The Great War , as it was known before we start capitalizing and numbering our world wars , is remembered as anything but " Great " now . If , that is , it ’s remember at all . World War I ( WWI ) remains the only major American war of the 20th centurynot commemorated with a memorialin the nation ’s majuscule in Washington , D.C. WWI lacks the deep historical veneration , at least among many Americans , that World War II or even the Civil War enjoys . It does n’t carry the hardened lettre de cachet of theVietnam WarorKorean War . It does n’t boast the acclaimedmovies . Or theTV shows .
Yet 100 old age after it ended — the armistice between Germany and the friend that put an end to World War I was signed at 11:11 a.m. on Nov. 11 , 1918 — scholarly person continue to play up ways that the Great War change America and shapes it even now . It ’s deserving memory .
Stepping Onto the World Stage
After years of promising to stay out of the conflict in Europe — and winning a 2nd term with the shibboleth " He Kept Us Out of War " — President Woodrow Wilson finally asked Congress , on April 2 , 1917 , to go to war . Germansubmarineswere attacking practically any boat that bilk their way of life , and the Germans were working to tempt Mexico onto its side . President Wilson — with at least some portion of the American public behind him ( many pick up an American interference as an exalting attempt ) — play . And a full - shove along world state of war was have .
It was during World War I that America first seize its oversize role in man occasion , which it still hold today . The state of war also furnish the U.S. federal government a chance to bend some newfound powerfulness at home , too . World War I began , remember , barely a half - one C after the country was near ripped apart in its own civil war . In the former 20th one C , a united American government — as united as a democracy can be — begin to show its strength .
" It was kind of an auditioning , if you will , of the sort of rise of a very large militarized society that we see in World War II and thereafter , " says Andrew J. Huebner , a story prof at the University of Alabama and the author of " Love and Death in the Great War . "
By the time the Americans land in Europe and were gathered enough to fight their first real fight — at the Battle of Cantigny in France , onMay 28 , 1918 — Europe had been at war for more than three old age . ( The firstBattle of the Marne , in Germany ’s initial push into France , was in September of 1914 ) . By the time 1918 was out , the Americans had help win the war and justify everything it took to get them there .
How WWI Is Relevant Today
At habitation , as the military industry take grasp , women — still without the right to vote — became instrumental in the war effort . FromThe National World War I Museum and Memorial , in Kansas City , Missouri :
The role of woman in WWI is recognized by many as a stepping stone to musical passage of the19th Amendmentin 1920 , which gave women the right to vote .
African - Americans , too , played a major part in the warfare . Despite face racialism at home , as many as 400,000 calamitous soldier process , mostly in segregated ship’s company . Many saw it as an chance to gain right hand back home . " [ C]ivil rights militant were disappointed when Wilson ’s war for democracy failed to tip Jim Crow at home . For a long time , the historiography terminate there , " historian Jennifer D. Keene compose inThe American Historian . " Recent histories , however , indicate that the war was a pivotal moment when Modern militancy , ideologies , members , and strategies infused thecivil rights movement . "
enjoin Huebner : " If you depend at the civil rights apparent motion and the women ’s right social movement , no one would say that World War I compelled it or make those movements . But it sort of pushed the orb down the field on those bowel movement . "
The victory itself changed the ease of the world , too , of course . erstwhile imperium toppled and fresh boundaries were pull in , notably in what now is considered the Middle East . Those raw boundary sparked debates that extend today .
And at home in the United States , the growth of federal power in undertake a global war created reverberation regarding civic liberties and surveillance — among many other societal topic — that reverberation age later , notably in America ’s reply to the result ofSept . 11 , 2001 , harmonise toKeene :
account , historians like to say , will teach us if we let it . But because World War I does n’t resonate with the public as other war do , some of the deterrent example of the Great War threaten to be lost . That , perhaps , is the enceinte reason we need to depend back on World War I today .
" We should retrieve it because people went through it , " Huebner says . " One hundred thousand or so Americans dead . A way corking number than thatwounded . Imagine that beam across all the families that feel it . That deserves to be remembered and honored . "
