[1914 - 1929] A Global Stage: War and Prosperity

In the summer of 1914, while the old empires of Europe spiraled into a catastrophic war, the United States of America was a nation holding its breath. Across the vast expanse of the Atlantic, it watched, officially neutral, a stance championed by President Woodrow Wilson who had won re-election on the slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War." For most Americans, the conflict was a distant, tragic affair. Daily life was still governed by the rhythms of farm, factory, and the burgeoning cities where new steel-framed buildings scraped the sky. Yet, the currents of the modern world were pulling America closer to the heart of the storm. The nation’s powerful industrial engine was already feeding the Allied war machine with loans and munitions, tying its economic fate to an Allied victory whether it wished to or not. The tipping point came on May 7, 1915. A German U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, sending nearly 1,200 souls, including 128 Americans, to a watery grave. The act sent a shockwave of outrage across the country. Still, neutrality held, but it was a frayed and fragile thing. The final rupture came in 1917 with the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram, a secret German proposal to Mexico to join the war against the U.S. The gamble backfired spectacularly. On April 6, 1917, America’s patience ran out. Congress declared war. The United States was unprepared for a conflict of this scale. It had to build a modern army from scratch. The Selective Service Act was passed, and over 24 million men registered for the draft. Ultimately, more than 4.7 million Americans would serve in what became known as the Great War. On the home front, the nation transformed into a single, massive engine of war. Factories that once made corsets now produced artillery shells. Citizens were urged to buy "Liberty Bonds" to finance the fight, and propaganda posters with piercing slogans like "I Want YOU for U.S. Army" became iconic. American soldiers, nicknamed "Doughboys," fresh-faced and determined, began arriving in France in force by 1918. Their arrival tipped the scales, injecting vital manpower into the exhausted Allied lines and helping to break the final German offensives. But victory came at a staggering cost. The war claimed the lives of over 116,000 American soldiers. As they returned home, they brought with them not just victory, but a silent, invisible killer: the Spanish Flu. The 1918 influenza pandemic swept across the globe, and in America, it killed an estimated 675,000 people, far more than the war itself. It was a brutal end to a brutal conflict. The end of the war did not bring peace, but a new kind of turmoil. President Wilson sailed to Paris with a grand vision of a new world order, his "Fourteen Points" advocating for self-determination and a League of Nations to prevent future wars. But the victorious European powers, scarred and vengeful, demanded harsh reparations from Germany. The resulting Treaty of Versailles was a bitter compromise that Wilson struggled to sell back home. A weary America, disillusioned with European politics, turned inward. The Senate rejected the treaty and, with it, membership in the League of Nations, marking a retreat into isolationism. This unease was compounded by economic anxieties and a profound fear of Bolshevism following the Russian Revolution. This "Red Scare" fueled a wave of paranoia, leading to the Palmer Raids, where thousands of suspected radicals and immigrants were arrested and hundreds deported, often with little regard for due process. The idealism of the war effort had curdled into suspicion and fear. Out of this anxious peace, however, an era of unprecedented energy and prosperity erupted. The 1920s didn't just begin; they roared. It was the Jazz Age, a decade of flappers and financiers, of speakeasies and skyscrapers. The economic boom was powered by new technologies and a revolutionary idea: mass consumerism. No one embodied this more than Henry Ford. His relentless optimization of the assembly line drove the price of a Model T automobile from over $800 down to under $300. Suddenly, the freedom of personal travel was no longer a luxury for the rich. Cars clogged city streets, created new suburbs, and forever changed the American landscape. Families who had never traveled more than twenty miles from home could now explore the country. This new consumer appetite was fed by another transformative technology: the radio. By the end of the decade, over 12 million American homes had a radio set, listening to the same news, advertisements, and music, creating a new, shared national culture. In 1927, sound came to the movies with "The Jazz Singer," and Hollywood’s golden age began. Society itself seemed to be remaking its rules. The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 granted women the right to vote, a monumental victory of the suffrage movement. A new archetype emerged: the "flapper," a young woman with a bobbed haircut, a shortened hemline, and a defiant spirit who smoked, drank, and challenged traditional norms. This cultural dynamism was nowhere more vibrant than in the New York neighborhood of Harlem. Fueled by the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities, the Harlem Renaissance was an extraordinary explosion of Black art, literature, and music. The syncopated, improvisational rhythms of jazz, born in New Orleans, became the soundtrack of the decade, spilling out of Harlem clubs and into the mainstream. Yet, a deep shadow ran beneath the glittering surface of the Roaring Twenties. The 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, had outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. This "noble experiment" of Prohibition was a catastrophic failure. Instead of creating a more moral society, it fueled a vast criminal underworld. Illegal bars called speakeasies flourished in every city, and bootleggers like the notorious Al Capone in Chicago built vast, violent empires on illegal liquor, earning millions and corrupting law enforcement. The decade also saw a dark resurgence of intolerance. A new Ku Klux Klan emerged, expanding its platform of hate beyond African Americans to include Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. Its membership swelled into the millions, a chilling testament to the anxieties simmering beneath the decade’s confident veneer. For many, especially in the gleaming towers of Wall Street, the party seemed as if it would never end. The stock market became a national obsession. Stories of ordinary people—teachers, waiters, factory workers—getting rich overnight were common. People bought stocks "on margin," borrowing up to 90% of the purchase price, betting on a future that could only go up. The market climbed to dizzying, unsustainable heights, detached from the real value of the companies it represented. The confidence was intoxicating, blinding. But in the autumn of 1929, the foundation began to tremble. On October 24th, "Black Thursday," the market plunged, sparking widespread panic. Bankers pooled their resources to stop the bleeding, creating a temporary rally. It was a false dawn. On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the floor gave way completely. On "Black Tuesday," the market collapsed in a frenzy of selling. Sixteen million shares were traded as fortunes built over a decade were wiped out in a matter of hours. The roar of the twenties fell silent, replaced by the stunned disbelief of a nation waking from a spectacular dream to face the harsh, cold reality of the Great Depression.