How WWI Changed America: Citizenship and WWI

Summary

Opposition to U.S. entry into World War I came from many sources:

• Religious and secular pacifists.
• Feminists who viewed war as a masculine enterprise that women should resist.
• Labor advocates who argued that war served neither ordinary workers nor the public.
• Some German-speaking Americans in the Midwest and Irish Americans in the West, whose communities had reasons to distrust joining a war alongside Britain.
• Southerners and Midwesterners who suspected the conflict would mainly benefit Northeastern industrialists.

As the United States entered the war in 1917, the government and its supporters sought to maintain national unity and industrial production. Opposition could carry serious risks. Members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) faced threats and mob violence, while employers, police, and National Guard troops could suppress strikes and unrest.

The draft law recognized conscientious objection. About 65,000 men claimed conscientious-objector status; some refused military service, while others sought noncombatant or civilian roles. In a climate of growing patriotism, objectors often faced intimidation, bullying, physical violence, or prosecution for refusing military orders.

Wartime culture increasingly connected citizenship with military service. People who opposed the war could be treated as threats to the war effort and scrutinized by neighbors and government officials. Laws criminalized certain criticism of the war or the government’s conduct, and the American Protective League investigated suspected disloyalty.

The consequences could continue after the war. Although many imprisoned opponents were eventually released and resumed their lives, prison records and labels of disloyalty could follow them.

The end of the war in November 1918 did not immediately resolve these divisions. Economic difficulties, the Russian Revolution, and fears that socialism would spread to the United States helped fuel the First Red Scare, including investigations, raids, and deportations targeting people seen as radical or opposed to the government.

Speakers or Sources Featured

The subtitles do not identify speakers by name. They appear to feature unnamed commentators or historians discussing wartime opposition, conscientious objection, repression, and the postwar Red Scare.