American Nobel Prize Winners of the 1920s

Several Americans in the 1920s took home this most prestigious international award.

Charles G. Dawes: Peace, 1925 (for his work on the post-Great War reparations plan; Dawes also served as U.S. vice-president under Coolidge, as well as being a diplomat and banker)

Arthur H. Compton: Physics, 1927 (for demonstrating that light was both a wave and a particle; he would later contribute to the Manhattan Project and serve as a university chancellor)

Frank B. Kellogg: Peace, 1929 (for his leadership in producing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a multi-national treaty endorsing “the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy”; Kellogg also served in the U.S. Senate and as secretary of state)

Below:  Kellogg with Pres. Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace.

The 1920s: Immigration Drastically Limited

So, what evidence can you find in the chart below that immigration numbers were enormously restricted by law in the 1920s? What evidence is shown that Northern Europe was still strongly favored?

American War Deaths

This may seem like a gruesome topic, but it can be useful to consider the relative size of the many wars the U.S. has been a part of. They vary enormously in size, scope, and duration. Where does World War I fit? See below (only major wars are included).

American Revolution:  @25,000

War of 1812:  @15,000

Mexican War:  13,283

Civil War:  @650,000

Spanish-Am. War:  2,446

Philippine War:  4,196

World War I:  116,516

World War II:  405,399

Korean War:  36,516

Vietnam War:  58,209

Afghanistan War:  4,419 (as of March 2020)

Iraq War:  4,497

The death toll in World War I is especially dramatic considering that American troops were in combat zones for only about a year in significant numbers. Just over half of those who died were felled by disease rather than by weapons, but the overwhelming majority would not have died unless they had been exposed to the crowded, disease-spreading conditions of the training camps and battlefront. In class, our coverage may have left you surprised that so many survived.

Declaring War in 1917

The United States Congress responded to Pres. Woodrow Wilson's request for a war declaration by voting on April 6, 1917. The vote totals show strong support but certainly not unanimity.

The Senate voted to declare war 82-6 with 8 abstaining. Among those who did not support the war was progressive leader Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin, later a major third-party candidate for the presidency.

The House of Representatives voted in support of the war declaration 373-50 with 9 abstaining. Opposition to the war was bipartisan, though more Republicans than Democrats voted no. Two smaller-party representatives (a Prohibitionist and a Socialist) also voted no.

What pushed many of these elected officials to vote for war when many of them had previously campaigned as neutralists or peace candidates? The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in early 1917 changed minds; so did the Zimmerman Telegram (covered in class).

Below, this is what the Zimmerman Telegram looked like before British intelligence decoded it and passed the contents on to the United States government.

Weapons on the Lusitania?

(Night students: this is a sneak preview of what we'll cover after the quiz. Day students: now you know.)

In 1982, decades after the RMS Lusitania was sunk by German u-boats in the First World War, the British government admitted that the passenger ship was carrying not only passengers but also munitions (guns and ammunition) in significant quantities--hundreds of tons.

The gunpowder-filled shells and large-caliber bullets the ship was carrying may have set off a secondary explosion when the torpedoes hit, causing eye-witnesses to wonder if an additional torpedo strike had occurred. (The secondary explosion might also have been the boiler.)

The German Empire noted that the ship was in the blockade zone around Britain and charged that it was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons, a fact denied at the time by the British who wanted to maintain good relations with the United States. Among the 1198 deaths when the Lusitania was sunk were 128 Americans.

This event helped shift public opinion in the U.S. against Germany and toward Britain although the U.S. was officially neutral and would not declare war for almost two years.

In your view, in light of these facts, was the u-boat justified in sinking the Lusitania? The answer to that question is not history but ethics, though those two subjects interact with each other constantly.

Many of the almost 1200 dead were buried in mass graves, as shown in the photo below.