[MUSIC] Hello again, this is Matthew Lasar historian for Conspiracy Planet. And we finished talking about the protocols of the elders of Zion, and now let's talk about World War One era conspiracy theories. World War One was such a crucial moment in the history of the development and evolution of the United States, it was also a crucial moment in the history of US conspiracy theories. Up until that momentous event, most conspiracy theorists warned that forces perceived to be coming from the outside. Were making their way towards the United States government in a bid to take it over the Catholics, the masons, the Jews etc. With the aftermath of World War One, conspiracy advocates began to argue that the take over had happened. Professor Kathryn Olmstead in her excellent book, Real Enemies Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy puts it this way. In the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of the First World War, American conspiracy theories underwent a fundamental transformation. No longer were conspiracy theorists chiefly concerned that alien forces were plotting to capture the federal government. Instead they proposed, that the federal government itself was the conspirator. [MUSIC] Professor Olmstead begins her narrative in June 1918, with the raid on the printing establishment of one Charles A Lindbergh Senior. Who had served as a representative from Minnesota in Congress, he'd written a book titled Why Your country is at War, and What Happens to You after the War. It argued that war profits speculators and government officials have provoked or maneuvered the Germans into the war, why? To protect their overseas investments and profits, but the federal government's Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer, determined that the book was subversive. And the government seized the plates for the book and destroyed them, this is a real turning point in United States history. Before the First World War the total federal budget was about $1 billion, and there was this very small federal police force called the Bureau of Investigation. It dealt with issues like illegal occupation of federal lands and stolen cars and, other federal interstate issues. But with the arrival of the war, suddenly what we would experience is the national security state took off, the federal budget and apparatus ballooned. The government passed laws suppressing dissent, so that now conspiracy theorists had something that could really sink their teeth into. By the end of the war, conspiracy theorists could argue that it was the US state itself that had been taken over. And it wasn't just in peril now, the takeover was a done deal. Historians continue to debate why World War One happened, and why the United States got involved in the war. Why suddenly a critical mass of Americans thought it so important to intervene in the conflict. Woodrow Wilson won the White House in 1912, and if you follow his quotes, he was all about neutrality. Americans were too proud to fight in the war, it was a conflict of the old world and we were above all that. It was a war and I quote, President Wilson, with which we have nothing to do whose causes cannot touch us, future generations would thank us for staying out. That's what Wilson declared, but embedded in Woodrow Wilson's thinking were assumptions that would open his mind to intervention. First, he was an intervener when it came to foreign affairs, as the Mexican Revolution unfolded, he authorized an invasion of Vera Cruz. Then he gave the green light to an armed pursuit of the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa. He sent US forces to occupy Haiti, after the assassination of Haiti's president. Mostly to protect US assets and to fend off a feared German invasion of the Caribbean country, those US forces stayed in Haiti until 1934. Second, Wilson was an admirer of the British and of British imperialism, he shared their assumptions about so called anglo civilization, and he shared their assumptions about white supremacy. Wilson was a racist, he allowed the segregation of the US Federal government, black and white employees were separated from each other. He endorsed a film Birth of a Nation that lionized the Ku Klux Klan. As Wilson worked within this framework, the United States found itself economically drawn into the European conflict. The British blockaded Germany, this is a big deal, food was included as contraband effectively, the British were targeting civilians now. So US trade by necessity focused on the side of World War One known as the Triple Entente Britain France and Russia. This was a huge windfall for the US economy, as they had over the previous century US farmers made lots of money supplying food to the French and the British. As both nations cut down on their own food production to fight the war, US manufacturers vastly expanded their exports to the Allied war machine. In 1915 the supposedly neutral Woodrow Wilson, relaxed restrictions on lending money to countries at war. And suddenly piles of investment money went to the Entente and US bankers already very sympathetic to the British, were now lending tons of cash to them. But far less to Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in large part because of the British blockade. To fight the blockade, Germans began building and using small, flexible fighting submarine ships, generically called U boats, and these boats were very effective and very deadly. And in May of 1915 an enterprising young U boat captain named Walter Schwieger encountered a huge ship called the RMS Lusitania on the Irish coast. The Lusitania was a great big pleasure cruise ship, with sumptuous interiors and luxurious cabins for its passengers. But it also carried an estimated 4 million rounds of ammunition on its trip from New York City to Liverpool. The Germans had gone so far as to publish newspaper advertisements, warning the public not to travel on these China ships. Germany made it clear, we're going to attack that kind of boat if we see it, yes, way the advertisements warned. But for reasons that are debated to this day, the Lusitania journey to the United Kingdom, with no escort in identified hostile waters. Schwieger's U boat fired a single torpedo and sank the ship, killing over 1,000 passengers, including over 100 americans. Woodrow Wilson made an issue of the sinking and he forced the Germans to promise to be more careful about firing and ships with civilians. But he refused to forbid Americans to sail on belligerent ships, and with this he campaigned in the election of 1916 under the slogan, he kept us out of war. But as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan could see where things were going. It was obvious to him that Wilson was gradually taking the United States into the conflict, and Bryan resigned. To be fair to the situation Wilson faced, the Germans began attacking the United States and conspiring against the United States. First, they attacked a series of American ships, then British cryptographers intercepted and decoded a telegram from German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman to the government of Mexico with an offer. Side with us Germans in the war and we'll get you all the territory you lost, in the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1848, back, we'll get that territory for you again. It's unclear what exactly the Germans expected Mexico to do, in the rather strange mind of Kaiser Wilhelm the second. I think the expectation was that he would somehow get Japan to launch an invasion of the US from Mexico, something like that. The U boat attacks had been one thing, it could be argued that the US was collateral damage in those encounters. But the Zimmerman telegram was the first time that it was revealed that the Germans, harbored directly hostile intentions towards the United States. And after Germany attacked more US merchant ships, Wilson asked for and got a declaration of war from Germany. But he got it, while just beginning a new presidential term one on the claim, that he would keep the United States out of the war, there was as we've seen a case for the US entering the war in Europe. In addition to German hostility in the USA there was a case to be made for the Entente powers. That they were more established democracies than Germany and Austria-Hungary. That Russia following its February 1917 Revolution was headed towards becoming a parliamentary democracy, at least that was the hope. And that the war's resolution, held out the promise of creating a more democratic peaceable, international order. And Woodrow Wilson made that case in his famous 14 points speech, in which he called for what would become the League of Nations, and eventually the United Nations. In which he used the word self determination as a policy for nations and, called for open treaties that were openly arrived at, and human liberty as a policy for nations. A phrase that attracted the support of important world figures like the historian and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. This was the case for the United States becoming involved in the war. [MUSIC] But, it wasn't a convincing case for millions of Americans for lots and lots of reasons. In our next episode, we'll see how their dissenting, views created a fertile ground for conspiracy theories. [MUSIC]
