CHAPTER XXI: THE GREAT WAR
The City of Lights Goes Dark
When the Germans assaulted their former British allies across the Orient, German troops also stormed west and swept across France in a desperate bid to capture Paris as quickly as possible. As always, Germany wanted the war concluded by Christmas. Although tensions were high and concerns apparent, French forces were also caught flat-footed by Germany’s lightning strike. French troops still stationed in Italy and across Italian North Africa could only read newspapers and listen to the rare radio in horror as their beloved fatherland was being invaded by the barbaric “Huns.”
German troops rapidly fanned across northern France and then reorganized for a concentrated assault on Paris. The French put up a noble resistance, but Paris fell on September 19 to the German juggernaut. French forces called up from North Africa were racing north and Italy, jumping for joy at the turn of events, pressed against the early British and French peace claims. Italy saw the sudden change of events as an opportunity to save its crumbling empire. The last thing that Britain and France needed now, was to continue its occupation of Italian territory across North Africa and Northern and Southern Italy. Italy petitioned for a complete restoration of the Italian homeland with only minor losses to its African holdings; both sides were happy. The allies because they needed to rapidly free up forces for the new war with Germany and the Italians because it preserved their great power status; their North African empire remained, by and large, intact. Italy was entirely preserved. And the sudden resurgence of Italian integrity warded off Austrian gazing.
Paris, abandoned as the Germans closed in on the city.
The War for Righteousness
As America declared war and joined the Allied war effort in Europe on November 19, 1914. A strong wave of anti-German sentiment that rocked the country. Although many patriotic German-Americans were among the first to sign up for the war, to prove their patriotism and loyalty to the United States, at the recruiting offices German-Americans who had last names sound “too German-like” had them changed to more Americanized (English) names. The nascent film industry and radio depicted Germany as a cruel and vindictive place. Music from men like Beethoven and Mozart were banned across America. Even German foods were renamed.
The strongest wing in American society that promoted the war effort was the American clergy associated with the pro-reform Social Gospel movement. American Protestant clergymen were quick to highlight Christ as the Suffering Servant, who would bear the iniquities of the world on his shoulders and die so that the world could be saved. This rhetoric explicitly identified the salvationist cause of Christ with the cause of the United States. It was an interesting cross of gospel and democratic politics into a new state religion. The United States should, and must, suffer so that the salvation of the twin pillars of democracy and liberalism could be preserved (it is important to remember that the development of democracy and liberalism is closely tied to the Protestant Reformation moreover than the Ancient Greeks). Thus, the power of institutional religion gave America her needed jolt to become enthusiastic about the war and fighting for the preservation of God, democracy, and an entire way of life!
The headline of the New York American joyfully proclaiming the message that the United States had declared war on Germany.
Indeed, the Great War was itself incorporated into the entire spirit and age of reform. This war, was itself, a manifestation of the reforming spirit. Now was the opportunity to reform the world from war, rid its possibility from existence. The war also posed the opportunity to reform political-societies and economies along liberal-parliamentarian and democratic lines with regulated, to be sure, middle-class enterprise the driving engine of economic growth instead of large corporations and trading monopolies.
Richard Gamble put it this way:
Primarily, these religious progressives interpreted the First World War in light of their social gospel theology. The liberal clergy were not merely lackeys in the [Roosevelt] administration’s attempt at social control, nor were they caught unaware and unprepared by the outbreak of the war; rather, these forward-looking clergy embraced the war as a chance to achieve their broadly defined social gospel objectives. In the same way that American imperialism at the turn of the century was, as historian William E. Leuchtenburg argued, not a betrayal of domestic reform idealism but rather the expression of the same expansive, interventionist spirit on an international scale, so too the progressive clergy’s enthusiasm for American participation in the Great War did not contradict their progressive theology.
In fact, all sectors of American society were mobilized by Roosevelt to guide America into the war and have her play the redemptive and leading role in democratic progressivism’s triumph. Churches, as already mentioned, were the leading champions of the war for democracy and cleansing the “Huns” and “Judases” (based on Germany’s betrayal of the allies) from Europe. Businesses and economics were reorganized along war-lines, the peace economy was only ever fairly regulated; now, the war economy would be an intimate participant with government programming and action. Nature itself was enlisted as a victim to be saved. Given Roosevelt’s conservationist policies, the Roosevelt Administration propagated imagery of nature dilapidated and destroyed at the hands of Krupp guns and German aggression. The shipping industry was also mobilized; the war and its buildup gave Roosevelt the blank check needed to formalize America’s new naval preeminence that was stymied by the Bryan Administration. The agrarian economy, long the bastion of populist politics and sentiment, could be collectivized for the war effort. The mass media too was enlisted to drum up support for the war. ENLIST! PATRIOTIC DUTY! GOD’S CALL! All such headlines swept the front pages of the newspapers. Even music, theatre, and art was called upon to send Captain America “over there!”
In one sweeping move, the progressives finally had the opportunity to orchestrate the reorganization of the United States along the progressive, urban, middle-class, internationalist, and industrial lines long sought but prevented by their populist and agrarian foes. The “new nationalism” would be the middle-class urban, forward-looking, social Protestantism championed by America’s intelligentsia and embodied by the spirit of Roosevelt himself. “We stand at Armageddon, and battle for the LORD!”[1]
[1] In real life, Roosevelt said this quote during his convention speech in 1912 when standing as the Progressive Party candidate for the Presidency.
SUGGESTED READING
Richard Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation
Richard Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation
- 2
