Selling the War
April 15, 2020
Video Discussion Questions After the U.S. enters the war, describe some of the media used to encourage unity.What was the mission of the CPI?Who were the Four Minute Men and what did they did?What was the impact of the propaganda industry later in the 20th century?
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Selling The War
April 15, 2020
Shortly after entering World War I in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI or “Creel Committee”) to help Americans understand the country’s reasons for fighting in the war. The CPI also revealed the role that citizens could play in supporting the Allied cause. This new pro-war campaign was a hard shift from the United States’ former policy of “isolationism,” and lack of direct participation in the war. Under the direction of George Creel, the CPI began publishing propaganda in the form of posters, speeches, films, advertisements, and other varieties of mass media that were designed…
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Appealing to Immigrants
April 14, 2020
According to the census of 1910, in a total population of almost 92 million, 15 percent had been born outside of the United States. In the years prior to World War I, refugees fleeing the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Revolution, and anti-Semetic pogroms changed the demographics of the immigrant population as more people from Eastern and Southern Europe arrived on American shores. Census data from the early twentieth century shows the shift in immigration in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
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America’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide
April 13, 2020
On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire began an aggressive genocide campaign against its Armenian citizens. The Ottoman Empire’s instability, coupled with World War I military losses, brought long-standing tensions between the Turks and Armenians to a head. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians died as a result of the events between 1915 and 1923. Much of Turkey’s actions went unacknowledged, taking a backseat to the war.
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African Americans in World War I
April 13, 2020
Almost 400,000 African Americans served in the U.S. military during World War I. Millions more registered for the draft. 200,000 African Americans served overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces. President Woodrow Wilson deemed it a war to make the world “safe for democracy,” but what did he mean by democracy and who had access to that vision?
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