History Web Links:  U.S. History Between the Wars, 1914-1945
Dr. Chris Schutz, Tennessee Wesleyan College

 
 
World War I
Online documents of Zimmerman Note (both coded and decoded), a significant reason for the U.S. entry into WWI (National Archives)
President Woodrow Wilson's "14 Points" which laid out the goals for the U.S. in joining WWI
PBS site on Woodrow Wilson (president from 1913-1921)
Private website on WWI (compiled by a non-professional, but with a variety of links on primary documents, posters, photos, etc)
American propaganda posters to support the WWI effort
site on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (Stanford Univ.)
PBS site on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

 
 
 
Politics, 1920-1933
President Warren Harding (1921-1923):
      -- April 1921 Harding speech on the need for "normalcy" in the country
      --official White House site on Harding
      -- C-SPAN site on Harding's presidency
President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
     -- official White House site on Coolidge
     -- C-SPAN site on Coolidge's presidency
     -- 1925 Coolidge Inaugural Address
President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
     -- Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum website
     -- Online papers from Hoover administration
     -- Herbert Hoover's 1929 Inaugural Address

 
 
1920s Social & Political Trends
Henry Ford museum site on the life of Henry Ford
Time magazine profile on Henry Ford's importance
Frederick Winslow Taylor, business innovator of Scientific Management (PBS site)
1920s fashion
Red Scare (1919-1920 public alarm about Communism in America):
     -- Univ. of Washington site on Red Scare & Communists in Washington state
            in the 1920s
     -- Images and political cartoons from the Red Scare
1924 Leopold & Loeb case of two teenage killers in Chicago, seen to represent a shocking national moral decay:
     -- site on Leopold & Loeb trial, including confession, and court documents
     -- Northwestern Univ site on Leopold & Loeb featuring numerous documents, 
            newspaper accounts, and pictures
Scopes "Monkey Trial":
     -- H.L. Mencken column satrizing the South's stance on the issue of 
           evolution:  "Homo Neanderthalensis"
Consumer Age Advertising of the 1920s:
     --Audio clips of 1920s & 1930s Radio Advertising (as advertising was
            entering an important heyday)
     --Advertising in 1920s Women’s magazines
     --Women’s Beauty & Hygiene Ads from the 1920s
     -- another Women's beauty & hygiene ad site
     -- Deodorant Ads from the 1920s-40s
     -- 1920s Soap Advertisements
      -- 1920s Dental Supplies Ads
Religion in the 1920s:
       -- private site on Aimee Semple McPherson (may contain some 
              innaccuracies)-- includes an audioclip of McPherson
       -- 1926 poem about Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's disappearance
              (written by Upton Sinclair)
       -- website on popular evangelist Billy Sunday (including written sermons,
             audio clips, and images)
       -- Pro-prohibition sermon by evangelist Billy Sunday
       -- Billy Graham Center website on evangelist Billy Sunday (at Wheaton 
            College)
Prohibition in the 1920s:
     -- website on Prohibition and the Temperance Movement (Ohio State U.)
     -- Digital collection of documents on Prohibition and the Temperance
           Movement (Brown Univ.)
     -- Documents and overview of Prohibition (National Archives)

 
 
Jazz great Jelly Morton (on far left) with his orchestra
Race & Ethnicity in the 1920s
Marcus Garvey:
     PBS site on Marcus Garvey 
     Marcus Garvey Papers Project (at UCLA)
W.E.B. DuBois
      -- text of his famous book, The Souls of Black Folk
      --  "Returning Soldiers" editorial, May 1919 (NAACP magazine Crisis," 
                    addressed to returning black veterans 
Booker T. Washington:
     -- full text of his famous book, Up From Slavery
Sacco and Vanzetti trial
     -- extensive site on the famous case
     -- Court TV site on the case
Site on famously racist film, Birth of a Nation (1915)-- includes film clips
     --site on the controversy and protests surrounding Birth of a Nation
The Ku Klux Klan (which reemerges in 1915 to hold tremendous power in 1920s America):
     -- KKK in Texas (from Texas Historical Association website)
     -- KKK 1924 poster for rally in Wisconsin
     -- report on the history of the KKK by the Southern Poverty Law Center
     -- 1920 KKK newspaper advertisement

 
Art and Literature in the 1920s
A Timeline of 1920s Culture and Art (including many links) (Gonzaga Univ. site)
Extensive Site on William Faulkner (at University of Mississippi)
Poet T.S. Eliot:
     --  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"  (1917)
     -- "The Wasteland"  (1922)
     -- "The Hollow Men"  (1925)
F. Scott Fitzgerald:
     -- Site on F. Scott Fitzgerald (at University of South Carolina)
     -- Full text online of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous 1920 novel This Side of Paradise
Full text of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt online:
Full text of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Ernest Hemingway:
     -- Private site with links on Ernest Hemingway
     -- CNN site on Hemingway
Full text online of Willa Cather’s 1922 Pulitzer-prize winning One of Ours (novel of a Midwestern American’s journey to the front of World War I)
Harlem Renaissance (extraordinary period of African American literature):
     -- Claude McKay Poems: "If We Must Die," and "TheWhite House"
     -- Langston Hughes Poems: "Let America Be America Again," "Mother to
              Son," and "America"
Full text online of famous playwright Eugene O’Neill’s three plays, “The Hairy Ape,” “Anna Christie,” and “The First Man.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
     --Full text online of Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence and Other Poems
            (1917)
     -- Millay's poem "Conscientious Objector"
Gertrude Stein:
     -- brief biography of Stein
     -- full text online of Stein's 1909 novel Three Lives
     -- full text online of Stein's 1914 poetry volume Tender Buttons

 
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR 1933 Inaugural Address
FDR Presidential Library site
Historical Overview of Social Security (Social Sec. Administration website)
First Typed Draft of Franklin D. Roosevelt's War Address after Pearl Harbor Attack (and audio excerpts of speech: "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy") (National Archives)
Online documents related to FDR & British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (National Archives)

 
 
Dorothea Lange, "Migrant Mother"  (February 1936)
Life During the Great Depression
"The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde," a poem written by Bonnie Parker to memorialize their famous robbery spree
"Pretty Boy Floyd" song lyrics by Woody Guthrie (Floyd was a famous
     Depression era bank robber who earned some public sympathies for his 
     modern day Robin Hood" reputation
PBS site on famous criminal John Dillinger, declared by the FBI during the 1930s as "Public Enemy Number One"
"History Place" website on Dorothea Lange, photographer particularly known for her photos of Depression era migrant farm workers

 
 
Jacob Lawrence, Tombstones (1942)
Art and Literature in the Great Depression Era
Links on the painter Edward Hopper
works of Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry
influential “migration series” works of painter Jacob Lawrence (depicting the northward urban migrations of African Americans)
Noted Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck:
       -- website for National Steinbeck Center
       -- Center for Steinbeck studies website (at San Jose State) with a number 
              of links
       -- C-SPAN "Great Writers" site on John Steinbeck
       -- Pace University John Steinbeck Centennial Page (including photos and
              profile of his works
Text of Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here, about the fictional rise of dictator in the United States

 
Robert Capa photo of D-Day Landing
World War II War Front
Famous columns written by the beloved American war correspondent Ernie Pyle
     --Famous Pyle column on the shore remains from the D-Day landing
Message Drafted by General Eisenhower in Case the D-Day Invasion Failed and Photographs Taken on D-Day (National Archives)
Personal D-Day Memo from General Eisenhower to General Marshall on D-Day Landing

 
 
World War II Homefront
National Museum of American History website on American posters promoting the WWII war effort
National Museum of American History website on Japanese internment during WWII
PBS website on the Zoot Suit riots (exposing racial unrest between whites and Latinos during WWII)
Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation During World War II (National Archives)

 
 
Destruction in Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb
Use of the Atomic Bomb
US War Department description of the first successful atomic bomb test,
July 1945
White House press release on the dropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima
Copy of the leaflets dropped by U.S. Forces on cities in Japan warning civilians about the atomic bomb, dropped August 6, 1945
US government statement urging Japanese surrender after the dropping of
the atomic bomb
Documents related to the decision over dropping the atomic bomb (Truman Library)

 
 
 
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