Erin ’s Reviews > American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis > Status Update

In the eyes of millions of American men, ambitious women were as much as threat to the traditional order as immigrants, socialist and Blacks.

After the war Germany was so defeated that a couple of years later Adolf Hitler would have an easy time convincing millions that sinister plotting of socialists, pacifists, and Jews had robbed the German military of victory.

Another facet of growing anti immigrant fervor was a deep suspicion of foreign languages. If you couldn't understand what people were saying, it might be something un-American.

Camp Funston Military Base was one of the first places on Earth where in the spring of 1918 doctors noticed the appearance of a particularly virulent strain of influenza.

The years from 1917 to 1921 are probably unmatched in American history for popular hysteria, xenophobia, and paranoid suspicion.

Once women got the vote, many men feared what might they want next? To abolish marriage? Or to rob men of their jobs?

Black soliders were dying for the rights of Serbs and Poles in Europe while they risked being lynched at home.

The military made sure that even in uniform Blacks lived in fear.

To be a left- wing activist in this highly repressive era was not just a matter of belonging to one organization you were part of an entire subculture.

Most labor unions turned away women, Blacks, and unskilled workers.