American Experience (1988–…): Season 29, Episode 8 - The Great War: Part 1 - full transcript

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.

In the summer of 1917,

at docks up and down
the eastern seaboard,

thousands of American soldiers
boarded ships bound for France.

They were the vanguard
of a new American army,

about to enter

the most destructive war
the world had ever known.

It's a watershed
in American history.

The United States
goes from being

the country on the other side
of the ocean

to being
the preeminent world power.



For President Woodrow Wilson,
the war was a crusade

"to make the world safe
for democracy,"

a chance to transform
the international order

in America's image.

Woodrow Wilson himself said

that "It was of this
that we dreamed at our birth,

for which we were destined,"
leading the way for the world

to a new order of peace.

This is the birth
of the ongoing debate

over how involved America
should be in the world.

The troops were drawn

from every corner
of the country, and reflected

the teeming diversity of
turn-of-the-century America.

In many ways, World War I
forced Americans to ask,



what are we as a country,
who are we as a people?

I think it's a war that
Americans fought together

which required them
to meet one another,

to confront one another,
and figure out what was

holding their society together.

All across the country,
communities staged

elaborate celebrations
to send their men off to war.

But underneath
the calls for unity,

Americans were deeply divided.

World War I showed Americans
the best and worst

that the country is capable of.

It lays bare questions

that Americans continue
to ask themselves

for the rest
of the 20th century.

This was a period

of deep paranoia
in this country.

It's probably the greatest

suppression of free speech
the country has ever seen.

Women who refused to set aside

their campaign for suffrage
because of the war

were set upon by mobs
and carted off to prison.

African-American men joined
in a war for freedom abroad

while being denied it at home.

The war galvanizes
African Americans,

not just to fight
for their country,

but to fight for their rights
as American citizens.

When the ships let loose their
lines and headed out to sea,

the troops on board
were entering a conflict

of unprecedented bloodshed
and suffering...

One that had come to be known
as The Great War.

The First World War is
the most important event

most people don't know about.

It's a Pandora's box.

And we're still ironing out

everything that that war
unleashed.

In the summer of 1914,

a new prospect named Babe Ruth
began playing

for the Boston Red Sox.

Crowds were flocking to theaters
to see the newest film

by Charlie Chaplin.

A loaf of bread cost six cents.

Henry Ford's Model T
sold for $500.

In 1914, the nation
boasted a population

of almost
a hundred million people.

A third of them were immigrants,

or had parents
who had been born abroad.

And one out of three Americans
lived on farms.

Women could vote, but only in 12
states of the union.

In the South, African Americans

had virtually no
political rights at all.

In 1914, the United States Army

ranked 17th in the world,
behind Serbia's.

Europe was a one-week
steamship voyage away.

The British pound was the
world's reserve currency.

In 1914,

the United States was the
largest producer of steel.

It had the biggest
transportation network.

It had more energy resources.

It had the second biggest
population in the Western world,

saving only Russia.

But the American people as
a whole were quite ambivalent

about whether or not

they actually wanted to become
one of the great powers

that arbitrated the destinies
of the world at large.

To mark the Fourth of July

in 1914, President Woodrow
Wilson delivered a speech

from the steps of Independence
Hall in Philadelphia.

After paying tribute
to what he called

the "energy and variety
and wealth" of America,

he posed a question...
"What are we going to do

with the influence and power
of this great nation?"

I think that Wilson had,
even in 1914,

this vision of America
as a moral beacon in the world,

as a city upon a hill,
this sense that Americans

had something
to give to the world.

Europe, meanwhile,
was a bastion of culture

and enlightenment,

but beset by ancient dynasties
and autocratic rulers

competing to control
the world's resources.

Germany was led by a kaiser,
Russia a tsar.

An emperor lay claim
to Austria Hungary,

while a sultan reigned over
the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Great Britain and France,
two democracies,

jealously guarded
far-flung colonial empires.

Only a month
after Wilson's speech,

Americans struggled
to make sense of news coming

from the other side
of the Atlantic.

The assassination of an obscure
Austro-Hungarian aristocrat

by a Serbian nationalist
had provided a pretext

to unleash imperial rivalries

that were breaking
the continent apart.

Germany and its ally,
Austria Hungary, declared war

on Serbia and her ally, Russia.

Germany then invaded France...
Through neutral Belgium...

And Russia.

Britain came to the aid
of the French and the Belgians.

And suddenly, millions of men
were fighting a war

whose very purpose
seemed hard to comprehend.

What were they thinking?

They had so much going for them.

Europe was the most
prosperous part of the world,

the most powerful part
of the world.

It had had extraordinary
progress.

It had a century
of almost unbroken peace,

and suddenly they blundered
into this war.

And I think the reaction
in the United States was,

"What on earth are they doing?"

and, "Thank goodness
we're 3,000 miles away."

"The general conflagration
has begun,"

Wilson's ambassador to England,
Walter Page, observed.

"Ours is the only
great government in the world

that is not in some way
entangled."

The Atlantic Ocean
provided the United States

with protection against
the European contagion.

But Wilson also saw
in America's unique position

a chance to influence
the course of world events.

On August 4,
he wrote to the leaders

of the newly warring nations
that he would "welcome

an opportunity to act in
the interest of European peace."

Almost from the outset
of the war,

Woodrow Wilson was trying to
find diplomatic solutions.

He believed if all
the heads of state

could sit at a table

and confer, they could probably
have ended this war.

There didn't have
to be a war here.

As he faced the greatest
international crisis

of his presidency, Woodrow
Wilson was falling apart.

In a small bedroom on the second
floor of the White House,

his wife Ellen lay dying.

They had been married
for 29 years,

and she had borne him three
daughters, standing by him

during his dramatic rise
to the White House.

Now, she was gravely ill
with Bright's disease,

a fatal inflammation
of the kidneys.

Two days after war broke out, at
5:00 in the afternoon, she died.

"I never understood before
what a broken heart meant

and did for a man,"
Wilson wrote to a friend.

"It just means that he lives
by the compulsion of necessity

and duty only."

Here is the president
of the United States

who is so bereft
he is actually contemplating

giving up the office.

He does not know
how he can go on

without this woman,
who really sacrificed

everything she could for him.

"It is pathetic
to see the president,"

his son-in-law lamented.

"He hardly knows where to turn."

A devastated Wilson
could barely manage

Ellen's funeral arrangements.

He sat next to the casket
during a sleepless train ride

back to her family home
in Georgia.

For the first time in decades,

Woodrow Wilson was facing
the future alone.

The son of a Scottish
Presbyterian minister

from Virginia, he was
a bookish young man

with a delicate constitution

who became a successful lawyer
and scholar

of American government.

He was a former professor,

a former college president,
and the governor of New Jersey.

He had a meteoric rise
in politics,

and in an age of oratory,
he was a very fine speaker.

Woodrow Wilson was
the most religious president

we ever had.

Woodrow Wilson is a man
who got on his knees twice a day

and prayed.

He read scripture every night.

He said grace before every meal.

His faith informed
everything he ever said,

everything he ever thought,
everything he ever did.

An idealistic
Democratic crusader,

Wilson had spent
his first two years in office

driving through Congress
a historic set

of progressive reforms.

His penchant for soaring
rhetoric masked a pragmatic,

and often ruthless, politician.

He was also the first
Democrat from the South

to be elected president
since Reconstruction.

One of Wilson's first acts
was to reintroduce segregation

in federal agencies
in Washington.

Almost overnight, thousands of
promising civil service jobs

that had been a path of upward
mobility for African Americans

were now open to whites only.

Wilson felt that
forward-thinking white people

were really best positioned
to see to the well-being

of African Americans.

And I think he felt confident
that at some point

African Americans would be able
to be incorporated

into the larger civic and
democratic body in some way,

but they hadn't reached the
point in their evolution yet.

He makes almost no effort

to bring African Americans
into any role in the government,

and in fact takes so many steps
to alienate them

that many African Americans
who thought he would be

a progressive on race become
bitterly disappointed in him.

His Southern upbringing

also profoundly shaped Wilson's
views about war and peace.

Woodrow Wilson is the only
United States president

who was born in a country
that had lost a war...

The Confederate States
of America.

He remembered the...

the devastation, the
deprivation, the degradation

that comes from losing a war.

He carried that with him.

MacMlLLAN:
Woodrow Wilson doesn't like war.

He believes in democratic
values, liberal values.

He believes in peace.

He doesn't want to take the
United States into war.

On August 18, Wilson emerged
from his grieving

long enough to issue
a proclamation.

"The United States
must be neutral in fact

as well as in name,"
he declared.

"We must be impartial
in thought as well as action."

But in the same breath,
the president acknowledged

that the unity he was asking

of his fellow citizens
was a challenge,

given America's
diverse population.

"The people of the United States
are drawn from many nations,

and chiefly the nations
now at war," he affirmed.

"Some will wish one nation,

others another, to succeed
in the momentous struggle."

America is not a monolith.

America is composed of a great
many different communities.

Take New York City.

You had Irish, who had no desire
to go over and fight

for the British king.

You had Russian Jews
who had no desire to go over

and fight for the tsar.

You had German-American
immigrants

and Austrian-American immigrants

who had no desire to go over and
fight against their country.

In Woodrow Wilson's day,
the United States hadn't become

the world's policeman.

And I don't think the
United States felt an obligation

to engage in the world.

And as far as Europe
was concerned, I mean,

for a lot of Americans,
they looked across the Atlantic

and said, "Well, they're idiots,
they're fools, they're probably

worse, let them do it."

He didn't want the United States
to be involved.

For now, Wilson believed,
America must bide its time,

and remain
"a nation that keeps herself

"fit and free
to do what is honest

"and disinterested
and truly serviceable

for the peace of the world."

But he was also keenly aware
that the right to influence

the chaos unfolding in Europe
might require

an unprecedented projection
of American power.

Part of what's driving him

is a genuine commitment...

Trying to apply what he sees as
American principles to the world

for the betterment of the world.

He thinks America has something
to teach everyone.

Part of it is ego.

Wilson believes himself able
to deliver

these democratic practices
to the global stage.

He sees himself as well equipped
to be this person.

Ambassador Page saw
little chance

that America could stay detached
from the great conflict

that was shaking the world
to its foundations.

"We shall need somehow
to wake up the American public

to realize that our isolation
is gone,"

he wrote to the president.

"There simply is no end to
the changes that are coming."

The day war broke out,
the impeccably tailored

American war correspondent
Richard Harding Davis

settled into his first-class
cabin on board a ship

bound for France, and enjoyed
a cold glass of champagne.

Davis was perhaps the most
famous journalist of his day,

and the war promised to be
the biggest story

of his already legendary career.

He had made a name for himself
reporting for the newspapers

owned by Joseph Pulitzer
and William Randolph Hearst,

filing dispatches from war zones
around the world.

His vivid reports of
the exploits of the Rough Riders

in Cuba had helped catapult
the young Theodore Roosevelt

to national renown.

Now Americans were
counting on Davis

to bring them news of the
shocking developments in Europe.

While he was crossing the
Atlantic in the first week

of August 1914, German troops
continued their invasion

of neutral Belgium, rushing
to encircle Paris

and defeat the French
and the British

before the huge Russian armies
to the east could mobilize.

The German war plans called for
them to defeat France first,

within a short period of time,
and then turn those armies

on the Russians.

The attitude was if they didn't
do it quickly enough,

the Russian steamroller
would come tumbling

into the eastern
German territories

on the way to Berlin.

The German army was well aware

that its task was to arrive
in Paris 42 days...

Not 43 days, 42 days exactly...
After the invasion of Belgium.

And the population in Belgium
and northern France

was not going to stand
in the way.

By August 17,
as hundreds of thousands

of Belgian refugees
were streaming away

from the advancing German army,
Davis had commandeered

a motorcar and was headed
in the opposite direction.

He managed to find his way
to Brussels to witness

the German forces
entering the Belgian capital.

The entrance of the German army

into Brussels
has lost all human quality.

No longer was it
regiments of men marching,

but something uncanny, inhuman...
A force of nature.

This was a machine...
Endless, tireless,

with the delicate organization
of a watch

and the brute power
of a steamroller.

For three days and three nights
the column of gray,

with 50,000 bayonets

and 50,000 lances,
with gray transport wagons,

gray cannon,
like a river of steel,

cut Brussels in two.

He described the columns
going on for days,

marching in perfect step
with each other.

And I think it was jaw-dropping.

Many Americans were
getting their first look at this

through Richard Harding Davis's
writings.

Davis arrived in the war zone

mindful that his employers at
the Wheeler News Syndicate

expected him to hew closely
to America's strict policy

of neutrality.

But the news from Belgium
turned more disturbing

with each passing day.

Racing to keep
to their invasion timetable,

the Germans ruthlessly put down
any resistance.

Civilians were mowed down
with machine guns.

14,000 buildings were
deliberately destroyed.

15 days into the invasion,
German soldiers arrived

at the Belgian city of Louvain,

a center of culture
for centuries.

Then they burned it
to the ground.

At Louvain, it was war
upon the defenseless,

war upon churches, colleges,
shops of milliners

and lace-makers, war brought to
the bedside and the fireside,

against women harvesting
in the fields,

against children in wooden shoes
at play in the streets.

At Louvain that night,

the Germans were like men
after an orgy.

Davis's dispatches
were hugely influential,

and they shocked Americans.

They also crossed a line
for his editors.

"Wheeler cabled that the papers
wanted me to be neutral

and not write against the
Germans," he wrote to his wife.

"Fancy anyone being neutral
in this war."

6,000 Belgian civilians
were killed,

the Belgians would say murdered,
in the course of the war.

Not one of them was a combatant.

That was the price
the German High Command knew

that they had to pay in order
to get to Paris in 42 days.

In just a few short weeks,
Richard Harding Davis

had abandoned any pretense
to neutrality.

What his editors
wouldn't publish,

he added to the preface
of his book,

which quickly became
a best-seller.

Were the conflict in Europe
a fair fight,

the duty of every American would
be to keep on the sidelines

and preserve an open mind.

But it is not a fair fight.

Germany is defying the rules of
war and the rules of humanity.

When a mad dog runs amok
in a village, it is the duty

of every farmer to get his gun
and destroy it,

not lock himself indoors
and toward the dog

and the men who face him
preserve a neutral mind.

A man who would now be neutral
would be a coward.

On August 25, 1914,

a hastily organized group of
American volunteers set off

through the streets of Paris
for the train station.

The men had just enlisted
in the French army.

Still wearing their rumpled
street clothes, they hardly

looked like soldiers.

That didn't bother the crowds,
whose cheers seemed

to carry them along.

There is a generation
of Americans,

particularly elite Americans,
who believed

that with this elite status
came the obligation

to take risks for humanity.

Now, this was a totally
romantic notion, but it inspired

thousands of Americans
to drop out of college,

to quit their jobs.

And they felt a personal
responsibility to address

what was the largest
human crisis of their times.

Most of the well-heeled men

were from elite colleges.

Many of them had been
drifting around Europe

when the war broke out.

There were painters
and professors, medical students

and mining engineers,
a big-game hunter, a chef,

and a race-car driver.

There are those Americans
who believe

that we should make an impact
on the battlefield,

and with the government
reluctant to do so,

individuals decide to do so.

We have a river of people
crossing the Atlantic

to join the Allied army,

to serve as ambulance drivers,
as aid workers,

as nurses, as doctors.

A lot of them
truly loved France,

and they felt this was
a war of civilization.

They were after a kind of glory,
even immortality.

A real sense of wanting
to sacrifice yourself

for a greater cause.

The French government
was stunned

by the wave of volunteers...

More than 35,000
from 49 different nations.

The newspaper Le Figaro
called it

"a moving homage,
to which each people wish

to contribute its part
of courage and of blood."

Reinforcements were arriving
in France just in time...

The military situation
was increasingly dire.

The German army
had swept through Belgium

and was driving towards Paris.

Every able-bodied man
who could handle a rifle

had been rushed to the front,

including 5,000
French reservists

who arrived in taxicabs.

The Americans' parade
was a response to France

in her hour of need.

At its head was a 26-year-old
Harvard graduate

and aspiring poet
named Alan Seeger,

who had been living in Paris
when war was declared.

The notion of military service

as a kind of a test of
character, a test of courage,

is a very deep
American phenomenon.

To test your mettle against
the harshest steel in the world

was something
very hard to resist

for people like Alan Seeger.

And I think he was
characteristic

of a larger group of individuals
who felt that this war

was one that could lead them
to experience things

that other human beings
won't ever know.

From their home in New York,
Seeger's parents did their best

to reconcile themselves
to the perilous path

their son had chosen.

Dear Mother, I hope you see

the thing as I do and think that
I have done well,

doing my share for the side
that I think right.

I am happy
and full of excitement

over the wonderful days
that are ahead.

It was such a comfort
to receive your letter

and know that you approved
of my action.

Be sure that I shall
play the part well,

for I was never in better health
nor felt my manhood more keenly.

Love to all, Alan.

Seeger joined
the French Foreign Legion,

a brigade famous
for its ferocity

and for taking in anyone willing
to fight, and die, for France.

In its ranks he met men
like Victor Chapman,

a fellow Harvard graduate

who had given up his
architectural studies in Paris

to volunteer,

and Eugene Bullard,

who had escaped
the brutal racism of Georgia

by stowing away for Europe
when he was 17.

Once on the continent,

Bullard had survived
as a panhandler,

an actor in a traveling
comedy troupe,

and a boxer.

The Legion put the Americans

through a crash course
in basic training,

and they joined a war
that now numbered

millions of combatants
on both sides.

Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and the Ottoman Empire,

who called themselves
the Central Powers,

were squared off against
France, Britain, and Russia,

known as the Allies.

Just as the American volunteers

were learning
how to be soldiers,

the nature of the war shifted.

After smashing their way
through Belgium,

the Germans were approaching
the outskirts of Paris

when their over-extended army
gave out.

Allied counter-attacks
drove them back

beyond the Marne River
east of Paris.

Both sides dug in for protection

and kept trying
to outflank one another.

Within weeks, an improvised
network of trenches

extended for more
than 500 miles,

from the English Channel
to the Swiss border.

The war that all sides assumed
would be over

in a matter of weeks

now stretched on
with no end in sight.

The Germans realized
that if they dig trenches

and install their machine guns
and their artillery,

the French and the British can't
get much further forward.

But each side is trying
to get the advantage.

And in that process,
which goes on for two months,

what they're really doing
is learning

that once they've dug trenches,

once they've got
defensive positions,

they've invented
a new industrialized form

of siege warfare.

And it's stalemate.

The "Western Front,"
as it was called,

consisted of deep gashes
in the mud

dug in a zig-zag pattern

to protect
against enemy attacks.

The lines were separated
by a blasted landscape

of shell holes, barbed wire,
and decaying corpses

known as No Man's Land.

The new fortifications
provided protection

from the murderous carnage
of open warfare.

But efforts to break out
of the stand-off

still sent hundreds of thousands
of casualties

flooding into hospitals
just behind the lines.

One of the nurses that struggled
to cope with the onslaught

was an American heiress
from Chicago named Mary Borden.

The hospital looks like
an American lumber town,

a city of huts,

and the guns beyond this hill
sound like the waves of the sea,

pounding, pounding,

and the sky is awhirr
with aeroplanes,

and, sometimes,
we are bombarded,

and all the time,
troops and troops

and more troops stream past.

All day and often all night,

I am at work over dying
and mutilated men.

There is such a tremendous
inflow of wounded

that I can't often sit down
from 7 a.m. to midnight,

impossible to tear oneself away

from the men who are crying
for a drink,

whose blood is dripping in pools
on the floor.

Despite its horrors, Alan Seeger
and his fellow volunteers

could not get to the front
fast enough.

Dear Mother,

we are actually going at last
to the firing line.

By the time you receive this,

we shall already perhaps
have had our baptism of fire.

How thrilling it will be
tomorrow and the following days,

marching toward the front
with the noise of battle

growing continually louder
before us.

The whole regiment is going,

about 4,000 men.

You have no idea
how beautiful it is

to see the troops undulating
along the road

as far as the eye can see.

I didn't raise my boy
to be a soldier

I brought him up
to be my pride and joy.

Who dares to place a musket
on his shoulder

To shoot some other mother's
darling boy?

The most popular song in America
in the spring of 1915

was "I Didn't Raise My Boy
to Be a Soldier."

700,000 copies, on 78 rpm
records and as sheet music,

flew out of stores.

It was sung in bars
and dance halls,

in concerts, schools,
and in homes

all across the country.

This was a time, remember,
when in a city like New York,

there were a great many daily
newspapers being published.

But an awful lot
of the population

didn't read
or didn't read English.

And they got their news
from songs.

Go to your local saloon
after work

and there'd be somebody there
playing a piano,

singing a song about something

that had just happened
in the news.

Songwriters would pick up
a few newspapers

on their way into the office
in the morning.

They would read stories

and they would sit down

and write a couple of songs
about them before lunch.

They'd be published
by the end of the day

and for sale on the street.

Ten million soldiers
to the war have gone

Who may never return again.

Ten million mothers' hearts
must break

For the ones who died in vain.

America's songwriting Mecca

was a short stretch of
West 28th Street in Manhattan.

Known as Tin Pan Alley,

it was home to one
of the biggest industries

in the country.

Sitting around
their upright pianos,

songwriting duos were acutely
conscious of the national mood.

"I Didn't Raise My Boy
to Be a Soldier"

was a mother's plea
for neutrality.

It wasn't just a catchy tune,
it was what people were feeling.

There'd be no war today
if mothers all would say

"I didn't raise my boy
to be a soldier."

Tin Pan Alley's love affair
with anti-war songs

reflected the growing force
and popularity

of the American peace movement.

In August of 1914,

thousands of women,
both black and white,

had gathered together

and marched down Fifth Avenue
in silence.

The Evening World reported

that "Every woman
in the slow-moving line

"wore some badge of mourning,

"either a band around her sleeve

"or a bit of crepe fluttering
at her breast

"as a token of the black death

which is hovering
over the European battlefields."

The march is very silent,
very somber.

It's sort of like
a funeral march,

because they are mourning
the young men

who are dying
in increasing numbers

after less than a month of war.

The women's march in 1914
really is the outgrowth

of a very large women's movement
in America.

And this is really a sign

that women are going to be
in the forefront

of opposition to the war.

Pacifism on the part of men
was harder

because it suggested cowardice.

So women could say things
and act politically

in a way that men couldn't.

We could be the arbiter of wars.

We could be those
that would stop the killing.

We could be those that would
help find the peace.

Woodrow Wilson's own
secretary of state,

William Jennings Bryan,

was a committed pacifist,

as was Eugene Debs, the leader
of the American Socialist Party,

who maintained
that "the war in Europe

is a crime
against civilization."

The industrialist Henry Ford
argued

that only "two classes
benefit by war...

The militarists
and the money lenders."

Meanwhile, the struggle
kept offering up

an appalling testament
to the peace movement's mission.

In the first five months
of the war,

more than 300,000 Frenchmen
were killed...

30,000 British soldiers...

Almost 150,000 Germans.

Horrified by what the war
had become,

in April of 1915,

a group of delegates
from the Woman's Peace Party

set off for the International
Congress of Women in The Hague.

The WPP numbered more
than 40,000 women nationwide,

and their goal was the creation

of an internationally sanctioned
framework

for an end to the war.

The president was Jane Addams.

Jane Addams was in some ways
the pre-eminent progressive.

She founded a settlement house
in Chicago called Hull House

that was a place
where immigrants and poor people

could go to get help,
to get education.

She toured the country
as a lecturer

in the name of peace.

She was one of the most visible
women in America at this time.

"We do not think
that by raising our hands

we can make the armies
cease slaughter,"

Addams admitted.

"But we do think it is fitting

"that women should meet
and take counsel

to see what may be done."

One of the peace movement's
harshest critics,

former president
Theodore Roosevelt,

lashed out at Addams
and her fellow pacifists.

"It is base and evil to clamor
for peace in the abstract,"

he thundered,

"when silence is kept about
concrete and hideous wrongs

done to humanity
at this very moment."

The women were undeterred.

Roosevelt was a "barbarian,"
they responded,

"out of his element" and
"half a century out of date."

More than a thousand women
from 12 different nations

attended the conference,

including representatives from
Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Addams and women
from many nations

gathered to say war must end,

and we must not engage
in this conflict.

The world has come too far

to allow a barbarous war
like this

to happen and to really destroy
what we have built.

She saw alliances among women
across national boundaries

to be a very important pathway
to peace.

The reason why Jane Addams
and other pacifists

go to The Hague

is to put pressure on Wilson
to get involved

in really backing up
with actions

what he's been saying all along,

which is that it is the role
of the United States

to help mediate the war.

And so in a sense, this is
a citizen's peace initiative

which is trying to nudge Wilson
to do the right thing.

On her return to America,

Jane Addams met with Wilson
six times.

He hears from her
about what she's seen in Europe.

And I think
it clearly influences him

by making him think
that his instinct

that America should have
a leadership role

in settling the peace

is a correct one.

"The time has come
for intervention,

and it is only by intervention
that the war will be ended,"

Addams argued.

"Left to themselves, the warring
nations will fight on and on.

"And every day that
peace negotiations are delayed

will make terms of peace
just that much harder."

On the first of May 1915,

an advertisement
in New York newspapers

announced the sailing
for Liverpool

of the British Cunard Line's
celebrated steamship,

the Lusitania.

Directly below the ad

was a notice placed
by the German Embassy.

"Vessels flying the flag
of Great Britain" it read,

"or any of her allies

"are liable to destruction
in those waters

"adjacent to the British Isles.

"Travelers sailing
in the war zone

do so at their own risk."

The recent sinking

of both cargo and passenger
ships bound for England

was evidence
of the deadly seriousness

of the German warning.

Still, the American tourists,
prominent aristocrats,

and English and Irish maids
on the Lusitania

decided to set sail.

They were getting
on the grandest ship of its day.

The cruise ship from the era
of the Titanic.

And they thought no civilized
nation would attack such a ship.

What no one on board realized

was how enmeshed in the war
the Lusitania really was.

The Germans saw the ship

as part of a critical
supply line

supporting
the British war effort.

Like most of the freighters
steaming toward England,

the Lusitania's hold
was filled to capacity

with American goods
and raw materials.

Part of American neutrality
from the very beginning

was that American companies
were free to do business

with any of the combatants,
on paper.

But Britain had
the world's strongest navy

and they used it to tremendous
effect against Germany,

instituting a massive blockade,

which meant
that all American armaments

that were sold overseas

were sold to the Allies.

Neutrality is almost always
a fiction.

In this case, the fiction was

that the United States
was neutral in word and deed.

Nonsense... the United States
tilted towards the Allies

from the very beginning.

When war broke out,

the U.S. economy was
in the midst of a recession,

and Americans lost no time

selling everything they could
to the Allies.

A typical British division
of 18,000 soldiers

required a staggering
nine million pounds

of ammunition, fodder, and food
each month.

There was a seemingly bottomless
market

for barrels of beef,
tons of iron and steel,

bushels of oats and wheat.

American companies also sold
Britain and France

massive quantities
of bullets, artillery shells,

and high explosives.

The Germans desperately wanted
to sink ships

transporting these supplies.

But since their navy was
no match for the British

on the high seas,

their only solution was to
attack from under the surface.

The submarine was really
a novelty before World War I.

And all of a sudden,
this war comes along,

and it's more than just
a novelty,

it's an essential weapon.

Western navies were unprepared
to deal with it.

They had no idea how to counter
submarine warfare.

It was unknown, it was unseen.

You never knew where an attack
was going to come from.

And it terrified people.

German submarines
were technological wonders

that were transforming
the nature of warfare.

Three months
before the Lusitania set sail,

the German High Command
had launched a full-scale attack

on ships entering the war zone
around Great Britain,

beginning a campaign

that would send hundreds
of ships to the bottom,

including vessels
flying the American flag.

The captain and crew
of the Lusitania

dismissed fears of submarines

and encouraged passengers
to enjoy the elegant amenities

on board the 787-foot
luxury liner.

Vacationing couples
on the lower decks

enjoyed shuffleboard,

while the wealthy travelers
in first class

were served high tea
in the Verandah Café.

From intercepted communications,

the British knew
the German submarine U-20

was lurking in the path
of the Lusitania.

Yet they chose
not to send destroyers out

to meet the ship
and escort it into Liverpool.

Within the halls
of the British Admiralty,

some argued
that if the Lusitania was lost,

it might precipitate
American entry into the war.

The British
are definitely trying

to get America
involved in this war.

Right from the beginning,

there is a sense of,
"We need you here.

"Your shipping is not going
to be enough.

We are your brethren,
you must support us."

On Friday, May 7,

as passengers excitedly scanned
the horizon

for their first sight of land,

a torpedo hit the ship's side.

The explosion ripped a huge gash
in the Lusitania.

It took only 18 minutes

for the leviathan to slide
beneath the waves.

For months after the Lusitania
went down,

dead bodies washed ashore.

Hundreds of others were pulled
lifeless from the Irish Sea,

the corpses stacked
on the docks.

Many of the casualties
could not be identified

and were buried in mass graves.

In all, 1,198 men, women,
and children were lost.

128 of them were Americans.

The New York Sun
called the sinking

"premeditated and dastardly,"

and the Herald denounced it

as "wholesale murder
on the high seas."

What the Lusitania did

was to bring the war home
to Americans.

Up to that time,
it was this awful thing

that was happening
to other people far away.

Now the war had reached out
and touched us.

But what it did really
was, I think,

redouble an awful lot
of people's determination

to stay out of it.

The American media
had been covering the war

for months and months now.

We knew what it was like.

Americans had been imagining
their sons at the battlefront.

We don't want to buy into that.

And here is this act
of barbarism

that's threatening
to bring us in.

Much of America is now beginning
to discuss

what should America's role be
in this war,

now that we are losing lives?

How do we maintain
a position of neutrality?

The Lusitania sinking
creates a crisis

within the Wilson
administration,

in part because it reveals

that this public and official
face of neutrality

was actually no such thing.

Germany argued that the speed

with which the Lusitania
was sent to the bottom

was proof that it was loaded

with tons of ammunition
for the Allies.

It was suggested that
the torpedo struck the boiler,

but a boiler wouldn't blow up
with that kind of force

to sink a liner of that size
in 18 minutes.

The secretary of state,
William Jennings Bryan,

who was a great pacifist,

he said, "The one thing I want
to know is,

were there in fact arms
on that ship?"

And the truth of the matter is,
there were arms on that ship.

Actually, from the German side,

not an irrational
or indefensible act.

In some ways, you have
these two visions

of what is a legitimate act
of violence,

just sort of colliding

and not being able
to reconcile themselves.

How far can you tolerate
the deaths of American citizens

is a very legitimate question
today,

as it was 100 years ago.

And I think being the man

who protects American lives
on the one hand,

and on the other hand,
protecting American lives

by not going into war

presented Wilson with
a very difficult high-wire act.

And I think he understood

that that meant the Lusitania
wasn't going to be the last.

Wilson responded
to Germany's provocations

with a series of diplomatic
messages to Berlin,

warning that
if aggression continued,

America would consider it
an act of war.

In protest, William Jennings
Bryan resigned.

But the president's threats
worked.

The German government pledged
to put limits

on their submarine warfare.

For those who were strong
advocates of neutrality,

it was too stern,

and for others,
such as Teddy Roosevelt,

it was an ignominious, cowardly,
kind of weaselly way out

of avoiding a fight.

The Lusitania forces
the American people to recognize

that just having two oceans
protecting you

doesn't mean you're protected
from danger.

Doesn't mean you can go on
with business as usual.

And the Lusitania opens up
that debate.

"What should we do about this?"

Three days after the Lusitania
was sunk,

in front of a crowd of
15,000 people in Philadelphia,

Woodrow Wilson tried to reaffirm

America's neutral role
in the conflict.

"The example of America
must be the example

"not merely of peace
because it will not fight,

"but of peace because peace

is the healing and elevating
influence of the world,"

he declared.

"There is such a thing as a man
being too proud to fight.

"There is such a thing
as a nation being so right

"that it does not need
to convince others by force

that it is right."

Since leaving Paris yesterday,

we have passed
through streets and streets

of such murdered houses...

Through town after town

spread out
in its last writhings,

deliberately erased
from the Earth.

At worst they are like
stone yards,

at best like Pompeii.

Ypres has been bombarded
to death,

and the outer walls of
its houses are still standing,

so that it presents the distant
semblance of a living city,

while nearby, it seems to be
a disemboweled corpse.

Every window-pane is smashed,
nearly every building unroofed,

and some house fronts
are sliced clean off,

with the different stories
exposed,

as if for the stage-setting
of a farce.

And with a little church

so stripped and wounded
and dishonored

that it lies there
by the roadside

like a human victim.

In the spring of 1915,

one of America's most famous
novelists

embarked on a tour
of the Western Front.

Edith Wharton had come
on her own initiative

to deliver medical supplies,
take photographs,

and write letters and articles
for publication back home

about what she called
the "dreadful realities of war."

For seven months,

Wharton followed the track
of the German invasion,

describing
the "huge tiger scratches

that the German Beast
flung over the land."

She stopped to visit
French troops,

who wrote "Vive l'Amérique!"
in chalk on her car,

and got close enough
to the front lines

to peer out
at a dead German soldier

sprawled across No Man's Land.

"I had the sense
of an all-pervading,

invisible power of evil,"
she remembered,

"a saturation
of the whole landscape

with some hidden vitriol
of hate."

Edith Wharton, she's symbolic

of a lot of Americans
who are living in France,

already had a deep passion
and interest in France,

a deep love of France.

They're able to make clear
exactly what's happening.

And the important thing
about this is,

it's coming
from an American voice.

At the outset of the war,

Wharton had organized
a series of American hostels

to shelter the wave
of dislocated families

pouring into Paris.

In little more than a year,

her relief organization
had provided clothing and jobs

for more than 9,000 refugees

and served nearly a quarter
of a million meals.

She also begged Americans
at home

to help finance her efforts.

"For heaven's sake,"
she wrote to a friend,

"proclaim everywhere,
and as publicly as possible,

"what it will mean to all
that we Americans cherish

if England and France
go under."

In June,
Wharton arrived in Dunkirk

immediately after the town
had been shelled by the Germans.

The "freshness of
the havoc seemed to accentuate

its cruelty," she wrote.

The hospitals in Dunkirk were
struggling to absorb

the casualties from artillery,
but they were also

confronting the effects
of a shocking new weapon

that had just been introduced.

A month before Wharton
had arrived,

not far from Dunkirk,
French and Canadian troops

had looked across No Man's Land

and seen a greenish haze
drifting towards them.

Soon, the unsuspecting men
were writhing in agony,

choking to death as chlorine gas
burned their throat and lungs.

In a panic, the survivors
abandoned their positions.

More than
a thousand soldiers were killed,

most of them slowly drowning as
their lungs filled with fluid.

World War I used a combination
of really traditional

fighting techniques with all
these brand new technologies

that turned traditional battle
into slaughter.

Or things like poisonous gas,

which seemed like this insidious
and unpredictable new weapon

that just killed
indiscriminately,

that had nothing to do
with individuals

fighting each other and that was
really just about mass death.

Gas was something
that was a new horror.

And for people that
already thought

that the Germans
were evil personified,

it just played
into those sorts of attitudes.

Gas in a way was as terrifying
to people as the submarine.

Gas could blind you,
very quickly.

It could make you cough up blood
very quickly.

It could break down your lungs
very quickly.

Eventually, both sides
would use gas.

It would just be
part of something that was

a descent into
20th century warfare.

And so gruesome, and truthfully,
to take things to a level

that had never been seen before.

Edith Wharton wasn't shy
about telling the world

what she thought
of the German army's tactics.

"The 'atrocities'
one hears of are true,"

she wrote in a letter.

"I know of many, alas,
too well authenticated.

"It should be known
that it is to America's interest

"to help stem
this hideous flood of savagery,

"by opinion
if it may not be by action.

No civilized race can remain
neutral in feeling now."

Edith Wharton really wanted
to create

kind of a sympathetic character
in the French people

and in France itself,
and she was even accused

by some of her fellow authors
of being a propagandist.

But she was writing in a way
that I think she knew

would have as powerful
an effect as possible.

I think she was changing
the tide

of how people viewed the war
and whether America should,

at long last, get involved.

The way that German atrocities
were played up in the media

helped create
a good guy-bad guy scenario.

This is the idea of
the Germans as Huns,

as destroyers, as barbarians.

The moral depravity
of German soldiers

suggested a moral cause.

It made it
about the sons of light

against the sons of darkness.

It became a sacred bill
of indictment against them

for behavior of a kind
that no one could justify.

On the morning of July 3, 1915,

an intruder holding two pistols

barged into
the Long Island mansion

of America's most powerful
banker: JP Morgan, Jr.

In the ensuing struggle,
the attacker was subdued,

but not until he wounded Morgan
twice in the thigh.

The gunman turned out to be

a former German teacher
at Harvard,

who had set off a bomb
at the U.S. Capitol

the day before.

Although no direct link
to the German government

was proven,
the attack on Morgan appeared

to be part
of a larger effort by Germany

to stop American support
for the Allies.

If you sympathized with Germany,

then Morgan
was your ultimate enemy.

And because he was so powerful
as an individual,

it was actually possible
to believe

that assassinating him
could actually stop the war.

As the conflict dragged on,

the French and British had
required larger and larger loans

to keep themselves afloat.

Morgan, a committed Anglophile,
had been more than happy

to oblige.

He also served
as a purchasing agent,

helping to procure the millions
of pounds of food and armaments

the Allies required every month.

President Wilson
turned a blind eye

to this financial lifeline
to the Allies.

Morgan would eventually secure

a $500 million line of credit
for the French and British,

the biggest foreign loan
in Wall Street history.

The war turned the United States

into a creditor power...
Not a debtor power...

For the first time
in its history.

That's a big argument.

We're in the war and we have
an economic interest

to make sure
that the Allies win it.

It's not just the fact that
the U.S. is loaning money

to the Allies,
but that they're spending it

in the U.S. for stuff,
so all of a sudden,

hiring picks up,
manufacturing picks up.

Americans were working again,
and nobody wanted

to cut that off.

Our economic support
for the Allies started out

at the very beginning
of the war,

and quickly became
a vicious cycle.

Because we could only sell
to the Allies,

they became our main market.

Because the Allies could
only buy from us,

they quickly became indebted
to us.

And so, it was in our best
interest to send them

more armaments
so that they could win the war.

Great Britain during the war
spent fully half

of its war budget
in the United States of America.

The attack on JP Morgan
drew attention

to the nation's
largest ethnic group:

German-Americans.

German cultural life
was everywhere.

There were German churches,
German language newspapers.

German was the most commonly
studied foreign language

in American high schools.

What we now call classical music
was German music:

Bach, Beethoven and Brahms
played by symphonies,

sung by ordinary people
in choirs and in churches.

They were particularly visible
in certain parts of the country,

particularly the Midwest.

And they wielded enormous
political power in some cities

like St. Louis,
Cincinnati, Milwaukee.

In response to what they saw
as a hypocritical

and blatantly one-sided
neutrality policy,

the National
German-American Alliance,

which boasted more than
two million members,

and chapters in 44 states,

held mass demonstrations
calling for an arms embargo.

Former Secretary of State
William Jennings Bryan

was their featured speaker.

The American Women's League
for Strict Neutrality collected

over one million signatures,
written on a scroll

more than 15 miles long,

endorsing an "embargo
on the things which kill."

While many of the nation's
leading magazines and newspapers

clearly sided
with the Allied cause,

the German-American magazine
The Fatherland promoted

what it called "fair play for
Germany and Austria-Hungary."

But the paper was fighting
an uphill battle.

In the first days of the war,
the British had cut

the transatlantic cables
connecting America

to the European continent.

The only remaining cable
was from London.

Now, this may not
sound like much,

but what it means is
that all the news

that Americans get
about the European war

is coming through Britain
over British cables,

which means,
from the very beginning,

they're getting
one side of the story,

and so if there is one single
event that the British do

to guarantee that the Americans
will not be really neutral,

it's that action.

Increasingly frustrated
by the one-sidedness

of American neutrality,
the German government

began to fight back.

Only a month after Morgan's
close call in New York,

a German diplomat's briefcase

fell into the hands
of American officials.

They were shocked
at what they found inside.

The Germans were secretly
supporting newspapers

sympathetic to their side,
paying corrupt union leaders

to stage strikes,
and setting up shadow companies

to disrupt the munitions trade.

They had even planned
a coup in Mexico

that would bring
a pro-German strongman to power.

The raft of incriminating
evidence revealed

that Germany was willing
to risk almost anything

to undermine America's support
for the Allies.

Sensational exposés
in the American press

fanned hysteria
about German subversives.

Soon, almost any accident
or strange occurrence

was attributed to Berlin.

The mounting paranoia
began to implicate

German-Americans as well.

Even the president
took up the theme.

In a speech to Congress
in December 1915,

Wilson warned that,

"There are citizens
of the United States

"born under other flags who have
poured the poison of disloyalty

"into the very arteries
of our national life.

"Such creatures of passion,
disloyalty, and anarchy

"must be crushed out.

"They are infinitely malignant,
and the hand of our power

should close over them
at once."

What Wilson is really trying
to do is say,

"Look, if you're German,

"if you stand with us,
you're okay.

"But if your loyalties are on
the side of the Europeans,

then we have a problem."

This is a criticism
of political radicals,

anarchists, and others,
but he frames it

not as a political opposition,
but an ethnic one,

that these are ethnic outsiders.

They're immigrants;
they're not Americans.

And by doing this,
he's making it possible

for Americans to see
their immigrant neighbors

as threats to national security.

Eight months
after Wilson's speech,

two fires broke out
on the small island

of Black Tom in New York Harbor.

The island was a railroad yard
and munitions depot

where two million pounds
of armaments,

bound for the Allies,
were being stored.

The detonation shattered windows
in downtown Manhattan,

lodged shrapnel
in the Statue of Liberty,

and was heard
as far away as Philadelphia.

If it had been an earthquake,

the blast would have measured
5.5 on the Richter scale.

"I am sure the country is
honeycombed with German intrigue

and infested with German spies,"

Wilson wrote
to one of his advisors.

"The evidence of these things is
multiplying every day."

Dear Uncle: The state of filth
I live in here is unbelievable,

and the barest necessities
are luxuries.

I get down to the depot
and kitchen about every two days

for a face wash.

Our heads get crusted with mud,

eyes and hair
literally gluey with it.

After enlisting
in the Foreign Legion,

Victor Chapman had spent 12
months at the front.

It was a long way from
architecture school in Paris.

Sanitation in the trenches
was crude or non-existent.

When it rained,
they became rivers of mud.

Soldiers were tormented by lice,

which the British
called "cooties,"

and an infection known as
"trench foot."

To escape the rain
of high-explosive shells,

soldiers constructed dugouts
as far underground as possible.

The men yearned to test
themselves in open battle,

anything to interrupt
the tedium,

and the random visitation
of death.

All up and down the lines
in the spring of 1916,

the great struggle that soldiers
talked about was at Verdun.

At that ancient fortress town,
the French had made a stand

against a massive
German offensive.

The contest had descended into
a sickening battle of attrition,

grinding on, month after month,
with no end in sight.

"I hope you got my letters about
my not being at Verdun,"

Alan Seeger wrote home.

"This ought to have been
a comfort to you.

"Of course, to me,
it is a matter of great regret

and I take it as a piece
of hard luck."

Meanwhile, Eugene Bullard longed
to be anywhere but Verdun.

Bullard had been transferred
to a new French unit

that had seen heavy fighting,

but he had never experienced
anything like this.

Neither side knew where
the lines were,

and there were no more trenches
and everything was guesswork.

In those hours,
every man at Verdun

either got one more hole
in him than he was born with,

or, if he was lucky,
he ducked into a series

of shallow shell holes as I did.

Bullard was manning a post
with a machine gun

as a mass of Germans came on.

It was like mowing grass,
only the grass grew up

as fast as you mowed it.

You'd mow them down, and four
more would be in their places.

You could see them wriggling
like worms in the bait box.

Every time the sergeant
yelled, "Fire!"

I got sicker and sicker.

They had wives and children,
hadn't they?

So, this young boy from Georgia
ends up in what is

the most horrific battle
of World War I.

And Bullard made a comment.

He said he wasn't surprised
by how many people were killed

at Verdun.

He was surprised that anybody
got out of it alive at all.

Bullard was wounded twice
at Verdun.

He would become one of
the first Americans to receive

the French military honor
for exceptional bravery:

the Croix De Guerre.

Dear Papa: This flying
is much too romantic

to be real modern war
with all its horrors.

There is something so unreal
and fairy-like about it,

which ought to be told
and described by poets.

High above the blackened
battlefield,

Victor Chapman had escaped
the trenches and found himself

engaged in a new kind of war,

one that had never been
waged before.

It's really, I think, difficult
to understand today

how exhilarating
flight was back a century ago.

The planes were made of
practically nothing.

They would fall apart just
almost, you know, at a whisper.

But there was something
very visceral about it,

because you were
in total control.

You didn't even have
the windscreen in front of you.

I mean, you're feeling
the blast of air.

You're dodging through clouds.

You're looking at the sun.

You see the curve of the earth.

You know, humans had gone up
in balloons before,

but that was
the extent of flight.

This was really flying.

If you see
these airplanes today,

you wonder how anyone in their
right mind went up in them.

They were essentially
bicycles with wings.

Very, very frail.

And this was
very dangerous work.

From the outset of the war,

both sides raced to turn
the airplane to their advantage.

Pilots began as observers,
and took thousands

of photographs
of enemy positions.

They tried mounting machine guns
on the wings,

but had to fly with one hand
while shooting with the other.

Eventually, machine guns
were synchronized

so they could fire
through the propeller,

and pilots engaged in vicious
duels, known as dogfights.

With each innovation,
the death toll kept rising.

Chapman joined a small group
of American volunteers

flying for France.

They called themselves
the Lafayette Escadrille,

and they were the first
all-American unit

to fight for the Allies.

The Lafayette Escadrille
wasn't a cross section

of American society.

They were very
well-educated young men

who wanted to fly for France,
and so, they just went over

and did so.

Even though this officially
violated American neutrality.

In that war, there was sort of
a winking arrangement with that.

You know, don't ask, don't tell.

The danger of their new
occupation helped cultivate

an air of reckless bravado among
the pilots of the Escadrille.

"If I should be killed
in this war,"

one of Chapman's fellow pilots
wrote home,

"I will at least die
as a man should."

They throw outlandish parties.

They have two lion cubs,
Whiskey and Soda,

as their mascots.

Celebrities from all over Europe
want to have dinner with them,

want to see them.

So they have
this devil-may-care attitude.

They don't really need
the French army's discipline.

The French army needs them
more than they need

the French army.

They fly in their bathrobes.

They do more or less
whatever they want.

The Lafayette Escadrille

made headlines
in the United States,

and an American film crew
arrived in France to chronicle

the exploits of Victor Chapman
and his fellow aviators.

We roared and buzzed
past the camera man,

up into the air.

Then, one at a time,
we rushed by him.

I must say that he had nerve.

You will see it all, I expect,
sometime this summer;

for it is to be given to some
American cinema company

in Paris.

They're very popular and,

regardless of what Americans
felt about the war itself,

these guys were,
in a way, heroes.

They were kind of like
the early astronauts.

For all their fame,
and often reckless bravery,

the pilots of the Lafayette
Escadrille understood

that the odds against
their survival were daunting.

On June 23, Victor Chapman dove
into a dogfight,

trying to rescue
some of his comrades.

He shot down
three German planes,

before being overwhelmed,
his plane riddled with bullets.

He became the first
American flier

to give his life for France.

A French friend of the Chapmans'
wrote to Victor's father

shortly after his death.

"I have just left the church
after attending the service

in honor of your son."

"The self-sacrifice of this one
who comes to us,

"and places himself at our side,
for no other reason than

"to make right triumph over
wrong, is worthy of honor.

"America has sent us
this sublime youth,

"and our gratitude
for him is such

that it flows back
upon his country."

They were handsome,
well-bred young men

who went off to do what they
thought was right,

even though the United States
didn't want to get involved

in the fight at that point.

And they were flying airplanes,
which captured the imagination

of the entire world.

To this day,
the image that we think of often

when we think of
World War I is an aviator,

with his goggles and his leather
cap and his long silk scarf.

They were a very tiny minority
of any fighting force.

But they were, in essence,
the face that all the armies

wanted to show the enemy
and the world.

As American volunteers were
fighting and dying in France,

some of their countrymen at home
were arguing

that the United States
must be ready for war.

Championed by people like
Theodore Roosevelt

and the former chief of staff
of the army,

what was known as
the Preparedness movement

had come into its own
in the small town

of Plattsburgh, New York,
in the summer of 1916.

For five weeks,
more than 1,300 young men

played at being in the Army.

New York City's mayor and
commissioner of police took part

as did the coach
of the Harvard football team.

They were living in barracks.

They were living in tents.

They were doing
physical training.

They did a lot of work
on the rifle range

because Roosevelt believed
that marksmanship

was the key to everything.

His idea of an officer
was someone who combined

the skills
of a hunter and a scout

with the skills of a commander.

These camps were almost
like Boy Scout camps in a sense.

I mean, you got your friends
and your football team,

and this idea
that we're going to go

and prepare ourselves for war
is both naïve...

When you think
about the difference

between what these camps
must have been like

compared to what troops
facing gas on the Western Front

were dealing with...
And yet at the same time,

there was something
very American

about the whole idea too.

The main supporters
of Preparedness

believed the United States
had to be prepared

to fight against Germany.

Also, they believed
that a strong nation

had to have a strong military,
and young Americans

had to have a military mindset.

So, training,
knowing how to use a gun,

knowing how to conduct
oneself in combat,

these were important skills

for any advanced,
powerful nation to have.

The Plattsburgh Ivy Leaguers
weren't the only ones

who saw the value
of military service.

The African-American community
had long argued

for all-black National Guard
units that they felt would prove

their patriotism and advance
their political power.

As the Preparedness movement
gained momentum,

black leaders in Harlem
at last succeeded

in commissioning
their own regiment,

and began to recruit men
from New York City

to bring it up to full strength.

On May 13, some 150,000
supporters of Preparedness

turned out to walk up
Fifth Avenue.

They passed under the largest
flag in the country,

strung between
the St. Regis and Gotham hotels.

There were grocers
and lumbermen,

corsetmakers and firemen,

the American Woman's League
for Self Defense,

and the Lower Wall Street
Businessmen's Association.

African-American groups
petitioned to be included

in the procession,
but were turned down.

12,000 marchers passed
the grandstand every hour.

Lasting almost the entire day,
it was the biggest parade

in American history.

Across from the reviewing stand
was a storefront

with a sign that read

"War Against War."

It was the work of Jane Addams
and her Woman's Peace Party,

representing an
"Anti-Preparedness" movement

that numbered up to
80,000 members nationwide.

Their star attraction
was a 15-foot model

of "Jingo the Dinosaur,"
mounted on a truck,

with a sign that declared:

"This animal believed
in huge armament.

He is now extinct!"

Despite the use
of political theater

by the Woman's Peace Party,
by the summer of 1916,

the Preparedness movement
was gaining such notice

that major magazines
began to endorse it.

Leslie's Illustrated Weekly
Newspaper decided

to feature it on its cover,
with the headline

"What Are You Doing
for Preparedness?"

They asked the illustrator
James Montgomery Flagg

to come up with an image
for the new issue.

He was

a very prolific artist,

but he was also
a bit of a procrastinator.

And he was
on a very tight deadline.

And so, he had no model to use.

He had seen some other posters
that had been published

in Britain.

And Uncle Sam, as an image,
had existed

throughout the 19th century.

Dates back even to the
revolution by some measures.

So Flagg had a mirror
and his own reflection

that he used to develop
a new image.

He added some whiskers,
some gray hair,

added a top hat.

And with that, the iconic image
for Uncle Sam was born.

I think we've got
another Washington

Someone who's just as good
as he can be

He's called a man of peace
no matter where he goes

He's just the one for me

It takes a little time
for him to make up his mind

But he gets there just the same

I think we've got
another Washington

And Wilson is his name.

Looking ahead to the
presidential election

in the fall of 1916,

Woodrow Wilson
confronted the fact

that his prospects were
far from favorable.

For more than two years,

he had kept America
out of the Great War.

Now the national mood
was restless.

German spies seemed to be
everywhere,

and U-boats still prowled
the Atlantic.

The war continued to be
big business,

and the economy was booming.

But millions of German-Americans

actively campaigned
against the president,

arguing that neutrality
was a sham

and that America was blatantly
supporting the Allies.

What support Wilson did have was
drawn from people's sense

that he had done
everything he could

to keep them safe
from the European bloodbath.

Wilson is riding along
a sort of knife edge

and the war becomes one of,
if not the central issue,

in the presidential contest.

And this yields the slogan,
"He kept us out of war."

The slogan seemed to be working,
but it worried the president.

"Any little German lieutenant
can push us into war at any time

by some calculated outrage," he
told his secretary of the Navy.

Wilson's Republican opponent
in November

was the popular Supreme Court
justice Charles Evans Hughes,

whose position on the issues
was often overshadowed

by the former Republican
president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Wilson displayed "culpable
weakness and timidity,"

thundered Roosevelt.

"It is our purpose this fall
to elect an American president,

and not a viceroy
of the German emperor."

Teddy Roosevelt's been attacking
Woodrow Wilson nonstop

for over a year.

So even though Hughes says he
wants the U.S. to stay neutral,

a lot of Americans don't quite
believe it.

And so the peace movement,

which has been ambivalent
about Wilson up to now,

jumps in and says,
we have to support Wilson now.

He's our best bet to keep
the nation at peace.

Anxious to cultivate the
influence of the peace movement,

Wilson sent Jane Addams
five dozen long-stem roses

and asked for her endorsement.

Addams is a life-long
Republican.

And so it's a big step
for her to support Wilson.

But she believes that Wilson
is certainly a peacemaker.

He wants to be a peacemaker,
she believes.

She wants to give him a chance
to be a peacemaker,

where she has no trust
whatsoever

in the current leadership
of the Republican Party.

As the campaign picked up speed
in the fall of 1916,

Wilson often appeared

with his most fervent supporter
by his side...

His new wife,
Edith Bolling Galt.

They had met
the previous spring,

only two months
before the crisis

over the sinking
of the Lusitania.

He was driving the streets

with his doctor and closest
friend at that time,

who waved hello to this woman
on the street.

And Wilson suddenly turned
and said,

"Who is that beautiful woman?"

Edith Galt was a vivacious,
well-to-do Washington widow.

Wilson would spend
the next six months

trying to win her affection.

It took up a lot of his time,

maybe it took up too much
of his time.

He was bewitched.

There were days he was writing

three or four love letters
to her.

"You have invited me

to make myself the master
of your life and heart,"

the president wrote.

"The rest is now as certain
as that God made us."

"This is my pledge,
Dearest One," she replied.

"No matter whether the wine be
bitter or sweet,

"we will share it together

and find happiness
in the comradeship."

Edith Galt had this incredibly
tonic effect on the president.

He came to life again.

And it allowed him
really to focus on his work

with so much more ease.

And he had somebody
to share all this with.

She knew part of the job
of being Woodrow Wilson's wife

was to be a great promoter,

was to be out there rooting
for him and supporting him.

With the nation
so deeply divided,

the presidential race
remained close.

In the end,
Wilson barely won a second term.

It's a razor-thin margin.

Wilson really wins
with a squeaking victory

through a couple
of Western states,

where if the vote had gone just
slightly in the other direction,

Charles Evans Hughes
would have been president.

The election of 1916 was in good
part a referendum on the war

and the Wilson balancing act

of what I would call
neutrality with a tilt.

The idea that the country
was not going

to make it its mission
to end the war

was attractive.

On the other hand, the notion
that the United States had

many interests in common
with the Allies,

that makes sense.

For the moment, Woodrow Wilson
had held together

the slender consensus
that he was the best man

to guide America
through a dangerous world.

Still, he sensed that his nation
might not be able

to remain on the sidelines
forever.

"We live in a world which we did
not make, which we cannot alter,

"which we cannot think
into a different condition

from that
which actually exists,"

the president declared.

"It would be a hopeless piece
of provincialism to suppose

"that because we think
differently

"from the rest of the world,

"we are at liberty to assume

"that the rest of the world
will permit us

to enjoy that thought
without disturbance."

As the bloody year 1916
drew to a close,

Americans were transfixed
by the scale of the suffering

that had been unleashed
on the European continent.

Two epic battles, at Verdun
and along the River Somme,

had raged on and on.

When they were over,
the strategic balance of the war

remained virtually unchanged.

The battle of the Somme
was Britain's attempt

to break through the German
lines in the north of France

by sheer industrial power.

It's the first battle in history
with one million casualties.

But I do believe

that the two battles changed the
meaning of the word "battle."

They were so big

that they crossed the threshold
of suffering.

The war became a war
of attrition

such as the world
has never seen.

It became a war of two powers
annihilating one another.

How do you understand that?

How do you write about that?

How do you explain that?

How do you do anything
but recoil in horror from that

because it makes no sense?

As one young French lieutenant
said at the Battle of Verdun,

humanity must be mad
to do what it's doing.

And it's true.

What other answer was there?

At a hospital near the Somme
battlefield,

the American nurse Mary Borden

often met the procession
of ambulances

and their cargo
of grievously wounded soldiers.

There are no men here,
so why should I be a woman?

There are chests with holes
as big as your fist,

and pulpy thighs, shapeless;

and stumps where legs
once were fastened.

There are eyes...
Eyes of sick dogs, sick cats,

blind eyes, eyes of delirium;

and mouths that cannot
articulate;

and parts of faces...
The nose gone, or the jaw.

There are these things,
but no men;

so how could I be a woman here
and not die of it?

Sometimes, suddenly,
all in an instant,

a man looks up at me
from the shambles,

a man's eyes signal or a voice
calls, "Sister! Sister!"

Sometimes suddenly a smile
flickers on the pillow,

white, blinding, burning,

and I die of it.

I feel myself dying again.

It is impossible to be
a woman here.

One must be dead.

One of the millions of men
caught up

in the fighting at the Somme
was Alan Seeger.

In late June, he and the rest
of his division

from the French Foreign Legion

were moved into position

outside the heavily defended
village of Belloy-en-Santerre.

June 28, 1916.

We go up to the attack tomorrow.

This will probably be
the biggest thing yet.

We are to have the honor
of marching in the first wave.

I will write you soon
if I get through all right.

I am glad to be going.

If you are in this thing at all

it is best to be in
to the limit.

And this is the supreme
experience.

On the 4th of July,

Seeger and his companions went
over the top.

Charging across an open field,

they were met
with heavy machine gun fire.

Seeger was hit in the abdomen.

He called out for a stretcher
and tried to bind up his wounds.

When help finally reached him,
he was dead.

Of the 45 men
in Seeger's section,

only four survived the attack.

That night, his body was
buried in a soldier's grave.

A few months before he died,
Alan Seeger had written a poem

called "I Have a Rendezvous
with Death."

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,

When spring comes back
with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill
the air...

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back
blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes
and quench my breath...

It may be I shall
pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope
of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again
this year

And the first meadow-flowers
appear.

God knows 'twere better
to be deep

Pillowed in silk
and scented down,

Where Love throbs out
in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse,
and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings
are dear...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight
in some flaming town,

Where Spring trips north again
this year,

And I to my pledged word
am true,

I shall not fail
that rendezvous.

For nearly two-and-a-half years,

the generals
of the German High Command

had tried everything they could

to break out of the stalemate
on the Western Front.

But by the beginning of 1917,

they were becoming increasingly
desperate.

The British blockade had pushed
millions of Germans

to the brink of starvation.

Meanwhile, American goods
and armaments

continued to flood into Britain

and prop up
the Allied war machine.

Finally, on January 31,

Germany sent a message
to President Wilson

announcing a policy of
unrestricted submarine warfare.

Any ships that now entered the
war zone around Great Britain

would be sunk.

It was a very risky decision.

They knew this would mean
sinking the ships

of neutral nations, most
obviously the United States.

And that this would probably
provoke the Americans

into an armed response.

So it was a calculated risk
I think the Germans were taking.

When Wilson read the message,

he turned to his secretary
and said,

"The break we have tried so hard
to prevent

now seems inevitable."

On February 3,

the president severed diplomatic
relations with Germany.

There is this fear that the war
is coming closer to home.

And by 1917, it's come
far too close to home.

The danger is too real.

I think Wilson was still trying
to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I think he was still hoping

he could figure out a way
through this.

There is tremendous pressure
on Wilson.

What's he going to do?

People like Teddy Roosevelt
are saying,

"Look, we're cowardly.

"We should be in there fighting
for the values

"we think are important

and not watching Germany
trample all over them."

You could argue that the United
States does have an interest

in not seeing the continent
of Europe dominated by Germany.

But Wilson doesn't like
to think like this,

and Wilson was
a deeply moral man

and he believed in doing
what he felt was right.

On March 1, Americans awoke

to banner headlines in
newspapers across the country.

An intercepted telegram,
written in code,

from the German foreign
minister, Arthur Zimmerman,

to his ambassador in Mexico,

revealed secret efforts to get
Japan and Mexico to declare war

on the United States.

The audacious plot underscored
the fact that Germany

was willing to go
to almost any lengths

to disrupt American support
for the Allies.

British naval intelligence got
the Zimmermann telegram

but waited until they knew

that they could get the American
president to blow his top.

And when he got the telegram,
he saw that there is no limit

to the provocations and indeed
direct challenges

to the sovereignty
of the United States

the imperial German government
was prepared to countenance.

By the middle of March,
U-boats had sunk

three more American
merchant ships.

Wilson's advisors unanimously
advocated

for a declaration of war.

Everybody in the Cabinet votes
for war.

And all Wilson says is,
"Thank you, gentlemen,

you've given me
a lot to think about,"

and walks out.

Wilson retreated to his second-
floor study to begin work

on a speech in response
to the German aggression.

When he at last emerged,
a friend recalled,

"He looked
as if he hadn't slept.

I'd never seen him
so worn down."

Woodrow Wilson made

both a strategic

and a moral, even spiritual
decision to go in.

Every indicator we have
of both public opinion

and congressional opinion

is that the big majority
were still in the middle.

Wilson could have carried them
either way.

And he agonized over it.

He did not want to take us
into the war

if he could possibly avoid it.

As Wilson watches
the events of World War I,

as he becomes increasingly
concerned

about what this means
for the world,

he really comes to believe

that America has to do more
than watch and be better,

that the U.S. has to go in
and show other countries

and other people

what one does to become better.

On April 2, as rumors
of a declaration of war

swirled through Washington,

more than a thousand pacifists
descended on the Capitol

wearing sashes and armbands
that read "Keep Us Out of War."

They were quickly driven
off the steps by the police.

At 8:32 p.m.,

Woodrow Wilson entered the floor
of the House of Representatives.

He was greeted by a two-minute
standing ovation.

Speaking to a rapt chamber,
he announced

that "the recent course of
the Imperial German Government"

was, "in fact,
nothing less than war

against the government and
people of the United States."

It is what I consider the
greatest foreign policy speech

in American history,

because embedded within this
speech is a single sentence,

which for the last hundred years
has been the bedrock

of all American foreign policy.

And that sentence quite simply
is this,

"The world must be made safe
for democracy."

"Its peace must be planted
upon the tested foundations

of political liberty,"
Wilson continued.

"We have no selfish ends
to serve.

"We desire no conquest,
no dominion.

"We seek no indemnities
for ourselves,

"no material compensation

for the sacrifices we shall
freely make..."

"We are but one of the champions
of the rights of mankind."

Woodrow Wilson realized
the country had a new power.

We were not going in
for treasure,

we were not going in
for territory.

We were not there to be
an imperial nation.

"There are, it may be,

many months of fiery trial
and sacrifice ahead of us,"

the president said in closing.

"It is a fearful thing to lead
this great peaceful people

"into war,

"into the most terrible
and disastrous of all wars,

"civilization itself seeming
to be in the balance.

"But we shall fight
for the things

"which we have always carried
nearest our hearts...

"for democracy, for the right
of those who submit to authority

"to have a voice
in their own governments.

"The day has come

"when America is privileged
to spend her blood and her might

"for the principles that gave
her birth and happiness

"and the peace
which she has treasured.

God helping her,
she can do no other."

Less than three years
after he had stood

at Independence Hall
in Philadelphia

and speculated about America's
great unfulfilled destiny,

Woodrow Wilson had committed
his nation

to the deadliest war
in human history.

He had proclaimed
that America must fight,

but whether the country would
rally around his cause,

and how and when
she would do so,

would be the great struggle
of the months to come.