Zinn does a good job explaining the interest levels of World War 1, which is something that never got explained to me. I knew that the Woodrow Wilson stated at the beginning of the war that the United States would stay neutral; however, once Germans attacked the US ships, the United States entered the war. I thought that once this happened that the people of the United States would come together and mostly be on the side of fighting. Zinn makes it clear that the war was actually not popular with most of the people in the United States and that most people did not volunteer to join the military. This war was needed on both an economic standpoint and a unity standpoint, which both did not fully go the way it was supposed to.
In the Crash Course video, John Green talks about how World War 1 is one of the most interesting topics to talk about. He goes on and talks about who is to blame for the war. Green states that “The German character isn’t to blame for WW1 and in fact, no national character has ever been to blame for any war.” I thought this was interesting since when learning about wars, blaming the aggressors is normally how I was taught it but apparently that is not always the case.
I also thought it was really interesting to further explore the motives behind US involvement in the war. I had known about opposition to the Espionage Act, but I never learned about the magnitude of it along with socialist opposition to the war. I think the opposition goes to show how strongly the war was motivated by economic incentives and not for moral nationalist sentiment, at least for the US. Of course, this may be true to an extent in the case of any military conflict, but in the case of the American Revolution, for example, there was an imperialist power that could become the scapegoat for the oppression of colonists, contributing to the coercion of lower-class involvement in the war, whereas the case of WWI didn’t offer as obvious of a common enemy.
I like how John Green pointed out, along with the point you brought up about national character, that a nation’s aggregate spending on war-time preparation could be called either a “strong national defense” or “militarism”. This point extends to the hypocrisy of American foreign policy in regards to the amount of military spending we tolerate from other nations in comparison to our runaway spending. It brings up a fascinating position on the historiography of war-time policy for the United States.
When learning about WW1 previously, I was also never under the impression that a large portion of the United States population was against enlisting in WW1. Furthermore, until reading this chapter, I was not really aware that the United States government strictly enforced anyone to speak out against the war through Espionage Act. I was shocked by Zinn’s statement that, “Ultimately, over 330,000 men were classified as draft evaders” (370).
You talked about how the war was not actually very popular with the majority of the population. One of the things the war was supposed to do was unite support for its cause, yet when this didn’t happen, the US infringed upon the rights of its human beings. Why does free speech only apply to some things? Do you think this is still true to a certain degree now? What is to stop something like this from happening in the future?
I agree with the points that you made. It also stood out to me how Zinn made clear the general unpopularity of the war – this is not something that is commonly taught, but definitely adds another layer to the story of WWI in terms of class relations and political and economic influences. I additionally liked your point about the character of a nation and the blame we assign to countries for starting or continuing wars. You make a very interesting point that we are always taught to blame the oppressor, rather than learn about more of the underlying cultural and situational reasons for why the war actually began.
I agree that Zinn made clear how WWI was not the war we learned about in our past history classes. I did not know how unpopular this war was, and how no one really actually volunteered to fight in the war.