In this chapter, we examine the complicated circumstances that led the United States into the war and share the wartime experiences of American men and women overseas and at home. We will study not only military actions but also the impact of the war on domestic policies and on the lives of ordinary Americans, including the migration of African Americans into northern cities. The war cut off immigration from Europe and led to a policy of immigrant restriction in the next decade. The war left a legacy of prejudice and hate and raised the basic question, could the tenets of American democracy, such as freedom of speech, survive participation in a major war? The chapter concludes with a look at the idealistic efforts to promote peace at the end of the war and the disillusion that followed. Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, which sought to make the world safe for democracy, marked a watershed in the relationship of the United States to the world. The Great War was global war in every sense, and it thrust the United States into the role of leadership on the world scene as an interventionist savior of democratic values, but many Americans were reluctant to accept that role. But whether they liked it or not, the world was a different place in 1919 than it had been in 1914 and that would have a profound influence on American lives.
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