WwII & Return to normalcy

Question 2

Long-term and short-term causes of WWI.

Answer 2

The best way to remember the causes is thinking M.A.N.I.A. - Militarism, Alliances, Nationalism, Imperialism and Assassination. The short-term cause was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Militarism, alliances, nationalism and imperialism are the long-term causes for WWI.

Question 3

Events that caused the United States to declare war on Germany in 1917: Lusitania/Zimmermann telegram/Unrestricted submarine warfare.

Answer 3

What happened to Lusitania and why was it important?

In 1915 it was sunk by a German U-boat, resulting in the death of 1,198 people. The Zimmerman telegram note revealed a plan to renew unrestricted submarine warfare and to form an alliance with Mexico and Japan if the United States declared war on Germany. The message was intercepted by the British and passed on to the United States; its publication caused outrage and contributed to the U.S. entry into World War I.

Question 4

The scale and nature of the fighting in World War I including especially the impact of new technologies of warfare.

Answer 4

Losses on all fronts for the year 1914 topped five million, with a million men killed. This was a scale of violence unknown in any previous war. The cause was to be found in the lethal combination of mass armies and modern weaponry. Chief among that latter was quick-firing artillery. World War I was a war of trenches. After the early war of movement in the late summer of 1914, artillery and machine guns forced the armies on the Western Front to dig trenches to protect themselves. Fighting ground to a stalemate.

Question 5

The contributions of the American military to Allied victory in World War I.

Answer 5

The American Expeditionary Forces arrived in Europe in 1917 and helped turn the tide in favor of Britain and France, leading to an Allied victory over Germany and Austria in November 1918. By the time of the armistice, more than four million Americans had served in the armed forces and 116,708 had lost their lives.

Question 6

Propaganda and Cohan’s song, “Over There.”

Answer 6

The song “Over There” is about the “Yanks” (the Americans) going “over there” (across the Atlantic) to help fight the “Huns” (what the Americans called the Germans at the time) during World War I.

Question 7

The Treaty of Versailles and German consequences of starting the war.

Answer 7

The treaty forced Germany to surrender colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific; cede territory to other nations like France and Poland; reduce the size of its military; pay war reparations to the Allied countries; and accept guilt for the war. By placing the burden of war guilt entirely on Germany, imposing harsh reparations payments and creating an increasingly unstable collection of smaller nations in Europe.

Question 8

The circumstances that led the United States to reject the Treaty of Versailles.

Answer 8

Although many Americans supported the treaty, the president met resistance in the Senate, in part over concern that joining the League of Nations would force U.S. involvement in European affairs.

Question 9

The reasons for the Red Scare and the resurgence of labor unrest in postwar America –i.e., Bolshevik Revolution; Labor unions; the Palmer Raids.

Answer 9

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which led many to fear that immigrants, particularly from Russia, southern Europe, and eastern Europe, intended to overthrow the United States government; The end of World War I, which caused production needs to decline and unemployment to rise. The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists and communists, and deport them from the United States.

Question 10

Lenin/Bolshevik Revolution

Answer 10

After the 1917 February Revolution ousted the Tsar and established a Provisional Government, he returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the new regime. But measured by the size of the forces engaged, the revolution of 1917 was chiefly an agrarian revolt. The slogan of the Bolshevik leaders in 1917 was “Peace, Land, and Bread.” Bread was desired by everyone, since the war had disrupted transportation and created shortages of food in the cities.

Question 11

Selective Service Act (the draft) /American Expeditionary Force (AEF); John J. Pershing

Answer 11

Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 authorizing a draft. By October 1940 all men between the ages of 21 and 35 were required to register with their local draft board. The primary role of the AEF is to maintain a level of force presence in the Area of Responsibility AOR, provide deterrence during periods of heightened tensions, and to augment the existing ground forces. How did the AEF contribute to the defeat of Germany? The American expeditionary force contributed to the defeat of Germany by having Allied forces arrive in England in a mission of invading the European continent & undertaking operations to defeat Germany. John J. Pershing was one of America’s most accomplished generals. He is most famous for serving as commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. These troops from America bolstered the spirits of European allies and helped defeat the Central Powers in 1918.

Question 12

Liberty Bonds

Answer 12

Liberty bonds are issued by governments for funding their military operations during war. The government encourages its citizens to purchase bonds as an act of patriotism. Introduced during the First World War (WWI), liberty bonds gained popularity during the Second World War.

Question 13

Pacifism

Answer 13

pacifism, the principled opposition to war and violence as a means of settling disputes. Pacifism may entail the belief that the waging of war by a state and the participation in war by an individual are absolutely wrong, under any circumstances.

Question 14

Sussex Pledge

Answer 14

The Sussex Pledge was a statement by the Germans that they would not sink passenger ships without warning during World War I. The significance was that the Germans were limiting their use of submarine warfare during World War I, which kept the United States a neutral country. These were the primary elements of the pledge: Passenger ships would not be targeted. Merchant ships would not be sunk until the presence of weapons had been established, if necessary by a search of the ship. Merchant ships would not be sunk without provision for the safety of passengers and crew.

Question 15

Wilson’s 14 points

Answer 15

Designed as guidelines for the rebuilding of the postwar world, the points included Wilson’s ideas regarding nations’ conduct of foreign policy, including freedom of the seas and free trade and the concept of national self-determination, with the achievement of this through the dismantling of European empires and the creation of new states.

Question 16

League of Nations

Answer 16

The League failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to World War II, including the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war.

Question 17

Henry Cabot Lodge

Answer 17

He served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. His successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations and his reservations against that treaty influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
a Republican who disagreed with the Versailles Treaty, and who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He mostly disagreed with the section that called for the League to protect a member who was being threatened.

Question 18

Suffrage

Answer 18

During the war years women undertook jobs normally carried out by men and proved they could do the work just as well. Between 1914 and 1918, an estimated two million women replaced men in employment, resulting in an increase in the proportion of women in total employment from 24 per cent in July 1914 to 37 per cent by November 1918.

Question 19

Committee on Public Information

Answer 19

The Committee on Public Information produced American propaganda posters that commonly portrayed Germans as bloodthirsty animals in an effort to spur enlistment or other goals. Subsequently, German Americans suffered as the public associated them with the enemy.
The Committee on Public Information was established during World War I to turn every channel of communication and education to promote the war effort.

Question 20

Why Harding won the presidency –what was the return to normalcy?

Answer 20

Harding’s conception of normalcy for the 1920s included deregulation, civic engagement, and isolationism. He rejected the idealism of Woodrow Wilson and the activism of Roosevelt, favoring the earlier isolationist policy of the United States. Harding’s slogan and platform, calling for disengagement from foreign intervention and for a return to business as usual, were offered as an antidote for the widespread sense of upheaval among Americans in the aftermath of World War I and in response to the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918–19, significant labour unrest, a series of race riots, and the Red Scare and resultant Palmer Raids.

Question 21

The farmers’ crisis, i.e., declining food prices –why?

Answer 21

The government began to grow more food to support the home front, troops, and allies. However, many men left the farms to join the military, so more workers were needed in agriculture to produce the additional food required during the war. Even though Congress authorized military deferments for farm workers in 1942, agricultural employment dropped by one million during the war. Among other things, this labor shortage spurred farmers to accelerate the use of mechanical equipment. WWII left the government with a large quantity of unused ammonium nitrate and poison gases – what became America’s fertilizer and pesticides. These chemicals were a pivotal part of creating a huge food surplus and a market for cheap, high-calorie foods—especially anything with corn.

Question 22

The changes in the American way of life and American values in the 1920s in the areas of consumerism, communications,

Answer 22

The prosperity of the 1920s led to new patterns of consumption, or purchasing consumer goods like radios, cars, vacuums, beauty products or clothing. The expansion of credit in the 1920s allowed for the sale of more consumer goods and put automobiles within reach of average Americans. In the 1920s, radio and cinema contributed to the development of a national media culture in the United States.

Question 23

The changes in the American way of life and American values in the 1920s in the areas of religion, and the role of women (pink collar jobs).

Answer 23

As a result, a new kind of Christianity emerged - Fundamentalism. Social changes in the 1920s led to a major religious revival among conservative Christians. They did not like the influence of cinema and jazz, or the new way in which women dressed and behaved. As for pink collar jobs
The term “pink collar worker” was coined by the sociologist William J. Baumol in the 1960s. American writer and social critic Louise Kapp Howe later used and publicized it in the 1970s. Howe used the term to describe the jobs women assumed at the time, such as nurses, teachers, secretaries, etc.

Question 24

The significance of the Scopes Monkey Trial (evolution in the schools)

Answer 24

The trial publicized the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution could be consistent with religion, against fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge.

Question 25

Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan

Answer 25

In 1925, when he volunteered to defend John Scopes’ right to teach evolution, Clarence Darrow had already reached the top of his profession. The year before, in a sensational trial in Chicago, he saved the child-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb from the death penalty. William Jennings Bryan—the “Great Commoner,” three-time Democratic nominee for President, and Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ruling elder—argued for the prosecution, the State of Tennessee, which alleged that Scopes had broken the Butler Act by teaching human evolution at a state-funded school. Billed as a grand showdown between religion and science, the trial would play out in a rural Tennessee courthouse amid sweltering summer heat.

Question 26

John Thomas scopes

Answer 26

John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970) was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925, with violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools. He was tried in a case known as the Scopes Trial, and was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,669 in 2022).

Question 27

Cinema and its evolution

Answer 27

During the early 1920s, every movie was silent. Cinemas employed musicians to play the piano or electric organ during the films. In 1927 “talking pictures” or “talkies” began with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. Cinema became the main form of popular entertainment.

Question 28

Introduction of credit for buying appliances, cars and homes.

Answer 28

During the 1920s, retailers and banks introduced installment plans. This arrangement, also called credit buying, allowed consumers to make small, regular payments toward the full purchase price of goods. This “buy now, pay later” concept was an innovation.

Question 29

Automobile Industry & other industries that Spawned from it(

Answer 29

As a result of the development of the assembly line and other innovations, automobiles now became one of the most important industries in the nation, stimulating growth in such related industries as steel, rubber, and glass, tool companies, oil corporations, and road construction.

Question 30

rubber, glass

Answer 30

Glass, leather, steel and rubber were all required to build the new vehicles. Automobiles used up 75% of US glass production in the 1920s! Petrol was needed to run them. And a massive army of laborers was busily building roads throughout the country for these cars to drive on.

Question 31

gas stations, motels, auto repair shops, road & highway building)

Answer 31

The automobile spawned whole new industries. Roadside service stations, filling stations, garages, camping grounds, motels, and restaurants sprang up along roads popular with motorists. The number of drive-in gas stations in the U.S. exploded between 1921 and 1929, from 12,000 to 143,000. With increased mobility, the American way of life began to gradually change to something that is familiar to us today.

Question 32

18th Amendment: Volstead Act

Answer 32

On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act providing for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified nine months earlier. Known as the Prohibition Amendment, it prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” in the United States.

Question 33

terms “wet” and “dry”; prohibition

Answer 33

From the days of early settlement in the late 1800s, the struggle between the “Drys” — those who sought to ban alcohol — and the “Wets” — those who were in favor — shaped the relationship between the Red River border communities of Fargo and Moorhead.

Question 34

19th Amendment; suffrage

Answer 34

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest.

Question 35

Tea Pot Dome Scandal

Answer 35

Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of a seminal investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh.

Question 36

Organized crime and gangsters(speakeasies)

Answer 36

Some say the Roaring Twenties was the birth of organized crime. Gangsters rolled in loads of cash by manufacturing and selling alcohol to thousands of speakeasies spread across the cities. A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, was an illicit establishment that sold alcoholic beverages

Question 37

bootlegging & rum running)

Answer 37

Bootleggers were those who smuggled alcohol during Prohibition, often in vehicles with hidden compartments. Rumrunners were the term for bootleggers who snuck in alcohol by ship, often rum from the Caribbean.

Question 38

The Lost Generation

Answer 38

The Lost Generation refers to the generation of artists, writers, and intellectuals that came of age during the First World War (1914-1918) and the “Roaring Twenties.” The utter carnage and uncertain outcome of the war was disillusioning, and many began to question the values and assumptions of Western civilization. They used common themes as pointing out the ridiculously frivolous and materialistic lifestyles of the rich the breakdown of traditional gender roles or the death of the American dream.

Question 39

Flappers

Answer 39

Flappers of the 1920s were young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous. Now considered the first generation of independent American women, flappers pushed barriers to economic, political and sexual freedom for women.

Question 40

Nativism/KKK

Answer 40

Nativism is favoring native born citizens over immigrants. In the 1920s, immigration more than doubled in the U.S. Native born U.S. citizens believed their way of life was being threatened, and thus supported nativist legislation like the Quota Act (1921). This law placed a strict limitation on the number of immigrants that entered the country. Ku Klux Klan (better known as the KKK) was started as a social club for white confederates who were against the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil war. The purpose of the group was to create terror and violence mostly toward black Americans, but also toward anyone who supported the Reconstruction efforts. Black freedmen in the South, with newfound rights, were exercising their right to vote, hold office, and work in their southern states. The KKK, lead by the Confederate calvary general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, sought to end this through excessive violence and intimidation, and bring white supremacy back to the South. For the next several years, the KKK was very successful through violence like lynching, whipping and assault, creating an extremely violent and dangerous environment for freedmen to exercise their rights. In February of 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson played the notorious DW Griffith movie “Birth of A Nation” in the White House. This was the first movie to ever be played at the White House. “Birth of a Nation” is about the post Civil War South, and glorifies the KKK’s involvement in violently restoring white supremacy. President Wilson said, “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” The showing of “Birth of a Nation” was one of the main reasons the KKK was revived in the 1920s. However, since white supremacy was still very much intact, they came up with a different motivation for the KKK: nativism.

Question 41

Sacco & Vanzetti

Answer 41

Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with committing robbery and murder at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree. On the afternoon of April 15, 1920, payroll clerk Frederick Parmenter and security guard Alessandro Berardelli were shot to death and robbed of over $15,000 in cash.

Question 42

Ida B. Wells

Answer 42

African-American journalist and activist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She also fought for woman suffrage.

Question 43

Charles Lindbergh

Answer 43

Charles Lindbergh, (born February 4, 1902, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.—died August 26, 1974, Maui, Hawaii), American aviator, one of the best-known figures in aeronautical history, remembered for the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York City to Paris, on May 20–21, 1927.