickly to build up a fighting force. ## Organizing Industry Arming and transporting this fighting force was an immense challenge. It required centralized organization and a planned economy, which the federal government had never undertaken before. Congress gave President Wilson the power to create new agencies to coordinate the war effort. The most important was the War Industries Board, headed by financier Bernard Baruch. The board regulated the supply of raw materials to manufacturers and the delivery of finished products. Iron and steel went into tanks and guns instead of cars and corsets. Textiles were turned into uniforms instead of civilian clothes. Leaders of big business, who had opposed government regulation before the war, rolled up their sleeves and went to work in Washington to help run the War Industries Board. They became known as "dollar-a-year men" for the token salaries they received. Their efforts paid off. It has been estimated that through the organization of the War Industries Board, the industrial capacity of the country grew 20 percent. Factories worked around the clock to pour forth mountains of supplies, including 89 million pairs of socks and 19 million blankets. American shipyards launched the amazing total of 95 vessels in a single day-appropriately enough, the Fourth of July in 1918. Without American industry, there would not have been an Allied victory. ## "Labor Will Win The War" This wartime slogan, meant to encourage hard work, proved correct. America's astonishing level of production would not have been possible without the cooperation of working people. Samuel Gompers and other leaders of organized labor cooperated with the federal government to keep up production. The National War Labor Board settled labor disputes, while the War Labor Policies Board regulated wages, hours, and working conditions. In the booming wartime economy, there was work for everyone, and membership in labor unions soared. One union, however, opposed the war. The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, claimed the war was being fought to enrich big business and Wall Street, not to make the world safe for democracy. The Wobblies, as members of the IWW were called, advocated sabotage and engaged in some strikes, but they were an exception among American workers. With millions of men in the armed forces, American employers looked for new employees. Women began filling jobs once thought fit only for men. Answering the call "A woman's place is in the war," they became factory workers, auto mechanics, streetcar conductors, telegraph messengers, traffic cops, and farmers (called "farmerettes" at the time). ## Conservation Heatless, wheatless, and meatless-these were watchwords to encourage conservation during the war. Resources were limited, and frugality became the norm. To win the war, Americans would have to feed their European allies as well as themselves. President Wilson named Herbert Hoover to head the Food Administration. Hoover, a mining engineer, was an excellent organizer. His Food Administration set crop prices and regulated food exports to Europe. To make sure there was enough to send abroad, Hoover asked Americans to give up wheat on Mondays and Wednesdays, meat on Tuesdays, and pork on Thursdays and Saturdays. This voluntary food conservation came to be known as "Hooverizing." Also part of Hoover's program to save food for export was the victory garden. He encouraged Americans, especially Boy Scouts, to plant a home vegetable garden. "Every scout to feed a soldier," was a popular saying. Another saying was "Fuel Will Win the War," for fuel was absolutely essential to run factories and to transport goods and troops. The Fuel Administration encouraged greater coal production and at the same time urged citizens to use less coal. To save an hour's use of lighting each day, the Fuel Administration established daylight saving time. To be patriotic, Americans participated voluntarily in "heatless Mondays" and "lightless nights." They willingly gave up family drives on "gasless Sundays." ## Financing The War Voluntarism also played a large part in paying for the war. By November 1918 the war cost $44 million a day. Increased taxes paid for only about one-third of war expenditures. The rest came from bonds bought by citizens rich and poor. The government sold these bonds in four large Liberty Loan drives. Bonds went on sale everywhere, from big city theaters to small-town banks. Famous entertainers urged people at crowded rallies to buy bonds. Posters rallied popular support. In each of the Liberty Loans, bond sales exceeded their goal, and the number of subscribers grew. More than 21 million people eventually bought bonds. ## Rallying Public Opinion Liberty Loans and Hooverizing succeeded because they made the war a personal effort. Recruiting posters like the famous Uncle Sam saying "I Want You" attempted to do the same thing. But such massive popular support was not at all a sure thing at the time Congress declared war. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Wilson had called on Americans to be neutral and impartial. That was not easy for everyone. As Wilson himself said, "We have to be neutral. Otherwise, our mixed populations would wage war on each other." German Americans were the largest foreign-born ethnic group in the country, and many felt loyalty to their relatives abroad. Many Irish Americans supported the Central Powers against their old enemy, England. On the other hand, a great many Americans sympathized with the Allies. A common language with England and a belief in democracy led them to favor the Allies. So did anti-German propaganda spread by the British, who controlled the telegraph cables linking Europe with the United States. As the war in Europe dragged on and German submarines threatened American interests, more people favored the Allies. But favoring the Allies was one thing; actually going to war for them was another. Since Washington's time, Americans had been told to avoid "entangling alliances" with Europe. Many had trouble understanding a war against Germany, which had not attacked the United States. Transforming Americans from neutrals to belligerents would require changing hearts and minds. With Wilson it would take on the tone of a moral crusade. ## Enforcing Loyalty Wilson explained the war as more than a matter of shipping interests. To him it was a struggle between good and evil, between righteous democracy and the forces of "selfish and autocratic power," who were the "natural foe to liberty." With the goals of war stated so ideally, disagreement with the government was seen as disloyalty, intolerable in time of war. To suppress criticism, Congress passed three laws. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Postmaster General gained the power to censor any publications exchanged with other countries. The controversial Sedition Act prohibited any speech that was "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive" about the government, flag, Constitution, or armed forces. The Espionage Act punished anyone found guilty of helping the enemy, hindering recruitment, or inciting revolt. In a landmark case-Schenck v. U.S. (1919)-the Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that there were circumstances in which the First Amendment right of free speech could be limited. These included the existence of a "clear and present danger" to public safety, as in wartime. Americans who criticized the government went to prison. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Eugene V. Debs for an antiwar speech. Anarchist Emma Goldman spent two years in jail for opposing the draft. Radical labor leader William D. Haywood and 94 other members of the IWW were also convicted of sedition. Here indeed was a paradox. Fighting in Europe to make the world safe for democracy, the United States was stifling differences of opinion at home. As historian David Kennedy explained it, "fear corrupted usually sober minds." First Amendment rights were sacrificed to the crusade for public support of the war. ## Promoting Patriotism Entry into the war prompted a national writing contest to bring forth a stirring statement of America's values. About 3,000 contestants vied for the prize of $1,000 offered by the mayor of Baltimore, the city where Francis Scott Key had written "The Star-Spangled Banner". William Tyler Page, a clerk of the House of Representatives, wrote the winning entry. In it he wove together words from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and one of Daniel Webster's most famous speeches to create the American's Creed: I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a Republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws, to respect its flag; and to defend it against all enemies. After the contest received national publicity, the Creed became quite popular. Millions of schoolchildren memorized it and recited it daily. With his prize money, Page bought war bonds, which he gave to charities. ## Building Support For The War Wilson knew that promoting patriotism was not enough. To promote the war itself, the President authorized formation of the Committee on Public Information, headed by the muckraking journalist George Creel. Plunging into his task, Creel used millions of posters and leaflets to rally support for the war. He also trained a group of spirited citizens to give brief speeches about war. These "Four-Minute Men" totaled 75,000 and had millions of listeners. Songs too were used to stir public enthusiasm. Before the war, Americans rarely sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." By war's end, thanks to the Creel Committee, the song would be sung at almost every public occasion, from baseball games to school assemblies. Despite its patriotic intentions, the Committee on Public Information became a propaganda mill that played on people's fears. It had writers make up stories of the crimes German soldiers would commit if they ever invaded the United States. It also encouraged people to spy on their fellow citizens. One leaflet said, "Report the man who spreads pessimistic stories, divulges -or seeks- confidential military information, cries for peace, or belittles our efforts to win the war..." ## "Report the man who cries for peace, or belittles our efforts to win the war..." —Government leaflet The Committee also used "100 percent Americanism" to build support for the war and to denounce anything or anyone connected with Germany. Many school districts stopped teaching the German language. Doctors referred to German measles as "liberty measles", and grocers sold "liberty cabbage" instead of sauerkraut. Passions ran high against the enemy. To wage war, Wilson had succeeded in mobilizing public support in thought as well as in action. Once the fighting stopped, however, he would not meet with the same success in his plans for peace. ## All Quiet On The Western Front By mid-October 1918, the German lines were crumbling. Not wanting to give them time to regroup their forces, General Pershing told his troops, "We must strike harder than ever." American soldiers fought their way forward and on November 7 captured the high ground above Sedan. The next day the Germans asked for the Allied terms of armistice. In the chill mists of dawn on November 11, 1918, the armistice was signed, and at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the fighting stopped. At first the soldiers were dazed. Wrote a sergeant, "It really was beyond comprehension, this glorious news-too much to grasp all at once. No more whizz-bangs [light artillery shells], no more bombs, no more mangled, bleeding bodies, no more exposure to terrifying shell fire in the rain and cold and mud!" With more than 8 million soldiers dead, at long last the killing was over. Soldiers climbed out of foxholes to celebrate, and telegraph cables flashed the good news around the world. As one historian described it, "Never in history perhaps have such great multitudes experienced such restoration of joyousness in the twinkling of an eye."