Part 3

At the Brink

Narrator: 2 AM, September 26, 1918. Already the Great War was by far the most destructive conflict in human history. Nine million soldiers were dead, and six million civilians. President Woodrow Wilson had committed his country to this struggle in the belief that the United States could lead the world to a better future. But if Wilson was to shape the peace, American troops would have to play a decisive role in winning the war.

Jay Winter, Historian: The fundamental point is how do you get into a position of dominance at the peace treaty? And the answer is through the barrel of a gun.

Narrator: Eighteen months after Wilson had taken his country to war, the United States was finally ready to unleash its full might. The biggest army in American history stood silent and ready along a twenty-mile section of the Western Front known as the Meuse-Argonne. Suddenly, the sky overhead seemed to explode, as thousands of artillery pieces opened up at once. The men had never seen anything like it.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: The U.S. artillery alone fired more shells, more weight of fire power into the German lines in that first four hours than the entire Union army had fired during the entire Civil War.

Narrator: Three hours later, the bombardment lifted. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers clambered up the sides of their trenches and stumbled forward into the milky fog. They carried with them President Wilson’s dream of a bright and peaceful future.

The Voice of Hope

Jay Winter, Historian: Imagine yourself in 1918. You wish something good will come out of this nightmare. Something, anything. There is nobody in the world saying “there will be a dawn, we can find a peace that can survive, that we can say that perhaps some of these men died for the future.” And the only person who stood up and said something was Wilson. He took it on his own shoulders, a prophetic stance, a bit like Jeremiah. You know, “One day we shall see the light of dawn and peace striking our noble countryside.” It was bound to appeal to people who were looking for some degree of comfort in a world that had effectively gone mad.

Narrator: Woodrow Wilson had captured the world’s imagination in January with his Fourteen Points: a set of proposals that amounted to a framework for an age of peace. It hadn’t ended the war, but it had provided hope to people everywhere. The Fourteen Points were Wilson’s creation, but it was George Creel and his Committee on Public Information who had proclaimed it to the world. The CPI had been created to shape public opinion of the war at home and abroad. It did such thorough work that German soldiers advancing into Russian towns found walls plastered with Wilson’s Fourteen Points, in German, as well as Russian. Thanks to the CPI, Wilson had become a savior to friend and foe alike.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: The claims of the warring European powers just sounded hollow and bankrupt. And soldiers in the trenches and citizens of other countries had stopped listening to them, stopped believing them. And Wilson is able to speak with a fresh voice.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: That was ultimately the reason I think Woodrow Wilson got America into the war. If the world would buy his peace plan, then indeed we may have fought the war to end all wars.

Narrator: On September 27, the day after the beginning of the American offensive in France, Wilson was in New York City to deliver a speech at the Metropolitan Opera House. He hadn’t spoken publicly about the war in months. As Wilson walked onstage someone hailed him as “the greatest president the country ever had,” and the audience erupted in wild cheering. When the house finally quieted down, Wilson spoke about the meaning of the war. Like people all over the world, he believed that a tragedy of this scale could be justified only by a revolution in world affairs. “Common people have demanded,” Wilson announced, “that their governments declare what they are seeking in this war. Their leaders respond only in statesmen’s terms – in terms of territorial arrangements and divisions of power, and not in terms of justice and mercy and peace.” More and more, Wilson was taking on the role of spokesman for the common people of the world. “This is a people's war,” he warned. “Statesmen must follow or be broken.”

Michael Kazin, Historian: Wilson in a sense wanted to be president of the world. He had a near-Messianic view of his role in history. He believed that in effect he was doing God’s work.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: There was a kind of arrogance to Woodrow Wilson, there’s no question about that. It verges on his feeling he was in the confidence of God I think.

Jay Winter, Historian: Moral authority is a dangerous position to maintain. It gives the aura of sanctity to the cause of war, and any sanctification of war is bound to redound on the head of the man or woman who proclaims it.

Lost

Voice: Ralph John: With a parting word of warning from an officer to each man, up and over the top we went. It was an odd feeling. It didn't seem like fear, nor even dread, but just wonderment.

Narrator: Just five months before he jumped off with the first wave of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Private Ralph John had been working on his family’s farm in McIntosh, South Dakota. His training consisted of two days’ practice with a rifle and a short stint driving a bayonet into a mannequin. Then he was shipped out, handed a gas mask, and sent into battle.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: Ralph John was barely trained. But he was a little more adept at handling a weapon because he had spent considerable time in the forests of South Dakota so he was a little bit better off than some of the men were. Some of the men came to the front without complete uniforms, others showed up without rifles. A sergeant asked, “Where’s your rifles, did you lose them?” and they said, “No we were never given any.” and he said, “Go over anyway and pick up the first one that you see.”

Narrator: “A thick white fog seemed to close in from all sides,” one of John’s comrades recalled, “isolating our company entirely, and nullifying all the careful instructions about keeping in touch.” When they entered the woods on the other side of No Man’s Land, everything was strangely silent. Deeper into the Argonne Forest, though, the casualties began to mount.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: The Argonne Forest is a dense tangle. There are ridges and valleys all through it. A step on solid ground will be followed by a step where you’re sinking into your knees in slop. In some places it’s impossible to see more than 10 feet in any direction. It’s almost impenetrable. There were machine gun positions everywhere, trenches everywhere, there were sniper nests all over the place, there was barbed wire every step of the way.

Voice: Ralph John: We were crawling, searching for machine gun nests and routing them out. I didn't think anything of stepping over dead bodies of men with whom I had started out, or wading through a pool of blood. I can just see them drop, and hear their requests for help. But we had to go on and leave them lay.

Narrator: The one reed that Private John could cling to in this hellish forest was his commanding officer. Major Charles Whittlesey was earning the undying respect of his men as they somehow made their objectives, day after day. But in a week of fighting, the major had lost over half the men in his command. The survivors were famished, exhausted…and they had lost touch with the units on each flank.

Richard Slotkin, Historian: The problem in the Argonne Forest is no unit could maintain contact with the units on its flanks because the woods are just too thick and at this point, the units are so shrunk by casualties that they can’t cover as much front as they did at the start.

Narrator: Every step forward was taking them farther from the rest of the army. When Major Whittlesey pointed out the danger to his senior officer on the 2nd of October, the response bordered on a reprimand: he was to continue pushing forward "without regard to flanks or losses."

Richard Slotkin, Historian: Don’t worry about your flanks means if you get surrounded, tough. And the other part is no retreat. The American army has to prove its morale, and if you retreat, you discredit the army.

Narrator: "All right, I'll attack," Whittlesey replied, "but whether you'll hear from me again I don't know."

Voice: Ralph John: We had orders to advance straight north, but we run into fierce machine gun fire in thick woods. Major Whittlesey commanded us to dig in for the night. Early the next morning he sent men back to get orders, but they quickly returned saying they couldn't get through. We knew then that we were entirely cut off from all support, surrounded by the Germans. There were something over five hundred men, who would become known as the Lost Battalion.

Pershing Under Siege

Narrator: The Meuse-Argonne offensive was the culminating event of General John Pershing’s life. The map on the wall of his headquarters traced the boundaries of his world. The commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces marked the slightest change in the front lines and could reel off the position of every division. Pershing was worried: the advance had fallen far behind schedule. The general left his headquarters near the city of Verdun and ordered his driver to take him to one of the command posts near the front lines. Within minutes his car was jammed in a landscape of horses, vehicles, artillery, and troops. This was the lifeblood of Pershing’s army, and it had slowed almost to a stop. If the German planes got through, they could cut the supply lines entirely. Pershing faced the deepest crisis of his war.

Andrew Carroll, Writer: Pershing wasn’t one for showing emotion. And he knew how a commander’s presence affected the men, he told his other generals, don’t ever let your troops see you look disheartened or beaten because it’ll permeate through the entire army. So he always had to have this façade of strength.

Narrator: When President Wilson appointed Pershing to lead the American Expeditionary Forces, he had given him one assignment: the AEF must claim a prominent role in winning the war, so that the United States could shape the peace and the postwar world. Every aspect of national life had been turned to building an Army that could beat the Germans. By the fall of 1918 Pershing believed the AEF was finally ready to fight a major offensive on its own. He chose the sector between the Meuse River and the Argonne forest for his showpiece battle because it offered the best chance of ending the war in one blow.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: The master plan for Meuse Argonne offensive was to push forward and cut the main rail link between Germany and northern France — the main supply route. It was part of a larger offensive that everybody was involved in, to drive the Germans out once and for all.

Richard Rubin, Writer: The Germans took Meuse-Argonne in 1914 and the French tried to take it back in ’14 and ’15 and ’16 and ’17, but the defenses in the Argonne were seen at that point as insurmountable.

Narrator: Pershing’s plan called for his troops to cut through the German defenses in just three days. Instead of sitting in their trenches like European soldiers, Pershing believed his doughboys would sweep across the battlefield, overwhelming the enemy. In doing so they would avoid the horrendous casualties that Britain and France had suffered.

Dan Carlin, Podcast Producer: Pershing’s attitude is like they’re all doing it wrong. You know I mean with American riflemen and can-do and our history we’re going to go in there and we’re just going to show the Europeans how it’s done.

Narrator: From the moment the doughboys went over the top, nothing went according to plan. As Pershing could see, his own supply lines had seized up. Casualties were soaring. With every passing hour the Germans were bringing up more reinforcements. Soon Pershing’s army would be locked in a war of attrition. It was exactly the outcome he had sworn to avoid.

Richard Slotkin, Historian: Pershing believed that American riflemen would go in with their mobile tactics, swarming around pillboxes, knocking them out, moving on to the next line of entrenchments and they couldn’t get through the first line.

Dan Carlin, Podcast Producer: U.S. troops were audacious and brave — reckless some Germans called them — because they ran right into machine gun fire and they assaulted things head on often. The kind of casualties we suffered were unprecedented in U.S. history.

Narrator: By the time Pershing reached his forward command post his famous temper was well lost. Every commander was put on notice: any one who did not measure up would be relieved. “When men run away in front of the enemy,” Pershing ordered, “officers should stop them, to the point of shooting men down.” There could be no hesitation, no weakness.

Dan Carlin, Podcast Producer: Americans had to accustom themselves to the reality that it didn’t matter how great the American rifleman was, there wasn’t going to be any quick victory.

Jay Winter, Historian: The kind of warfare on the western front that the United States thought that it was going to fight, it didn’t find. It was the same war, the same bloodbath.

Walter Reed

Narrator: As the American offensive raged in France, civilians on the home front were coming to grips with an equally deadly enemy: influenza. Washington DC suffered so many fatal cases that the authorities closed the public schools. Saloons, churches, and theaters were shut down; public gatherings were prohibited. For Lillian Aubert, there was no avoiding the disease – she was an Army nurse at Walter Reed military hospital. Aubert had moved to Washington five months earlier. Back then the wartime bustle had been thrilling. Young women had crowded three to a bed in rooming houses and paid 25 cents to bathe at the Central High School pool. Military policemen with rifles and bayonets guarded the gates of the White House. Soldiers kept watch over the Potomac rail bridges and bunked in tents along the riverbank. Soon after Aubert began her work at Walter Reed, wounded soldiers began arriving from France. “Never think of these men as men to be pitied,” the nurses were told. “These are men to be proud of, to be envied.” The weapons that had transformed warfare also produced new types of casualties. Artillery caused 70% of the deaths in the Great War, often simply disintegrating a human being. More commonly, splinters of steel would spin off at low velocity, creating jagged wounds that were prone to infection. Amputation was the all-too-common result. At Walter Reed, ninety percent of the amputees needed re-amputation, cutting off the remnants of limbs that had become infected. Aubert nursed these men as they began once more the long nightmare of convalescence. Many would undergo it three, four, five times. Artillery damaged even the men it didn’t maim: fully one fifth of frontline hospital admissions were victims of a terrifying phenomenon called shell shock.

Richard Rubin, Writer: Artillery was always a matter of terror for the men in the trenches. There was absolutely nothing you could do to protect yourself. You had shelters that you could go into, but you didn’t know if they would hold up or not. And you didn’t know what you were facing until the shells started coming in and going off. You didn’t know if it was going to blow up on impact or if it was going to explode over your head. You didn’t know if it had shrapnel in it, you didn’t know if it had gas in it. This was something that soldiers had never faced to that extent before.

Narrator: Poison gas had been introduced by the Germans in 1915, but the Allies quickly caught on, and by 1918 it was everywhere. Gas was was rarely fatal, but it produced horrible wounds. Almost a third of the men in American hospitals were gas victims, and their condition was terrifying.

Edward A. Gutiérrez, Historian: Mustard gas is the most frightening chemical agent in World War I. It actually will damage the lungs, it’ll burn the eyes. Any exposed skin will burn. The most frightening thing about mustard gas is that it can settle into the ground and last for weeks, in the leaves, in the grass. And the doughboys would just run across, not even knowing that there was gas in the area and they’d release the gas again. And that gas was just as toxic and just as effective.

Narrator: Even as Lillian dealt with the flood of wounded men, she began hearing talk of an epidemic that was wreaking havoc on the American Army in France.

Nancy K. Bristow, Historian: The influenza virus of 1918 was an H1N1 virus with the capacity to infect and to kill that was unprecedented in modern times. There’s no preexisting immunity to the disease. It’s also one that’s able to move human to human very quickly.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: The flu hit the United States and the world at a particularly vulnerable time; when people were displaced, when they were hungry. And the war accelerated the spread of the virus in part by cramming all these soldiers into troop ships and then bringing them back and forth from Europe to America.

Narrator: In September 1918, 40,000 soldiers were admitted to Army hospitals overseas with the flu. Then the disease started cropping up on the home front. Authorities told the public to avoid wearing tight shoes, tight clothing or tight gloves, to chew their food well and drink water. Swindlers made small fortunes with potions and patent medicines. But nothing stemmed the tide of death.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: This was a national catastrophe. And the president doesn’t say one thing about it. And part of his reasoning for that was not to create panic. But the other part was that if you start thinking too much about the flu, you’re not thinking about the war. Because really containing the influenza epidemic means shutting down factories, shutting down war bond drives, shutting down mobilization. None of that can happen. In the context of the First World War, this is just another tragedy that must be endured.

Narrator: When Lillian Aubert was assigned to the influenza ward at Walter Reed, the job was as dangerous as any on the front lines. The first flu victim was admitted in mid-September; soon the ward filled to overflowing. Her patients lived, on average, just twelve days.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: People could be perfectly healthy in the morning, start running a fever, their lungs would fill up with fluid. And by nightfall be dead. And there was just nothing they could do. This is an era before antibiotics. People don’t understand how the flu is being transmitted.

Nancy K. Bristow, Historian: You’re literally drowning in your own bodily fluids in some cases, so you’re extremities are turning purple. Your face is turning purple. You may have blood draining from your ears or your nose. It was devastating.

Narrator: By the 2nd of October the epidemic was running wild. Coffins piled up in cemeteries; some victims lay where they died. That was the day Lillian developed a fever. Her suffering was mercifully short. Five months after she had arrived in Washington, Lillian Aubert found her final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.

Leroy Johnston

Narrator: It had been a long journey from the Mississippi delta to a field hospital in France. In November 1917 Leroy Johnston had made his way from Philips County Arkansas to New York City, to join the fabled New York 15th, known as the Harlem Hellfighters. He was drawn to a cause every bit as captivating as world peace.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: Young black men had been given reason to hope that some good would come of the war. The language of the war itself, the framing of it as a war for democracy already makes it a powerful and meaningful moment in the history of African Americans. There’s also the example of the Civil War not long before, which was a very different war, but it’s a war that African-American involvement and African-American agitation had turned into a war literally for freedom.

Narrator: Johnston had been with the Hellfighters throughout their incredible odyssey. They had spent 191 days under fire and suffered more casualties than any other American regiment: 1,300 of the original 2,000 men had died or been wounded. The regiment had been shattered in the opening days of the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

Richard Slotkin, Historian: At one point they’re cut off. They’re way ahead of their supports. They lose roughly two-thirds of their combat strength. They just have not got the numbers any more to get anywhere. They can’t even cover the German line in front of them.

Jeffrey Sammons, Historian: They’re basically shredded. They’re no longer able to fight as an offensive unit. They’re, you know, reduced beyond the level that they can be an effective fighting force.

Narrator: The Hellfighters were finally relieved on the 1st of October, but not before Johnston was severely wounded. He survived long enough to reach an aid station. Now, for the first time since he had landed in France, Leroy Johnston knew that he would make it back to Arkansas someday. But he couldn’t know what he would find there: the war had changed him; changed everything.

Chad Williams, Historian: The experience of traveling to France for a black southerner from a rural town was completely mind-boggling. The French were not free of racism by any stretch of the imagination, but in comparison to how African-American soldiers were treated by white American troops, it really highlighted how bad American racism was.

Richard Slotkin, Historian: One of the major themes in the black press had been from the start the notion that the black soldier’s going to prove the race’s manhood in war. And when we come back from war, we’re going to prove it here, in the United States.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: There’s that great editorial by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Crisis, where he says, “Make way for democracy, we saved it in France and by the great Jehovah, we will save it in the U.S. or know the reason why.”

The War Comes Home

Narrator: As far as the newspapers were concerned, the American offensive was going splendidly. Much of their reporting was provided directly by the Committee on Public Information. The head of the organization, George Creel, estimated that 20,000 newspaper columns a week were drawn from CPI releases.

Alan Axelrod, Writer: Woodrow Wilson, the great democrat, wanted strict censorship. Creel said that this would be a great mistake. What we have to do instead is supply all of the news. Everything anybody hears about the war has to come through the Committee on Public Information. Creel’s argument is that “I’m giving you all the facts and you are free to reach whatever conclusions you will.” But in fact these were very carefully edited facts.

Narrator: Creel couldn’t hide the war’s cost: casualty lists began filling whole pages in the newspaper, day after day. As the losses mounted, the CPI redoubled its efforts to enlist civilians in the war effort. In the fall of 1918 the CPI put on a traveling War Exposition. It was an attempt to bring the war home, emphasizing the sacrifices that soldiers were making for their countrymen. In Chicago, two million visitors lined up to see artifacts ranging from Zeppelin wreckage to an Iron Cross Nail Brush. The highlight was a staged reenactment of trench warfare, complete with a working tank. The truly dedicated could visit the Army Mess Kitchen, where, it was promised, “Meals are served in the same manner, and using the same ‘grub’ as is the fare of the ‘doughboys’ in France.” “Do your part to win the war” was the theme of the Exposition, and George Creel was doing his best to make it the theme of American life.

Alan Axelrod, Writer: Creel was a genuine idealist. He wanted the war to be a war of ideas, of ideology. He did not like the idea of “we must kill the Hun,” he did not like the idea of “if you are disloyal you should be killed.” He thought we should all get along as Americans and do what we can to win the war because that was the right thing to do.

Narrator: But whether Creel liked it or not, there was a darker side to the running of the war. For anyone who didn’t get in line, there could be serious consequences.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: There was a sense that you were being watched. But it wasn’t always clear who was watching you. You never knew if some magazine that you had subscribed to was suddenly going to get you in trouble. You never knew if you sang a German song that your father or grandfather had sung before that suddenly you were going to end up prosecuted.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: You see a rash of vigilantism aimed at making sure that anybody who might have any objection to the war does not express it. And it’s not now just a matter of being quiet, just don’t say that I’m against the war, but actively demonstrate support.

Narrator: A host of organizations made sure that every American was doing his or her patriotic duty. The American Protective League boasted a quarter of a million members across the country. The Justice Department gave the APL semi-official status by supplying it with armbands and badges. League men embarked on illegal searches and seizures, detained and arrested men without charges, intimidated allegedly disloyal Americans, and broke up strikes. In the fall of 1918, they unleashed a series of so-called “slacker raids” in cities across the country.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: They organize “slacker raids,” with the idea of rounding up men who are evading the draft. They fan out across these cities, they go into nickelodeons, they go into movie theaters, they wait at the exits of fairs to catch people when they’re walking home, onto city buses, beaches, pulling in any guy that’s not carrying his draft card. These vigilante groups are wandering around just assaulting civilians.

Narrator: One September morning, 20,000 agents surrounded the entrances to every subway, train, and ferry station in New York, then launched hundreds of raids across the city. Over three days, almost half a million men were interrogated, and 60,000 detained. It was the largest police action in the country’s history. The New York raid netted just 199 draft dodgers. Yet President Wilson was satisfied, commenting that the raids would “put the fear of God” into any potential shirkers.

Michael Kazin, Historian: Wilson believes that once he’s made a decision, Americans should understand it and go along with it. And if you oppose him, you are committing in effect, treason. So he’s both the great democrat and one of the most repressive figures in American history.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Wilson’s answer to all of this was just put the lid on it. And maybe tighten that lid too. We have one objective right now; that is to fight this war and win it.

Rickenbacker

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: The military figures that Americans get to know during the war are carefully selected by the Committee on Public Information. They actually try to censor the information about most soldiers and remove their names from most news accounts, so when a name is picked out of the hat to be shared with the American public it’s because that’s a story that they think Americans will latch on to. Eddie Rickenbacker is absolutely a case in point. He is one of the most all-American heroes of the war.

Narrator: Eddie Rickenbacker had been fighting the odds his whole life. His father died young, so Eddie had to drop out of school in the seventh grade and help feed the family. After working at a foundry, a brewery, a shoe factory and a monument works, he wound up at the Columbus Buggy Company, where he fell in love with their latest product: automobiles.

John F. Ross, Writer: Rickenbacker found himself at a moment in American history when cars were going fast enough to race. And automobile makers wanted cars to race so that they could sell them. And here is this kid with not much to lose and everything to gain.

Narrator: By the time war broke out Rickenbacker was a celebrity: he’d raced in the Indianapolis 500 four times, and ranked third nationally. But he also had an accent and a German name.

Thomas A. Hoff, Writer: Even though he’s born in the United States, he grew up in a family speaking a combination of German and English, and he grows up with a bit of an accent. And in fact when war breaks out there was a news story about him that he was actually the son of a German baron and he had been disgraced and sent to America to prove himself. And so he was actually von Rickenbacker.

Narrator: As anti-German hysteria swept the United States, the twenty-seven-year-old arranged a meeting at the War Department, determined to prove his loyalty.

John F. Ross, Writer: He figures that all his buddies on the racing circuit, should be the guys who are going to be pilots of these new airplanes. So he marches into Washington, DC, and he says, I got a plan for you. And they listened to the way he spoke. He mangled his English. And they laughed at him. They basically told him to get out of there.

Narrator: Rickenbacker wouldn’t quit. He went to France as a driver with General Pershing’s delegation a few weeks after America entered the war. Through sheer perseverance he qualified as a pilot and was assigned to a fighter squadron in the spring of 1918. It was a dubious prize: the life expectancy of a new combat pilot was twenty days. But the same combination of recklessness and calculation that had marked his career on the racetrack served him well in the air. He downed his first German airplane on April 27th, and never looked back. As Rickenbacker’s score mounted the public fell in love with him.

John F. Ross, Writer: These aviators really invented a new icon of American manhood. Ultimately the old stereotypes, of cavalry leaders and charges and lumberjacks and cowboys gave way to the modern era. And what was that? Well it was a pilot with his silk scarf and his goggles. You see the beginnings of the Right Stuff right there, American manhood redefined.

Narrator: A working-class hero was a reflection of the changing nature of the air war. Where early pilots had reveled in the image of the gallant, chivalrous airman, Rickenbacker had seen too many friends go down in flames to romanticize combat flying. He called it “scientific murder,” and was constantly refining methods to make it more scientific, and more murderous. “Most of the pilots he killed, never knew what hit them,” a fellow airman recalled. “Out of the sun, a quick burst and gone.”

Thomas A. Hoff, Writer: What makes him a great fighter pilot is his understanding that there was a science to flying. And maybe it was because he was a little older, maybe it was because he had faced death a few times, he had a different perspective. He understood the limits of his aircraft and he was going to use it as the tool it was designed to be.

Narrator: Although the papers tracked the leading pilots’ scores like a sports rivalry, the day of the solo air ace was over; the era of the air force had arrived. When America declared war its air force consisted of fifty-five airplanes, fifty-one of which were obsolete. By the fall of 1918 the United States Air Service comprised 740 front-line aircraft and 200,000 men. Operations were carried out by ever-larger formations, coordinated with movements on the ground. Rickenbacker’s scientific approach to combat flying was perfectly suited to this new air war; he was promoted to squadron leader ahead of more senior pilots on the eve of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. “The squadron began to love him,” another pilot recalled. “I don’t know how to explain it. At first he was just an uneducated tough bastard who threw his weight around the wrong way. But he developed into the most natural leader I ever saw.”

John F. Ross, Writer: When a pilot took command of a squadron they often lay back, didn’t fly as much, were much more cautious. Eddie actually flew more when he became the commander of the 94th. And I think it was that willingness to tangle, to teach novices, to let them take a kill that he set up, to fly more than anybody, to log more hours, that really made people come to regard him with such high esteem.

Narrator: Among other things, the fighter squadrons had to blind the enemy to American troop movements, and to their perilous supply lines. A week into the offensive, Rickenbacker led a flight of twenty-four fighters on a mission to bring down two German observation balloons. He assigned three planes to shoot down the balloons, while the rest of the group provided cover from carefully designated positions. Rickenbacker flew thousands of feet above and behind the formation, so high that the lack of oxygen left him light-headed, while the freezing wind was an agony. But from there he could survey the action like a general behind the lines. As the Americans approached the balloons, Rickenbacker spotted eight German Fokkers racing in from one direction, and eleven from another. Their red paint identified them as the most famous fighter unit of the war: the Flying Circus.

John F. Ross, Writer: The Red Baron started the Flying Circus. By the time Eddie Rickenbacker and the Americans hit the frontline the Red Baron had already died, he was shot down himself. But all of his Flying Circus members, all of his squadrons that he had trained were still very much alive and were very experienced. And they were a frightening thing to behold in their Fokkers all colored in bright scarlet paint.

Narrator: Rickenbacker dove to warn the others. He and the Flying Circus arrived at the same time, and the sky became a swirling mass of airplanes, with tracer bullets streaking in all directions. Rickenbacker quickly set one of the Fokkers on fire, and watched as the pilot bailed out. Moments later, one of his own comrades went down in flames. For him, there was no escape.

John F. Ross, Writer: In World War I, American pilots were not issued parachutes, though very serviceable parachutes existed. But the American headquarters believed that parachutes would give them a sense of being defeatist and they would bail out of the airplane at a moment’s notice. This of course caused Eddie Rickenbacker to do back flips, he was so angry seeing so many of his men die who could have survived with that.

Narrator: Each American pilot was left to plan his own death should his plane catch fire. Some carried pistols to shoot themselves, others preferred to jump. Rickenbacker planned to inhale the flames – he’d heard that shortened the agony. Right now, he wanted no more of this huge dogfight miles behind enemy lines. He coolly shepherded the group back toward friendly territory, until the Germans finally broke off the fight. Eddie’s careful planning and cool head had proved more than a match for the virtuosity of the Flying Circus. His squadron downed nine enemy aircraft that day, while losing just two. It was a sign of things to come. As American pilots fought for control of the skies, a very different struggle was unfolding below, in the mud and darkness of the Argonne Forest.

Relief

Narrator: Reporters were calling them the Lost Battalion. 700 men under Major Charles Whittlesey trapped behind enemy lines in a pocket 350 yards wide and 100 yards deep. Private Ralph John was among them.

Voice: Ralph John: The men were getting weaker and weaker. We had robbed the dead men of everything in the way of food, water and ammunition. The most terrible thing of all, it seemed to me, was the fact that we could do next to nothing for the wounded. Many would almost rot before they died.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: The hillside looked like a butcher shop. There were wounded everywhere. There were dead everywhere. The physical condition of the men was atrocious. The effects of exposure were taking their toll. The men that had been gassed, were hard to listen to. Their gasping and snuffling in the cool damp air was very disheartening. The medics had long since run out of anything, and all they could lend now was words of advice.

Narrator: For four days the Germans had been trying to crush the pocket with mortars, heavy machine guns, and infantry assaults. Through it all Whittlesey had kept the force together, but everyone knew that the end was drawing near.

Richard Slotkin, Historian: Whittlesey is really the heart and soul of the defense. At least before the men, he never seems to lose his faith that they’re going to survive, they’re going to make it, they’re going to be relieved.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: Whittlesey was in the same mental state as the rest of the men, inside. Outwardly he never showed one moment of cracking, but inside his turmoil was considerable. His second in command, found him one night curled up in the bottom of his hole, asleep and crying. The knots that were inside him had to be enormous, but he never once let on, and he continued to lead them from the front, and it endeared him to the men for life.

Narrator: On the afternoon of October 6th, a sentry came running in, his eyes wide with fear.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: They looked off to the right flank and they could see a glow coming through the trees and the spits of flames coming at them. Men just stood with their mouths hanging open, they didn’t know what to do. They’d never seen it before. It had to be absolutely terrifying.

Thomas A. Hoff, Writer: One of the most terrifying weapons in man’s arsenal since we were living in caves with pointed sticks was fire. So during the First World War the Germans and the French perfect a man packed flamethrower. You don’t want to be burned alive, and so that flamethrower becomes more of a terror weapon than anything else.

Narrator: For a long moment the men stood transfixed. Then an officer starting hollering as he fired wildly at the approaching inferno. With that the spell was broken; the troops began shooting blindly as they listened to the screams of men being incinerated.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: They were crying and wailing and pushing forward. They actually got up out of their holes and began to give chase to the Germans and push them back. It was almost a controlled riot as they did so. And they let it be known to the Germans, wasn’t gonna happen this time.

Narrator: As suddenly as it began, the attack was over. The forest was quiet, except for the cries of the wounded, and the sounds of survivors struggling back to their positions.

Voice: Ralph John: Such a mess you never did see. Some of our men were dead, others dying and moaning for help. Some were already buried and others just in pieces. At night sometimes we would be able to bury a few of them in shallow graves, or just throw dirt over them in their dugout.

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: That was it. They all knew that if the Germans came in one more time they were gonna walk right across that pocket. And a blanket of despondency had fallen on that hillside. You might hear a lot of rah-rah about the American army never giving up. No, they hadn’t given up, and they were determined to hold that hillside to the last man, but they certainly weren’t happy about it.

Narrator: The sky darkened, a chilling rain set in. Major Whittlesey sat staring into space, as weak and hungry as the rest. A soldier crept up to his command post: a captain out on the road wanted to speak with him. Whittlesey stumbled off to see what it was about. It took the others a couple of minutes to figure out what was happening. The stranger was an American officer. The offensive had forced the German line back beyond the Pocket. The siege of the Lost Battalion was over.

Voice: Ralph John: Early next morning more men arrived and the Major was right down among his men, doing anything he could for them. It was a happy bunch started the hike back to the rear for a little rest and food. I can well remember the first thing I had to eat was a big white onion, and boy, did I bite into it. That night we did have so called bedding. The nicest part of it all was to be in out of the rain.

Narrator: The relief of the Lost Battalion kept frontline reporters so busy that they missed another big story entirely. On that same day, just a few miles from the Pocket, Corporal Alvin York killed twenty Germans soldiers and led a whole column of prisoners back into the American lines. "Well, York, I hear you've captured the whole damned German army," a general greeted him. York’s story received some attention when a magazine published an account soon after the war. But he would become a true national icon years later, when his story became an allegory about fidelity and duty. What made York so fascinating was the fact that he had once been a conscientious objector. This modest Christian had refused to fight until his commanding officer managed to persuade him that the war was just.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: Alvin York is the reluctant warrior. That’s what makes his story so compelling. We’re reluctant warriors we like to believe. He’s skilled and effective, brave. That’s what we want to think about ourselves. We turn to that story to argue wars sometimes need to be fought; that sometimes you have to put your personal objections aside and do what’s best for your community.

Pershing’s Collapse, Victory on the Horizon

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: The experience in the Meuse-Argonne was far more horrible than anybody realizes. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive we lost an average of 550 men a day, KIA, for 47 days. Three times that wounded, every day. It was, and remains, the largest and bloodiest battle America’s ever been involved in.

Narrator: General Pershing seemed to have aged a decade over the past few weeks: his hair had turned gray, deep wrinkles lined his face, he fell asleep at his desk. Most disturbing, Pershing’s nerves were failing. In mid-October he collapsed sobbing in the backseat of his staff car, crying out for his dead wife. "My God,” he moaned, “sometimes I don't know how I can go on." On the 16th of October, the general gave up his field command.

Edward A. Gutiérrez, Historian: Pershing is still trying to recover from the loss of his three daughters and his wife, who died in a fire. At the same time Pershing was under immense pressure to get results, and he is haunted by the casualties. Pershing halts the offensive, which is shocking. But he had that sense to say, “let’s give someone else a chance, because I am frankly exhausted.”

Richard Slotkin, Historian: It is in a way Pershing’s finest hour to recognize his limitations. He steps back from immediate field command, he splits the army into two wings, lets his field commanders deal with things on the ground.

Andrew Carroll, Writer: You could say that it was a sign of weakness, where he feels, I just can’t handle this. I think you could also see it as a sign of strength to know his limitations. He told his other generals “you have to take this to its final conclusion. We need to slug this out.” He just wanted to go after the Germans full force, be as aggressive as possible and end this conflict.

Narrator: The troops were exhausted; some units had been bled white. One of Pershing’s successors found it “a disorganized and wrecked army.” But the enemy was still dangerous; they must not be given time to recover. As the high command rearmed and reorganized, the doughboys steeled themselves for the next phase of the offensive.

Code Talkers

Narrator: When Solomon Louis turned eighteen his friends had celebrated the fact that he could finally enlist in the US Army. That was the joke, at any rate: Solomon Louis was already in the Army. He lied about his age so that they could all go in together. Fourteen of them — all full-blood Choctaw Indians — walked to the recruiting station in Idabel, Oklahoma. Six months later, they were all in the thick of it in the Meuse-Argonne.

Edward A. Gutiérrez, Historian: Very few Native Americans were actually recognized as citizens. Even with all of that prejudice, they volunteered in very high numbers. America had really just finally stopped fighting Native Americans in the 1890s and as a result they were seen as very formidable warriors. This kind of Indian warrior mythos very much resonated, not only with the public, but especially with the military. They were excited to use the prowess of Native American soldiers.

Narrator: By mid-October Louis’ brigade had taken so many casualties that they were told to dig in for a couple of days. Many of the men busied themselves with letters, but Louis didn’t have many to write. He was an orphan; he’d married a girl he met at a football game just before shipping out. She was an orphan too. He’d told her that he wanted someone to leave his things to if he got killed. Solomon was talking with two friends when his commanding officer interrupted. “How many of you Indians talk the same language?” he asked. Solomon’s first thought was that they were in trouble for speaking Choctaw. Back at the Armstrong Academy the first word of English he’d learned was "soap." That’s what the teachers used to wash out student’s mouths if they were caught speaking their mother tongue. So he was pleasantly surprised when his C.O. started asking questions. The regiment had a problem, and the Choctaw might have the solution.

Edward A. Gutiérrez, Historian: The Americans knew that the Germans were tapping into their lines because the Germans had been doing it the whole war. Tapping wires was very easy to do, especially at night. They would sneak out there, and cut the line or just listen. So the Germans knew exactly what the Americans were up to.

Narrator: Within hours Solomon Louis and seven of his friends were assigned to each of the regiment’s field headquarters. From that day forward, all of the regiment’s important messages were sent over the wires in Choctaw. When the unit went back into action a few days later, the Germans were caught — for the first time — completely by surprise.

Edward A. Gutiérrez, Historian: The Choctaw are able to use their own language in a very effective way, to the point where a German POW was captured and confesses that “we had no idea what was going on. We had no idea.”

Armistice

Robert J. Laplander, Writer: As far as manpower goes the British and the French were scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Germans were not far behind. We were just getting started. And we proved in the Meuse Argonne that we were fighters, and we were not going to give up.

Narrator: When the Meuse-Argonne offensive resumed on November 1st, the fighting was just as savage, and the casualties appalling. But through sheer force of will, the American Army was achieving its mission.

Michael Neiberg, Historian: What the Americans did is tie down the Germans, make sure they can’t move. The British, French and American armies keep the pressure on until they bring the Germans to their knees. So it didn’t go the way that Pershing wanted it to go but at the strategic level, it accomplished what he needed it to accomplish.

Narrator: All along the Western Front the German Army was crumbling under the combined weight of British, French, and American assaults. The front was moving miles a day; German soldiers were surrendering by the tens of thousands. And their homeland was collapsing from within. Four years of war had reduced the population to starvation; the economy was bankrupt, cities on the brink of revolution. America, on the other hand, was just hitting its stride. In late October the 2,000,000th American soldier landed in France, with another quarter million arriving every month.

John Horne, Historian: What really I think breaks the Germans is the calculation, almost the paper calculation, that more and more Americans will just continue to arrive. If there are already two million of them in France, at the end of 1918, how many will there be by 1920? And the Germans know that they can’t match that. It’s less the contribution in those final three months than it is the sheer spectacle that there’s more and more and more of that to come.

Narrator: The message came through the Swiss Embassy. “The German government accepts, as a basis for the peace negotiations, the program laid down by the President of the United States in his Fourteen Points message, and in his address of September 27, 1918.”

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: The Germans ask for a peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. They know that the British and the French would seek to crush them and in fact the Germans almost want to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Allies as a whole.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: I think Germans clutched at the idea of a Wilson who would be more sympathetic, less vindictive than either the British or the French. If they get Wilson to manage the peace, they might not lose that much.

Narrator: By approaching the United States and excluding the Allies, Germany had granted Wilson a leading role at the outset of the negotiations. On the afternoon of October 22nd the president met with his cabinet to consider the German offer. Some felt bound to consult the French and British. Wilson disagreed. “The peoples of Great Britain and France are with me,” he claimed. “That does not mean that their governments are of the same mind.”

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Wilson did have this curious thing: where he believed he spoke for the people. It was never very clearly defined, but if you crossed him he would say “but I have the voice of the people. I know what the people want.” And he kept on appealing to the opinion of people around the world.

Dan Carlin, Podcast Producer: A man who became a part of Wilson’s cabinet once said that he was a man of high ideals but no principles. And the way he goes about arm-twisting reminds you of that. He took the country into the war as an associated power rather than an ally, to be able to say, we reserve the right to broker our own peace.

Narrator: Wilson sent a note demanding the abdication of the Kaiser and the evacuation of all Allied territories. At the same time, he strong-armed the Allies into accepting the Fourteen Points as the basis of peace negotiations. Two weeks later, in a rail car outside Paris, a dejected German delegation signed a truce, to take effect at 11 AM on November 11th. Eddie Rickenbacker was over no-man’s land when the Armistice came.

Voice: Eddie Rickenbacker: The trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men poured out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer’s seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands. Then all up and down the front, the two groups of men began edging towards each other across no-man’s-land. Seconds before they had been willing to shoot each other; now they came forward. Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, each group approached the other. Suddenly gray uniforms mixed with brown. I could see them hugging each other, dancing, jumping. Americans were passing out cigarettes and chocolate. Star shells, rockets and flares began to go up, and I turned my ship towards the field. The war was over.

The Day After

Narrator: News of the Armistice reached Washington at around 3 in the morning. By the time the day got underway practically every city, town and hamlet in America had erupted in celebration. Ignoring official warnings about the flu, people gathered, embraced strangers, formed spontaneous parades, listened to bands and speeches. In Cloverport, Kentucky, “every man, woman, child and baby in town gathered on Main Street beating tin pans, washtubs, and most anything they could find.” The people of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania expressed desire for a great religious service of thanksgiving, but in the meantime police had to close the saloons at 11 in the morning after a bar brawl got out of control. By nightfall America was having a party that would be remembered for decades. The suffragist Alice Paul made a point of ignoring the celebrations. “Self-government is victorious throughout the rest of the world,” she declared, “but here it is delayed and obstructed by the United States Senate.” Yet women’s suffrage was gaining converts every day. The President himself had come around. Paul could sense that her victory, too, wasn’t far off. In fact, there was much to celebrate. The United States had helped rescue its two closest allies. Even the most jaded observers could hope that a better day was dawning.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: The message that was given to Americans was that we had won this war and I think it empowered Americans. It infused them with this sense that there’s a certain American responsibility.

Narrator: “Everything which America has fought for has been accomplished,” President Wilson proclaimed. “Complete victory has brought us, not peace alone, but the confident promise of a new day as well, in which justice shall replace force and jealous intrigue among nations. It will now be our fortunate duty to assist in the establishment of democracy throughout the world.” But even as Wilson heralded the triumph of American values, many of his countrymen worried about the fate of democracy at home.

Michael Kazin, Historian: The end of the war does not mean the end of repression. There’s still a lot of pent up anger among Americans who support the war against those who opposed it. They are considered to be dangerous radicals. There was just as much tension about loyalty and disloyalty after the Armistice as there was during the war itself.

Narrator: During the nineteen months that the United States was at war, American society had been torn apart by questions of loyalty. More than 2,000 citizens were prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, and thousands of enemy aliens interned.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: These two acts really become tools to shut up people who refuse to be quiet about their opposition to the war, especially leftwing organizations, socialists, the IWW. Now the government has the legal authority to suppress them, and it uses that at will.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: You can’t actually measure the impact of wartime repression solely by the number of prosecutions — and there were tens of thousands. But for every prosecution there might be tens, hundreds, thousands of “friendly” visits by government agents warning someone not to say what they said or write what they wrote. We also need to look at the chilling effect that this repression had on every American.

Narrator: The silencing of predominantly left-wing opposition came back to haunt Wilson a few days before the end of the war, when his Democrats lost heavily in the midterm elections, handing control of Congress to the Republicans. Even some true believers thought Wilson was to blame. “All the radical or liberal friends of your policy were either silenced or intimidated,” George Creel chided the president. “There was no voice left to argue for your sort of peace.” Now, any treaty Wilson signed would have to be ratified by a Republican Congress. As Creel pointed out, Wilson had jeopardized his dream through his conduct of the war at home.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: George Creel says essentially to Wilson that you destroyed yourself. You were elected by progressives and liberals and then when those progressives and liberals spoke out against the war, you silenced them, you attacked them and now when you need them, there’s no one left to stand up for you.

Narrator: Many Americans hoped that Wilson would quickly dismantle the tools of repression and heal the nation’s wounds. Instead, the tide of repression quickened. Shortly before the end of the war the nation’s most famous socialist, Eugene Debs, was sentenced to ten years in prison for having spoken out against the draft a few months earlier.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: Debs becomes a symbol for the war’s repression and he also becomes the motivation for movements to pardon him. Not only him, but also other political prisoners, conscientious objectors and others who were still in jail after the Armistice. And Wilson had drawn his line in the sand, that he would not pardon Debs.

Narrator: Among the thousands of anti-war activists in jail were several hundred conscientious objectors, including Josef Hofer and his two brothers. The Hofers were Hutterites; their faith forbade them from helping the war effort in any way, from even wearing a uniform. They had been taken from their South Dakota community in May, and suffered months of abuse at the hands of the authorities. One week after the Armistice they were taken by train to Leavenworth, Kansas, and marched through the streets of the town and into the courtyard of the Military Prison. It was almost midnight; weak and exhausted, they were ordered to strip and were left standing for hours as the temperature dropped to 17 degrees. When they were finally taken inside, they were suspended from the bars of their cells so that their feet barely touched the floor. They were kept in that position for nine hours a day, and fed only bread and water. Even in the freezing cold, the men chose to remain almost naked rather than wear the military uniforms that were left in their cells.

Michael Kazin, Historian: It’s really torture; I think it has to be called that. Even the Secretary of War said that he was uncomfortable with the way they were treated; nevertheless, he wasn’t going to step in and change it.

Narrator: After two weeks, David Hofer was allowed to wire home, with news that his brothers Michael and Josef were dying. By the time Josef’s wife Maria arrived at Leavenworth, he was barely able to talk. Josef Hofer died at 8:30 the following morning. To Maria’s horror she saw that the prison guards had dressed Josef’s corpse in the army uniform he had so staunchly refused to wear in life.

Versailles

Narrator: On the 14th of December 1918, just one month after the Armistice, Woodrow Wilson arrived in Paris to negotiate a peace treaty and end the Great War.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Paris then had a population of about a million people. Over two million people lined the parade route, just the few miles that Woodrow Wilson traveled as he wove through the streets. Just by the sheer numbers it was quite simply the greatest march of triumph in the history of man. I’m not forgetting Caesar. I’m not forgetting Alexander the Great. This was the arrival of the Messiah, this was the Second Coming. What kind of peace was he bringing? The whole world wanted to see.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: He was carrying a burden of expectations which no human being can have carried. There was this feeling that he’s going to set it all right. But what setting it all right meant was very different things for different people.

Narrator: The Armistice was just a truce; a treaty was needed to satisfy the competing claims of the victors, on terms that the Germans could accept. For the first time, Wilson met French Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, along with delegates from more than thirty countries. These were the nameless statesmen whom Wilson had denounced in his speeches. Some of them were less enamored of the American president than the crowds that mobbed his processions. And many of them held ambitions that clashed sharply with Wilson’s.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Wilson was the only one there fighting for a principle. He was fighting for mankind; that was basically his constituency here. And what he came up against were especially Lloyd George of Great Britain and Clemenceau of France who genuinely wanted revenge on Germany.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Wilson makes it very clear that the United States is not coming in to gain anything for itself at the peace conference. They are coming in to build a better world. Well, he can say that because the United States hasn’t lost territory, it hasn’t lost huge numbers of men, it hasn’t spent huge amounts of money. Britain and France have spent themselves almost to bankruptcy and lost men in the hundreds of thousands.

Narrator: Wilson came to the negotiations, as a British diplomat observed, “armed with power such as no man in history had possessed.” The Allies had to take Wilson’s wishes into account. That meant, above all, creating a League of Nations.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Wilson felt there was no point the United States having come into the war if a better world order wasn’t going to come out. And so the League of Nations is the idea that there will be attempts to settle disputes among nations without war, that there will be an effort made to bring about disarmament, that peoples will not be handed around the world without their consent. All that is there in the covenant of the League of Nations.

Narrator: Many found Wilson to be stubborn, but the president felt bound by a moral imperative. At the end of May, he tried to articulate that commitment, when he dedicated a cemetery for American servicemen outside Paris. From a small platform in the middle of the graveyard, Wilson looked out at a crowd of veterans, many of them bearing scars, missing limbs, disabled, disfigured. “I beg you to realize,” he told them, “the compulsion that I am under. I sent these lads over here to die. Can I ever speak even a word which is inconsistent with the assurances I gave them?”

A. Scott Berg, Writer: He took personal responsibility for every one of those deaths. And he said, I owe it to these soldiers to go back and fight for the things they fought for.

Narrator: At the end of June 1919, after six months of negotiations, the Allies and Germany finally came to terms. The Treaty of Versailles consisted of 440 articles that drew new borders for Germany, hobbled its military and imposed staggering reparation payments. It also effectively carved the Middle East into French and British spheres of influence, and divided German colonies among the victors. The Treaty was a series of compromises satisfactory to no one. But Wilson had achieved something truly remarkable: the very first article in the Treaty was the Covenant of a League of Nations. From the ashes of the most destructive war in history, Woodrow Wilson had created what he believed would be the framework of an age of peace. At the beginning of July he sailed for home. One last hurdle remained: shepherding the treaty through the United States Senate.

Red Summer

Narrator: Saturday July 19th was hot and humid even by Washington standards. Theaters, brothels, and saloons were packed with soldiers and sailors on leave. The city was on edge over reports that two black men had harassed a white woman. At dusk, hundreds of servicemen began roaming the streets, looking for revenge. “Before the very gates of the White House” a reporter noted, “Negroes were dragged from streetcars and beaten up while crowds of soldiers, sailors and marines dashed down Pennsylvania Avenue, in pursuit of any who tried to flee.”

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: Wilson is newly returned from France where he’s been articulating this vision for justice on a world scale, and where he’s been hailed by masses as this messianic figure. And then he comes back to a Washington that is like burning. He’s so wrapped in his connection with the abstract masses that his own citizens who need him get nothing from him.

Narrator: Wilson felt that black soldiers posed a threat to the United States. In the wake of the Russian Revolution he worried about Communism creeping into America, and “the most likely vessel for that,” he told a friend, was “the American Negro returning from abroad.” Now, all over the country, returning black veterans were being abused, attacked, lynched, and burned alive.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: There’s an expectation on the part of African American soldiers that they’ve earned the right to vote, to participate, to be respected, to map their fates. But it’s met with a similar resolve on the part of white supremacists to make sure that nothing comes, nothing lasting would come of that military service.

Narrator: Time and again tensions over black rights led to rioting. Twenty-five cities were torn apart; hundreds were killed.

Chad Williams, Historian: The assertiveness of African Americans was threatening to white southerners who were determined to make sure that African Americans remained in their place, but also to many white northerners who were resistant to African Americans encroaching in the labor market. And in the summer of 1919 the United States experienced a wave of racial violence, which was unparalleled in American history. James Weldon Johnson described it as the “Red Summer.” It was a horrific statement about how the aspirations of African Americans were going to be met with violent resistance from white people, both North and South.

Narrator: The White House received thousands of appeals from black citizens, begging for protection. If the victims received any response at all, it was a form letter advising them that the federal government had no say in these matters.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: In Wilson’s defense he was still in Paris for the first month and a half of the riots. On the other hand, when he came back it could have been a game-changer, I think, to have stepped up and said, these soldiers, these African Americans fought in the same war you white soldiers did and we must now embrace the African Americans in American society. And he said nothing on the subject.

Narrator: In October, Philips County, Arkansas exploded into the deadliest racial violence in the country’s history. Tensions had been building since black sharecroppers, led by a returning veteran, formed a union to demand a fair price for their cotton. When a white man was killed in a firefight, local authorities spread the word that an insurrection was underway. Although Wilson’s White House had always refused to allow the Army to protect black citizens, hundreds of soldiers were sent in to assist posses of white men in putting down the so-called rebellion. As they roamed the countryside, killing hundreds of black people, a train pulled into the station. A crowd rushed aboard and dragged out four unsuspecting black men. They were Leroy Johnston and his three brothers. Johnston, the young man who had traveled to New York to join the Harlem Hellfighters, had returned home in July. He’d spent nine months in French hospitals recovering from the wounds he’d received at the Meuse-Argonne. The mob accused him of “distributing ammunition to the insurrectionists,” then shoved the four brothers into the back of a car with an armed guard. By most accounts one grabbed the guard’s gun and managed to kill him. In the next instant the mob shot the Johnston brothers to pieces. Leroy Johnston had survived some of the hardest fighting of the Great War. He hadn’t survived his homecoming.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: That betrayal, the “Red Summer” of 1919, was crushing. For a lot of people, it destroys them. But there are a number of people who find ways to channel that fury, and they turn it into activist power.

Jeffrey Sammons, Historian: World War I has emboldened them, has actually told them just how threatening they might be to whites. All that happened after, even into the civil rights movement, was a result of the change in attitude which itself was a result of what they saw they were capable of doing in World War I.

The Death of the League

Narrator: At the beginning of October 1919, as the survivors in Arkansas were burying their dead, Woodrow Wilson disappeared from public view. Senators, cabinet members, even Wilson’s own Secretary of State, were all being denied access to the President. The story had begun three months earlier, after Wilson’s return from Europe.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Wilson gets home, he spends the next several weeks making his pitches to the Senate, why this is a wonderful treaty, why they must embrace it. He realizes almost from the beginning that he’s going to face some opposition, but he doesn’t realize how great the opposition actually would be.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: Wilson has outlined a vision of American world leadership that involves it permanently in the maintenance of world peace. Woodrow Wilson assumes that Americans support this new idea of internationalism. But when the war is over and people really start getting in to the nitty-gritty, he finds that there’s a lot of doubt. People really aren’t so sure.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Over the next few weeks he realizes he has one real nemesis and that is Henry Cabot Lodge, who is leading the charge against the Treaty.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Wilson I think made a big strategic mistake and that was that when he went to Paris, he didn’t make it a bipartisan thing, he didn’t bring any Republicans. If he’d had the sense he should have brought Henry Cabot Lodge. You know, these were stupid things to do.

Narrator: After Senator Lodge held the Treaty up in committee through much of the summer, Wilson decided to take his case directly to the people.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: This is always the great Wilson saying, I’m going to speak to the people, cause no one else can. Just this sort of arrogance, even though he was a great orator.

Narrator: For three weeks Wilson traveled around the western United States, making four or five stops a day, speaking to huge crowds in the late summer heat, without air conditioning or amplification.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: It built a lot of momentum. He was really winning the argument. Unfortunately, while Wilson is building great energy and good will talking to the people, on the inside physically he’s falling apart. His gait is getting slower, he’s tripping on words. It’s just harder and harder for him to deliver a speech.

Narrator: On September 25th Wilson dragged himself through an appearance in Pueblo Colorado, even as he was blinded by a migraine, his left arm and leg numb, his face twitching uncontrollably.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: As the evening wears on, Wilson’s headaches are so severe he simply cannot deal with it. And his doctor and Mrs. Wilson say, this tour has got to end, because your life is about to end. And Wilson just refuses to budge. He won’t do it, no, I just need a little sleep. Of course he can’t sleep, the pain is so severe. And a few hours later even he now realizes he cannot go on. And the doctor gives the order, “that’s it; just get the President back to Washington D.C.” Wilson is truly a broken man.

Narrator: Three days after his return to the White House, Wilson suffered a stroke so severe that his wife Edith thought he should resign the presidency. But Wilson’s inner circle believed his abdication would kill any remaining hope of ratifying the treaty. Mrs. Wilson and a handful of advisors decided to keep the President’s condition a secret.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: For the last year and a half of the Wilson presidency, a handful of people in the White House, I believe, engaged in the greatest conspiracy in American history. Some have argued that for all intents and purposes, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson became the first female president of the United States. Certainly there is no question that the executive branch of government was functioning through Mrs. Wilson.

Narrator: With Wilson hidden away, treaty negotiations took an unexpected turn. At the last minute, Republicans proposed a list of amendments that would have given Wilson almost everything he wanted, including the League of Nations. The author of the amendments was Henry Cabot Lodge.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Lodge was not against the League of Nations as a whole, he just was worried about the shape. He wanted to talk about it. Wilson wouldn’t do it. He wasn’t prepared to admit that Lodge had any reasonable reservations about the treaty.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Lodge himself knew, “if I offer anything, Woodrow Wilson has such contempt for me he will not accept it.” And indeed Lodge was correct.

Narrator: There were more than enough votes to ratify the treaty with Lodge’s amendments. But Wilson ordered Democratic senators to kill his own treaty. On March 19, 1920, they did just that.

A. Scott Berg, Writer: In essence, Woodrow Wilson stabbed himself, stabbed the treaty in the back, or more to the point, in the heart. Because that was really the end for Woodrow Wilson.

Jay Winter, Historian: There comes a time I suppose when bitterness overtakes shrewdness. And at the end of his life he was a very bitter man. I don’t know anyone who can tell me why it was that Wilson didn’t compromise one way or the other. And as a result he loses it all. He loses everything.

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: We can’t help asking what if. I mean what if the United States had joined the League? What if the United States had been in the League when Mussolini rose in Italy? What if the United States had been in the League when Hitler rose in Germany? Just what if.

Epilogue

Dan Carlin, Podcast Producer: We go into this war as the 17th most powerful military in the world, a debtor nation and we come out of it a global superpower, you never go back to the way things were. The modern version of the United States is born out of this war.

Nancy K. Bristow, Historian: Though we won the war, it had great costs. Not only in a loss of life. That war was won but it was won by way of behaviors, policies, even laws that contradicted the very values for which the country was fighting.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: The Great War changes people’s imagination. This language of a war for democracy, this idea that some principles are worth fighting for, those are now ideas that you hear over and over again.

Jennifer D. Keene, Historian: America now had a new idea of the role it could play in the world. It could be the diplomat. It could be the peacemaker. It could be the humanitarian. Those ideals continue to animate our foreign policy; they continue to be the goals we strive to achieve.

Christopher Capozzola, Historian: The images that come to us are sort of distant figures in black and white. But I think it’s important to remember how contemporary the war was. It’s important to look back and understand the experiences of Americans who lived through it and who tried to generate something better, who really did hope to end all wars. It’s part of what we owe to that generation.