Why the Allies Fought: The Deeper Meanings of the WW2 Conflict

The Second World War was a global conflict between two groups of nations, but it was also a conflict between two economic systems, and two political ideologies.

On one side, there was the oppression and subjugation of nations: In Japan, the imperialist, nationalist, and militarist leaders, headed by Tojo, controlled the nation, to the detriment of ordinary Japanese people. In Italy, Mussolini’s fascists imposed conformity on the Italian people. In Russia, Stalin’s Soviet Socialism extracted compliance from citizens by terrorizing them. Hitler’s National Socialism enslaved the entire German nation and forced it to obey decrees from the government and from the party.

The people of Japan, Italy, Russia, and Germany were tyrannized by, in the words of Howard Zinn, “imperialism, racism, totalitarianism,” and “militarism.” The ideologies inflicted “unspeakable evil” on their own people, and then proceeded to make other nations the victims of their aggression.

England and France, joined later by the United States, were “fighting against racist totalitarianism,” as historian Mary Grabar explains. In the United States, African-Americans read and heard about Japan’s vicious racial hatred toward the Koreans and the Chinese. Black people in America absorbed this information with mixed emotions: they knew only too well the pain of such oppression, and felt a kinship with the Chinese and Koreans; many African-Americans were eager to join the U.S. military and liberate the victims of racism.

But Black people in the United States also knew that their own journey to legal equality was not yet over. Although slavery had been gone for seventy-eight years, measuring the span from the Empancipation Proclamation to Pearl Harbor, the final fulfillment of civil rights for African-Americans had not arrived by 1941.

Black Americans had made gains in those seventy-eight years, and they wanted to help oppressed people in other nations acquire those same gains; but Black Americans also wanted to continue their advancement to complete the last few steps toward full legal equality. The service of African-Americans in the U.S. military would yield a double benefit: not only would Black soldiers help to liberate the victims of National Socialism, but they would advance toward a better status by means of their military service. It was in the U.S. Army that African-Americans would attain more civil rights.

Not simply capitalism, but rather specifically free-market capitalism defeated the forces of National Socialism, Soviet Socialism, and Fascism. The free enterprise system was more flexible, more efficient, and more productive than the economic systems of Axis powers. So it was that Allies, which by war’s end included more than a dozen other countries, had economic advantages which were as important as the military ones.

Both politically and economically, the Allies came out of a long-standing cultural tradition which embraced equality and liberty. Writing about the U.S. war effort, Howard Zinn notes that “it was a war waged by a government whose chief beneficiary” was the ordinary citizen. By contrast, in Japan and Soviet Russia, “a wealthy elite” benefited from, and controlled, the government.

Japan’s war effort was “fought to benefit plutocrats,” as Mary Grabar notes. The aim of colonized eastern Asia was built around the desire for raw materials: oil, iron, steel, coal, etc.

Because the U.S. economy was structured around opportunity, motivated workers were able to outperform and outproduce other nations. Once the debate between the isolationists and interventionists had been resolved, entrepreneurship, creativity, and inventiveness flourished in the American business world.

Once the order was given to increase production for armaments and other military supplies, American factories were able to get close enough to meeting President Roosevelt's “seemingly impossible yearly production goals” to vaunt the Allies to victory, according to Victor Davis Hanson. The United States had “over twelve million in uniform,” but “suffered only about 416,000 combat casualties,” which was just slightly above “3 percent of those enrolled in the military” and was “proportionally the fewest combat casualties of the major powers.” American industries might have helped save American lives and win the war.

Japan’s attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was a clarifying moment. The isolationists and interventionists united, and, as Howard Zinn writes, “almost all Americans were now in agreement — capitalists, Communists, Democrats, Republicans, poor, rich, and middle class — that this was indeed a people’s war.”

Because the Allies had not only superior military, technological, and economic resources, but rather also a cultural foundation of equality and liberty — admittedly not always perfectly fulfilled — the war’s end meant not only the defeat of the opposing countries, but rather also “a blow to imperialism, racism, totalitarianism, militarism, in the world.”

Black people in the United States saw that the war effort, the effort to stop the aggression of National Socialism and Fascism, would not only contribute to the liberation of oppressed peoples in other countries, but it would also be instrumental in obtaining civil rights. As historian Mary Grabar writes, “African Americans were fighting for the right to fight.”

Years before the United States entered the war, black leaders were supporting bills by Congressman Hamilton Fish to expand the opportunities for African Americans in the military beyond the support services to which they were relegated. The exploits of black soldiers in the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the Mexican-American War, and in the Philippines were the subjects of lectures by black leaders that boosted the pride and morale of African Americans and also provided arguments for equal rights. In World War II, Africans Americans would once again exhibit their fighting ability, beginning with Dorie Miller on the ship West Virginia in Pearl Harbor rushing to wield an anti-aircraft gun (in spite of having been denied combat training), to the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion, the original “Black Panthers.” During 183 days of combat in the last two years of the war, the 761st “captured or liberated more than 30 major towns and four airfields,” “pierced the Siegfried line into Germany and fought in the Battle of the Bulge,” and liberated “at least one concentration camp, the Gunskirchen camp in Austria.”

The 761st Tank Battalion received the Distinguished Unit Citation.

Hope for advancement were rewarded when General Eisenhower, defying the segregationist edicts of FDR and of FDR’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. During the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945, Eisenhower needed maximum flexibility as he deployed and redeployed various units within the U.S. Army.

Roosevelt’s and Stimson’s segregation rules hampered Eisenhower’s ability to use his troops effectively. Violating the rules, Eisenhower assigned troops to various parts of the battle, regardless of their race. It was a major achievement in civil rights, as Black soldiers were able to fill new roles in the army, obtaining higher ranks and higher pay, and proving their skill and courage in combat.

After the war, African Americans voted enthusiastically for Eisenhower when he ran in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. Eisenhower, in turn, invited Martin Luther King to the White House.

Eisenhower worked with MLK and with Vice President Nixon to lobby Congress for the 1957 Civil Rights Act. They were successful, and together, the three of them also lobbied for the 1960 Civil Rights Act.

In WW2, the United States not only defeated the racism of Japan and of the Nazis, but they also advanced the cause of civil rights for African Americans.

Quickly Modernized: The U.S. Army During WW1

The U.S. Congress, persuaded by President Woodrow Wilson, declared war in April 1917. The first small groups of American soldiers arrived in Europe in June of that year. By October, enough U.S. soldiers were in France to have a significant impact on the fighting.

Most of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was employed in France alongside British and French units. They faced the Germans on the Western Front. The actions of the AEF decisively tipped the balance of the war, ensuring a quick end to the fighting and a defeat for the Germans.

The AEF was composed mainly of units from the U.S. Army, but also included U.S. Marine Corps units, as well as a few units from the U.S. Navy. General John Pershing was in command of the entire AEF, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Measured by their own national experience, Pershing and his staff viewed the AEF’s accomplishments with awe and pride. When the war ended, 1.3 million Americans had served at the front in twenty-nine combat divisions. These troops had provided the margin in numbers that allowed the Allies to grind the German army into surrender.

American involvement in WW1 coincided with a global pandemic. The number of soldiers who died from the virus was greater than the number who died in combat.

The bulk of the U.S. force arrived at the beginning of 1918. The entire war, from June 1914 to November 1918, lasted approximately 52 months. The AEF was greatly involved for approximately 11 months, or about 21% of the war.

In 200 days of combat, the Americans had lost 53,402 men killed in action or died of wounds. Over 200,000 more were wounded in action. Disease deaths, largely associated with the flu epidemic of 1918, claimed the lives of another 57,000 soldiers at home and abroad.

The United States Civil War had ended in 1865. For over fifty years, there had not been a major war. While WW1 involved the use of far more ammunition than the Civil War, but far fewer combat deaths.

Of the various engagements which the AEF experienced, the most significant was the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Almost all of the AEF fighting happened in France.

As amateur Civil War historians, some of Pershing’s officers could not help drawing comparisons with their Army’s heroic past. In area and type of terrain, the Meuse-Argonne operation resembled the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. There the similarities ended, as the AEF’s struggle made the Wilderness pale by comparison. The Wilderness lasted four days, the Meuse-Argonne forty-seven. The Union Army fought with 100,000 men, the AEF with 1.2 million. In the course of the campaign Pershing’s artillerymen fired a tonnage of munitions that exceeded the totals fired by the entire Union Army during the course of the Civil War. gm About half the total AEF casualties occurred in the Meuse-Argonne.

Because the total number of casualties sustained by the U.S. Army was small fraction of the deaths sustained by British, German, French, and Russian armies, and because the AEF had been engaged in combat for only a fifth of the total duration of the war, the major European nations regarded the U.S. as a minor player in the war, and therefore thought that the U.S. should have only a minor role in the writing of the peace treaties that would determine the postwar world.

The Treaty of Versailles is the most famous peace agreement, and did much to shape international relations going forward from 1919. But there were several other treaties which answered some of the questions which Versailles left open.

As Woodrow Wilson learned at Versailles, however, the Allies did not view the American achievements and sacrifices with similar reverence. In a four-and-a-half-year war that claimed the lives of 8 million soldiers, the United States fought late and at relatively small cost.

The United States had spent billions of dollars on WW1, and was left with a massive debt at the end of the war. Not only was the U.S. effort underappreciated by the European powers, but it was also not well understood by the American public at home.

Few Americans had any military experience, and none had experienced a war as massive and as technologically advanced as WW1. The public was informed mainly, almost exclusively, by newspaper accounts of the fighting in France, and could not conceptualize the difficulties entailed in this type of war, as Allen Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Despite its profligate mobilization, the United States bore only one-fifth of the Allies’ war costs. Quickly forgetting their relief at the arrival of the AEF’s big divisions in 1918, Allied generals minimized the American contribution to the final victory. The Germans convinced themselves after the war that they had been defeated by the war-weary revolutionaries at home and the British at the front. As the AEF’s generals expected, few of their countrymen appreciated the scope and complexity of the American war effort.

Historians in later years were able to appreciate the crucial role which the U.S. played in the war.

If the AEF had a pivotal role in the war, the war also had a major role in the history of the U.S. Army. In a short period of time, the army was modernized. Prior to WW1, technologies like airplanes, machine guns, tanks, poison gas, etc., were marginally present, if at all, in the U.S. military.

Yet for all the AEF’s problems, its role in the Allied victory was crucial, and the Americans who fought in France, professionals and citizen-soldiers alike, knew they had participated in a critical turning point in their nation’s military history. They had gone to Europe, and they had fought a mass, industrialized war with allies against a modern national army noted for its expertise. “Over there,” they had seen the face of future war.

A song titled “Over There” was popular during the war, referring to the scene of the action in France. The physical distance — thousands of miles — between the homes of Americans and the battlefields of WW1 was matched by the developmental distance traversed by the army: from a nineteenth-century military centered around the horse to a twentieth-century military centered around mechanized warfare.

American soldiers returned home with both physical and psychological scars. Some additionally suffered lifelong neurological damage from poison gas attacks. The ordinary soldier may not have understood the historical development in which he’d participated, but he understood the trauma and horror of having witnessed the violent loss of life on a massive scale.

Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism Fuels Racism and Racism Fuels Progressivism

One man has served as a symbol for two things: Woodrow Wilson is a symbol for the Progressivist movement, and he is a symbol for egregious racism. Harvard Professor Gautam Mukunda writes that Wilson’s “extreme racism” led him to “views and actions” that were and are “abhorrent.”

When President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House — the dinner took place in October 1901 — Woodrow Wilson was furious, and reacted by using hateful and inappropriate racial epithets. Wilson’s vulgar language was unacceptable by the social standards of his era, as Gautam Mukunda explains:

He discouraged Black students from attending Princeton and segregated the (previously integrated) federal workforce.

Wilson’s racism was perhaps the most obvious feature of his leadership of the Progressive movement, but it was not the only one. Other features of his career and his policies including violating the free speech rights of millions of Americans: During WW1, anyone who opposed Wilson’s actions could be arrested for merely expressing an opinion.

In fact, however, Wilson’s record as President was disastrous, and his failures were the foreseeable products of his own shortcomings, not difficult circumstances or bad luck.

Wilson’s attitudes and actions were an extension of Progressivism and of the Democratic Party. Wilson was supported and elected by a movement and by a party that gave in to its deepest desires.

As a candidate, Wilson was an impressive speaker and writer, giving the impression that he was wise and intelligent, and that he would make thoughtful decisions. The record of his choices, however, proved problematic.

But his flaws stretch beyond bigotry. Understanding how someone like him could become President illuminates a common but all too often devastating mistake made in leader selection — picking someone based on their perceived talent instead of their real record. This creates the potential for a high impact, but often disastrous, leader.

Wilson was shockingly unprepared. He had never been employed in any kind of business. He had no military experience. His one attempt at real, for-profit activity, had been to try to start a law firm. It went bankrupt in less than a year.

Wilson was the least experienced person ever elected President. When he received the nomination his only political experience was 18 months as Governor of New Jersey. He was a darling of Progressives because of his attempted reforms at Princeton. He passed significant reforms as Governor, but so alienated the legislature’s Democrats — his own party — that they worked to elect Republicans in the 1911 legislative election just to harm Wilson.

His racism and his disregard for individual political liberty made Woodrow Wilson a rockstar among the Progressives and in the Democratic Party. A small handful of Democrats understood Wilson’s lack of leadership skills, but the majority of people in his party were unaware of Wilson’s poor management habits.

Wilson’s rhetorical skills and popularity with Progressives nonetheless made him a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Although he was not expected by anyone — including himself — to win, after 45 ballots a series of backroom maneuvers threw him the nomination.

“The bigotry that stained his presidency” was only one of Wilson’s flaws. “Wilson’s Presidency was tumultuous” and included

raids by his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, which interned thousands of people without trials. The most important events, however, were unquestionably America’s entry into the First World War and Wilson’s role in the peace negotiations afterwards. His failed attempt to secure Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and American entry into the League of Nations crippled the League and the post-war settlement, setting the stage for the Second World War.

Woodrow Wilson was not only a bitter racist; he not only disregarded individual political liberty; he also was temperamental and highly defensive about any form of criticism or dissent regarding his own views or actions. Not only did he reject criticism from the Republican Party, but he reacted in extreme ways to even the slightest questioning from within his own Democratic Party or from within his own Progressivist movement. His ego was large and fragile; he was a “prima donna.”

Not Fast Enough: North American Colonies Want Quicker Action Toward Abolition

By the mid 1600’s, the thirteen British colonies in North America had developed their own identity. From 1607, when Jamestown was founded as an English outpost, and saw itself as nothing more, to the 1650s, when Roger Williams was the leader of the abolitionist colony of Rhode Island, the “colonists” became “Americans.” While they saw themselves as part of the British Empire — indeed, the appeals made to London in the early 1770s were appeals made on the basis of British citizenship — they began also to see themselves as Americans.

From the earliest moments of this identity and its formation, Africans and African-Americans were part of it. Not only were people of African descent, but also, and especially, free Africans were integral to the new concept of “American.”

By 1641, at the latest, free Africans were understood as having a status which was different and separate from enslaved people. The contrast of “free” Africans to enslaved Africans contained within itself the seeds of a powerful anti-slavery movement which would emerge within a decade, as historian Paul Heinegg documents:

When they arrived in Virginia, Africans joined a society that was divided between master and white servant, a society with such contempt for white servants that masters were not punished for beating them to death. They joined the same households with white servants — working, eating, sleeping, getting drunk, and running away together. Some of these first African slaves became free. John Geaween (Gowen), “a negro servant,” was free by 1641. Francis Payne of Northampton County paid for his freedom about 1650 by purchasing three white servants for his master’s use. Emanuell Cambow (Cumbo), “Negro,” was granted fifty acres in James City County in 1667. John Harris, “negro,” was free by 1668 when he purchased fifty acres in York County.

The fact that “free” Africans — and even at this early stage, it is reasonable to speak of them as African-Americans — were able to marry, own land, be named as owners of property in legal documents, and even interact in the larger, English-dominated society, fanned the flames of the abolitionist movement.

The abolitionists pointed to the fact that the free Blacks were acknowledged as having the full legal status of persons. Enslaved Blacks, the abolitionists reasoned, were therefore logically also fully persons in an legal or moral sense, and slavery therefore a violation of their status as persons.

As free Africans grew in number, and further established themselves in society, their very existence was fuel to the anti-slavery movement. Paul Heinegg reports:

A number of men and women of African descent living on the Eastern Shore gained their freedom in the seventeenth century. There were at least thirty-three African Americans in Northampton County in the 1670s who were free, later became free, or had free children. They represented one-third of the taxable African Americans in the county. By the mid-seventeenth century, some free African Americans were beginning to be assimilated into colonial Virginia society. Many were the result of mixed-race marriages. Francis Payne was married to a white woman named Amy by September 1656 when he gave her a mare by deed of jointure. Elizabeth Key, a “Mulatto” woman whose father had been free, successfully sued for her freedom in Northumberland County in 1656 and married her white attorney, William Greensted. Francis Skiper was married to Ann, a African American woman, before February 1667/8 when they sold land in Norfolk County. Peter Beckett, a “Negro” slave taxable from 1671 to 1677 in Northampton County, married Sarah Dawson, a white servant. Hester Tate, an English woman servant in Westmoreland County, had several children by her husband James Tate, “a Negro slave to Mr. Patrick Spence,” before 1690.

Among the thirteen colonies, there were regional variations. While Virginia, generally reckoned to be a “southern” colony, was home to free Blacks by, at the latest, 1641, the northern colonies tended to be more energetic in their abolitionist tendencies than some of the southern colonies, as Paul Heinegg notes:

The history of free African Americans families in colonial New York and New Jersey is quite different from Virginia and North Carolina. Most were descended from slaves freed by the Dutch West India Company between 1644 and 1664 or by individual owners.

The abolitionist movement was not patient. It quickly took action. While seeing themselves as British subjects, the colonists perceived British headway toward ending slavery as too slow. In a truly revolutionary step, Roger Williams, a pastor and theologian, led the Rhode Island colony to abolish slavery, as John Barry explains:

Rhode Island demonstrated that the seeds Williams had planted had taken deep root, and that the plantation believed in freedom as a principle. It outlawed slavery — an extraordinary action, likely the first in the world, and a reflection of the beliefs of both Williams and Gorton. On May 23, 1652, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed the following law.

Roger Williams was involved in a variety of spiritual groups: the Anglican Church, the Puritan Separatists known as Pilgrims, and the Baptists. While he was connected to each of these groups, he was not clearly a member of any of them. Rather, he sought to pursue the clearest form of the Christian faith that he could find.

It was his goal of genuine Christianity that caused Roger Williams to steadfastly oppose slavery. Under his influence, the colony of Rhode Island adopted the following law:

Whereas, there is a common course practiced amongst English men to buy “negers,” to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventing of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no black mankind or white be forced to covenant bond or otherwise to serve any man or his assignes longer than ten years, or until they come to be twenty four years of age if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the liberties of this Colony; and at the end or term of ten years to set them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them go free or shall sell him away elsewhere to that end that they may be enslaved to others for a longer time, he or they shall forfeit to the Colony forty pounds.

As historian John Barry notes, “the law was never repealed.” More than two hundred years before the U.S. Civil War, before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and before the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, free Blacks had established themselves as part of North American society, and their presence had energized the abolitionist movement to the point that it outpaced British steps toward ending slavery.

It is a deep historical irony that the North American colonies, and later the United States, had at first moved faster than England toward abolishing slavery. It is ironic because England later achieved this goal ahead of America: England and the British Empire ended slavery decades before the United States did.

In 1815, the Vienna Congress ended slavery in much of territories controlled by Britain and by various European nations. While slavery was not an institution in Britain, and not an institution in Europe, it existed in other parts of the world where Britain and Europe had influence.

So it was that between 1815 and the final actions taken Prime Minister William Wilburforce, slavery was ended in those parts of the world controlled by European or British interests. Wilburforce had led a series of Parliamentary actions against slavery from 1807 to 1834.

Slavery in the United States did not end until the Emanicpation Proclamation of 1863 and the war’s end in 1865.

The end of slavery in the United States motivated other nations to end slavery: Brazil ended slavery in 1888, Cuba in 1886, Madegascar in 1896, Egypt in 1904, China in 1909, Thailand in 1905, Morocco in 1925, and Yemen in 1962.

Redesigning the Military: America at the Turn of the Century

In the late 1800s, the United States had to choose how much money to spend on its navy, and how much on its army. Did the nation need a large army, or a large navy, or both?

Encouraged by the Monroe Doctrine, America had taken on the role, repeatedly, of defending smaller nations in South America and in Central America from the imperialism of powerful Asian and European nations. Likewise, America defended some islands in the Pacific.

It seemed, therefore, that a large navy was the most useful form of military power. So American political leaders focused on paying for large and powerful fleets of battleships to be built. The following paragraph from a history books talks about this time around the turn of the century:

With uncharacteristic restraint, Theodore Roosevelt assessed American military policy at the dawn of a new century: “I believe we intend to build up a good navy, but whether we build up even a respectable little army or not I do not know; and if we fail to do so, it may well be that a few years hence ... we shall have to learn a bitter lesson....” Even though he had more insight into world politics than most of his countrymen, Roosevelt could not have predicted in 1900 that in less than two decades the United States would be embroiled in a world war or even that the nation would enter that war with standing forces beyond the imagination of policymakers in the nineteenth century.

As military technology modernized, the navy went from wooden ships to steel ships, from medium-sized ships to huge battleships, and from sailing ships to ships with powerful engines. The increased sophistication required “standing” military forces.

A “standing” navy or a “standing” army means having a large number of trained soldiers and sailors, and equipment for them, even during years of peace when there is no warfare. The opposite of a “standing” military is to have very few soldiers and sailors, and very little equipment, and then to try to get all of that together quickly when a war begins.

Because of the increasing complexity of military systems, it was not possible to quickly assemble an army and a navy on short notice. The nation needed to keep soldiers, sailors, and their equipment ready at all times.

The vast distances across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans kept America safe from attacks on the east coast and the west coast. Good relationships with Canada and Mexico kept America safe from the north and the south. Although there had been tensions and brief skirmishes with Mexico, there had been no threat of real war with Mexico for nearly a century. The United States felt that it did not need a large army to defend itself. It would rely on a navy for defense.

Officers in the army and navy gained knowledge about their equipment, and about tactical ways to use that equipment. This required the political leaders to trust the military more, because the politicians could not be expected to understand the technical details about the equipment and its use.

The political leader kept control over when and where the military would be used: this is called “civilian control” because a political leader is not allowed to be a member of the military, and the military leaders are not allowed to be elected to government offices. Military leaders were and are not engaged in the political process, and remain neutral in elections and in debates between political parties. Both Democrats and Republicans can trust the military, because it is neutral. Here's another paragraph from a history book:

However inadequate those forces were, they represented a fundamental change in American policy. The shift in policy produced an essential dependence upon a standing battlefleet to protect the United States from foreign invasion and reduced dependence upon coastal defense artillery and fortifications, backed by military forces. It also increased dependence upon the Navy and the regular Army for military tasks beyond the continental United States. At the same time, the political elite gained increased confidence in the skill and political neutrality of the Army and Navy officer corps and became more willing to institutionalize military advice and accept military professionalism as compatible with civilian control. Both groups shared an interest in the reform of the militia as the nation’s reserve force for land operations and the creation of federal reserve forces for both naval and military mobilization in case of a major war. They also urged the accelerated application of new technology to military operations, especially improved ordnance, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, and electronic communications.

From the early history of the United States, going back to the 1770s, reserve forces called “militias” had been maintained by local governments: by cities, counties, and states. As a result of the higher levels of technology, there was a trend toward having the national government supervise and organize reserve forces. This allowed the reserves to be trained and equipped in the same way across the entire nation, so that when needed, soldiers from Massachusetts could work efficiently with soldiers from Wisconsin, and soldiers from Connecticut could work efficiently with soldiers from Minnesota, for example.

As civilian political leaders trusted military officers, and worked with them, both groups saw that planning and developing for new technology would be an important feature of the military in the future. Horses would be replaced by trucks and tanks. Hand-carried notes would be replaced by telephones, telegraphs, and radio. Airplanes would play an important role in modern warfare.

The United States had no major wars between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of World War One in 1914. The Spanish-American war had been a small operation. Even though there were no big wars during this era, the American military was redesigned into a more modern organization, both in terms of technology, and in terms of its management, planning, and administration.

The Spanish-American War Begins

By the late 1890s, the Spanish Empire included Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, along with various other territories around the world. The people in Cuba wanted to be independent; they did not wish to remain a colony of Spain.

In the United States, people read about Cuba’s struggle for freedom. Americans had sympathy for Cuba, because the United States had been England’s colony and had to fight for its independence, just as Cuba was Spain’s colony and was now fighting for its independence.

Although America had sympathy for Cuba, it did not immediately help Cuba with military aid in its struggle. Two events would change the minds of Americans: First, newspaper reports revealed that Spain had begun rounding up Cubans, placing them into concentration camps, and committing inhumane atrocities. Second, an American battleship parked in a Cuban harbor met a tragic end.

In January 1898, the naval ship USS Maine was sent to Cuba by President William McKinley. The ship was there to protect U.S. citizens who were in Cuba, and also to take some or all of those citizens back to the United States, so that they could be safely away from the fighting in Cuba.

The United States was still not part of the fighting. The ship was in Havana Harbor simply to protect and transport U.S. citizens. That changed suddenly, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

On the night of February 15, 1898, a Marine bugler played “Taps” aboard USS Maine, anchored in Havana’s harbor since late January. Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, the ship’s commander, finished writing a letter as the notes drifted off into the evening stillness. Just as he reached for an envelope, “a bursting, rending, and crashing roar of immense volume” rocked the ship, which trembled, listed to port, and settled into the mud. Out of 354 officers and men on board, 266 died in the explosion. What caused the disaster? No one knew for sure, but one thing was certain: The incident made war between the United States and Spain more likely.

More than 100 years later, the exact cause of the explosion remains uncertain. Did Spain attack the ship, fearing that the U.S. would use it to support the Cuba rebels? Did the Cubans themselves do it, hoping that the U.S. would assume it was done by Spain? Or was it simply an accident, a mechanical failure in the ship which allowed the coal and gunpowder in the ship to catch fire?

The ship’s destruction caused increasing tensions between Spain and the United States. In April 1898, the U.S. Congress confirmed a decision that the U.S. would not attempt to annex Cuba. (To “annex” means to take possession of land: Congress was saying that America wanted Cuba to be free and independent, and not controlled by the U.S.) At the same time, Congress also said that Spain must stop its military aggression toward Cuba. This was an application of the Monroe Doctrine.

In that same month, as a response, Spain declared war on the United States. The Spanish-American War had begun.

The war was brief. It ended in August 1898.

At war’s end, Cuba became a free and independent nation, and would enjoy that freedom for the next sixty years, until it was taken over by the international communist conspiracy.

Spain also surrendered three other territories to the U.S.: Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.

The United States developed a plan to make the Philippines into its own independent country, so that it would not be a part of the United States.

In the United States at the time, there was a strong anti-imperialist political movement, which argued that America should help small nations become independent, and that America should not try to annex these small nations. So, when America had a chance to take over Cuba and the Philippines, it didn’t. Instead, it helped those nations become their own countries.

Guam and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, remained part of the United States.

The Spanish-American War was brief: it lasted less than four months. But it changed the world, and today places like Guam, Cuba, The Philippines, and Puerto Rico are still shaped by this war.

Urbanization in America Between 1865 and 1900: Changing Technology, Changing Lifestyles

The United States became an independent and sovereign country in 1776, less than 4% of the nation’s population lived in cities. By the year 2020, more than 80% of the people lived in urban areas. This change affected society, culture, and technology.

When the nation began, the vast majority of citizens lived on farms. They could largely determine their own schedules. They decided when to chop wood, take care of the animals, tend the crops in the fields, and do housework. Farming families didn’t often look at their clocks.

When most people began living in cities, their schedule was determined by the starting times of the schools they attended, the streetcars and trolleys they rode, the opening and closing hours of stores and shops, and the working hours set by their employers. Clocks became important.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the urbanization trend accelerated. While cities had grown slightly until that year, they expanded dramatically afterward.

This sudden growth was due in part to technology.

Farmhouses were rarely more than two stories tall. Early cities often featured five-storied buildings, and the invention of the elevator suddenly allowed for ten- and twenty-storied buildings.

Large-scale industrial factories became common in cities after 1865. This created a need for workers. Thousands of people moved to cities and got jobs in factories.

The need for workers created opportunities for individuals and families to improve their lives. A steady wage from a factory job, combined with lower prices for ordinary products, lured people from the poor parts of the country. Prices were lower because industrialization allowed for the mass production of basic goods, as historian Wilfred McClay writes:

In 1790, 3.3 percent of the population lived in cities, defined as a population of eight thousand or more. By 1890, that number was 33 percent. The nation grew, but cities grew faster; the nation’s population increased by 12 times between 1800 and 1890, but the population of cities increased by 87 times. By 1890, there were not merely six cities but 448 cities with greater than eight thousand in population. And there were six metropolises by 1900 with populations totaling more than a half million. Much of this growth took place in the postwar years; Chicago tripled its population between 1880 and 1900, while New York grew from two million to three and a half million in the same years.

People moved to the cities not only from other parts of the United States, but also from other countries around the world. A new wave of immigrants came to America. Until the Civil War, most immigrants came from northern and western Europe. They were called the “Old Immigration.”

After the Civil War, people from southern and eastern Europe began coming to America. They were called the “New Immigration.”

There were also immigrants from Japan and China.

Many immigrants faced difficulties when they first arrived. Some could not speak English. Others had no money at all. Sometimes, their new neighbors — people who’d already lived in the United States for a while — were not happy to see them make a new home here.

But in the long run, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, as Wilfred McClay explains:

Why did they come? Some came for the same reasons that immigrants had always come to America: to escape the poverty, famine, and religious or political persecution of their native lands. But many more were pulled to America by its promise than were pushed to it by the conditions in their homelands. Those who had seen relatives become successful in America were inclined to follow in their wake, and in time whole extended families were affected. Real wages were relatively higher in the United States than in Europe, and burgeoning American industries, ever in need of fresh sources of unskilled labor, were only too happy to appeal to members of economically struggling groups in European countries with the promise of steady employment and an ability to rise in the world. Such companies sought out immigrants in their native lands and actively recruited them to come to America and work in the steel mills and on the railroads. Many did just that.

“In the experiences of these people,” McClay says, industrialization, urbanization, and immigration converged. To tell the story about why and how large cities grew in America, one must also tell the story about technological developments, and about immigrants from other nations.

New technology like the electric lights, telephones, and recorded music were a part of these large, new, and growing cities, as were the people who found opportunities for a better life by moving into those cities.

By the year 1900, a new way of life — an urban life in which people rode powered streetcars, spoke on telephones, listened to recorded music, had electric lights after dark — a life which was scheduled and organized by the operating hours of schools, stores, shops, factories, cable cars, and trams — was offering serious competition to the agricultural way of life. Life on a family farm, which had once been the only option for the majority of Americans, was now merely one option — and a shrinking one at that.