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Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen
Based on a rich array of sources that capture the voices of both political leaders and ordinary Americans, Uncle Sam Wants You offers a vivid and provocative new interpretation of American political history, revealing how the tensions of mass mobilization during World War I led to a significant increase in power for the federal government. Christopher Capozzola shows how, when the war began, Americans at first mobilized society by stressing duty, obligation, and responsibility over rights and freedoms. But the heated temper of war quickly unleashed coercion on an unprecedented scale, making wartime America the scene of some of the nation's most serious political violence, including notorious episodes of outright mob violence. To solve this problem, Americans turned over increasing amounts of power to the federal government. In the end, whether they were some of the four million men drafted under the Selective Service Act or the tens of millions of home-front volunteers, Americans
of the World War I era created a new American state, and new ways of being American citizens.
of the World War I era created a new American state, and new ways of being American citizens.
334 pages, Hardcover
First published June 7, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 8, 2025
"Coercive Volunteerism" is the theme of this work, as the author examines the real processes at work as the United States engaged in a crash mobilization to join the Great War in a timely fashion. Which is to say that, lacking an effective official machinery of mobilization, the Wilson Administration depended on the constellation of volunteer groups that often found themselves substituting for an actual bureaucracy in American society. The most notorious of these being the American Protective League, a mass movement that briefly existed as an auxiliary to the Justice Department, until it was quickly disbanded after the war as an embarrassment. Wanting to learn more about the APL is a major reason why I picked up this monograph.
From there, Capozzola examines the experience of self-mobilizing patriots in terms of over-riding the civil liberties of other supposed "slackers" in regards to the war effort, including pacifists, folks who stood out for their performative sense of being German, determined suffragettes, and other public critics. The overall impact can only be described as somewhere between ridiculous and horrifying, and this sort of mobilization probably culminated in the Great Tulsa Massacre; but that is a topic for another book.
I found this work very useful for my purposes, and there's very little that I can mark it down for, as though Capozzola thinks that the experience of the Great War broke American volunteerism, I can see echoes into today; particularly having been on something of a reading program in regards to American politics and violence.
About the one observation I'd take Capozzola to task for is that he buys into the myth of mass American desertion and malingering during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of 1918 when, according to Carol Byerly in "Fever of War," it appears that the American Expeditionary Force was hit really hard with the "Spanish" Flu when the operation launched. With the U.S. Army's Medical Corps conducting something of a cover-up to disguise their incapacity.
From there, Capozzola examines the experience of self-mobilizing patriots in terms of over-riding the civil liberties of other supposed "slackers" in regards to the war effort, including pacifists, folks who stood out for their performative sense of being German, determined suffragettes, and other public critics. The overall impact can only be described as somewhere between ridiculous and horrifying, and this sort of mobilization probably culminated in the Great Tulsa Massacre; but that is a topic for another book.
I found this work very useful for my purposes, and there's very little that I can mark it down for, as though Capozzola thinks that the experience of the Great War broke American volunteerism, I can see echoes into today; particularly having been on something of a reading program in regards to American politics and violence.
About the one observation I'd take Capozzola to task for is that he buys into the myth of mass American desertion and malingering during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of 1918 when, according to Carol Byerly in "Fever of War," it appears that the American Expeditionary Force was hit really hard with the "Spanish" Flu when the operation launched. With the U.S. Army's Medical Corps conducting something of a cover-up to disguise their incapacity.
January 1, 2025
Christopher Capozzola’s Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen which sets out to demonstrate that “by turning the vast machinery of [WWI] war mobilization into a family relation,” the American state brought itself into the personal life of American citizens and created new duties and societal obligations for those who sought to prove themselves model American citizens. Alongside these new societal obligations came both a process of state-building and a decentralization of state-power, to the point where the American government did not exercise a monopoly on violence and instead often relied upon irrationalist voluntary violence in service in war mobilization, particularly in repressive acts against radicals or ensuring compliance with pro-war grassroots mobilization (10-13). By the end of the war, however, the voluntarist obligation was replaced by legal obedience upon the completion of WWI-era state-building and the so-called “return to normalcy” (15).
The Selective Service Act of 1917 constituted “the centerpiece of wartime citizenship and its defining obligation. America’s first mass draft reflected the state’s power at its most extreme” (21). Capozzola emphasizes how enlistment was an expansion of the state’s power whilst conscription “created new categories of citizens,” those who upheld their “obligations” to the war and the “slackers” who did not. Antiwar intellectualism, opposition to state-power, and agrarian and radical draft resistance was countered in the popular imagination by the state classification of antiwar voices as “draft dodgers,” and opening them up to censure from local draft boards, families, churches, and state-backed “slacker raiding” from vigilante organizations like the American Protective League (22-41). This culminated in a phenomenon of voluntarist coercion in which those who did not comply with imagined wartime obligations to the state were repressed by grassroots mobilization with the acquiescence of the U.S. state (41-53). Women were a key component in coercive voluntarism, both as a “hearts and minds” morale asset as well as voluntary associations which enforced reduced consumption and provided significant amounts of unpaid labour towards the war effort (85-103). Women “showed through the fulfillment of [imagined wartime] obligations that they could be entrusted with rights,” but these rights still had to be won through radical women’s protests led by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (103-116).
Those who objected to enforced wartime mobilization, particularly religious conscientious objectors whose status was not yet recognized, were viewed as shirking their political obligations and were subject to physical coercion, invasive attempts at persuasion, and rituals of public humiliation (59-69). For religious conscientious objectors, “sincerity…became a key concept in the debate surrounding conscription…Bureaucratic institutions demanded it, and selective service administrators [impossibly] tested it” (70). Conscience was thus regulated by state institutions, and education and oratory skills—“articulation” became the measuring stick for sincerity and thus the “privileges of citizenship” (71-76). “Absolutists” unable or unwilling to collaborator with the state and fully justify their positions in a satisfactory manner were thus subject to humiliation and often viewed as possessing biological inferiority. Capozzola makes the argument that these objectors, asserting “their individual rights against the modern state…were some of the 20th century’s first modern citizens” (81).
World War I “marked the high point of [vigilante] political violence in American history…Yet the same years witnessed the invigoration of political arguments that questioned extralegal authority and laid the groundwork for the legal and political dismantling of vigilantism…” (117). In dealing with vigilante violence, the WWI-era American state made a distinction between a positive, legal vigilance and a condemned, illegal vigilantism (118). Vigilance was a citizen’s “obligation,” it was the embodiment of an American’s liberal duty to “police each other.” These efforts were largely fruitless: vigilant efforts encouraged by the American government no spies (119-123). “Vigilance” was deployed in wartime not only in direct service of war efforts but also to ensure compliance with norms. Labour disputes in Bisbee, AZ ended in mass non-state repressive vigilance and forced marches of striking miners and their families into the desert. Military anti-vice efforts targeted women who offended middle-class gender moralism, with eugenics and faux-psychology deployed as repressive ideological tools against women during wartime. Finally, Southern efforts enforcing black compliance with the draft went in tandem with efforts reinforcing white supremacy (125-140). While Capozzola demonstrates public disapproval of vigilante societies in the postwar period, he glosses over the main deployment of vigilante “justice” after WWI in the mass lynching and extrajudicial murders of African-Americans in the South.
Repressive efforts against speech during the wartime period led to modern conceptions of civil rights, with the interpretation of First Amendment and individual rights commonplace in the mid-to-late 20th century stemming drawn from civil libertarian struggles of the WWI period (144-145). The trial of Jane Addams for her anti-war stance, the formation of the American Union Against Militarism, and struggles against the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, and the Schenck and Abrams trials creating modern standards for civil rights in the American political landscape.
Finally, anti-Germanism and enforced Americanization efforts during wartime created both the American surveillance state as well as led to the destruction of ethnic language exclaves and cultural independence throughout much of the United States, targeting the German community in particular, with the obligations of state “loyalty” and non-English “silence” outweighing any concern for cultural preservation (173-201). This went hand-in-hand with the rise of J. Edgar Hoover and pre-FBI Bureau of Investigation and the First Red Scare Palmer Raids (201-204). The rise of the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan in the postwar era illustrate the changing definitions of voluntary association after the war. No longer dedicated to serving the state directly, they instead enforced repressive efforts to ensure compliance with the bourgeois and Jim Crow systems on a grassroots, community level (211-213).
The Selective Service Act of 1917 constituted “the centerpiece of wartime citizenship and its defining obligation. America’s first mass draft reflected the state’s power at its most extreme” (21). Capozzola emphasizes how enlistment was an expansion of the state’s power whilst conscription “created new categories of citizens,” those who upheld their “obligations” to the war and the “slackers” who did not. Antiwar intellectualism, opposition to state-power, and agrarian and radical draft resistance was countered in the popular imagination by the state classification of antiwar voices as “draft dodgers,” and opening them up to censure from local draft boards, families, churches, and state-backed “slacker raiding” from vigilante organizations like the American Protective League (22-41). This culminated in a phenomenon of voluntarist coercion in which those who did not comply with imagined wartime obligations to the state were repressed by grassroots mobilization with the acquiescence of the U.S. state (41-53). Women were a key component in coercive voluntarism, both as a “hearts and minds” morale asset as well as voluntary associations which enforced reduced consumption and provided significant amounts of unpaid labour towards the war effort (85-103). Women “showed through the fulfillment of [imagined wartime] obligations that they could be entrusted with rights,” but these rights still had to be won through radical women’s protests led by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (103-116).
Those who objected to enforced wartime mobilization, particularly religious conscientious objectors whose status was not yet recognized, were viewed as shirking their political obligations and were subject to physical coercion, invasive attempts at persuasion, and rituals of public humiliation (59-69). For religious conscientious objectors, “sincerity…became a key concept in the debate surrounding conscription…Bureaucratic institutions demanded it, and selective service administrators [impossibly] tested it” (70). Conscience was thus regulated by state institutions, and education and oratory skills—“articulation” became the measuring stick for sincerity and thus the “privileges of citizenship” (71-76). “Absolutists” unable or unwilling to collaborator with the state and fully justify their positions in a satisfactory manner were thus subject to humiliation and often viewed as possessing biological inferiority. Capozzola makes the argument that these objectors, asserting “their individual rights against the modern state…were some of the 20th century’s first modern citizens” (81).
World War I “marked the high point of [vigilante] political violence in American history…Yet the same years witnessed the invigoration of political arguments that questioned extralegal authority and laid the groundwork for the legal and political dismantling of vigilantism…” (117). In dealing with vigilante violence, the WWI-era American state made a distinction between a positive, legal vigilance and a condemned, illegal vigilantism (118). Vigilance was a citizen’s “obligation,” it was the embodiment of an American’s liberal duty to “police each other.” These efforts were largely fruitless: vigilant efforts encouraged by the American government no spies (119-123). “Vigilance” was deployed in wartime not only in direct service of war efforts but also to ensure compliance with norms. Labour disputes in Bisbee, AZ ended in mass non-state repressive vigilance and forced marches of striking miners and their families into the desert. Military anti-vice efforts targeted women who offended middle-class gender moralism, with eugenics and faux-psychology deployed as repressive ideological tools against women during wartime. Finally, Southern efforts enforcing black compliance with the draft went in tandem with efforts reinforcing white supremacy (125-140). While Capozzola demonstrates public disapproval of vigilante societies in the postwar period, he glosses over the main deployment of vigilante “justice” after WWI in the mass lynching and extrajudicial murders of African-Americans in the South.
Repressive efforts against speech during the wartime period led to modern conceptions of civil rights, with the interpretation of First Amendment and individual rights commonplace in the mid-to-late 20th century stemming drawn from civil libertarian struggles of the WWI period (144-145). The trial of Jane Addams for her anti-war stance, the formation of the American Union Against Militarism, and struggles against the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, and the Schenck and Abrams trials creating modern standards for civil rights in the American political landscape.
Finally, anti-Germanism and enforced Americanization efforts during wartime created both the American surveillance state as well as led to the destruction of ethnic language exclaves and cultural independence throughout much of the United States, targeting the German community in particular, with the obligations of state “loyalty” and non-English “silence” outweighing any concern for cultural preservation (173-201). This went hand-in-hand with the rise of J. Edgar Hoover and pre-FBI Bureau of Investigation and the First Red Scare Palmer Raids (201-204). The rise of the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan in the postwar era illustrate the changing definitions of voluntary association after the war. No longer dedicated to serving the state directly, they instead enforced repressive efforts to ensure compliance with the bourgeois and Jim Crow systems on a grassroots, community level (211-213).
October 17, 2023
3.5 for class
February 14, 2018
Historians, being buzzkills, often insist on the importance of what happened during wars away from the fun stuff, that is, the action on the battlefield. This is particularly important in the case of America’s involvement in the First World War. While the US was instrumental in ending the war militarily (and suffered a lot of casualties in a short period of time), they still got in towards the end and were only in the war for a little more than a year and a half. But the social changes the war wrought in the US were pretty huge- and largely kind of fucked up, MIT historian Christopher Capozzola argues in this history.
One way or another, the First World War dragged every power involved in it (and some who weren’t) into twentieth century modernity. Capozzola focuses on the ways in which the war effort rapidly rearranged the relationship between the American state and its citizens. The US entered the war, he argues, with a culture of voluntarism and association. Many functions we think of as governmental — those clustered around social welfare and social regulation — were undertaken by what a later age would call non-governmental organizations: employers, churches, clubs, unions, etc. Their composition, behavior, and degree of official imprimatur varied widely from place to place and time to time, forming a sort of crazy-quilt of overlapping jurisdictions over assorted social functions.
The war changed all of this, but Capozzola is quite deft in parsing out how much of these changes involved overthrowing the associational mode versus how often the government incorporated or deputized it. War fever swept the US in 1917 and American civil society by and large put itself at the government’s disposal for war purposes. At the same time, the federal government rapidly expanded its reach and power. Sometimes, these were at cross purposes, more due to the incompetence and disorganization of groups knitting endless sweaters for soldiers who already had uniforms, or more sinisterly, amateur spy-catchers who caught no spies but did harass a lot of people.
But just as often, the government found itself working through unofficial voluntary associations, most notoriously in the case of the American Protective League. A rapidly-formed, huge organization of patriotic busybodies and snitches, the APL was formally empowered by the Justice Department to round up draft-dodgers and seditionists (i.e. people not crazy about the war). This culminated in the APL sending in thousands of members to do block-by-block sweeps in New York over a period of a few days, where they arrested over a thousand people (most of them released without charge).
If you ever want a cure for romanticizing “community,” this book could serve. Yes, it’s nice that Americans once had a greater sense of civic involvement. The problem is they had this way of expressing it through constantly surveilling each other and hounding and occasionally murdering outsiders or some designated internal enemy. Along with “slackers,” socialists, pacifists, union members, conscientious objectors, and most prominently the German community as a whole were subjected to a wide range of abuses by private power backed by the state. States and municipalities, those “laboratories of democracy,” seemed to compete with each other to find more and more draconian ways to punish dissidents and Germans. The city of Omaha, for instance, actually sponsored a mass slaughter of German breeds of dog.
The war ended relatively soon after the US entered. The newly-empowered federal government, embarrassed by some of the sloppiness of its partners among the good volunteer burghers (Capozzola reminds us that the American vigilante was less likely to be a drooling hick than a solid, middle-class citizen), began consolidating more of its enforcement and welfare functions in explicitly federal hands. It was interesting reading about J. Edgar Hoover actually reigning in some of his underlings (against Germans, it should be noted- not radicals). Civil libertarians, in the course of attempting to fight the curtailment of speech and association rights by the vigilante-government hybrid, found themselves in a wary alliance with modernizers in the federal government and the courts that would prove to be pretty important down the line. The US tried to return to “normalcy” in the 1920s, but try as it might, it was thoroughly caught in the turbulent dynamics of the twentieth century. ****
https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...
One way or another, the First World War dragged every power involved in it (and some who weren’t) into twentieth century modernity. Capozzola focuses on the ways in which the war effort rapidly rearranged the relationship between the American state and its citizens. The US entered the war, he argues, with a culture of voluntarism and association. Many functions we think of as governmental — those clustered around social welfare and social regulation — were undertaken by what a later age would call non-governmental organizations: employers, churches, clubs, unions, etc. Their composition, behavior, and degree of official imprimatur varied widely from place to place and time to time, forming a sort of crazy-quilt of overlapping jurisdictions over assorted social functions.
The war changed all of this, but Capozzola is quite deft in parsing out how much of these changes involved overthrowing the associational mode versus how often the government incorporated or deputized it. War fever swept the US in 1917 and American civil society by and large put itself at the government’s disposal for war purposes. At the same time, the federal government rapidly expanded its reach and power. Sometimes, these were at cross purposes, more due to the incompetence and disorganization of groups knitting endless sweaters for soldiers who already had uniforms, or more sinisterly, amateur spy-catchers who caught no spies but did harass a lot of people.
But just as often, the government found itself working through unofficial voluntary associations, most notoriously in the case of the American Protective League. A rapidly-formed, huge organization of patriotic busybodies and snitches, the APL was formally empowered by the Justice Department to round up draft-dodgers and seditionists (i.e. people not crazy about the war). This culminated in the APL sending in thousands of members to do block-by-block sweeps in New York over a period of a few days, where they arrested over a thousand people (most of them released without charge).
If you ever want a cure for romanticizing “community,” this book could serve. Yes, it’s nice that Americans once had a greater sense of civic involvement. The problem is they had this way of expressing it through constantly surveilling each other and hounding and occasionally murdering outsiders or some designated internal enemy. Along with “slackers,” socialists, pacifists, union members, conscientious objectors, and most prominently the German community as a whole were subjected to a wide range of abuses by private power backed by the state. States and municipalities, those “laboratories of democracy,” seemed to compete with each other to find more and more draconian ways to punish dissidents and Germans. The city of Omaha, for instance, actually sponsored a mass slaughter of German breeds of dog.
The war ended relatively soon after the US entered. The newly-empowered federal government, embarrassed by some of the sloppiness of its partners among the good volunteer burghers (Capozzola reminds us that the American vigilante was less likely to be a drooling hick than a solid, middle-class citizen), began consolidating more of its enforcement and welfare functions in explicitly federal hands. It was interesting reading about J. Edgar Hoover actually reigning in some of his underlings (against Germans, it should be noted- not radicals). Civil libertarians, in the course of attempting to fight the curtailment of speech and association rights by the vigilante-government hybrid, found themselves in a wary alliance with modernizers in the federal government and the courts that would prove to be pretty important down the line. The US tried to return to “normalcy” in the 1920s, but try as it might, it was thoroughly caught in the turbulent dynamics of the twentieth century. ****
https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...
April 25, 2022
Christopher Capozzola’s Uncle Sam Wants You argues that during the first World War and after, the U.S. government and many American citizens promoted a culture of obligation. Capozzola points out that the U.S’s involvement in World War 1 espoused conversations among Americans concerning “their relationship to the state” (6). Organized thematically into six chapters, Capozzola recounts experiences of American men who were conscripted into service. His study also tracks groups like religious Americans who may have avoided military service on the account of conscientious objection, women who believed it was their duty to volunteer, African Americans who were subjected to racism and mob violence, and lastly the German-Americans whose loyalty was always in question.
Capozzola points out the irony of Woodrow Wilson’s stance on democratic idealism. Although hypocrisy is no stranger to Washington D.C. or the White House, it doesn’t make it any less exhausting. Woodrow Wilson’s statement that “[t]he world must be made safe with democracy” (5) from his “Declaration of War” was more than likely met with a side-eye and a sarcastic chuckle from a few Americans. His claim that “no man who loves America… can justify mob action while the courts of justice are open and the government of the States and the Nation are ready and able to do their duty” (118) should’ve come with an asterisk and a footnote that read “Unless you are Black.” Here, Capozzola shows the reader the unique position African Americans held in the backdrop of World War 1 civic obligation. Even after fulfilling their civic obligation to participate in the war effort, “at least 76 African Americans were lynched, 10 of them veterans, some still in their military uniforms” (136).
Outraged by this mistreatment, in addition to race riots in the summer of 1919, African American activists and allies coalesced. When they turned to Wilson for acknowledgement of such atrocities, the “President dismissed a petition bearing 30,000 signatures that protested the violence against African Americans” (137). Unfortunately, this should not come as a surprise. A few years prior in 1915, this same President allowed his friend D.W Griffith to showcase his racist film The Birth Of a Nation in the White House.
Likewise, German-Americans weren’t spared from Wilson’s hypocrisy either. Despite stating in his Declaration that “we have no feeling toward [Germans] but one of sympathy and friendship” (4) in early April 1917, that same year Wilson “defined all male German citizens of the United States aged fourteen and older as ‘enemy aliens’” (177). Not only were they forced to register with the federal government for surveillance purposes, but prisoners of German origin or descent were incarcerated in separate prisons in certain locations in Utah, Georgia, and North Carolina. The federal government also forced the relocation of German-Americans who “live[d] within one-half mile of a military installation or a munitions manufacturer” (188). Like African Americans, German-Americans (citizens or not) suffered under Wilson’s wartime policies.
Capozzola points out the irony of Woodrow Wilson’s stance on democratic idealism. Although hypocrisy is no stranger to Washington D.C. or the White House, it doesn’t make it any less exhausting. Woodrow Wilson’s statement that “[t]he world must be made safe with democracy” (5) from his “Declaration of War” was more than likely met with a side-eye and a sarcastic chuckle from a few Americans. His claim that “no man who loves America… can justify mob action while the courts of justice are open and the government of the States and the Nation are ready and able to do their duty” (118) should’ve come with an asterisk and a footnote that read “Unless you are Black.” Here, Capozzola shows the reader the unique position African Americans held in the backdrop of World War 1 civic obligation. Even after fulfilling their civic obligation to participate in the war effort, “at least 76 African Americans were lynched, 10 of them veterans, some still in their military uniforms” (136).
Outraged by this mistreatment, in addition to race riots in the summer of 1919, African American activists and allies coalesced. When they turned to Wilson for acknowledgement of such atrocities, the “President dismissed a petition bearing 30,000 signatures that protested the violence against African Americans” (137). Unfortunately, this should not come as a surprise. A few years prior in 1915, this same President allowed his friend D.W Griffith to showcase his racist film The Birth Of a Nation in the White House.
Likewise, German-Americans weren’t spared from Wilson’s hypocrisy either. Despite stating in his Declaration that “we have no feeling toward [Germans] but one of sympathy and friendship” (4) in early April 1917, that same year Wilson “defined all male German citizens of the United States aged fourteen and older as ‘enemy aliens’” (177). Not only were they forced to register with the federal government for surveillance purposes, but prisoners of German origin or descent were incarcerated in separate prisons in certain locations in Utah, Georgia, and North Carolina. The federal government also forced the relocation of German-Americans who “live[d] within one-half mile of a military installation or a munitions manufacturer” (188). Like African Americans, German-Americans (citizens or not) suffered under Wilson’s wartime policies.
January 4, 2022
Christopher Capozzola does a novel job of showing the roles of citizenship, obligation, and vigilance during the Great War in the average American man and woman. Despite being quite repetitive, even of as short of a book as this one, the argument is persuasive and contains enough specific evidence to really highlight the points he is trying to make. He is very effective in showing how vigilance would often lead to vigilantism, a dangerous ideal that has always been present in American political discourse. I am not sure I agree with his assertion that World War I saw a pseudo-zenith of this political violence towards the unpatriotic or the "other," but the evidence he brings in is successful in at least showing that the government, including the president himself, more often than not strengthened vigilantes and made civil libertarians fight all the harder for individual rights often shut down during wartime.
September 1, 2017
Written by a young and rising American historian who teaches at MIT. A featured speaker at the Minnesota History Center Lecture Series. The one thing that I learned that during WWI, it was a rough time for German Lutherans in the US. I was not aware of this which I thought a bit strange since I was raised in the Missouri Synod and my parents never mentioned anything about this taking place.
November 5, 2018
Very interesting perspective looking at the home front during World War I. Exposes how the draft was accepted within the community and how Woodrow Wilson built a modern American army in a very accessible and fun way. Filled with memorable anecdotes that will play with your emotions and the collective memory of the Great War.
April 4, 2022
Fantastic history, highlights how WW1-era United States sought to craft and articulate new notions of citizenship and create much of what we imagine it means to be an "American" today. Thankful that Capozzola gives the Anarchists, Socialists, and Wobblies the presence they deserve, as they pop up in every chapter like the nuisance they were to patriots, police and anti-union bosses.
October 2, 2017
great exhaustive picture of life on the homefront during the great war.
September 2, 2021
I was persuaded by the author's arguments.
February 26, 2025
Capozzola did an exceptional job applying his thesis that World War 1 changed the relationship between individuals, voluntary organizations, and the state.
Each chapter stands alone and covers topics such as the role of religion, obligations to the state, women as citizens (despite not having the vote), free speech, and aliens in American society. The last covers both immigrants and those that Theodore Roosevelt described as hyphenated Americans. Using several cases within each topic, he shows that World War 1 changed the relationships and helped build the foundation for a major shift in American political culture.
I found many parallels between the actions at that time and the current period.
* Wilson's efforts to suppress criticism of the government and his policies parallel the censorship of critics of COVID policy.
* Suppression of free speech by campuses was also seen in the banning of German music, literature, and language by many universities. I am sure that most of my colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder would be shocked that the faculty there organized book-burning of German texts (184)
* American immigration policy was more about domestic politics than international affairs.
* The way in which 'security threats' were used to expand the powers of the federal government and agencies.
I strongly recommend for students of American politics and the policies of security affairs.
Each chapter stands alone and covers topics such as the role of religion, obligations to the state, women as citizens (despite not having the vote), free speech, and aliens in American society. The last covers both immigrants and those that Theodore Roosevelt described as hyphenated Americans. Using several cases within each topic, he shows that World War 1 changed the relationships and helped build the foundation for a major shift in American political culture.
I found many parallels between the actions at that time and the current period.
* Wilson's efforts to suppress criticism of the government and his policies parallel the censorship of critics of COVID policy.
* Suppression of free speech by campuses was also seen in the banning of German music, literature, and language by many universities. I am sure that most of my colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder would be shocked that the faculty there organized book-burning of German texts (184)
* American immigration policy was more about domestic politics than international affairs.
* The way in which 'security threats' were used to expand the powers of the federal government and agencies.
I strongly recommend for students of American politics and the policies of security affairs.
June 30, 2012
I relied heavily on the information and material in this book in researching and writing my own thesis about the experiences of an enlisted soldier during the Punitive Expedition and World War I. His descriptions of the effects of World War I on the American people help to illuminate why our society is the way it is now, as it was significantly changed leading up to and during the war, both for the soldiers, their families, and the general American public. A great read about WWI and its effects on America.
January 5, 2026
i hated this book when i read it because i thought it was dull but honestly? it grew on me. capozzola recounts the conscientious objector movement, draft dodgers, women’s wartime volunteerism, and the treatment of german immigrants during WWI. it’s a very human-focused look at the war and how global conflict changed the relationship between americans and their government forever. solid argument!
March 22, 2013
An interesting review of the American homefront during World War I. I did enjoy it for the most part, but got a little less interesting towards the end. Also almost no mention of African Americans, which I would have been interested in reading about.
June 5, 2022
This book just confirms how much I don't like nonfiction books.
Want to read
June 27, 2017[Author spoke at OU March 2016] Talk (and presumably book) gives an excellent close reading of "I Want You" Uncle Sam poster.]
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews