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The Great War American Experience Official Site. Part 2. Narrator: On the evening of April 2nd, 1. President Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith left the Capitol and headed to the White House. Only moments earlier, Wilson had asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. A. Scott Berg, Writer: It was the greatest applause Wilson had heard in his years in office.
After the speech, he and his wife go back to the White House. Wilson goes into his office. And he puts his head down on the table and he weeps.
And one of the men on his staff said, but Mr. President, what, what are you, what are you crying about? I mean you just had this incredible response in Congress. He said, can you imagine people applauding my asking to bring us into war?
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And with that he put his head down and sobbed again. Watch Happy End Streaming. Narrator: A shaken Wilson had to confront the fact that, after struggling for nearly three years to keep America out of the Great War, he had now committed his nation to a conflict that had already left millions dead. David M. Kennedy, Historian: We know from the record that Wilson was filled with anxieties about what he understood that he was asking the country to get itself in for he knew that he was asking the country to sacrifice in ways it had never done before, for a purpose that was not all terribly well defined. Narrator: In his speech to Congress, the president had proclaimed that German aggression was “a challenge to all mankind.” “The world must be made safe for democracy,” he said.
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We shall . . . bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”Alan Axelrod, Writer: America was unique in the war because it was not fighting for survival; it was fighting for an idea. And Wilson’s idea was to preserve, develop, defend a way of government and, it was hoped, spread that way of government to the world. Chad Williams, Historian: Woodrow Wilson was fighting for this ideal of democracy on a global scale. But what will it mean to fight a war on largely ideological grounds? How do you rally a very divided country behind that? Get in Line. Narrator: Americans began to notice the posters almost overnight. Within weeks they were everywhere — plastered on buildings and displayed in trolley cars, hung in the windows of restaurants and in barbershops.
America was suddenly at war and the message was inescapable: Loyal citizens were expected to do everything they could to support Woodrow Wilson’s crusade for democracy. The campaign was the handiwork of a former journalist from Missouri, George Creel, who had helped Wilson retain the White House in 1. He Kept Us Out of War.” Now, only a week after the declaration, Wilson turned to Creel to convince Americans to get behind the war as quickly as possible. It was a plain publicity proposition,” Creel recalled, “a vast enterprise in salesmanship.” Wilson needed Creel’s help. Despite his eloquent call for intervention, the president knew the nation was deeply divided about the conflict. Fifty members of the House and six Senators had voted against the war resolution.
Senator Robert La. Follette of Wisconsin, argued that Americans opposed the war by a margin of 1. The Socialist Party of America, under its leader, Eugene Debs, denounced the struggle as “a crime against the people of the United States.”Christopher Capozzola, Historian: Eugene Debs was an unyielding spokesman for working class and labor concerns.
He also strongly opposed the U. S. entry into the war. He believed that workers of the world had more in common with each other than they did with the ruling parties of the nations that were at war. Narrator: Further fueling opposition, Wilson was making plans to institute a draft. In response, the anarchist Emma Goldman founded the “No- Conscription League” and organized protests all across the country.
Nancy K. Bristow, Historian: The idea of the draft is very controversial. The idea that the government can call on you or call on you to give up your son to go put their life on the line is absolutely counter to the notion of American individualism or what an American democracy looks like.
Narrator: Facing such determined opposition, Wilson and Creel conceived of a plan to galvanize support for the war. David M. Kennedy, Historian: Creel was a pioneer, you might say in the field of public relations. And then Wilson appoints him the head of something called the Committee on Public Information, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is essentially the U. S. government’s agency for propaganda. Narrator: Creel was a passionate believer in the rightness of the president’s cause, and he saw it as his mission to educate Americans about the war’s enlightened aims. His Committee on Public Information, the CPI, began in tiny quarters, but was soon bursting at the seams.
The Division of Pictorial Publicity featured posters painted by famous illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson that portrayed the war as a heroic fight for democracy and freedom. Pamphlets called “Loyalty Leaflets” and the “Red, White and Blue” series, were printed by the millions in fourteen different languages, explaining the principles the country was fighting for in simple terms that every American could understand. Inbetweeners Season 2 Episode 1 Youtube more. Christopher Capozzola, Historian: Wilson is asking the American people to make the world safe for democracy.
Germany had become a symbol of autocracy, of violence, of un- freedom that needed to be destroyed. Narrator: “It was [a] fight for the minds of men . Creel recalled “and moral verdicts took on all the value of military decisions.” Alan Axelrod, Writer: Creel saw his problem as transforming the American people into one white hot mass of enthusiasm for the war and the CPI went from a bureaucracy of one person to an army of about a hundred thousand people in the space of a couple of months. Narrator: Creel’s propaganda campaign was a mix of inspired improvisation and disciplined commitment to the government’s message. For Woodrow Wilson, however, it wasn’t enough. He had long argued for a law that gave him the power to penalize disloyalty and root out subversion wherever it could be found.
On June 1. 5th, he got his wish. Congress passed the Espionage Act, an unprecedented measure that made it a crime to “collect, record, publish or communicate” information that might be useful to the enemy. Richard Rubin, Writer: The Espionage Act was passed ostensibly to prevent espionage but really it clamped down on dissent. It was used to battle any kind of antiwar vocalization. Wilson was a very complicated man. On the one hand he was a professor, he was a devotee of the constitution; at the same time he was a very proud, some might say egotistical man, and from the moment America entered the war he identified the cause of the war with himself. And he absolutely would not tolerate any dissent from anybody.
David M. Kennedy, Historian: It’s really kind of amazing how quickly the public mood changed from skepticism, reluctance, opposition to war to big majorities were full- throatedly in favor of the war. It didn’t just happen spontaneously. The government went about the business of deliberately cultivating enthusiasm for the war and deliberately suppressing any negative voices.
Narrator: The flood of propaganda and the power of the Espionage Act sent an unmistakable message to the American public: The time for open debate was over; the country was now on a war footing and every citizen was expected to get in line. Pershing’s Challenge. Narrator: On the morning of June 1. Invicta was brought up to the pier at the French port of Boulogne. Standing at the rail was the commander of the American Army, General John Pershing. He had come to France to give a symbolic boost to America’s new allies, and find out for himself the status of the European war.
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