Unit 8 · Twentieth-Century Crises

By 1914, the great powers of Europe did not trust one another. Four forces built up tension over many years. Historians often remember them as four roots of the war. Each one alone might not have caused a world war. Together, they made one far more likely.

The first was militarism, the belief that a nation needs a large, strong military. Germany and Britain raced to build the biggest navy. Countries drew up detailed plans for war and kept millions of soldiers ready. The second was alliances. Nations made deals to defend each other. France, Russia and Britain lined up on one side. Germany and Austria-Hungary lined up on the other.

The third root was imperialism, when a strong nation takes control of other lands. European countries competed for colonies in Africa and Asia. Each new colony caused jealousy and quarrels. The fourth root was nationalism, a strong pride in one’s own nation. Pride made leaders unwilling to back down. It also made some groups, like Serbs living inside Austria-Hungary, want their own country.

Together, these forces made Europe like a room full of gunpowder. Alliances meant that a fight between two countries could quickly pull in many more. Only a spark was needed. In the summer of 1914, that spark came in a city in southeastern Europe.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand rode through the city of Sarajevo in an open car. He was next in line to rule Austria-Hungary. A young Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the archduke and his wife, Sophie. Princip wanted lands with Serbian people to break free from Austria-Hungary.

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war on it. Then the alliances took over. Russia, a friend of Serbia, got its army ready. Germany, Austria-Hungary’s ally, declared war on Russia and then on France. When German troops marched through neutral Belgium to reach France, Britain declared war on Germany. All of this happened in about one week in early August.

Two sides formed. The Allies included France, Britain and Russia. Italy joined them in 1915. The Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Colonies around the world were pulled in too. People at the time called it the Great War. Later it became known as World War I.

On the Western Front, the war became a stalemate. That means neither side could win. Soldiers lived in trenches for months at a time. Attacks across no man’s land usually failed, because defenders with machine guns could stop them.

Both sides tried new weapons to break the deadlock. In 1915, Germany used poison gas, and soon both sides did. Soldiers had to carry gas masks. Britain rolled out the first tanks in 1916. They were slow and often broke down, but they could crush barbed wire and cross trenches.

The war also moved into the sky and under the sea. At first, airplanes scouted enemy lines. Soon pilots fought each other in the air. At sea, German submarines, called U-boats, sank ships carrying supplies to Britain. Submarines would later help bring the United States into the war.

The cost was enormous. By the end, about 9 million soldiers had died, along with millions of civilians. A whole generation of young men in France, Britain and Germany was scarred. People asked how their leaders could let so many die for so little ground.

When the war began, President Woodrow Wilson said the United States would stay neutral. Most Americans agreed. The war seemed far away. Many people did not want to send their sons to fight in Europe’s quarrels.

Yet Americans had strong feelings. About one in three Americans had been born abroad or had a parent who was. Many German Americans and Irish Americans were against Britain. Many other Americans felt close to Britain and France through language, history and democracy.

Money mattered too. American farms and factories sold huge amounts of food, steel and weapons to the Allies. Banks loaned the Allies billions of dollars. Britain’s navy blocked most trade with Germany, so the Central Powers got much less. Over time, America’s business was tied to an Allied victory.

British propaganda also shaped opinion. Britain cut Germany’s undersea telegraph cables, so most war news reached America through British sources. Stories of German cruelty in Belgium, some true and some exaggerated, turned many Americans against Germany.

Germany used U-boats to stop supplies from reaching Britain. On May 7, 1915, a U-boat sank the British passenger ship Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 people died, including 128 Americans. Americans were furious. Germany said the ship carried weapons, which was partly true, but most of the dead were ordinary travelers.

Wilson protested strongly. For a while, Germany promised to stop sinking passenger and merchant ships without warning. Wilson won reelection in 1916. Many voters liked that he had kept the country out of war.

Then, in early 1917, Germany took a gamble. It announced unrestricted submarine warfare. U-boats would sink any ship near Britain, even American ships. German leaders hoped to starve Britain before America could make a difference.

At the same time, British spies decoded a secret message from Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann. He asked Mexico to join Germany if the United States entered the war. In return, Mexico could win back land it had lost to the United States. The message was printed in American newspapers in March 1917. Anger swept the country.

In March 1917, U-boats sank several American ships. The same month, a revolution in Russia removed the czar, its all-powerful ruler. Now all the major Allies had some kind of elected government. That made it easier for Wilson to call the war a fight for democracy.

On April 2, 1917, Wilson spoke to Congress. He asked lawmakers to declare war on Germany. He said America had no selfish goals. It wanted no land and no payment. It would fight for the rights of people everywhere.

On April 6, 1917, Congress voted for war. Most members agreed, but some voted no. Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman elected to Congress, was one of them. She said she wanted to stand by her country but could not vote for war.

The United States had a small army. It would take many months to build a large one and ship it across the Atlantic. The Allies were exhausted. They needed American soldiers, food and money as fast as possible.

To build an army fast, Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May 1917. This created a draft, a system that requires people to serve in the military. Millions of men signed up on registration day. Numbers were drawn to decide who would go.

The soldiers were called the American Expeditionary Force, or AEF. General John J. Pershing led them. People nicknamed American soldiers “doughboys.” Soldiers came from farms, cities and immigrant neighborhoods. Some did not yet speak English well.

The army was segregated, meaning Black and white soldiers served in separate units. More than 350,000 African Americans served. Many were given only labor jobs. But some Black units fought bravely. The 369th Infantry from New York, called the Harlem Hellfighters, fought alongside French troops. The 370th Infantry, first formed as the 8th Illinois National Guard, came from Chicago and had Black officers.

Native Americans served too, even though many were not yet U.S. citizens. Women served as nurses and as telephone operators in France. Their service helped change ideas about who belonged in the nation.

American troops arrived in large numbers in 1918, just in time. Russia had left the war after a second revolution. That let Germany move soldiers to the Western Front. In spring 1918, Germany launched huge attacks and pushed toward Paris.

American soldiers and Marines helped stop the Germans at Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood in June 1918. Then the Allies struck back. In the fall, more than a million Americans fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France. It was the largest battle in American history up to that time.

Germany was running out of soldiers, food and hope. Its people were hungry and angry. On November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., an armistice took effect. That is an agreement to stop fighting. Church bells rang across Europe and America.

About 116,000 Americans died in the war. More than half died from disease, not battle. Their sacrifice was smaller than that of France or Britain, but the fresh American troops had tipped the balance.

War is expensive. The government sold Liberty Bonds, loans from ordinary people that would be paid back with interest. Movie stars held rallies. Children bought savings stamps. The government also raised taxes on high incomes.

To win hearts, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel. It made posters, films and pamphlets. Thousands of volunteer speakers gave short talks in movie theaters. Some of this propaganda also spread fear and hatred of Germans.

German Americans faced suspicion and cruelty. Some schools stopped teaching German. Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.” In Collinsville, Illinois, in 1918, a mob killed a German-born man named Robert Prager, who was falsely accused of disloyalty.

Congress passed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918. These laws made it a crime to interfere with the draft or, later, to criticize the government or the war in harsh ways. Labor leader Eugene V. Debs was sent to prison for a speech against the war. In 1920 he ran for president from his prison cell and won nearly a million votes.

With millions of men in uniform and immigration from Europe cut off, factories needed workers. Women took jobs in factories, offices and railroads. Many had never been paid for work outside the home before. Their war work helped win support for the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920.

African Americans in the South faced Jim Crow laws, low pay and violence. Now Northern factories were hiring. Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved north. This movement became known as the Great Migration. It continued for decades.

Chicago was a top destination. The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, urged Southerners to come north. Pullman porters on the trains carried copies south. The Illinois Central Railroad ran straight from Mississippi and Louisiana to Chicago. New arrivals found work in the stockyards, steel mills and rail yards.

The North was not free of prejudice. Black families faced unfair housing rules and hostility. In July 1919, a Black teenager named Eugene Williams drowned after being attacked at a Chicago beach. Days of rioting followed, and 38 people died. The violence showed how deep the racial divide ran.

In 1918, a new kind of influenza, or flu, spread around the world. It moved fast in crowded army camps and on troop ships. Soldiers carried it from place to place. Unlike most flus, it was especially deadly for healthy young adults.

A pandemic is a disease that spreads across many countries. The 1918 flu reached almost every part of the world. It killed at least 50 million people worldwide. In the United States, about 675,000 people died.

Cities tried to slow it down. Many closed schools, theaters and churches. People were told to wear masks and avoid crowds. Nurses and doctors worked until they dropped. There were no vaccines or medicines that could cure it.

Because of the war, many governments kept news of the flu quiet at first. They did not want to hurt morale. Scientists today still study the 1918 pandemic to prepare for new diseases.

In January 1918, Wilson listed his goals for peace, called the Fourteen Points. He wanted open agreements, free trade, fewer weapons and the right of peoples to choose their own governments. His last point called for a League of Nations, a group where countries could settle disputes without war.

In 1919, leaders met near Paris. Britain and France wanted Germany to pay. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, forced Germany to accept blame for the war. It had to pay huge sums called reparations, give up land and shrink its army. New nations such as Poland and Czechoslovakia appeared on the map. The treaty did create the League of Nations.

Back home, the Senate had to approve the treaty. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and others worried the League could drag America into future wars without a vote of Congress. Wilson refused to compromise. He toured the country to win support, but he suffered a stroke in 1919.

The Senate never approved the treaty. The United States never joined the League. Many Germans felt the treaty was unfair and humiliating. That anger would help bring about an even bigger war twenty years later.

By 1920, many Americans were worn out. They had lived through a world war, a deadly flu and bitter strikes. Warren G. Harding, a Republican senator from Ohio, promised a return to “normalcy.” He won the 1920 election easily.

Harding picked some honest, skilled advisers. But he also gave jobs to friends who used their power to get rich. In the worst scandal, called Teapot Dome, Interior Secretary Albert Fall took bribes. In return, he let private companies drill on government oil land. Fall became the first cabinet member sent to prison. Harding died in 1923 before most of the scandal came out.

Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president. People called him “Silent Cal” because he spoke so little. Coolidge believed government should stay small and let business grow. Taxes were cut, especially for the wealthy. Coolidge won the 1924 election. In 1928, voters chose another Republican, Herbert Hoover, for president.

Supporters said these policies brought jobs and prosperity. Critics said they helped the rich far more than farmers and workers. Both views would matter when the good times ended. People still argue about how much these choices helped cause the troubles of the 1930s.

In 1917, communists took power in Russia. Communists wanted workers to overthrow owners and have the government control property. They said their revolution would spread. Many Americans feared it might spread to the United States.

In 1919, more than 4 million American workers went on strike for better pay. Police officers in Boston even walked off the job. That year, bombs were mailed to government leaders. One exploded at the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Fear of radicals, people who want extreme change, grew into a Red Scare. Red was the color of communism.

In late 1919 and early 1920, Palmer’s agents raided offices and homes in many cities. Thousands were arrested, often without proof of any crime. Many were immigrants. Hundreds were deported, or sent out of the country. Critics said the raids trampled on free speech and fair trials.

In 1920, two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested for a robbery and murder. They were anarchists, people who oppose all government. They were convicted and executed in 1927. Many people then and since have doubted they received a fair trial.

Before the war, about a million immigrants a year came to the United States. Many came from Italy, Poland, Russia and Greece. Some Americans feared these newcomers. They said immigrants took jobs or brought dangerous ideas. Prejudice against Catholics and Jews was also strong.

Congress acted. A 1921 law created quotas, or limits, on how many people could come from each country. The Immigration Act of 1924 made the limits much tighter. Each nation’s quota was based on how many people from that country lived in the U.S. in 1890. That was before most southern and eastern Europeans had arrived, so their quotas were tiny.

The 1924 law also blocked almost all immigration from Asia. Japan was deeply offended, because it saw the law as an insult to its people. Chinese immigrants had already been shut out since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The quotas did not apply to countries in the Americas. Many Mexican workers came north to work on farms and railroads. In 1924, Congress also created the U.S. Border Patrol. The quota system stayed in place until 1965.

The first Ku Klux Klan had used terror against Black Southerners during Reconstruction. In 1915, a new Klan was started in Georgia. In the 1920s it grew fast. At its peak, it had millions of members, in the North and West as well as the South.

The new Klan attacked anyone it saw as not truly “American.” It targeted African Americans, Catholics, Jews and immigrants. Members wore white robes and hoods and burned crosses to frighten people. Some Klan members used violence. The Klan also used politics. In Indiana and other states, it helped elect governors, mayors and lawmakers.

Many Americans spoke out against the Klan. Black newspapers, Catholic and Jewish groups, and immigrant communities pushed back. In 1925, a top Klan leader in Indiana was convicted of murder. People saw that the group claiming to protect morals was led by criminals.

After that, the Klan shrank quickly. The Klan never fully disappeared, but it lost most of its power. Its rise showed how much fear and bigotry existed in the 1920s, even in a time known for fun and new freedoms.

For many years, the temperance movement had worked to limit alcohol. Temperance means drinking little or no alcohol. Supporters said drinking hurt families, health and work. Frances Willard of Evanston, Illinois, led the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and made it a national force.

In 1919, the states ratified the 18th Amendment. Starting in January 1920, making, selling or shipping alcoholic drinks was illegal. This era was called Prohibition. Drinking went down at first, especially in rural areas.

But millions of people ignored the law. They went to hidden bars called speakeasies. Bootleggers smuggled liquor from Canada and the Caribbean or made it in secret. Gangs fought over the profits. In Chicago, Al Capone ran a huge illegal liquor business and was linked to many killings. He was finally sent to prison in 1931, for not paying taxes.

Many Americans decided Prohibition caused more harm than good. It made criminals rich and taught people to ignore the law. In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed, or canceled, the 18th Amendment. It is the only amendment ever repealed.

In 1925, Tennessee passed a law called the Butler Act. It banned public school teachers from teaching that humans developed from earlier forms of life. This idea is part of the scientific theory of evolution.

A civil liberties group offered to defend any teacher who would test the law in court. John Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed. He was charged with breaking the law. The trial in July 1925 became a national event. A Chicago radio station, WGN, broadcast it live.

Two famous men faced off. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and a devout Christian, helped the prosecution. Clarence Darrow, a well-known Chicago lawyer, defended Scopes. In one famous moment, Darrow questioned Bryan himself about the Bible.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. A higher court later threw out the fine on a technical point. People saw the trial differently. Some felt it defended faith and the right of communities to decide what schools teach. Others felt it defended science and a teacher’s freedom. The debate over values in schools continues today.

In 1908, Henry Ford began selling the Model T. It was simple, tough and cheaper than most cars. In 1913, Ford’s factory started using a moving assembly line. Workers stayed in one place while the car moved past them. Each worker did one small task. Building a car’s frame and engine went from more than 12 hours to about an hour and a half.

Faster building meant lower prices. The Model T cost $850 in 1908. By the mid-1920s, it cost less than $300. In 1914, Ford also began paying many workers $5 a day, about double the usual pay. Now factory workers could afford the cars they built. Making huge numbers of goods this way is called mass production.

Cars changed the country. Towns paved roads and built gas stations. Families could live farther from work, and suburbs grew. Rural families could drive to town. Teenagers could go out on their own.

Americans also bought radios, washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Many paid on credit, using installment plans: a small payment now and more each month. Advertising urged people to buy now and pay later. This helped the economy grow, but it also left many families in debt.

In 1920, station KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast the results of the presidential election. It was one of the first commercial radio stations. Within ten years, millions of homes had a radio. Families gathered to hear news, music, comedy shows and ball games. For the first time, people across the country heard the same thing at the same moment.

Movies were even more popular. Millions of people went to the movies every week. Charlie Chaplin made audiences laugh in silent films. In 1927, The Jazz Singer became the first feature-length movie with spoken dialogue. Soon silent films were gone.

Americans loved sports heroes. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927. Red Grange, the “Galloping Ghost” from Wheaton, Illinois, starred at the University of Illinois and then for the Chicago Bears. Such stars became celebrities, famous people followed by fans.

Pilots were heroes too. In May 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew alone, without stopping, from New York to Paris. Bessie Coleman, who lived in Chicago, became the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license, in 1921. She had to go to France to learn, because American flight schools would not accept her.

In 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Many women hoped this would lead to other changes. Some ran for office. A few were elected to state legislatures and to Congress.

Some young women, called flappers, broke old rules. They cut their hair short in a style called a bob and wore shorter skirts. They danced the Charleston, drove cars and went out without a chaperone, an older person who watched over them. Older Americans were often shocked.

More women worked outside the home, especially as typists, clerks, telephone operators, nurses and teachers. Most jobs still paid women less than men. Many women, especially Black and immigrant women, worked hard jobs as cooks, maids and factory hands, as they had before.

Most women were not flappers. Most married women still spent their days caring for homes and children. But new appliances made some chores easier. The image of the free, modern woman changed what many girls dreamed they could do.

The Great Migration kept going through the 1920s. Black Southerners came north to escape Jim Crow laws and find better jobs. Chicago’s Black population more than doubled during the decade.

On the South Side, newcomers built what some called a Black metropolis, a city within a city. There were Black-owned banks, insurance companies, newspapers, stores and churches. Ida B. Wells, the famous journalist and civil rights leader, lived there and kept working for justice.

The South Side was also a center of jazz and blues. Musicians like Louis Armstrong and King Oliver played in its clubs. Records made in Chicago spread the music across the nation. Blues singers, church choirs and dance bands made the South Side one of the most exciting places in America.

Black Chicagoans gained political power too. In 1928, voters on the South Side elected Oscar De Priest to Congress. He was the first African American elected to Congress from a Northern state. But discrimination remained. Rules called restrictive covenants barred Black families from buying homes in many neighborhoods. That kept the South Side crowded.

Harlem is a neighborhood in New York City. By the 1920s, it had become one of the largest Black communities in the country. Writers, artists and musicians gathered there. Their burst of creative work is called the Harlem Renaissance. Renaissance means rebirth.

Langston Hughes was one of its brightest voices. He wrote poems in the rhythms of jazz and blues about the lives of ordinary Black people. Zora Neale Hurston, who grew up in an all-Black town in Florida, collected folk tales and wrote novels. Claude McKay and Countee Cullen wrote powerful poetry.

Music filled Harlem’s clubs. Duke Ellington led his orchestra at the Cotton Club. But at that club, Black musicians performed for white-only audiences. Even at the center of Black culture, segregation was present.

The Harlem Renaissance showed the nation the talent and depth of Black culture. It gave African Americans a new sense of pride. It also shaped American literature and music for generations.

Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica. In 1914 he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, or UNIA. In 1916 he moved to New York, and his movement grew quickly in Harlem and other cities.

Garvey told Black people to be proud of their African roots. He urged them to start their own businesses and depend on each other. He believed Black people would never be treated fairly in white-run nations. He called for building a strong independent nation in Africa. His followers marched in uniforms and read his newspaper.

Garvey started a shipping company called the Black Star Line. It was meant to carry goods and people between the Americas and Africa. But the company was badly run. It bought old, worn-out ships and lost a great deal of money that followers had invested.

Garvey had critics, including W.E.B. Du Bois of the NAACP. They disagreed with his plan to leave America and with how he ran his businesses. In 1923, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud. He was deported to Jamaica in 1927. His message of Black pride inspired later leaders.

The 1920s looked like good times. But the economy had hidden cracks. Farmers were one. During the war, they had grown extra crops for Europe. After the war, prices fell. Many farmers could not pay their debts and lost their land, years before the crash.

Wealth was also very unequal. A small group of rich families earned a large share of the nation’s income. Most workers’ pay rose slowly. Factories made more goods than ordinary people could afford to buy. This is called overproduction.

Many families bought cars, radios and furniture on credit. When they had borrowed as much as they could, they stopped buying. Then stores sold less, and factories had to slow down and cut workers.

The stock market was a big risk too. A stock is a small share of ownership in a company. In the late 1920s, stock prices rose fast. Many people bought stocks on margin. That meant they paid only a small part of the price and borrowed the rest. They believed prices would keep rising forever. If prices fell, they would owe money they did not have.

In September 1929, stock prices reached a record high. Then they began to slip. On Thursday, October 24, panicked owners rushed to sell. Prices dropped sharply. Bankers bought stocks to calm the market, and it steadied for a moment.

On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the market collapsed. So many people wanted to sell that there were few buyers. More than 16 million shares were traded in one day, a record that stood for decades. This day became known as Black Tuesday.

People who had bought on margin were ruined. Lenders demanded their money back. Banks that had loaned money for stocks, or bought stocks themselves, lost huge sums. Some wealthy families lost almost everything in a few days.

The crash alone did not cause the Great Depression. But it helped start a downward spiral. Frightened people and businesses stopped spending. Stock prices kept sliding for almost three years.

When people heard a bank was in trouble, they rushed to take out their money. This is called a bank run. Banks do not keep all deposits as cash; they lend most of it out. So a run could force a bank to close. About 9,000 banks failed between 1930 and 1933. When a bank closed, its customers’ savings were often simply gone.

As people and businesses stopped spending, factories cut workers. Workers with no pay bought even less. More factories closed. By 1933, about one in four workers had no job. This is called unemployment. Many others worked fewer hours for lower pay.

The trouble spread around the world. In 1930, Congress passed a high tariff, a tax on imported goods, to protect American businesses. Other countries raised their own tariffs in return. World trade shrank, and the Depression grew worse.

Hardship reached every group. African Americans and Mexican Americans were often the first fired. Farmers watched prices fall so low that crops were not worth harvesting. Families lost homes and farms.

Herbert Hoover became president in March 1929, just months before the crash. He was a skilled engineer who had organized food aid for Europe during World War I. He believed in rugged individualism, the idea that people should succeed through their own effort.

Hoover thought the economy would recover on its own. He asked business leaders to keep wages up. He urged churches, charities and local governments to help the needy. He believed direct federal relief, government money or food given to people in need, would make people depend on government.

As things got worse, Hoover did more. He supported building projects like the dam on the Colorado River later named Hoover Dam. In 1932 he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It loaned money to banks, railroads and big businesses, hoping the help would trickle down to workers.

But charities ran out of money. Local governments went broke. Many Americans felt Hoover cared more about banks than about hungry families. That was not entirely fair, but his name became linked to hard times.

Many families who lost their homes built shacks from scrap wood, tin and cardboard. Groups of these shacks grew on empty land in many cities, including Chicago. People bitterly called them Hoovervilles. A newspaper used as a blanket was a “Hoover blanket.” Thousands of young people rode freight trains from town to town looking for work.

In 1932, thousands of World War I veterans marched to Washington, D.C. Congress had promised them a bonus, an extra payment, for their service. But it was not due until 1945. The veterans needed it now. They camped with their families near the Capitol. They were called the Bonus Army.

The Senate voted against paying the bonus early. Most veterans went home, but thousands stayed. In July 1932, Hoover ordered the army to clear them out. Soldiers led by General Douglas MacArthur used tear gas and set the camp on fire.

Americans were shocked to see the army turned against veterans. The event badly hurt Hoover as the election of 1932 approached. To many voters, it seemed to sum up a government that had lost touch with suffering people.

For years, farmers on the southern Great Plains plowed up the deep-rooted prairie grass to plant wheat. The grass had held the soil in place. In the early 1930s, a long drought, a time with little rain, struck the region.

With no grass and no rain, the dry soil blew away. Huge dust storms rolled across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. The area became known as the Dust Bowl. On April 14, 1935, called Black Sunday, a giant storm turned day into night. People stuffed wet rags around windows. Dust got into food, beds and lungs.

Crops died and farms failed. Hundreds of thousands of people left. Many headed west to California, hoping to pick crops. Because many came from Oklahoma, they were all called “Okies,” often as an insult. In California, they found low pay, crowded camps and people who did not want them.

Photographer Dorothea Lange took pictures of migrant families for the government. Her pictures helped Americans understand the suffering. The government taught farmers to plant trees as windbreaks and to plow in ways that saved the soil.

In 1932, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, ran against Hoover. He promised “a new deal for the American people.” Roosevelt, often called FDR, came from a wealthy family. At age 39, he had been struck by polio and could no longer walk without help. Many said the illness made him more understanding of people who were suffering.

Roosevelt won in a landslide. When he took office on March 4, 1933, banks in many states had closed. Millions of people were out of work and frightened. In his first speech as president, he spoke directly to Americans’ fear.

Two days later, Roosevelt closed all the nation’s banks for a “bank holiday.” Congress quickly passed the Emergency Banking Act to inspect the banks. Only healthy banks would be allowed to reopen. When they did, people put money back in instead of rushing to take it out.

Roosevelt believed in trying new ideas and dropping those that failed. His programs became known as the New Deal. They aimed at three goals: relief for people in need, recovery for the economy, and reform to prevent another depression.

Roosevelt’s first months were a whirlwind. In about a hundred days, Congress passed more than a dozen major laws. On the radio, Roosevelt explained his plans in calm, simple talks from the White House. These became known as fireside chats.

The Banking Act of 1933 created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. It insured people’s bank savings. If a bank failed, the government would pay depositors back. The FDIC still protects savings today.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, hired young men to plant trees, fight fires and build trails in parks. Over its life, about 3 million young men served. The Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, built dams in one of the poorest parts of the South. The dams controlled floods and made electricity.

Other programs tried to raise crop prices by paying farmers to grow less. Another tried to set fair rules for wages and prices in industry. Some worked better than others. Together, these programs brought the government into Americans’ lives as never before.

By 1935, the economy was better but still weak. Millions of people still had no jobs. Critics on all sides were growing louder. Roosevelt launched a new wave of programs, often called the Second New Deal.

The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, hired millions of jobless people. Over its life, about 8.5 million people worked for it. They built roads, bridges, schools, parks and airports. The WPA also hired artists to paint murals, writers to record local history and actors to put on plays.

The Social Security Act of 1935 created a system of payments for retired older workers. It also set up help for unemployed workers and some families with children. Workers and employers paid into the system from each paycheck.

Workers gained new rights. The Wagner Act of 1935 protected workers’ right to form labor unions and bargain together for better pay. Union membership grew fast. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act set the first national minimum wage and limited most child labor.

Eleanor Roosevelt changed the role of First Lady. Because her husband could not easily travel, she crossed the country for him. She visited coal mines, farms and city slums. She wrote a newspaper column and held press conferences for women reporters. She spoke up for the poor, for women and for African Americans.

In 1939, a group refused to let Black singer Marian Anderson perform in its hall in Washington. Eleanor Roosevelt quit the group in protest. She helped arrange for Anderson to sing outdoors at the Lincoln Memorial. About 75,000 people came to hear her.

Frances Perkins became Secretary of Labor in 1933. She was the first woman in a president’s cabinet, his group of top advisers. She played a key role in creating Social Security and the minimum wage.

Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator who had started a school in Florida that grew into a college, led a New Deal youth program’s work with Black young people. She also led a group of Black officials who advised the president. Newspapers called it the Black Cabinet. She pushed the government to include African Americans in its programs.

African Americans were often “last hired, first fired” during the Depression. Some New Deal programs helped them, and the CCC and WPA hired many Black workers. But in the South, local officials often ran programs unfairly. Social Security at first did not cover farmworkers or household workers. Many Black workers held exactly those jobs. Farm programs that paid owners to plant less also pushed many Black sharecroppers off the land.

Even so, many African Americans felt Roosevelt’s government cared more than earlier ones had. Many Black voters, who had long voted Republican, switched to the Democratic Party in the 1930s.

Mexican Americans faced a harsh campaign. As jobs disappeared, local and state officials pressured people of Mexican descent to leave the country. This was called repatriation. Hundreds of thousands left or were forced out. Many were U.S. citizens, including children born in the United States.

Native Americans saw a change in policy. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended the breaking up of tribal land into small plots. It encouraged tribes to form their own governments. Some nations welcomed it. Others felt it forced outside ideas of government on them.

Not everyone liked the New Deal. Some business leaders and conservatives said it gave government too much power and spent too much money. They warned that it would make people depend on government and hurt freedom.

Others said Roosevelt did too little. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana wanted to take money from the rich and give every family a basic income. A radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, attacked Roosevelt to millions of listeners. Dr. Francis Townsend proposed large monthly payments to older Americans.

The Supreme Court struck down some New Deal laws. In 1937, Roosevelt proposed adding up to six new justices to the Court. Critics said he was trying to “pack” the Court to get his way. Even many Democrats opposed the plan, and it failed. That same year, spending cuts helped cause a new downturn.

The New Deal did not end the Depression. Unemployment stayed high until huge spending for World War II created millions of jobs. But the New Deal changed what Americans expected of government. Social Security, the FDIC, the minimum wage and workers’ rights to form unions are still part of American life. People still debate how big the government’s role should be.

The Great War and the Great Depression left many people angry and afraid. In several countries, they turned to dictators, rulers with total power. In Italy, Benito Mussolini took power in 1922. He started fascism, a system that puts the nation above the individual and crushes all opposition. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin ruled through terror. Millions of his own people died because of his harsh policies.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party. He blamed Germany’s problems on the Treaty of Versailles and on Jewish people. He promised to make Germany powerful again. Hitler became chancellor, or head of government, in 1933. He soon ended democracy and began building up the army. In Japan, military leaders gained control of the government. They wanted an empire in Asia to supply oil, rubber and other resources.

These nations began taking land. Japan seized Manchuria, in northern China, in 1931 and invaded the rest of China in 1937. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Germany took over Austria in 1938. Then Hitler demanded part of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France agreed at a meeting in Munich, hoping to avoid war. Giving in to an aggressor’s demands to keep peace is called appeasement.

Appeasement failed. In 1939, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had begun. By June 1940, Germany had conquered France. Britain fought on almost alone. Germany, Italy and Japan became allies called the Axis Powers.

Many Americans remembered World War I and wanted no part of another European war. People who want their nation to stay out of other countries’ affairs are called isolationists. In the mid-1930s, Congress passed Neutrality Acts that limited selling weapons to nations at war.

After war began in 1939, Roosevelt believed the United States could not be safe if Hitler won. Congress agreed to let Britain and France buy weapons if they paid cash and carried the goods in their own ships. In 1940, the nation started its first peacetime draft.

The America First Committee, based in Chicago, argued hard against getting involved. Its best-known speaker was the pilot Charles Lindbergh. Other Americans said the country had to help Britain survive.

In January 1941, Roosevelt spoke of Four Freedoms that all people deserved. In March, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. It let the United States lend or lease weapons and supplies to Britain, and later to the Soviet Union and others. Roosevelt said America would be the “arsenal of democracy,” a storehouse of weapons for nations fighting the Axis.

Japan wanted to control East Asia and its resources. When Japan moved into French Indochina in 1941, the United States cut off sales of oil to Japan. Japan needed oil for its navy. Its leaders decided to strike the U.S. Pacific Fleet so America could not stop them.

Early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They sank or damaged eight battleships and destroyed many planes. More than 2,400 Americans were killed. The battleship Arizona exploded and sank with more than 1,100 sailors aboard. Luckily for the U.S., its aircraft carriers were at sea that day.

The next day, Roosevelt spoke to Congress. Congress quickly declared war on Japan. Only one member voted no: Jeannette Rankin, who had also voted against war in 1917. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The attack ended the debate over isolation. Americans were now united and angry. Millions rushed to join the military. The United States joined Britain, the Soviet Union, China and others as the Allies.

Winning the war meant making huge amounts of weapons. The government told factories what to build. Car companies stopped making cars for families and built tanks, trucks, airplane engines and more. This shift to wartime production is called mobilization. Jobs appeared everywhere, and the Depression finally ended.

Illinois played a big part. Chicago plants built engines, radios and ships’ parts. In the small town of Seneca, on the Illinois River, workers built landing ships for the Navy. Great Lakes Naval Training Station, north of Chicago, trained huge numbers of sailors.

Many goods were in short supply. The government used rationing, limiting how much of certain goods each family could buy. Families got ration books with stamps for sugar, coffee, meat, gas and tires. People planted victory gardens to grow their own vegetables. Children collected scrap metal and rubber. Families bought war bonds to lend money to the government.

With millions of men in uniform, millions of women took jobs in factories and shipyards. They welded, riveted and ran machines. The image of “Rosie the Riveter” became a symbol of these workers. Hundreds of thousands of women also joined the military in new women’s branches. Most were pushed out of factory jobs when the men came home, but the war changed ideas about women’s work.

More than a million African Americans served in World War II, in a military that was still segregated. A Black newspaper called for a Double V campaign: victory over enemies abroad and victory over racism at home. In 1941, labor leader A. Philip Randolph planned a march on Washington to protest job discrimination. Roosevelt then signed an order banning discrimination in defense industries.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military pilots in U.S. history. They trained at Tuskegee, Alabama. Flying over Europe, they protected American bombers and earned a strong record.

Native Americans served in large numbers. About 400 Navajo Marines became code talkers. They used their own language to create a code for sending messages in the Pacific. The enemy never broke it. Code talkers from other nations, such as the Comanche, also served.

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans served, and many earned high honors. At home, the Bracero Program brought Mexican workers to farms and railroads. But in 1943, in Los Angeles, groups of servicemen attacked young Mexican Americans in the Zoot Suit Riots. Chinese Americans also served, and in 1943 Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Under Executive Order 9066, about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced into camps. This is called incarceration, being locked up. No Japanese American was ever convicted of spying for Japan during the war. In Hawaii, where people of Japanese ancestry made up about a third of the population, there was no mass removal. German and Italian Americans were not removed as whole groups either.

Some people fought back in court. Fred Korematsu, a young welder in California, refused to leave his home. He was arrested. In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the removal was allowed because of wartime needs. Three justices disagreed, and one called it racism. The same day, in another case, the Court ruled that the government could not keep loyal citizens locked up. The camps began to close.

Thousands of Nisei men served in the U.S. Army. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up mostly of Japanese Americans, fought in Italy and France. It became one of the most decorated units in American history.

Years later, Japanese Americans pushed for redress, making things right. In 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act. It apologized and paid $20,000 to each surviving person who had been held.

The Allies agreed to defeat Germany first, since it was the strongest Axis power. In the Atlantic, German U-boats sank hundreds of ships carrying supplies. Over time, the Allies used radar, air patrols and warship escorts to win this battle.

In 1941, Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union. At first the Germans swept forward. But in the winter of 1942 to 1943, the Soviet army trapped and defeated a huge German army at Stalingrad. It was a major turning point. From then on, Germany was mostly retreating in the east. The Soviet people suffered enormous losses in the war.

In November 1942, American and British troops landed in North Africa. Americans lost their first big battle there, but they learned fast. By May 1943, the Axis armies in North Africa had surrendered.

Next, the Allies invaded Sicily and then Italy in 1943. Italian leaders removed Mussolini from power. But German troops fought on in Italy’s mountains. The Allies freed Rome in June 1944. Meanwhile, Allied bombers struck German factories, railroads and cities.

For years, the Soviet Union had asked Britain and the U.S. to open a second front in Western Europe. The Allies planned a huge invasion of Normandy, on the coast of France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower led it.

On June 6, 1944, called D-Day, about 156,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel by ship and plane. Americans landed at beaches code-named Utah and Omaha. At Omaha Beach, the fighting was fierce, and many soldiers died. By nightfall, the Allies held the beaches. Soon they poured more troops into France.

In August 1944, Paris was freed. In December, Germany launched a surprise attack in Belgium. This was the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle Americans fought in the war. The Allies held on and pushed into Germany from the west while Soviet troops pushed in from the east.

On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died. Vice President Harry S. Truman became president. On April 30, Hitler killed himself. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, called V-E Day, for Victory in Europe. Crowds celebrated in cities across America.

The Holocaust was the planned, government-run persecution and murder of about six million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany and its helpers, from 1933 to 1945. Persecution means cruel, unfair treatment of people because of who they are. The Nazis also persecuted and murdered millions of others, including Roma people, people with disabilities, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. They imprisoned political opponents, gay men and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It began with hateful words and unfair laws. Hitler spread antisemitism, hatred of Jewish people. In 1935, new laws took away German Jews’ citizenship. On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazis attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues across Germany and Austria. This is called Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to prison camps.

During the war, the Nazis forced Jews into crowded, walled-off city areas called ghettos. Killing squads murdered Jews in Eastern Europe. Then the Nazis built death camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, where people were killed on a huge scale. About one and a half million of the victims were children. Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who kept a diary while hiding in Amsterdam, died in a camp in 1945 at age 15. Jews resisted, as in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943. Some non-Jews risked their lives to hide them.

Before the war, the U.S. kept strict immigration quotas and let in relatively few Jewish refugees. In 1939, the ship St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away by Cuba and not allowed into the U.S. In 1944, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which helped save many thousands. In 1945, American soldiers freed prisoners at camps like Buchenwald and Dachau. Survivors’ stories, shared in places like the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, help the world remember.

After Pearl Harbor, Japan won victory after victory. It captured the Philippines, where U.S. and Filipino troops surrendered in April 1942. Japanese soldiers forced the prisoners on a brutal march, and thousands died. It became known as the Bataan Death March.

In June 1942, the U.S. Navy won a huge victory at the Battle of Midway. American code breakers had learned Japan’s plans. U.S. planes sank four Japanese aircraft carriers. Japan’s navy never fully recovered. Midway was the turning point in the Pacific.

The Allies then used island hopping. Instead of attacking every Japanese-held island, they captured key ones and skipped others. Each captured island gave them airfields closer to Japan. The fighting was fierce. At Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Japanese soldiers fought almost to the last person.

Near the end of the war, some Japanese pilots crashed their planes on purpose into American ships. They were called kamikaze pilots. The high losses made American leaders fear that invading Japan itself would cost a great many lives.

Scientists warned Roosevelt that Germany might build a powerful new weapon from splitting atoms. The U.S. started a secret program called the Manhattan Project. On December 2, 1942, under the stands of a stadium at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi created the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. It proved an atomic bomb was possible.

In July 1945, scientists tested the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. President Truman now had to decide whether to use it. Japan had refused to surrender. Military leaders expected an invasion of Japan to cost huge numbers of lives on both sides.

On August 6, 1945, a U.S. plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. On August 9, a second bomb destroyed much of Nagasaki. The Soviet Union also declared war on Japan. By the end of 1945, well over 100,000 people had died in the two cities, most of them civilians. Many survivors suffered from radiation sickness for years.

Japan announced its surrender on August 15, 1945. The formal surrender was signed on September 2. People still debate the decision. Supporters argue the bombs ended the war quickly and saved lives by avoiding an invasion. Critics argue Japan was close to defeat, and that killing so many civilians was wrong.

World War II was the deadliest war in human history. More than 60 million people died, most of them civilians. Cities across Europe and Asia lay in ruins. Millions of people had lost their homes. About 16 million Americans served in the military, and about 405,000 died.

After the war, the Allies put Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg, Germany, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. For the first time, leaders were held responsible before an international court for the murder of civilians. Japanese leaders were also tried.

Leaders wanted to stop another world war. In 1945, delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco and signed a charter creating the United Nations. This time, unlike after World War I, the United States joined. The UN was set up to help settle disputes, protect human rights and help people in need.

The war changed the United States. It came out as a superpower, a nation with enormous military and economic strength. So did the Soviet Union, and the two soon became rivals. At home, veterans returned to a booming economy. The service of women and people of color would fuel new demands for equal rights.