The United States of America

Part One: The Interwar Period: 1919-1939

At the end of the Great War the United States found itself in a unique position as the only major power to have had a major global presence in the conflict and escape it without any major damage to its homeland. US industry was booming, having been supplying the Entente with weapons since 1914, and having been fully mobilized to arm the massively expanding US military after 1917. The economy was at an all-time high, and many returning veterans took on a loose attitude, casting off the strict norms left over from the Victorian Era in favor of a more “live for the moment” attitude.

Police Officers in Seattle during the Spanish Influenza Pandemic

One lasting legacy of the Great War was the Spanish Flu; the most serious pandemic in human history. The Spanish Flu had begun in Fort Reilly, Kansas, spread with the troops via the railroad, and upon reaching Europe had mutated and became extraordinarily lethal. It spread back to the United States, and in three weeks in October of 1918 killed so many so fast that government services collapsed in parts of the country. It would continue in waves throughout 1919 and into 1920, with citizens being forced to wear masks, travel being restricted, businesses being closed, and even massive shortages of coffins.

The aftermath of an anarchist bombing on Wall Street

The pandemic was not the only problem that plagued the United States after the Great War, as socialists, emboldened by the rise of the Soviet Union, anarchists and socialists commenced a campaign of terror across the West, including in the US. A series of riots and bombings took place in places like Seattle, Chicago, and New York. After a series of raids ordered by Attorney General Palmer and the deportation of anarchists to the new Soviet Union, the problem diminished, and a planned May Day uprising did not occur, leading the “Red Scare” to finally end.

A man at work on construction of the Empire State Building in New York

The rise of oil and electricity began to replace coal and natural gas as methods of lighting and powering homes, and land prices dropped considerably, causing a period of unprecedented prosperity. This combined with a relaxed attitude prevalent among the younger generation following the Great War led to a period of cultural shift, as the prim Victorian norm was replaced with the Roaring Twenties.The cities began to grow toward the skies, as new techniques of construction saw the rise of skyscrapers and the creation of the modern vision of urban sprawl. The automobile, until now a luxury item, began to appear all around the country due to the mass production of the affordable Ford Model T, and roads and highways began to be built across the country. Americans enjoyed a prosperity that they had never before, and it seemed as though the sky was the limit of American prosperity.

Model T Ford automobiles at a factory in Argentina

A major victory was won by the Temperance Movement, which focused on banning intoxicants, in 1920, with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US constitution. This banned consumption of alcohol in the US, and resulted in a massive surge in organized crime as the Mob began to make, import and distribute illegal alcohol around the country. The period saw the rise of such infamous gangsters as John Dillinger, Al Capone and others as crime syndicates grew rich on alcohol sales. and the Federal Government expanded its own power in order to combat them.

Police supervise the dumping of liquor during Prohibition

In 1929 the economy collapsed due in large part to banks using their customer’s accounts to invest in the stock market, and losing all their money when the market bubble in construction and the falling agriculture markets created by a mass exodus to the cites caused the stock market to collapse. This led to the Great Depression, a period of great financial hardships for the country, and the American people began to look for solutions to the mass unemployment and poverty that plagued them. In 1932 Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President, and began to employ his “New Deal” plan to repair the economy. This plan would in the end by largely ineffectual, and the Depression would only end as the United States reindustrialized to support the new wars in Europe and Asia in the late 1930s.

Men line up at a soup kitchen during the Great Depression

The US did not join the League of Nations in 1918, instead adopting an isolationist stance, and tried to stay out of international affairs. Even the destruction of the gunboat USS Panay in 1937 by the Japanese did not reverse this line of public opinion, but as the war began in 1939 the US found itself being drawn ever closer to the conflict.