The Real Question, Just or Unjust? - World War I Edition
This unit in my Policy class we learned all about the Executive Branch. We learned about various executive orders given throughout the history of the United States. This involved learning about wars and U.S military involvment in them and whether, as our guiding question for this class asks, it was for the common good or not. Often times we found ourselves questioning whether an order was just or unjust and evaluating it as a whole. As our final action project we were asked to evaluate a war of our choosing and make an argument as to whether it was just or unjust. For this project I decided to pick one of the greates wars our planet has seen, World War 1.
Soldiers Eating WWI, BBC
Many are familiar with or have at least heard of World War 1. Known by many other names like the Great War, The War to End All Wars, and Kaisers' War there is no doubt it deserves all the history books written about it. It is a piece of history shared by many of our home countries,its brutality, gruesomeness, and scars it left historically entangles our countries, making it impossible to forget. According to a report by Reperes “The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War 1 was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded”, in a rough size comparison World War 1’s casualty numbers are just a few million more than Canada’s current population. Just how exactly did such a brutal war start? Many believe it all started with a…
Bang! On June 28th 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek were assassinated by a 19 year old serbian Princip. Ferdinand took a gunshot to the neck and his Chorek took a gunshot to the abdomen. ArchDuke Ferdinand was a very important figure in the Austro-Hungarian empire as he was the next in line to inherit the throne. We can logically assume his assasination did not please the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a response Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and sent a list of demands of which upon being rejected by Serbia resulted in Austria- Hungary declaring war and commence an invasion of Serbia. It is important to note that at this time tensions were very high in Europe and Ferdinand's assasination was not the main cause for the war as much as it was the straw that broke the camel's back. At the time France wanted back the territory which it had lost to Germany during the Franco-German War, Germany wanted to expand even more, the rapid growth of Germany’s navy felt threatening to other countries, Russia was helping territories belonging to Austria-Hungary declare independence, and everyone had developed new military technologies of which they wanted to try out; Europe was the perfect brewing pot ready to erupt.
Soon Russia stood up for its ally Serbia, Germany sided with Austria-Hungary and France joined as well bound by treaty to side with Russia, Britain declared war on Germany, and Japan declared war on Germany. Two sides were formed, the allies originally made up by France, Britain, Japan, and Serbia but later on joined by Australia, New Zealand, Portugal,Belgium and other countries. The other side were the Central powers originally made up by Germany and Austria-Hungary but in later years was joined by the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, and Emirate of Jaabal Shammar. The war seemed perfectly justified to the citizens of each given country due to the popular feeling of patriotism and nationalism. Propaganda also played a big role in convincing the citizens it was a good thing to be at war and defend one's country especially countries that were being invaded like Belgium and Serbia. The war's main justification layed on the fact that sovereign countries were being invaded and the tensions leading up to the war would have been very difficult to soothe with peaceful diplomacy.
U.S Enters the War
Having previously attempted various times to play the role of a “Prophet of Peace” President Woodrow Wilson was not very successful in getting the allies and central powers to hug out this war. President Wilson was very intent in keeping the United States out of the war, after all his reelection slogan was “he [President Wilson] kept us out of war”. In his book The First World War Michael Howard tells us
Until the end of 1916 President Woodrow Wilson’s primary concern had been to keep the United States out of the war. But the longer the war went on, the more difficult this became. His problem was less to persuade the hard-pressed Allies to make peace: that could have always been done by cutting off their credits and supplies, which Wilson showed himself quite ready if necessary to do. It was how to persuade the victorious Germans, who were not getting American supplies anyway… the German armies were still too successful and the Allies too hopeful of eventual military success for either side to consider it.
President Wilson at that point had attempted various times to bring about peace but was unsuccessful in each attempt as we can see. This along with the sinking of the lusitania and the interception of the Zimmerman telegram which posed a certain danger with Germany offering Mexico an alliance on the basis they attacked the U.S prompted President Wilson to declare war on Germany. So on April 2, 1917 President Wilson went before congress to request a declaration of war on the basis and justification that doing so would be to “make the world safe for democracy”. The Senate voted in favor of the war 82-6 and on April 6th, 1917 the House of Representatives voted in favor as well 373 - 50 officially declaring war on Germany and entering the Great War.
With the U.S entering war came also policies which were often passed to try and promote the war effort. One of these policies was the Selective Service Act. President Woodrow Wilson proposed the selective service act in order to enlist the necessary number of men into the army to properly fight and help out the allies in Europe. About 1,000,00 men were expected to enlist but only about 73,000 enlisted, pushing the President and congress to pass the act. The purpose of this act was to grow the numbers in the U.S military by making it a requirement for healthy able males ages 21-30 to enlist in the army. Those who failed to comply and did not have reason for an exemption faced risk of prosecution. There were various groups exempted such as religious ministers, those who had a chronic disability, students, state officials, etc. This policy which can be referred to as a draft and was held constitutional by the supreme court. The draft was just in a legal sense since it did not violate any articles in the constitution and actually was supported by Article 1 section 8 which states that “Congress has the power to declare war, raise and support Armies, provide and maintain a Navy, and organize, arm, discipline, and call forth a militia”. Once the Selective Service Act was executed around 2.8 million men were drafted, around 350,000 tried to evade the draft, and the U.S’ army numbers were increased to about 4.8 million. The other 2 million in the army were volunteers. These numbers truly helped the U.S back up its allies in Europe.
Overall U.S military involvement was justified due to the threats Germany posed to the welfare of the U.S. The U.S was also right in helping out its allies in Europe such as France since most Americans upon realizing the brutality the German forces were using were morally aligned more with the Allied Powers. While I believe all wars are not morally just, I cannot doubt this one was legally justified by the breaching of sovereignty and welfare threats to countries around the world. In the end it is important to remember and honor those who lost their lives on the grounds and beliefs that what they were fighting for mattered. Thank you for reading!
Sources and Works Cited
“Constitutional Topic: The Draft - the U.S. Constitution Online.” Constitutional Topic: The Draft - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net, US Constitution.net, https://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_drft.html#:~:text=The%20Constitution%20does%20not%20directly,create%20or%20man%20an%20army.
Greenspan, Jesse. “The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 26 June 2014, https://www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand.
Holt, Lauren. “Woodrow Wilson and the First World War.” National Portrait Gallery, 12 Sept. 2014, https://npg.si.edu/blog/woodrow-wilson-and-first-world-war.
Howard, Michael Eliot. The First World War. Oxford University Press, 2003.
Mougel, Nadege. “World War I Casualties - Centre-Robert-Schuman.org.” REPERES, 2011, http://www.centre-robert-schuman.org/userfiles/files/REPERES%20%E2%80%93%20module%201-1-1%20-%20explanatory%20notes%20%E2%80%93%20World%20War%20I%20casualties%20%E2%80%93%20EN.pdf.
Simkin, John. “Strategy and Tactics in the First World War.” Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWtactics.htm.
University, Cornell. “War and Defense Powers.” Legal Information Institute, Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/war_and_defense_powers#:~:text=Under%20Article%20I%2C%20Section%208,and%20call%20forth%20a%20militia.
“U.S. Enters WWI.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Feb. 2010, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/america-enters-world-war-i.
“World War I Declarations: Topics in Chronicling America: Introduction.” Research Guides, https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-wwi-declarations.
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