From War to the Great Depression
In the previous two blogs, I highlighted the top three things that contributed to the US entering the war in 1917 before turning to the actual events that led to the official declaration, focusing on the battle on the high seas. In this final blog, I’ll explore the US involvement in the war post-declaration of war, how the war changed the country, and what things it led to when the fighting was done. Then, I’ll tie it back to the singular question of what it would’ve meant if Germany had achieved a victory early in 1914. First, let’s look at the US military.
Mobilizing America
When the US declared war on 4 April 1917, the nation had a standing army of 127,500 officers and soldiers. To express just how small this army was, in 1914, three years earlier, Germany, upon mobilization, could muster an army of over 2 million with another 1.7 million reservists. French on mobilization could raise 3.6 million. The British regular army was only 250,000 men at the start of the war. Though the British had a much smaller force, it was highly experienced, something the Americans did not have with its smaller army.
However, the American’s numbers and lack of experience were not the only problems. Many famous military leaders throughout history have quotes related to logistics. The most famous is the WWII American General Omar Bradley’s quote, “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” That would prove true here. The United States did not have the shipping to move these troops and equipment to Europe. So, they had to seize German ships, use cruise liners, and borrow Allied ships to move their force across the Atlantic.
When the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was established in May of 1917, General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing was put in overall command. His initial assessment of his French and British counterparts was sour, to say the least. He was not impressed with how they were prosecuting the war. He believed, rather naively, that by focusing on marksmanship, when the Americans entered the battle, they’d be able to throw the Germans out of their trenches and reestablish movement warfare.
It seems he didn’t realize that’s what his counterparts had always wanted but failed to achieve due to how the art of defense had surpassed the art of offense (technological development at this time dictated this reality, most notably the deadly combination of machine guns and the different types of artillery—an interesting parallel is being repeated today in Ukraine). As with the Americans under his command, Pershing had a lot to learn.
Yet, the war was changing. Tactics were already being employed to break the stalemate, most notably with “defense in depth” on the German side (and the establishment of the “Hindenburg Line”), which was then countered by the British “bite and hold” tactics, which negated defense in depth. Then, the Germans developed stormtrooper tactics, using smaller units to break through the lines ahead of the main attack. Suffice it to say the Americans entered a very different war from the one Europe fought for the last three years.
However, one of the most important things Pershing did during his command tenure was fighting for a separate American army. The French and the British were applying pressure to integrate American doughboys into their divisions. They wanted to use American bodies to replenish their losses, proposing that America only send infantrymen to Europe. Pershing recognized that such a proposal would prevent him from developing complete and wholly American infantry divisions (with artillerymen, engineers, etc.) Fortunately, he resisted and stood his ground, refusing such proposals with support from US President Woodrow Wilson.
As an American, given how the British actively tried to get America involved in the war from the beginning of hostilities, the fact they had the gall to relegate Americans to a mere replacement pipeline for their armies rather than its own fighting force is pretty insulting—but I digress.
While the war would eventually see 4 million Americans serve in the US Army, with another 800,000 in other military branches, that was not the only major change to come. With the US becoming a major military power, total war also brought with it many challenges for democracies. Free speech and other civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution would unfortunately come under great threat during this time.
The Expansion of Government
The war inevitably put pressure on the republic. The two world wars of the 20th century created an environment where the government expanded and centralized control over various aspects of society. It’s treated as a necessary and, ideally, a temporary measure to achieve victory. Let me illustrate just how much the US government expanded.
In 1914, federal spending totaled less than 2 percent of gross national product (GNP). The recently enacted federal income tax was 7% for those who made over $500,000 a year (which was only roughly 1% of the population then). Only 402,000 federal employees were employed, most by the US Postal Service, accounting for 1 % of the nation’s labor force (we already covered how many were in the armed services).
Come 1918, the demands of the war and its cost essentially transformed the country. The war would come with a price tag of $31 billion, roughly 52% of the nation's GNP at that time. Despite moving off the gold standard to free up the printing of money to finance the war (something that the world would struggle with post-war, leading to the Great Depression), it still had to increase taxes. Federal revenues increased by nearly 400% between fiscal years 1917 to 1918. To finance the war, the US sourced the money in three ways: 22 percent came from taxes, 58 percent through borrowings from the public, and 20 percent from money creation.
After the passing of the 16th Amendment, which enabled Congress to levy taxes on incomes, with the threat of war coming and eventually arriving, the government passed two acts:
Revenue Act of 1916: this raised the lowest tax rate from 1 to 2 percent. Those with incomes above $1.5 million were taxed at 15 percent in addition to new taxes on estates and excess business profits.
War Revenue Act of 1917: in addition to removing more exemptions, the act made it so that American taxpayers with an income of only $40,000 were subject now to a 16 percent tax rate, while people who earned $1.5 million faced a 67% tax rate.
While only 5% of the US population was required to pay taxes then, U.S. tax revenue increased from $809 million to $3.6 billion by 1918. By the war’s end, income tax revenue had funded one-third of the war effort, and the federal budget for 1917 equaled the combined budgets of the administrations between the years 1791 (the year the Bill of Rights was ratified) and 1916—read that again; that’s staggering.
However, it was not just the expansion of government spending but also control over the means to make war. The federal government greatly controlled many of the industries needed for the war effort, such as the oil, shipping, and telegraph industries. Moreover, they controlled the expansion of the armed forces, with 2.8 million, or 72 percent, of all those added to the armed services from the declaration of war coming from the draft.
With this giant machine, the incentive to suppress and combat anything that would challenge it became a top priority (again, more parallels to what’s going on today with censorship on social media). This sadly led to many egregious violations of civil liberties. On 15 June 1917, the government passed the Espionage Act, which penalized anyone convicted of willfully obstructing the enlistment services. Punishment included fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment of up to 20 years.
On 16 May 1918, the Sedition Act was passed, which went even further. It imposed severe criminal penalties on all forms of expression deemed critical of the government, its symbols, and its war mobilization. Combined with a massive wave of anti-German propaganda, American-German populations suffered greatly as a result.
In 1916, the national debt was $1.2 billion. By 1919, it was $25.5 billion. While the US government would contract after the war, it set the groundwork for what would come.
The Great Depression and the New Deal
While World War I fueled the women’s suffrage movement and helped pass the 19th Amendment, that was probably one of the few good things that came from the post-war era. The stress of the war on the world’s economies was apparent. Many studies have been done on this subject, placing the blame for the Great Depression on different things (how Europe approached its return to the gold standard or the laissez-faire policies of the presidents leading up to 1929, just to name a few).
Still, it seems all roads lead back to World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (which set the stage for WWII). Undoubtedly, the economic decisions leading up to Black Thursday on 24 October 1929 played a pivotal role. But they wouldn’t have been necessary without the war. When that day befell the world, to add insult to injury, the US would prolong the depression with the policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations.
However, the centralization of governmental power during WWI was the precedent for the actions taken during the New Deal era. When WWII came, which proved even larger and more costly than the previous world war, the government would once again expand exponentially. It would force the US into another, more permanent transformation, becoming the world’s leading superpower atop a new world order that has sought to prevent another world war.
An Early German Victory
When you sit back and look at it all, it’s quite staggering how much the First World War radically changed the United States. From its relationship on the world stage to the function of its government, the US was greatly impacted by the prolonged war in Europe from 1914 to 1918. As we’ve explored in the previous blog series, much would've been different if Germany had succeeded with the Schlieffen Plan in 1914.
For one, Woodrow Wilson won his 1916 campaign to keep America out of the war (albeit, ironically, given the actual history). He won by razor-thin margins (23 electoral votes, to be exact), so perhaps Charles Evans Hughes would’ve become the 29th president of the United States. So, how would that change the US from 1917 to 1921? Here are just a few things that would’ve changed:
Hughes opposed the Adamson Act, which established an eight-hour workday for railroad workers involved in interstate commerce and required overtime pay for hours worked beyond the eight-hour limit. Without this, there might’ve been a nationwide railroad strike if such an act was not passed. That would’ve hurt the economy. Even before WWI, the US was in a recession, with unemployment at 16.4%. With the shock of war, though it would’ve been short in this timeline, the US probably would not have been in an ideal place economically.
Hughes was also opposed to the 16th Amendment. Without the war and the influx of women entering the workforce as men joined or were drafted into the armed forces, women’s suffrage probably would’ve happened later.
The prohibitionists used WWI to argue that the manufacture and transportation of liquor were depleting the war effort. This led to the Wartime Prohibition Act in 1918, which then led to the amendment that started prohibition. Without the war, this might not have gained enough momentum.
In the previous blogs, I suggested that an early German victory would probably have set up another conflict. The Balkans would’ve most likely been the focal point with the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Assuming a lot from this line of alternate history, if a war does break out in 1919 (or sometime in the 20s) amid a weak American economy, a Wilsonian president, if not Wilson himself, given his declining health, could possibly win the 1920 election (that candidate could’ve been James M. Cox with FDR as his running mate just like it was in our timeline, A. Mitchell Palmer, or Wilson’s son-in-law, William Gibbs McAdoo).
So, if a war had broken out around this time and set Europe on fire, would the US have become involved? That depends on several factors.
The question of the high seas, which was so important in our timeline, could be even more complex. With the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the Allies (assuming Britain, France, and a reformed Russia are involved yet again) would’ve had to find a way to sever the railway or block off the ports to render it useless. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire would attack the Suez Canal. Moreover, with the spoils of 1914, maybe the German High Seas Fleet is formidable enough to challenge the British.
In all cases, it doesn’t bode well for global trade. This would’ve hurt the US, which was already struggling with a recession (assuming it hadn’t recovered from it by outbreak of war). However, many other things, besides the question of the high seas, contributed to the US involvement in our timeline. How would those shake out?
Let’s say Cox does win the presidency in 1920. He supported Wilson’s internationalist views, so another war in Europe would’ve concerned him if not for its economic implications. The Triple Entente, especially the British, might’ve pursued American involvement more aggressively, given they might view this as their last chance to stop the rise of German dominance in Europe, especially if it meant that they would lose the Suez Canal.
As for other considerations, Cox backed the Ake Law in 1919, which banned the teaching of the German language until the eighth grade, claiming it was "a distinct menace to Americanism and part of a plot formed by the German government to make the school children loyal to it." It’s hard to say if this reflected his worldview of Germany or simply part of what he ran on in our timeline in which he supported the Americanization of the immigrant population to be more loyal to the United States (or both). Maybe Cox would’ve viewed Germany as the major threat to US hegemony.
Regardless, it’s hard to say in what capacity the US would’ve become involved in such a war (I tend to think our involvement would’ve been inevitable given the factors I laid out). But no doubt, the ramifications of changing that bit of history would alter the trajectory of the US or, at the very least, delay its rise as the heir apparent to the British Empire.
Looking to the East
One thing that I haven’t even touched on extensively is the concern with the Empire of Japan. As I mentioned in the last blog, that threat was already top of mind among the American populace on the West Coast. But furthermore, it was also a concern in American military circles even before WW1. The future US Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who would become a prominent figure in WWII, wrote in his diary in 1906:
In view of Japan's growing power in the Orient, where our interests must conflict, it would seem wise to train our men.
Unless something changes drastically with the Japanese military and its government, it would seem the US would face, at the very least, a major war in the Pacific sometime in the future, regardless of what happens. With the turmoil of the 1919 war in this alternate timeline, would the Japanese see this as an opportunity to expand their influence? The answer is most likely a strong yes. Depending on the severity and outcome of a war that starts in 1919 (the Japanese were not happy about their treatment during Versailles in our timeline…something similar could also happen here if they join with the Allies again), that would impact the events leading to the next war if and when it came.
In sum, an early German victory changes some things for the US, at least in the short term. But does it alter the course enough to reduce the US to a more minor role on the world stage in the future? I am not convinced. Germany and the Japanese would continue their pursuit of empire. It seems a clash reminiscent of World War II would remain more than likely and probably happen sooner rather than later, depending on the events following a short war in 1914. If such a war did come, the US would have to undergo an inevitable transformation, as it did in our timeline, to overcome such a challenge to its interests abroad.
In the next blog series, I'll continue exploring this alternate timeline concerning Britain and France. In the meantime, if you've been enjoying this content, join my newsletter. Check out my latest books, which are now available on Amazon (click the image below).
Sources:
Meyer, G.J. The World Remade: America in World War I. New York, Bantam Books, 2016.
Paridon, S. (Host). Toti, W. (Cohost). 2024, September 3). Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy [video podcast]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/qU1NtsqIFbw?si=QjEQwlHMJvDZ12Mg
Images:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._forces_arriving_in_Paris_(see_notice_welcome_to_the_American_doughboys)._2.4.1918,_Bestanddeelnr_22061_007.tif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Pershing,_Bain_bw_photo_as_major_general,_1917.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unemployed_men_queued_outside_a_depression_soup_kitchen_opened_in_Chicago_by_Al_Capone,_02-1931_-_NARA_-_541927.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Governor_Charles_Evans_Hughes.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FDR_and_James_M_Cox_cph.3b03395.jpg
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