Why WWI Matters in American History The view

Why WWI Matters in American History The view from the trenches

AMERICAN HUMANITARIANISM AND WORLD WAR I RECONSIDERING THE TIMELINE OF WHEN WAR BEGINS AND ENDS

COERCIVE VOLUNTARISM CREATING A WAR CULTURE

Alvin York’s Choices Regarding Military Service: 1. Request noncombatant duty as a conscientious objector 2. Refuse to perform any military duty 3. Agree to serve and fight

American Soldiers Speak: “Here was our one great chance for excitement and risk. We could not afford to pass it up. ” “Our people back home expect it of us, my parents wouldn’t want to say after the war is over that their son didn’t go into the front lines and now they won’t have to say it. ” “I was hesitating because I didn’t really know if I wanted to kill someone. Then I heard a bullet whistle by my head. ”

HANG IN YOUR WINDOW HANG IN YOUR KITCHEN

Warning published in NY State’s Albany Journal “If you ever, on the street or in a trolley car, should hear some softshell pacifist or hardboiled but poorly camouflaged pro-German, make seditious or unpatriotic remarks about your Uncle Sam you have the right and privilege of taking that person by the collar, hand him over to the nearest policeman or else take him yourself before the magistrate. You do not require any official authority to do this and the only badge needed is your patriotic fervor. The same thing applies to women. Every American, under provisions of the code of civil procedure, has the authority to arrest any person making a remark or utterance which ‘ outrages public decency. ’”

THE WAR’S COLLECTIVE MEMORY REMEMBERING THEN FORGETTING

Within the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, which covers 130. 5 acres, rest the largest number of our military dead in Europe, a total of 14, 246. east of the village of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon (Meuse), France

John Steuart Curry’s Parade to War, Allegory (1938)