Question

Did World War 1 make the world safe for democracy? examples

Answer 1

One hundred years ago, on 11 November, the First World War was mercifully drawing to a close. Across the devastated Western Front, British Tommies and French Poilus emerged from the trenches as their German opponents capitulated. What few remember is that more than two million American Doughboys were on the Allied lines when the guns finally fell silent on November 11 , 1918, after four years of slaughter. that claimed 18 million lives. The Great War has never taken the same place in America as it has in Europe. British schoolchildren learn to remember Flanders Fields, while almost all French cities have monuments to 'Morts pour la France.' This is not the case 'over here,' where awareness of the First World War is low to non-existent, the important work of the United States World War One Centennial Commission does not stand by. Mentioning places like Verdun, the Somme, and the Marne, or names like Foch, Haig, and Ludendorff from this "forgotten war" will often lead to empty stars. In forgetting the events of the First World War, we also overlook one of its key consequences: the rescue of democracy around the world. America's raucous entry into global affairs during the war played a major role in saving the democratic order. In a break with the isolationist foreign policy of the past, President Woodrow Wilson framed American involvement as a means of supporting the free people of Europe, mainly the British and French. The declaration of war by the United States against Germany in April 1917 and the dispatch of millions of troops to Europe over the next year and a half were central to securing an Allied victory. Western European democracies (Belgium, Britain , and France) could not have prevailed without strong American support.

Alternatively, the authoritarian Central Powers have failed to realize their illiberal vision of a post-war European order. The aim of Germany 's war, the September Programme, was to dominate the continent while making the Kaiser a European emperor. Besides the annexation of France and Britain, Germany would have annexed Belgium and Luxembourg and seized parts of the territory of the Russian Empire in the East. A German victory would have been a death knell for European democracy in the form of a neo-Napoleon ruling a continental superstate. Instead, America's decisive participation as a great power preserved democratic norms and predicted the growing international role that the United States would play in the twentieth century and beyond. The Great War also produced a liberal spirit that has characterized much of the last century. Wilson's "Fourteen Points" speech and the subsequent championship of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference laid the foundation for the League of Nations. Former mandates in Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific signaled the beginning of imperialism 's end as colonies fought and won their independence in the name of national liberation. Such Wilsonian idealism also underpinned the Charter of the United Nations and has dictated the terms of multilateral engagement ever since. If the Central Powers had won the First World War, such liberal democratic aspirations would have been superseded by a global drive towards autocracy. Today's leading multilateral institutions, such as the EU , NATO and the UN, would never have taken shape in an authoritarian, German-dominated regime. Unfortunately, the victors have ignored the key lessons of the war. In 1919, Georges Clemenceau's France (with the acquiescence of David Lloyd George's Britain) forced his enemy to accept the humiliating peace terms of Versailles. The immense reparations levied on Germany did little to welcome it as a democratic member of the post-war community of nations. Instead of forging a lasting peace, the Treaty had the opposite effect: the Franco-British ambition to temper the German aggression backfired as the Weimar Republic, neglected by its democratic partners, lasted only 14 years to replace the Third Reich. Outside Europe, Britain and France were disastrously unable to promote self-determination, as they were plotting to divide the Arab lands from the decrepit Ottoman Empire among themselves, in a process that accounted for much of the instability that defines the Middle East of today. Across the Atlantic, the US retreat from global affairs left a vacuum that fascist powers in Europe and Asia were trying to fill. The Second World War could have been avoided if the victorious great powers had worked harder to defend the democratic order they had saved. Although the Great War saved democracy, in the postwar years it was dangerously close to extinction. It would take another three decades, and an even more horrible war, to consolidate the democratic institution that built the peace of Versailles.

We 're going to talk about neutrality, and we've got some lovely pieces, photos and correspondence. Also, from the home front, a lot of wonderfully illustrated posters that outline the way the state of Maine and the country really did rally behind food rationing and fundraising for the war. We have materials from servicemen, both at home and abroad: everything from a machine gun, an 1895 machine gun that we borrowed from Bucksport 's historic society, to uniforms, gas masks, helmets and other pieces. But I think that one of the most exciting things, and something we don't have a lot of opportunity to share, is the costumes of the period. And we're going to feature both military uniforms and some wonderful examples-Maine examples-of civilian fashion, women's fashion during the period.