American Domestic Affairs during WWI
American Domestic Affairs during WWI Though the WWI was started in Europe and had to do with European problems and didn’t really have to do with America at first, when we got involved it changed our country forever. The war started mainly over a man named Franz Ferdinand who was the archduke of Austria-Hungary. He went to the Serbia, which was an area that everyone wanted to have control of; he was there to see how the people took his presence and to see how easy it would be to take over. Some people here knew this and were not happy, they didn’t want him to take over their land. When he went to Sarejaveo these people killed him; Austria-Hungary was outraged but was hesitant to declare war because Russia was Serbia’s ally. The two major sides were the Triple Antente, which consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; then there was the Triple Alliance, which consisted of Russia, France and England. Eventually Austria-Hungary did declare war, and then like wildfire the two sides were declaring war against each other until most of Europe was a battlefield. You might ask yourself, what did America have to do with this; the truth is that America was only involved after Germany tried to make Mexico attack us by sending them th . . .
They got this message across with the help of propaganda preaching these methods. An Amendment to the act, the Sedition Act made it illegal to speak out against the constitution, the government and the flag (Encarta). Although the propaganda was good for making people support the war, it was encouraging the people to have anti-German feelings; German Americans felt the effects of these feelings. People got into thinking that the military needed the food more than they did because they were fighting for our country (Lecture Notes). People had to fill out draft papers and send them to the government and then you were put into a raffle to be drafted. The dangerous places that they worked proved that they could work in places that were usually not thought of as places where women worked. Not only did they establish themselves as workers but they also established themselves in society, the prejudices about women were still apparent after the war ended but they had proved themselves and everyone knew it. Later the punishments became greater, this was necessary because the secrets were of greater magnitude and were guarded more heavily. Families with members of the family in combat bought many Liberty Bonds thinking that they were in a way taking care of their relative. German orchestras would not play German music for fear of what would happen if they did; there was a serious lack of German music during this time. The anti-German posters were shameless portraying the average German as a bloodthirsty barbarian. Sauerkraut, which was an American favorite, came from Germany so we changed the name to Liberty Cabbage, again trying to make people think victory while not thinking about the Germans. Even though there was still much racism in the north, it was nothing compared to that in the south. Mostly the African Americans from the south were not highly urbanized and mostly only knew how to farm and do other non-industrial jobs. In Illinois a German American Socialist was lynched, just for being German (American Pageant).
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