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World War 1
• Although the U.S. wanted to stay neutral in the war, it could not. U.S. involvement in the war helped turn the tide in favor of the Allies. If the Spanish-American War had left any doubt, World War I firmly established the U.S. as a dominant world power.
• Woodrow Wilson saw the war as an opportunity to prevent future wars. He wanted to end the war through a liberal peace agreement, but Allied nations and Republicans in Congress rejected his attempts. The U.S. also refused to join the League of Nations, which was conceived by Wilson.
• The war effort brought blacks and women into the workforce in record numbers. It also prompted the migration of nearly 500,000 blacks from the South to the North. Women’s contributions to the war effort resulted in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment (women’s right to vote).
• Progressivism continued throughout the war, securing its last great success with the prohibition of alcohol in the form of the Eighteenth Amendment.
World War 2
• The strict terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and the Depression of the 1930s created the terms under which fascism and extreme nationalism arose in Germany and Italy. The expansionist designs of these fascist regimes started World War II.
• During the years before the war began and in its first two years, the U.S. maintained its isolationist policies. As the war continued, though, American sympathies increasingly moved toward the Allies. American isolationism shifted first to indirect involvement and then to full involvement after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
• The war effort brought the American economy out of the Great Depression. Socially, blacks and women played large roles in the war effort.
• As the war neared its end, relations between the United States and the USSR became increasingly hostile. The discussions between the Allies about how to divide and rebuild Europe after Germany fell were an occasion for the U.S....