Anything That Ought to Be Done

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Locke
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frank Norris ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
World War ◽  
Eighteenth Amendment ◽  
Rising Power ◽  
Christian Nationalism ◽  
The U.S

Fleeting political defeats could not blunt the rising power of Texas’s evangelical activists, and clerics’ cloistered denominational worlds sustained their efforts through all of the bitter political battles over prohibition and other moral reforms during the early twentieth century. Shielded from the stormy winds of politics and the public’s anticlericalism, the clerical culture nourished new generations with the gospel of politics and southern religious leaders pushed triumphantly into public life behind the issue of prohibition. Aggressive religious leaders such as J. Frank Norris and Robert Shuler outmaneuvered hostile politicians, including Governor James Ferguson, and elevated Morris Sheppard, the “father of national prohibition” and a firm champion of Christian nationalism, to the U.S. Senate. By the time the United States entered World War I, clerics were well-positioned to implement the Eighteenth Amendment, allowing for the national prohibition of alcohol.

scholarly journals Hegemony and Humanitarian Norms: The U.S. Legitimation of Toxic Violence

2013 ◽  
pp. 82-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonds
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The U.S

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating work in order to maintain domestic and international consent. Based on case study analysis of archival and secondary sources, this article identifies three main techniques U.S. officials use to legitimate contested forms of violence. These techniques are defensive categorization, humanitizing discourse, and surrogacy.

First Americans

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Grillot
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tribal Sovereignty ◽  
World War ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
Native American Tribes ◽  
First Americans ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

This book depicts a forgotten history that explores how army veterans returning to reservation life after World War I transformed Native American identity. Drawing from archival sources and oral histories, the book demonstrates how the relationship between Native American tribes and the United States was reinvented in the years following World War I. During that conflict, 12,000 Native American soldiers served in the U.S. Army. They returned home to their reservations with newfound patriotism, leveraging their veteran cachet for political power and claiming all the benefits of citizenship—even supporting the termination policy that ended the U.S. government's recognition of tribal sovereignty.

scholarly journals The United States of America and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Indonesia

Ad Americam ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Anna Wyrwisz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The U.S

The United States had developed trade relations with the Dutch East Indies before World War I. In the 1920s, American diplomatic services prepared reports on the economic and political situation in the Dutch colony. The U.S. wanted to defend their interests in the region. In 1949, after several years of attempts to regain power in Indonesia, the Dutch withdrew in the absence of American support. A decade later, suchlike events occurred in connection with Dutch New Guinea.

Legacy, 1926–1929

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas I. Faith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Chemical Warfare ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

This chapter evaluates the successes and failures of the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) during the second half of the 1920s, in light of the organization's ultimate incapacity to influence foreign policy. By 1926, the CWS was a well-established organization capable of supporting the continuation of poison gas work into the foreseeable future. It had successfully influenced public policy to continue chemical warfare research after World War I. However, the CWS and its supporters failed to convince people to believe that gas warfare was humane. Public hostility toward chemical weapons ultimately led to the signing of international agreements prohibiting chemical warfare. This chapter discusses the CWS's sustained accomplishment during the period 1926–1929, with particular emphasis on its new chemical weapons initiatives in partnership with other departments and branches of the military; the United States' continued support for international efforts to prevent chemical warfare; and the CWS's reorganization into the U.S. Army Chemical Corps after World War II.

Equating Temperance with Patriotism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine N. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
Selective Service ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
Eighteenth Amendment ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Military Discipline

This chapter examines the consequences of World War I for Minnesota's temperance movement during the period 1916–1919. The specter and, consequently, the reality of military involvement enhanced the tolerance of many Americans toward restrictive liquor laws they would otherwise not have accepted. The chapter considers how the struggle for prohibition became entangled with the United States's looming military efforts in the Great War and how the war provided an opportunity for temperance reformers to fight for the preservation of military discipline in army camps throughout the United States. Reformers insisted that military efficiency could be achieved only through young soldiers' abstinence and purity, an argument that convinced Congress to pass the Hobson-Sheppard bill, the Selective Service Act, and the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act in 1917. In addition, Progressive reformers waged a social purification campaign. In September 1918, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, which would function as the enforcement act of the Eighteenth Amendment. The period also saw the demise of German Americans' opposition to Minnesota's temperance movement.

Lawyers, Guns, and Public Moneys: The U.S. Treasury, World War I, and the Administration of the Modern Fiscal State

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay K. Mehrotra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Finance ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
World War I ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Excise Taxes ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The U.S

World War I was a pivotal event for U.S. political and economic development, particularly in the realm of public finance. For it was during the war that the federal government ended its traditional reliance on regressive import duties and excise taxes as principal sources of revenue and began a modern era of fiscal governance, one based primarily on the direct and progressive taxation of personal and corporate income. The wartime tax regime, as the historian David M. Kennedy has observed, “occasioned a fiscal revolution in the United States.”

Propaganda in the History of US Foreign Relations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Belmonte
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Public Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The U.S

From the revolutionary era to the post-9/11 years, public and private actors have attempted to shape U.S. foreign relations by persuading mass audiences to embrace particular policies, people, and ways of life. Although the U.S. government conducted wartime propaganda activities prior to the 20th century, it had no official propaganda agency until the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was formed in 1917. For the next two years, CPI aimed to generate popular support for the United States and its allies in World War I. In 1938, as part of its Good Neighbor Policy, the Franklin Roosevelt administration launched official informational and cultural exchanges with Latin America. Following American entry into World War II, the U.S. government created a new propaganda agency, the Office of War Information (OWI). Like CPI, OWI was disbanded once hostilities ended. But in the fall of 1945, to combat the threats of anti-Americanism and communism, President Harry S. Truman broke with precedent and ordered the continuation of U.S. propaganda activities in peacetime. After several reorganizations within the Department of State, all U.S. cultural and information activities came under the purview of the newly created U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1953. Following the dissolution of USIA in 1999, the State Department reassumed authority over America’s international information and cultural programs through its Office of International Information Programs.

Battle, 1918

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas I. Faith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chemical Warfare ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Gas Mask ◽  
Heavy Gas ◽  
The U.S

This chapter focuses on the American Expeditionary Force's (AEF) experiences with poison gas on the Western Front and the logistical effort made by the United States to support chemical warfare during World War I. The nascent Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) had to support battlefield operations in 1918 as the AEF faced poison gas in Europe. On the whole, the CWS found itself seriously challenged by conditions on the Western Front and dependent on U.S. allies for information and equipment. This chapter examines the CWS's efforts to train the AEF, manufacture chemical weapons, and use poison gas on the battlefield throughout 1918. It discusses the comparatively heavy gas casualties suffered by the AEF in the fighting due to the inadequacy of the gas-mask training that its soldiers were given. It also considers the AEF's limited use of chemical weapons against the Germans and the U.S. Army's inability to organize for chemical warfare jeopardized the gas warfare program's status after World War I ended.

Between the Wars

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Riley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The World ◽  
Relief Program ◽  
Bail Out ◽  
The U.S

The years after World War I and before World War II saw famine, death, and revolution in many parts of the world. Russia suffered these calamities and worse. Hoover found himself again caught up in a struggle to feed millions of foreign citizens with American food. This time the supplicant was bolshevist Russia, a hated enemy, where famine had already caused the deaths of millions. The U.S. Congress was even more unwilling than before to aid Russia, wondering out loud why the United States should bail out a country that was so intent on falling to pieces. This chapter recounts how Hoover overcame U.S. legislative resistance and organized a major relief program in a country with an extremely anti-American government, where transport hardly worked, and where social organizations were frozen in indecision. The chapter then sums up the vastly changed character of American food aid over the period 1794–1924.

scholarly journals Socks at War: American Hand Knitters and Military Footwear Production for the World Wars

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-92
Author(s):  
Rachel P. Maines
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Option ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

Abstract In both World Wars, combatant nations, including the United States, Britain, and Germany, learned that inadequate or poorly-maintained footwear produced costly and preventable casualties from trench foot and frostbite. While provision of shoes and boots to troops were major issues in earlier conflicts, no nation before World War I had fully appreciated the significance of warm, dry, well-fitting socks to the effectiveness of soldiers in the field. The large numbers of trench foot casualties in World War I, especially among the French and British, convinced policymakers that this vital commodity must receive a higher priority in military production planning, but few nations in wartime could shift production to knitting mills rapidly enough to make a difference. Thus, in Britain and the U.S, the best policy option proved to be recruiting women and children civilians to knit socks by hand for the military in the first war, and for refugees, prisoners and civilians in the second. This paper discusses the economic and military importance of this effort, including the numbers of pairs produced, and the program’s role in supplementing industrial production. The production of this low-technology but crucial item of military apparel is typical of detail-oriented tasks performed by women under conditions of full mobilization for war, in that they have a high impact on battlefield and home front performance and morale, but very low visibility as significant contributions to national defense. Often, both during and after the emergency, these efforts are ridiculed as trivial and/or wasteful. Unlike women pilots or industrial workers, handcrafters of essential supplies are regarded as performing extensions of their domestic roles as makers and caretakers of clothing and food. This was especially true in the U.S. in and after World War II, a wealthy industrialized nation that took pride in its modern - and thoroughly masculinist - military industrial complex.

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