THE LEGACY OF THE GREAT WAR

BRIAN: Ed, Joanne, at the beginning of the show, historian Will Hitchcock argued that Wilson’s actions in World War I set the stage for America’s emergence as a world power.

But after the war, the United States actually retreated from the world stage. The Allied powers declared victory in November 1918, and then President Wilson lobbied these countries to work together and create a League of Nations, which was really a forerunner of the United Nations.

ED: Maybe I’m missing something, but this seems like a pretty audacious move on Wilson’s part. He looks around and sees the smoldering wreck of Europe and says, hey, let’s put this all behind us build a League of Nations and get along.

BRIAN: Well, the idea was that this kind of international body could help governments resolve conflicts peacefully to avoid another Great War. Audacious, to say the least.

JOANNE: That’s pretty hyper-idealistic, isn’t it?

BRIAN: For sure. Even more idealistic, Wilson wanted the United States to lead the way. But try as he might, Wilson couldn’t convince members of Congress– or for that matter, the American people– to participate.

I have something I want to play for you guys.

[RADIO BROADCAST]

BRIAN: This is Woodrow Wilson– not an actor this time– in a 1923 Armistice Day address, one of the first live radio transmissions ever.

It’s hard to understand, but he’s saying that America turned its back on its European allies by refusing to join the League of Nations. Wilson said that return to isolationism was cowardly and dishonorable.

[RADIO BROADCAST]

Hitchcock told me that Wilson was shattered by his failure to create a more peaceful world order.

WILL HITCHCOCK: He has a stroke while he’s in the White House. He’s ill and largely maligned.

And so he genuinely believed that America would wage war on moral principles and would try to make the world better by fighting to make a safer world, a world safe for democracy. At the same time, what he failed to do was really prepare the country for the kinds of sacrifices that would be involved. Over 100,000 Americans were killed in France for reasons they didn’t really fully understand why they were fighting. And that created a backlash against a robust American role.

ED: There was that backlash on the foreign policy front, but some of the other processes that had started during the war certainly continued. That introduction of jazz to Europe– that really took off in the 1920s, and world culture bears the imprint of American culture from then on. And the American business that surges during World War I accelerates even more in the 1920s and 30s.

So even though Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic vision of America as a leader of a League of Nations and a new world order fizzles, America’s role as a cultural and economic leader takes off.

JOANNE: OK, but here’s my question. Given what Ed just said about business and about American culture, was it even possible for the United States to be isolationist in the wake of World War I?

BRIAN: It’s a great question, Joanne, and the answer is, we tried awfully hard. Those Republicans who were in the driver’s seat for the 1920s– they tried to raise trade barriers as high as they could. That’s kind of the hallmark of isolationism, if you will.

But increasingly, both business interests and primarily the Democratic Party under the New Deal regime– Franklin D. Roosevelt– saw that the way to get out of the Great Depression was through free trade.

And then I think we have to give a nod to technology. The fact that airplanes could travel more and more distances suggested that those oceans– that so many Americans thought would protect the United States in 1916– were no longer barriers, even if we wanted them to be.

JOANNE: So business and culture and technology are making it hard to be isolationist.

ED: And yet we still have the longing to be isolationist. You can hear, at virtually every moment from World War II on, there are people saying, OK, now– now let’s be isolationist again. Let’s go back to some time before World War I when we didn’t have to worry about the world’s problems.

BRIAN: Well, Ed, sadly– but not surprisingly– we want all the benefits of those entanglements. We want the security of having alliances. We want the economic benefits of having free trade. But when the downside starts coming home to roost, when in fact we’re losing jobs to other countries in a global economy to both allies and former foes around the world–

ED: Or losing soldiers.

BRIAN: Or losing soldiers– that’s when Americans begin to have second thoughts about what George Washington long ago called “entangling alliances.” And I guess, Joanne, you and Ed won’t be terribly surprised that we kind of want it both ways.

ED: Yeah, in some ways, we long for that world we lost after World War I, when we did seem to have it all. The American Century was just beginning.

BRIAN: That’s going to do it for today. But you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode. Also, don’t forget to tell us what pieces of history you collect.

You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter– @BackStoryRadio. And if you like the new show, feel free to review it in the iTunes Store. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

ED: This episode of BackStory was produced by Andrew Parsons, Brigid McCarthy, Nina Earnest, Emily Gadek, and Ramon Martinez. Jamal Millner is our Technical Director, Diana Williams is our Digital Editor, and Joey Thompson is our researcher. Additional help came from Sequoia Carrillo, Emma Gregg, Aidan Lee, Courtney Spagna, Robin Blue, and Elizabeth Spach.

Our theme song was written by Nick Thorburn. Other music in this episode came from Podington Bear, Ketsa, and [? Jazar. ?] Special thanks to Archeophone Records and the Library of Congress.

Thanks, too, to the Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and to Ed Golterman and Jim Golterman.

JOANNE: BackStory Is produced at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

NINA EARNEST: Brian Balogh is professor of History at the University of Virginia and the Dorothy Compton professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University.

BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.