1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,162 WWW.MY-SUBS.CO 1 00:00:41,042 --> 00:00:44,345 People watching here tonight, they want to base their vote... 2 00:00:44,512 --> 00:00:47,281 ...on differences between the two of you as president. 3 00:00:47,448 --> 00:00:49,083 Is there any difference? 4 00:00:49,250 --> 00:00:51,252 We have a fundamental choice to make. 5 00:00:51,419 --> 00:00:56,023 Are we gonna step up to the plate as a nation the way we did after World War ll... 6 00:00:56,190 --> 00:00:58,259 ...the way that generation of heroes said: 7 00:00:58,426 --> 00:01:02,296 "Okay, the United States is gonna be the leader." 8 00:01:02,463 --> 00:01:05,032 And the world benefited tremendously from the courage... 9 00:01:05,199 --> 00:01:07,535 ...that they showed in those post-war years. 10 00:01:07,701 --> 00:01:10,871 I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say: 11 00:01:11,038 --> 00:01:13,340 "This is the way it's gotta be." 12 00:01:13,507 --> 00:01:14,708 We can help. 13 00:01:14,875 --> 00:01:18,512 And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. 14 00:01:18,679 --> 00:01:20,147 I mean, I wanna empower people. 15 00:01:20,314 --> 00:01:21,916 I want to help people help themselves... 16 00:01:22,083 --> 00:01:24,752 ...not have government tell people what to do. 17 00:01:24,919 --> 00:01:27,488 I just don't think it's the role of the United States... 18 00:01:27,655 --> 00:01:30,891 ...to walk into a country and say, "We do it this way, so should you." 19 00:01:31,892 --> 00:01:34,395 I'm not sure where the vice president is coming from. 20 00:01:34,562 --> 00:01:35,596 What we need to do... 21 00:01:35,763 --> 00:01:38,966 ...is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. 22 00:01:39,133 --> 00:01:40,668 Maybe I'm missing something here. 23 00:01:40,835 --> 00:01:43,971 I mean, are we gonna have a nation-building corps from America? 24 00:01:44,138 --> 00:01:47,374 Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. 25 00:01:47,541 --> 00:01:48,876 That's what it's meant to do. 26 00:01:49,043 --> 00:01:51,779 And when it gets overextended, morale drops. 27 00:01:51,946 --> 00:01:54,682 But I'm gonna be judicious as to how to use the military. 28 00:01:54,849 --> 00:01:57,618 It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear... 29 00:01:57,785 --> 00:01:59,787 ...and the exit strategy obvious. 30 00:02:00,988 --> 00:02:05,793 NARRATOR". The 2000 presidential election between George Bush and AI Gore... 31 00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:10,097 ...confronted the American people with two different visions of the future. 32 00:02:10,264 --> 00:02:12,733 Few remember that exactly 100 years before... 33 00:02:12,900 --> 00:02:17,004 ...the American people had been asked to make a similar choice. 34 00:02:17,171 --> 00:02:21,542 They were asked to decide whether the United States should be an empire. 35 00:02:21,709 --> 00:02:24,778 Republican William McKinley's vision of the American future... 36 00:02:24,945 --> 00:02:27,615 ...lay in free trade and overseas empire. 37 00:02:27,781 --> 00:02:30,651 McKINLEY: Upon this platform we stand... 38 00:02:30,818 --> 00:02:33,854 NARRATOR". By contrast, Democrat William Jennings Bryan... 39 00:02:34,021 --> 00:02:36,457 ...was an outspoken anti-imperialist. 40 00:02:36,624 --> 00:02:38,993 BRYAN: I can conceive of a national destiny... 41 00:02:39,160 --> 00:02:41,162 NARRATOR". Few noticed a third choice... 42 00:02:41,328 --> 00:02:45,132 ...Socialist Presidential Candidate Eugene V. Debs. 43 00:02:45,299 --> 00:02:49,403 DEBS: The socialist movement is as wide as the world. 44 00:02:49,570 --> 00:02:51,472 NARRATOR". The socialist movement represented... 45 00:02:51,639 --> 00:02:54,775 ...the new working class when no one else would. 46 00:02:54,942 --> 00:02:58,412 To them, empire meant one thing and one thing only: 47 00:02:58,579 --> 00:03:00,681 Exploitation. 48 00:03:00,848 --> 00:03:04,418 Incumbent President McKinley was running off a soaring economy... 49 00:03:04,585 --> 00:03:08,322 ...and a victory over Spain in the war of 1898. 50 00:03:08,489 --> 00:03:12,493 McKinley believed that America must expand to survive. 51 00:03:12,660 --> 00:03:14,895 Bryan, known as the Great Commoner... 52 00:03:15,062 --> 00:03:17,731 ...was an enemy of industrial tycoons and bankers... 53 00:03:17,898 --> 00:03:21,635 ...and was convinced that McKinley's vision would bring disaster. 54 00:03:21,802 --> 00:03:24,505 Quoting a letter by Thomas Jefferson, he said: 55 00:03:24,672 --> 00:03:26,507 BRYAN: If there be one principle... 56 00:03:26,674 --> 00:03:31,645 ...more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American... 57 00:03:31,812 --> 00:03:36,217 ...it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. 58 00:03:36,383 --> 00:03:38,852 NARRATOR". Having now annexed several foreign colonies... 59 00:03:39,019 --> 00:03:43,724 ...the Philippines, Guam, Pago Pago, Wake and Midway Islands... 60 00:03:43,891 --> 00:03:45,993 ...Hawaii and Puerto Rico... 61 00:03:46,160 --> 00:03:49,096 ...and asserted practical control over Cuba... 62 00:03:49,263 --> 00:03:54,602 ...the United States was about to betray its most precious gift to mankind. 63 00:03:54,768 --> 00:03:57,238 This is 1900. 64 00:04:19,793 --> 00:04:22,162 NARRATOR". While most Americans thought the United States... 65 00:04:22,329 --> 00:04:27,101 ...had fulfilled its manifest destiny by spreading across North America... 66 00:04:27,268 --> 00:04:30,371 ...it was William Henry Seward, Secretary of State... 67 00:04:30,537 --> 00:04:33,207 ...to both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson... 68 00:04:33,374 --> 00:04:37,811 ...who articulated a far more grandiose vision of the American Empire. 69 00:04:37,978 --> 00:04:40,648 Although he failed more often than he succeeded... 70 00:04:40,814 --> 00:04:43,083 ...he set his sights on acquiring Hawaii... 71 00:04:43,250 --> 00:04:47,221 ...Canada, Alaska, the Virgin islands, Midway Island... 72 00:04:47,388 --> 00:04:51,825 ...and parts of Santo Domingo, Haiti and Colombia. 73 00:04:51,992 --> 00:04:56,664 A lot of his dream would actually come true. 74 00:04:56,830 --> 00:05:00,701 But while Seward dreamed, the European empires acted. 75 00:05:00,868 --> 00:05:04,238 Britain led the way in the last 30 years of the century... 76 00:05:04,405 --> 00:05:09,343 ...gobbling up 4.75 million square miles of territory... 77 00:05:09,510 --> 00:05:13,013 ...an area significantly larger than the United States. 78 00:05:13,180 --> 00:05:14,548 As the Romans did... 79 00:05:14,715 --> 00:05:19,720 ...Britain believed her mission was to bring civilization to mankind. 80 00:05:19,887 --> 00:05:24,558 France added 3.5 million square miles. 81 00:05:25,859 --> 00:05:30,130 Germany, off to a late start, added 1 million. 82 00:05:33,033 --> 00:05:36,136 Only Spain's empire was in decline. 83 00:05:38,572 --> 00:05:42,543 By 1878, European empires and their former colonies... 84 00:05:42,710 --> 00:05:46,647 . . . controlled 67 percent of the Earth's land surface. 85 00:05:46,814 --> 00:05:51,285 And by 1914, an astounding 84 percent. 86 00:05:52,386 --> 00:05:57,291 By the 1890s, Europeans had carved up 90 percent of Africa. 87 00:05:58,225 --> 00:06:00,060 [ALL YELLING] 88 00:06:01,061 --> 00:06:03,063 [COMMANDER SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY] 89 00:06:03,764 --> 00:06:04,898 Fire! 90 00:06:07,868 --> 00:06:12,906 NARRATOR". The lion's share claimed by Belgium, Britain, France and Germany. 91 00:06:16,210 --> 00:06:19,413 The United States was anxious to make up for lost time... 92 00:06:19,580 --> 00:06:23,317 ...and although empire was a hostile concept to Americans... 93 00:06:23,484 --> 00:06:25,986 ...most of whom had come from immigrant stock... 94 00:06:26,153 --> 00:06:29,423 ...it was now an era dominated by the robber barons. 95 00:06:32,993 --> 00:06:36,430 In particular, an aristocracy known as the Four Hundred... 96 00:06:36,597 --> 00:06:41,769 ...with their huge estates, private armies, legions of employees. 97 00:06:41,935 --> 00:06:45,539 Men like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller... 98 00:06:45,706 --> 00:06:48,742 ...and William Randolph Hearst held enormous power. 99 00:06:55,616 --> 00:06:59,987 The capitalist class, haunted by visions of the revolutionary workers... 100 00:07:00,154 --> 00:07:03,657 ...who formed the Paris Commune of 1871 101 00:07:03,824 --> 00:07:09,363 ...conjured up similar visions of radicals upsetting the system in the United States. 102 00:07:09,530 --> 00:07:12,633 What's the use of talking? Talking's done nothing. 103 00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:14,701 The pamphlets are no good either. 104 00:07:14,868 --> 00:07:17,871 - What we want is action. ALL: Yeah! 105 00:07:18,038 --> 00:07:20,474 We'll tear up the streets of Paris. 106 00:07:20,641 --> 00:07:23,710 If they've got bayonets, we've got knives! 107 00:07:23,877 --> 00:07:24,912 [ALL SHOUTING] 108 00:07:25,078 --> 00:07:28,882 NARRATOR". These radicals or Communards were also called Communists... 109 00:07:29,049 --> 00:07:35,456 ...almost 50 years before the Russian Revolution of 1917. 110 00:07:35,622 --> 00:07:42,095 Jay Gould's 15,000-mile rail road empire epitomized the worst of the robber barons. 111 00:07:42,262 --> 00:07:46,934 He was perhaps the most hated man in America, having once boasted... 112 00:07:47,100 --> 00:07:51,939 ...that he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. 113 00:07:55,175 --> 00:07:59,546 When the financial panic of Black Friday hit Wall Street... 114 00:07:59,713 --> 00:08:02,850 ...it triggered the nation's worst depression to date. 115 00:08:03,016 --> 00:08:08,355 Mills, factories, furnaces and mines shut down everywhere in large numbers. 116 00:08:08,522 --> 00:08:10,290 Four million workers lost their jobs. 117 00:08:11,124 --> 00:08:12,826 Unemployment reached 20 percent. 118 00:08:13,927 --> 00:08:17,064 The American Railway Union, headed by Eugene Debs... 119 00:08:17,231 --> 00:08:22,035 ...responded to layoffs and pay cuts by George Pullman's Palace Car Company... 120 00:08:22,202 --> 00:08:25,272 ...and shut down the nation's rail roads. 121 00:08:25,439 --> 00:08:28,675 Federal troops were sent in on the side of the rail road magnates. 122 00:08:28,842 --> 00:08:33,080 Dozens of workers were killed and Debs spent six months in jail. 123 00:08:33,247 --> 00:08:37,417 Socialists, trade unionists and reformers at home... 124 00:08:37,584 --> 00:08:40,988 ...protested that capitalism's cyclical depressions resulted... 125 00:08:41,154 --> 00:08:45,125 ...from the under-consumption of the working class. 126 00:08:45,292 --> 00:08:49,363 In his pioneering photography, Jacob Riis shocked the nation... 127 00:08:49,530 --> 00:08:53,901 ...b y first documenting the misery of New York City's poor. 128 00:08:54,868 --> 00:08:59,773 Working class leaders were arguing for redistributing wealth at home... 129 00:08:59,940 --> 00:09:03,310 ...so that working people could afford to buy the products... 130 00:09:03,477 --> 00:09:06,280 ...of American's farms and factories. 131 00:09:06,747 --> 00:09:08,815 But the Four Hundred, the oligarchs... 132 00:09:08,982 --> 00:09:12,219 ...responded that this was a form of socialism. 133 00:09:12,386 --> 00:09:15,255 They said there could be a bigger pie for all... 134 00:09:15,422 --> 00:09:18,759 ...and argued that the U.S. had to compete with foreign empires... 135 00:09:18,926 --> 00:09:20,894 ...and dominate the trade of the world... 136 00:09:21,061 --> 00:09:25,599 ...so that foreigners would absorb America's growing surplus. 137 00:09:25,766 --> 00:09:29,503 The profit for them was clearly abroad in trade. 138 00:09:29,670 --> 00:09:32,706 The chief prize was China. 139 00:09:32,873 --> 00:09:35,475 To tap this vast market, the U.S. would need... 140 00:09:35,642 --> 00:09:39,179 ...a modern steam-powered Navy and bases around the world... 141 00:09:39,346 --> 00:09:41,248 ...to compete with the British Empire... 142 00:09:41,415 --> 00:09:45,852 ...with its major concession at the port of Hong Kong. 143 00:09:46,019 --> 00:09:51,024 Russia, Japan, France and Germany were all clawing to get in. 144 00:09:51,191 --> 00:09:55,162 Businessmen began pressing for a canal across Central America... 145 00:09:55,329 --> 00:09:58,432 ...which would help open the door to Asia. 146 00:09:58,599 --> 00:10:05,238 In this climate of global competition, in 1898 the United States annexed Hawaii. 147 00:10:06,840 --> 00:10:08,408 Almost a hundred years later... 148 00:10:08,575 --> 00:10:12,212 ...a U.S. Congressional resolution apologized to native Hawaiians... 149 00:10:12,379 --> 00:10:16,850 ...for the deprivation of their right to self-determination. 150 00:10:18,986 --> 00:10:22,456 Cuba, less than 100 miles from the shores of Florida... 151 00:10:22,623 --> 00:10:25,559 ...had revolted against the corruption of Spanish rule... 152 00:10:25,726 --> 00:10:30,197 ...and the Spanish reacted by incarcerating much of the population... 153 00:10:30,364 --> 00:10:34,201 ...in concentration camps, where 95,000 died of disease. 154 00:10:35,469 --> 00:10:39,172 As the fighting increased, powerful bankers and businessmen... 155 00:10:39,339 --> 00:10:43,710 ...like Morgan and the Rockefellers, who had millions invested on the island... 156 00:10:43,877 --> 00:10:47,881 ...demanded action from the president to safeguard their interests. 157 00:10:48,048 --> 00:10:53,754 President McKinley sent the USS Maine to Havana Harbor as a signal to the Spanish... 158 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:58,558 ...that the U.S. was keeping an eye out on American interests. 159 00:11:06,566 --> 00:11:11,972 On a night in February, 1898, with the tropical heat more than 100 degrees... 160 00:11:15,409 --> 00:11:20,781 ...the Maine was suddenly blown up, killing 254 seamen... 161 00:11:20,947 --> 00:11:23,984 ...supposedly sabotaged by the Spanish. 162 00:11:24,151 --> 00:11:28,622 The U.S. yellow press, embodied in mogul William Randolph Hearst... 163 00:11:28,789 --> 00:11:34,928 ...led a crazed tabloid reaction and created a vigilante climate for war. 164 00:11:35,095 --> 00:11:37,197 We have no secrets from our readers. 165 00:11:37,364 --> 00:11:40,167 Mr. Thatcher is one of our most devoted readers. 166 00:11:40,333 --> 00:11:44,071 He knows what's wrong with every copy of the Inquirer since I took over. Read. 167 00:11:44,237 --> 00:11:46,306 "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. 168 00:11:46,473 --> 00:11:48,775 Could send you prose poems about scenery... 169 00:11:48,942 --> 00:11:51,011 ...but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. 170 00:11:51,178 --> 00:11:53,780 There is no war in Cuba." Signed Wheeler. Any answer? 171 00:11:53,947 --> 00:11:58,819 Yes. "Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war." 172 00:11:58,985 --> 00:12:02,589 NARRATOR: The Journals cry, "Remember the Maine. To hell with Spain!" 173 00:12:02,756 --> 00:12:07,461 Millions read it, convinced that Spain, this decaying Catholic power... 174 00:12:07,627 --> 00:12:11,665 ...was capable of any evil trick to preserve her empire. 175 00:12:11,832 --> 00:12:15,068 When McKinley declared war, Hearst took credit. 176 00:12:15,235 --> 00:12:17,604 "How do you like the Journal's war?" 177 00:12:17,771 --> 00:12:20,240 Often remembered by Teddy Roosevelt's... 178 00:12:20,407 --> 00:12:24,044 ...symbolically colorful charge up San Juan Hill... 179 00:12:24,211 --> 00:12:27,180 ...the Spanish-American War was over in three months... 180 00:12:27,347 --> 00:12:31,618 ...Secretary of State John Hay calling it "a splendid little war." 181 00:12:31,785 --> 00:12:37,090 Out of almost 5500 U.S. dead, fewer than 400 died in battle... 182 00:12:37,257 --> 00:12:40,393 ...the rest succumbing to disease. 183 00:12:41,695 --> 00:12:44,564 Sixteen-year-old Smedley Darlington Butler... 184 00:12:44,731 --> 00:12:47,501 ...lied about his age and signed up with the Marines. 185 00:12:47,667 --> 00:12:50,804 He would become one of America's most famous military heroes... 186 00:12:50,971 --> 00:12:52,773 ...winning two medals of honor... 187 00:12:52,939 --> 00:12:57,577 ...in a career that would shadow America's destiny to come. 188 00:13:00,247 --> 00:13:04,584 With victory, American businessmen swept in, grabbing assets where they could... 189 00:13:04,751 --> 00:13:08,121 ...essentially making Cuba into a protectorate. 190 00:13:08,288 --> 00:13:12,859 United Fruit Company locked up 2 million acres of land for sugar production. 191 00:13:13,026 --> 00:13:16,596 By 1901, Bethlehem Steel and other U.S. businesses... 192 00:13:16,763 --> 00:13:19,266 ...owned over 80 percent of Cuban minerals. 193 00:13:22,702 --> 00:13:26,506 More than 70 years later, in 1976... 194 00:13:26,673 --> 00:13:29,709 ...an underreported official investigation by the Navy... 195 00:13:30,343 --> 00:13:34,381 ...found that the most probable cause of the sinking of the Maine... 196 00:13:34,548 --> 00:13:38,251 ...was a boiler which exploded in the tropical heat... 197 00:13:38,418 --> 00:13:42,956 ...causing the ship's ammunition store to explode. 198 00:13:43,890 --> 00:13:46,459 As with Vietnam and the two Iraq wars... 199 00:13:46,626 --> 00:13:50,197 ...the U.S., basing its reaction on false intelligence... 200 00:13:50,363 --> 00:13:53,667 ...went to war because it wanted to. 201 00:13:54,267 --> 00:13:59,206 In the glow of victory, however, the U.S. found herself with a much bigger problem. 202 00:13:59,372 --> 00:14:05,712 She'd acquired from the Spanish a gigantic but ramshackle land mass in the far east... 203 00:14:05,879 --> 00:14:07,447 . . . the Philippine Islands. . . 204 00:14:07,614 --> 00:14:12,252 ...which were viewed as an ideal refueling stop for China-bound ships. 205 00:14:12,686 --> 00:14:18,258 As in the invasion of Baghdad in 2003, the fighting there began successfully. 206 00:14:18,792 --> 00:14:25,365 Commodore George Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in May 1898. 207 00:14:25,532 --> 00:14:27,334 One anti-imperialist noted... 208 00:14:27,500 --> 00:14:32,606 ..."Dewey took Manila with a loss of one man and all our institutions." 209 00:14:32,772 --> 00:14:37,244 The Anti-imperialist League was founded in Boston in 1898... 210 00:14:37,410 --> 00:14:42,549 ...seeking to block U.S. annexation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. 211 00:14:42,716 --> 00:14:46,720 Its ranks included Mark Twain, who famously asked: 212 00:14:46,887 --> 00:14:49,956 TWAIN: Shall we go on conferring our civilization... 213 00:14:50,123 --> 00:14:56,396 ...upon the peoples that sit in darkness or shall we give these poor things a rest? 214 00:14:56,563 --> 00:14:59,099 NARRATOR". President McKinley did not share that mindset... 215 00:14:59,266 --> 00:15:01,334 ...opting finally for annexation. 216 00:15:01,501 --> 00:15:05,438 McKINLEY: There was nothing left for us to do but to take the Filipinos... 217 00:15:05,605 --> 00:15:08,942 ...and uplift and civilize and Christianize them... 218 00:15:09,109 --> 00:15:12,212 ...and by God's grace, do the very best we could by them... 219 00:15:12,379 --> 00:15:16,650 ...as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. 220 00:15:16,816 --> 00:15:18,785 NARRATOR". McKinley was ignoring reality. 221 00:15:18,952 --> 00:15:22,455 Under the fiery leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo... 222 00:15:22,622 --> 00:15:24,758 ...the Filipinos had established their own republic... 223 00:15:24,925 --> 00:15:28,628 ...in 1899 after being freed from Spain... 224 00:15:28,795 --> 00:15:33,600 ...and, like the Cuban rebels, expected the United States to recognize them. 225 00:15:33,767 --> 00:15:37,771 They had overestimated their ally, and now they fought back. 226 00:15:37,938 --> 00:15:42,275 After one protest, Americans lay dead in the streets of Manila. 227 00:15:42,842 --> 00:15:46,980 America's yellow press cried out for vengeance against the barbarians. 228 00:15:48,515 --> 00:15:52,352 Torture, including waterboarding, became routine. 229 00:15:52,519 --> 00:15:56,723 The insurgents, or "our little brown brothers," as they were nicknamed... 230 00:15:56,890 --> 00:16:03,296 ...were pumped full of salt water until they swelled up like toads to make them talk. 231 00:16:03,463 --> 00:16:05,131 One soldier wrote home: 232 00:16:05,298 --> 00:16:07,167 MAN: We all wanted to kill niggers. 233 00:16:07,334 --> 00:16:10,737 This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces. 234 00:16:11,571 --> 00:16:14,107 NARRATOR". It was a war of atrocities. 235 00:16:14,274 --> 00:16:17,744 When rebels ambushed American troops on the Island of Samar... 236 00:16:17,911 --> 00:16:21,614 ...Colonel Jacob Smith ordered his men to kill everyone over the age of 10... 237 00:16:21,781 --> 00:16:25,185 ...and turn the island into a howling wilderness. 238 00:16:25,352 --> 00:16:26,419 [GUNSHOT] 239 00:16:26,586 --> 00:16:30,423 More than 4000 U.S. troops would not return from this guerilla war... 240 00:16:30,590 --> 00:16:32,926 ...which lasted three and a half years. 241 00:16:33,093 --> 00:16:35,495 Twenty thousand Filipino guerillas were killed... 242 00:16:35,662 --> 00:16:40,667 ...and as many as 200,000 civilians died, many from cholera. 243 00:16:40,834 --> 00:16:42,836 But because of distorted press reports... 244 00:16:43,003 --> 00:16:45,005 ...mainland Americans comforted themselves... 245 00:16:45,171 --> 00:16:49,542 ...with the thought that they had spread civilization to a backward people. 246 00:16:49,709 --> 00:16:52,779 American society grew more callous from this war... 247 00:16:52,946 --> 00:16:56,449 ...as this new doctrine of Anglo-Saxon superiority... 248 00:16:56,616 --> 00:17:02,155 ...not only justified a nascent empire, but changed social relations at home... 249 00:17:02,322 --> 00:17:08,294 ...as Southern racists resorting to similar arguments initiated a campaign... 250 00:17:08,461 --> 00:17:11,965 ...against the true meaning of the outcome of the American Civil War... 251 00:17:12,132 --> 00:17:18,204 ...and passed new jim crow laws enforcing White Supremacy and segregation. 252 00:17:19,005 --> 00:17:22,809 In China, a similar yearning for independence... 253 00:17:22,976 --> 00:17:27,113 ...led to the homegrown Boxer Rebellion of 1900. 254 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:29,816 Nationalist-minded Chinese rose up with fury... 255 00:17:29,983 --> 00:17:33,820 ...to murder missionaries and throw out all foreign invaders. 256 00:17:33,987 --> 00:17:36,723 McKinley sent 5000 American troops... 257 00:17:36,890 --> 00:17:41,027 ...to help the Europeans and the Japanese defeat the rebels. 258 00:17:41,194 --> 00:17:43,997 Lieutenant Smedley Butler was in the invading force... 259 00:17:44,164 --> 00:17:48,802 ...leading his Marines into Beijing, where he saw firsthand... 260 00:17:48,968 --> 00:17:51,504 ...the way the victorious Europeans treated the Chinese. 261 00:17:51,671 --> 00:17:53,373 He was disgusted. 262 00:17:57,477 --> 00:18:01,948 Thus, as in 2008, the 1900 American election took place... 263 00:18:02,115 --> 00:18:05,085 ...with U.S. troops tied down in numerous countries. 264 00:18:05,251 --> 00:18:09,289 In this case, China, Cuba and the Philippines. 265 00:18:09,456 --> 00:18:13,126 And yet McKinley, basking in the glow of victory over Spain... 266 00:18:13,293 --> 00:18:17,530 ...beat Bryan by a wider margin than he had in 1896. 267 00:18:17,697 --> 00:18:21,768 Socialist Eugene Debs barely registered with under 1 percent. 268 00:18:21,935 --> 00:18:26,139 Americans had clearly endorsed McKinley's vision of trade and empire. 269 00:18:26,306 --> 00:18:28,808 McKINLEY: My fellow citizens... 270 00:18:28,975 --> 00:18:32,212 ...recent events have imposed upon the patriotic... 271 00:18:32,378 --> 00:18:34,114 NARRATOR". At the height of his popularity... 272 00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:39,352 ...McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901. 273 00:18:39,519 --> 00:18:45,592 The assassin had complained about American atrocities in the Philippines. 274 00:18:45,758 --> 00:18:47,627 The new president, Theodore Roosevelt... 275 00:18:47,794 --> 00:18:50,530 ...an even more unabashed imperialist, continued his policies. 276 00:18:50,697 --> 00:18:51,865 [ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING] 277 00:18:52,031 --> 00:18:54,934 You gonna build that canal in Panama, Teddy? 278 00:18:55,101 --> 00:18:57,337 I'll dig it with my own hands if I have to. 279 00:18:59,772 --> 00:19:03,042 NARRATOR: And Roosevelt, orchestrating a revolution in Panama... 280 00:19:03,209 --> 00:19:05,512 ...a Province of Columbia... 281 00:19:05,678 --> 00:19:08,748 ...signed a treaty with the newly created Panamanian government... 282 00:19:08,915 --> 00:19:11,384 ...to lease the canal zone... 283 00:19:11,551 --> 00:19:16,122 ...receiving the same rights of intervention the U.S. had forced upon Cuba. 284 00:19:17,524 --> 00:19:22,729 The canal was built with great difficulty and finally opened in 1914. 285 00:19:22,896 --> 00:19:26,266 In the years to follow, U.S. Marines were repeatedly sent in... 286 00:19:26,432 --> 00:19:31,504 ...to protect U.S. business interests in what were now called banana republics... 287 00:19:31,671 --> 00:19:36,643 ...considered backward and in need of strong rule by sometimes brutal dictators... 288 00:19:36,809 --> 00:19:42,916 ...able to enforce U.S. business interests on the workers and a resistant peasantry. 289 00:19:43,082 --> 00:19:46,920 It is my policy to protect American citizens... 290 00:19:47,086 --> 00:19:50,390 ...and American interests whenever, wherever they are threatened. 291 00:19:50,557 --> 00:19:53,593 [ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING] 292 00:19:53,760 --> 00:20:00,300 NARRATOR". Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua... 293 00:20:00,466 --> 00:20:06,339 ...the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama... 294 00:20:06,506 --> 00:20:09,842 ...Guatemala, Mexico. 295 00:20:10,009 --> 00:20:13,346 U.S. occupations often lasted for years. 296 00:20:13,513 --> 00:20:15,982 Sometimes for decades. 297 00:20:16,149 --> 00:20:19,852 No one had more firsthand experience intervening in other countries... 298 00:20:20,019 --> 00:20:24,490 ...than Smedley Butler, now a major general in the Marine Corps. 299 00:20:24,657 --> 00:20:27,360 Adored by his men, they called him Old Gimlet Eye... 300 00:20:27,527 --> 00:20:29,963 ...after a wound sustained in Honduras. 301 00:20:30,129 --> 00:20:33,366 And at the end of his long and highly decorated service... 302 00:20:33,533 --> 00:20:37,103 ...he reflected upon his years in uniform. 303 00:20:37,270 --> 00:20:41,407 BUTLER: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service... 304 00:20:41,574 --> 00:20:46,279 ...as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. 305 00:20:46,446 --> 00:20:50,984 I served in all commission ranks from second lieutenant to major general. 306 00:20:51,150 --> 00:20:55,188 And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman... 307 00:20:55,355 --> 00:20:59,525 ...for big business on Wall Street and for the bankers. 308 00:20:59,692 --> 00:21:04,197 In short, I was a racketeer. A gangster for capitalism. 309 00:21:04,364 --> 00:21:06,699 Like all the members of the military profession... 310 00:21:06,866 --> 00:21:10,136 ...I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. 311 00:21:10,303 --> 00:21:16,576 I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. 312 00:21:16,743 --> 00:21:19,379 I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place... 313 00:21:19,545 --> 00:21:22,548 ...for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. 314 00:21:22,715 --> 00:21:26,419 I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics... 315 00:21:26,586 --> 00:21:28,354 ...for the benefits of Wall Street. 316 00:21:28,521 --> 00:21:31,291 The record of racketeering is long. 317 00:21:31,457 --> 00:21:33,092 I helped purify Nicaragua... 318 00:21:33,259 --> 00:21:37,830 ...for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1909 to 1912. 319 00:21:37,997 --> 00:21:43,136 I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. 320 00:21:43,303 --> 00:21:49,208 In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. 321 00:21:49,375 --> 00:21:54,547 During those years I had, as the boys in the backroom would say, "a swell racket." 322 00:21:54,714 --> 00:21:58,718 Looking back on it, I feel I could have given Al Capone a few hints. 323 00:21:58,885 --> 00:22:01,421 Best he could do is operate his racket in three districts. 324 00:22:01,587 --> 00:22:03,956 I operated on three continents. 325 00:22:05,325 --> 00:22:10,096 NARRATOR". His overall outspokenness over the years would cost Butler dearly... 326 00:22:10,263 --> 00:22:14,067 ...when he was passed over as commandant of the Marine Corps... 327 00:22:14,233 --> 00:22:19,439 ...which he now left in 1931 under a cloud of contention. 328 00:22:25,244 --> 00:22:27,680 "War is a racket," is what Butler was saying. 329 00:22:27,847 --> 00:22:33,453 And World War I was among the most dismal episodes in human history. 330 00:22:36,022 --> 00:22:41,260 One of the lesser-known facts of this story is that on the eve of World War I... 331 00:22:41,427 --> 00:22:44,731 ...the banks of the British Empire were in crisis. 332 00:22:44,897 --> 00:22:48,334 Britain's economic model of cannibalizing the economies... 333 00:22:48,501 --> 00:22:51,771 ...of increasing parts of the globe in order to survive... 334 00:22:51,938 --> 00:22:56,676 ...and not investing in its own homegrown manufacturing was failing. 335 00:22:56,843 --> 00:23:00,346 Cycles of depression came and went. 336 00:23:01,647 --> 00:23:04,951 In contrast, the newly unified German Empire... 337 00:23:05,118 --> 00:23:07,954 ...was leading the nations of Continental Europe... 338 00:23:08,121 --> 00:23:12,058 ...in a new system away from free trade to protectionist measures... 339 00:23:12,225 --> 00:23:15,895 ...that encouraged the growth of a domestic industrial base... 340 00:23:16,062 --> 00:23:18,765 ...not as dependent on colonization. 341 00:23:18,931 --> 00:23:21,334 Germany was competing in the production of steel... 342 00:23:21,501 --> 00:23:26,672 ...electrical power, chemical energy, agriculture, iron, coal and textiles. 343 00:23:26,839 --> 00:23:30,343 Its banks and rail roads were growing, and in the battle for oil... 344 00:23:30,510 --> 00:23:34,847 ...the newest strategic fuel that was necessary to power modern navies... 345 00:23:35,014 --> 00:23:39,519 ...Germany's merchant fleet was rapidly gaining on Britain's. 346 00:23:39,685 --> 00:23:44,390 England, now heavily dependent on oil imports from the U.S. and Russia... 347 00:23:44,557 --> 00:23:47,760 ...was desperate to find potential new reserves in the Middle East... 348 00:23:47,927 --> 00:23:51,798 ...which were part of the tottering Ottoman Empire. 349 00:23:51,964 --> 00:23:55,368 And when the Germans began building a rail road to import this oil... 350 00:23:55,535 --> 00:24:00,239 ...from Baghdad to Berlin through their alliances with this Ottoman Empire... 351 00:24:00,406 --> 00:24:02,108 ...Britain was deeply opposed. 352 00:24:02,275 --> 00:24:06,512 The interests of their nearby Egyptian and Indian empires were threatened. 353 00:24:06,679 --> 00:24:10,450 Enormous unrest in the Balkans, particularly in Serbia... 354 00:24:10,616 --> 00:24:15,288 ...helped block the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad from completion. 355 00:24:15,455 --> 00:24:17,990 In fact, it was a minor affair in Serbia... 356 00:24:18,157 --> 00:24:21,461 ...that finally set off the chain of events of World War I... 357 00:24:21,627 --> 00:24:26,065 ...when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire... 358 00:24:26,232 --> 00:24:29,602 ...and his wife were assassinated on the streets of Sarajevo... 359 00:24:29,769 --> 00:24:32,071 ...in the baking summer of 1914. 360 00:24:32,738 --> 00:24:38,311 The situation deteriorated quickly in a series of complex alliances... 361 00:24:38,478 --> 00:24:40,980 ...between competing economic empires... 362 00:24:41,147 --> 00:24:44,550 ...led to the greatest war yet in human history. 363 00:24:48,221 --> 00:24:51,324 The war was a slaughter from beginning to end... 364 00:24:51,491 --> 00:24:53,993 ...on a level incomprehensible to the public. 365 00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,163 In the first battle of the morn in 1915... 366 00:24:57,330 --> 00:25:02,635 ...the British, the French and the Germans suffered 500,000 casualties each. 367 00:25:02,802 --> 00:25:04,837 The war lasted beyond all expectations. 368 00:25:05,505 --> 00:25:10,409 In one brutal single day the Somme, Britain lost 60,000 dead. 369 00:25:10,576 --> 00:25:13,746 France and Germany suffered almost a million casualties... 370 00:25:13,913 --> 00:25:15,848 ...during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. 371 00:25:21,587 --> 00:25:26,792 Repeatedly ordered to charge into the teeth of German machine guns and artillery... 372 00:25:26,959 --> 00:25:31,197 ...France ultimately lost half of its young men between the ages of 15 and 30. 373 00:25:35,201 --> 00:25:39,272 Germany first used poisoned gas successfully at the Battle of Ypres... 374 00:25:39,438 --> 00:25:45,678 ...in April 1915, blanketing French troops along four miles of trenches. 375 00:25:47,013 --> 00:25:51,117 The Washington Post reported that French soldiers were driven insane... 376 00:25:51,284 --> 00:25:57,790 ...or died from agonizing suffocation, their bodies turned black, green or yellow. 377 00:25:57,957 --> 00:26:01,394 The British retaliated with gas at Loos in September... 378 00:26:01,561 --> 00:26:06,365 ...only to see the wind shift and the gas blown back into the British trenches... 379 00:26:06,532 --> 00:26:08,935 ...resulting in more British casualties than German. 380 00:26:09,101 --> 00:26:13,539 In 1917, Germany unleashed even more potent mustard gas weapons... 381 00:26:13,706 --> 00:26:16,375 ...against the British again at Ypres. 382 00:26:17,443 --> 00:26:20,112 The novelist Henry James wrote: 383 00:26:20,279 --> 00:26:22,148 JAMES: The plunge of civilization... 384 00:26:22,315 --> 00:26:25,384 ...into this abyss of blood and darkness... 385 00:26:25,551 --> 00:26:30,590 ...is a thing that so gives away this whole long age... 386 00:26:30,756 --> 00:26:36,829 ...during which we have supposed the world to be gradually bettering. 387 00:26:52,311 --> 00:26:54,847 NARRATOR". Woodrow Wilson was the embodiment... 388 00:26:55,014 --> 00:26:59,385 ...of the Henry James pre-war ideal of hope in civilization. 389 00:26:59,552 --> 00:27:04,123 First elected president in 1912, he echoed most Americans' sympathy... 390 00:27:04,290 --> 00:27:08,761 ...for the Allies, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Russia... 391 00:27:08,928 --> 00:27:14,166 ...against the Central Powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. 392 00:27:14,333 --> 00:27:16,435 But he didn't join the war, explaining: 393 00:27:16,602 --> 00:27:18,237 WILSON: We have to be neutral... 394 00:27:18,404 --> 00:27:23,776 ...because otherwise our mixed populations would wage war on each other. 395 00:27:23,943 --> 00:27:29,081 NARRATOR". He won reelection in 1916 with the slogan, "He kept us out of war." 396 00:27:29,248 --> 00:27:31,984 But he would soon reverse himself. 397 00:27:32,151 --> 00:27:33,886 Wilson was an interesting man. 398 00:27:34,053 --> 00:27:36,222 He had been president of Princeton University... 399 00:27:36,389 --> 00:27:37,657 ...and governor of New Jersey. 400 00:27:37,823 --> 00:27:41,460 Descended from Presbyterian ministers on both sides of his family... 401 00:27:41,627 --> 00:27:47,600 ...he exhibited a strong moralistic streak and sometimes a self-righteous inflexibility. 402 00:27:47,767 --> 00:27:51,504 He shared a missionary's sense of America's global role... 403 00:27:51,671 --> 00:27:56,409 ...and believed in the export of democracy, even to countries unwilling to receive it. 404 00:27:56,575 --> 00:28:01,547 He shared as well his Southern forbearers' sense of white racial superiority... 405 00:28:01,714 --> 00:28:05,317 ...taking steps to re-segregate the federal government. 406 00:28:05,484 --> 00:28:10,256 When a delegation of African Americans petitioned him, he replied: 407 00:28:10,423 --> 00:28:14,894 WILSON: Segregation is not a humiliation, but a benefit. 408 00:28:16,262 --> 00:28:19,365 NARRATOR". The old anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan... 409 00:28:19,532 --> 00:28:22,168 ...now serving as Wilson's Secretary of State... 410 00:28:22,334 --> 00:28:26,205 ...tried to maintain American's sense of neutrality in the war. 411 00:28:26,372 --> 00:28:29,041 But Wilson rejected his efforts to bar U.S. citizens... 412 00:28:29,208 --> 00:28:32,812 ...from traveling on ships of countries at war. 413 00:28:33,913 --> 00:28:36,982 Britain, which for nearly a century now controlled the Atlantic... 414 00:28:37,149 --> 00:28:39,985 ...with its superior naval power... 415 00:28:40,152 --> 00:28:43,122 ...had launched a blockade of Northern Europe. 416 00:28:43,289 --> 00:28:46,792 Germany retaliated with a highly effective U-boat campaign... 417 00:28:46,959 --> 00:28:51,397 ...that seemed to be able to tilt the balance of power on the high seas. 418 00:28:51,564 --> 00:28:57,336 In May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania... 419 00:28:57,503 --> 00:29:02,308 ...leaving 1200 dead, including 128 Americans. It was a shock. 420 00:29:02,475 --> 00:29:07,480 There were calls for America to go to war, but despite initial disclaimers... 421 00:29:07,646 --> 00:29:11,217 ...it was found that the ship was indeed in violation of neutrality laws... 422 00:29:11,383 --> 00:29:14,553 ...and carried a large cargo of arms to Britain. 423 00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:18,724 Bryan demanded that Wilson condemn the British blockade of Germany... 424 00:29:18,891 --> 00:29:24,263 ...as well as the German attacks, seeing both as infringements of neutral rights. 425 00:29:24,430 --> 00:29:29,068 When Wilson refused, Bryan resigned in protest. 426 00:29:29,235 --> 00:29:33,038 Wilson was increasingly coming to believe that if the U. S. did not join the war... 427 00:29:33,205 --> 00:29:37,476 ...they would be denied a role in shaping the post-war world. 428 00:29:38,043 --> 00:29:41,347 And in January 1917, he dramatically delivered... 429 00:29:41,514 --> 00:29:44,150 ...the first formal presidential address to the senate... 430 00:29:44,316 --> 00:29:46,352 ...since the days of George Washington. 431 00:29:46,519 --> 00:29:48,454 He called for peace without victory... 432 00:29:48,621 --> 00:29:52,424 ...based on core American principles of self-determination. .. 433 00:29:52,591 --> 00:29:57,963 ...freedom of the seas, and an open world with no entangling alliances. 434 00:29:58,130 --> 00:30:01,267 The centerpiece of such a world would be a League of Nations... 435 00:30:01,433 --> 00:30:03,736 ...that would enforce the peace. 436 00:30:03,903 --> 00:30:06,572 Wilson's idealism has always been suspect... 437 00:30:06,739 --> 00:30:11,277 ...because it seemed to be consistently undermined by his politics. 438 00:30:11,443 --> 00:30:17,550 American neutrality in this war was, in effect, more a principle than a practice. 439 00:30:18,284 --> 00:30:21,620 J.P. Morgan, along with Rockefeller of Standard Oil... 440 00:30:21,787 --> 00:30:26,959 ...had been one of the two titans of American finance since the Civil War. 441 00:30:27,126 --> 00:30:32,798 He died in 1913, but his son J.P. Morgan, Jr. effectively served... 442 00:30:32,965 --> 00:30:35,568 ...as America's banker to the British Empire... 443 00:30:35,734 --> 00:30:40,372 ...between 1915 and 17, when the U.S. entered the war. 444 00:30:41,307 --> 00:30:44,210 Initially the United States would not allow American bankers... 445 00:30:44,376 --> 00:30:46,412 ...to float loans to the belligerents. .. 446 00:30:46,579 --> 00:30:50,416 ...knowing that this would undermine America's stated neutrality. 447 00:30:50,583 --> 00:30:56,555 But in September 1915, in his first term, Wilson reversed himself. 448 00:30:56,722 --> 00:31:02,695 And in that month, Morgan floated a $500 million loan to Britain and France. 449 00:31:02,862 --> 00:31:09,068 By 1917, the British War Office had borrowed close to $2.5 billion... 450 00:31:09,235 --> 00:31:13,105 ...from the House of Morgan and other U.S. banks on Wall Street. 451 00:31:13,272 --> 00:31:17,142 Only $27 million had been loaned to Germany. 452 00:31:17,309 --> 00:31:22,014 By 1919, after the war, Britain found itself owing the U. S... 453 00:31:22,181 --> 00:31:28,921 ...a staggering sum of $4. 7 billion, 61 billion today. 454 00:31:29,088 --> 00:31:34,059 Morgan also became the sole purchasing agent for the British Empire in the U.S... 455 00:31:34,226 --> 00:31:36,862 ...placing some $20 billion in purchase orders... 456 00:31:37,029 --> 00:31:40,666 ...and taking a 2-percent commission on the price of all goods... 457 00:31:40,833 --> 00:31:46,305 ...favoring friends like Dupont Chemical, Remington and Winchester Arms. 458 00:31:48,073 --> 00:31:51,477 Socialist Eugene Debs had consistently urged workers... 459 00:31:51,644 --> 00:31:53,913 ...to oppose the war, observing: 460 00:31:54,079 --> 00:31:58,017 DEBS: Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses... 461 00:31:58,183 --> 00:32:02,554 ...and there will never be another war on the face of the earth. 462 00:32:04,156 --> 00:32:09,528 NARRATOR: Whether for financial or idealistic reasons, in April 1917.. . 463 00:32:09,695 --> 00:32:13,632 ...Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, saying: 464 00:32:13,799 --> 00:32:16,702 "The world must be made safe for democracy." 465 00:32:16,869 --> 00:32:21,540 Six senators voted against it, including Robert La Follette of Wisconsin... 466 00:32:21,707 --> 00:32:24,009 ...and 50 representatives in the house... 467 00:32:24,176 --> 00:32:29,915 ...including Jeanette Rankin of Montana, the first woman ever elected to Congress. 468 00:32:30,082 --> 00:32:33,352 Opponents attacked Wilson as a tool of Wall Street. 469 00:32:33,519 --> 00:32:36,055 "We are putting a dollar sign on the American flag..." 470 00:32:36,221 --> 00:32:40,993 ...charged the respected senator George Norris of Nebraska. 471 00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:45,097 Opposition ran deep, but Wilson got his wish. 472 00:32:50,936 --> 00:32:54,673 Yet despite government appeals for a million volunteers... 473 00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,844 ...reports of the horrors of trench warfare dampened enthusiasm... 474 00:32:59,011 --> 00:33:03,782 ...and only 73,000 men signed up in the first six weeks... 475 00:33:03,949 --> 00:33:07,753 ...forcing Congress to institute a draft. 476 00:33:13,726 --> 00:33:18,998 As 1918 dawned, it looked as if the Central Powers might indeed win the war... 477 00:33:19,164 --> 00:33:21,533 ...and defeat the Allies... 478 00:33:21,700 --> 00:33:26,038 ...which threatened to leave the U.S. bankers in a huge financial hole. 479 00:33:26,205 --> 00:33:30,642 America rallied with patriotic Liberty Bond drives... 480 00:33:30,809 --> 00:33:33,545 ...and many of the nation's leading progressives... 481 00:33:33,712 --> 00:33:38,784 ...John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, took Wilson's side. 482 00:33:38,951 --> 00:33:42,521 It was the Midwestern Republicans, like La Follette and Norris... 483 00:33:42,688 --> 00:33:48,293 ...who understood that the war was a death nail for meaningful reform at home. 484 00:33:48,460 --> 00:33:50,529 And Congress demonstrated this in passing... 485 00:33:50,696 --> 00:33:54,133 ...some of the most repressive legislation in the country's history... 486 00:33:54,299 --> 00:33:59,671 ...the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918... 487 00:33:59,838 --> 00:34:05,344 ...which curbed speech and created a climate of intolerance towards descent. 488 00:34:05,511 --> 00:34:08,280 University professors who opposed the war... 489 00:34:08,447 --> 00:34:11,316 ...were either fired or cowed into silence. 490 00:34:14,787 --> 00:34:16,889 Hundreds were jailed for speaking out... 491 00:34:17,056 --> 00:34:21,160 ...including Industrial Workers of the World leader Big Bill Haywood. 492 00:34:21,326 --> 00:34:27,466 Eugene Debs protested repeatedly and was finally arrested in June 1918, saying: 493 00:34:27,633 --> 00:34:29,268 DEBS: Wars throughout history... 494 00:34:29,435 --> 00:34:34,940 ...have been waged for conquest and plunder and that is war in a nutshell. 495 00:34:35,107 --> 00:34:38,310 The master class has always declared the wars. 496 00:34:38,477 --> 00:34:41,413 The subject class has always fought the battles. 497 00:34:41,580 --> 00:34:45,284 NARRATOR". Before being sentenced, he eloquently addressed the courtroom. 498 00:34:45,451 --> 00:34:48,387 DEBS: Your Honor, years ago I recognized... 499 00:34:48,554 --> 00:34:53,258 ...my kinship within all living beings. And I made up my mind... 500 00:34:53,425 --> 00:34:57,296 ...that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. 501 00:34:57,463 --> 00:35:03,869 I said then and I say now that while there is a lower class, I am in it. 502 00:35:04,036 --> 00:35:06,638 While there is a criminal element, I am of it. 503 00:35:06,805 --> 00:35:11,977 While near there is a soul in prison, I am not free. 504 00:35:12,144 --> 00:35:15,747 NARRATOR: The judge sentenced Debs to 10 years in prison. 505 00:35:15,914 --> 00:35:20,352 He served three, from 1919 to 21. 506 00:35:20,519 --> 00:35:22,087 With Wilson's permission... 507 00:35:22,254 --> 00:35:25,991 ...the Department of Justice destroyed the IWW, the Wobblies... 508 00:35:26,158 --> 00:35:31,363 ...while some Americans marched off to war to the strains of the hit song "Over There." 509 00:35:31,530 --> 00:35:35,367 Over there, over there 510 00:35:35,534 --> 00:35:37,603 Send the word, send the word over there 511 00:35:37,769 --> 00:35:41,440 NARRATOR". The Wobblies responded with a parody of "Onward Christian Soldiers"... 512 00:35:41,607 --> 00:35:45,110 ...titled "Christians at War," which ended with: 513 00:35:45,277 --> 00:35:50,048 "History will save you, that pack of goddamned fools." 514 00:35:53,785 --> 00:35:56,655 One hundred and sixty-five of their leaders were charged... 515 00:35:56,822 --> 00:35:59,725 ...with conspiring to hinder the draft and encourage desertion. 516 00:36:00,292 --> 00:36:03,529 Big Bill Haywood fled to revolutionary Russia. 517 00:36:03,695 --> 00:36:05,764 Others followed. 518 00:36:06,698 --> 00:36:09,601 German Americans were singled out with particular animosity. 519 00:36:09,768 --> 00:36:14,206 Schools, many of which now demanded loyalty oaths from teachers... 520 00:36:14,373 --> 00:36:15,974 ...banned German from their curricula... 521 00:36:16,141 --> 00:36:20,679 ...and orchestras dropped German composers from their repertoires. 522 00:36:20,846 --> 00:36:24,149 Just as French fries would later be renamed freedom fries... 523 00:36:24,316 --> 00:36:25,918 ...by Congressional xenophobes... 524 00:36:26,084 --> 00:36:32,124 ...furious at French opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003... 525 00:36:32,291 --> 00:36:36,595 ...during World War I, hamburgers were renamed liberty sandwiches... 526 00:36:36,762 --> 00:36:39,164 ...and sauerkraut was called liberty cabbage. 527 00:36:39,331 --> 00:36:44,970 German measles, liberty measles, and German Shepherds became police dogs. 528 00:36:45,137 --> 00:36:46,605 [BARKING] 529 00:36:50,943 --> 00:36:53,445 The war years were to bring unprecedented collusion... 530 00:36:53,612 --> 00:36:55,948 ...between large corporations and the government... 531 00:36:56,114 --> 00:37:00,986 ...in an attempt to stabilize the economy, control unfettered competition... 532 00:37:01,153 --> 00:37:04,356 ...and guarantee profits to munition makers... 533 00:37:04,523 --> 00:37:08,393 ...who were sometimes characterized as merchants of death. 534 00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:14,066 It was more than a year after declaring war that U.S. troops finally arrived in Europe... 535 00:37:14,233 --> 00:37:18,203 ...in May 1918, six months before the war's end... 536 00:37:18,370 --> 00:37:23,242 ...when they helped beleaguered French forces turn the tide along the Marne river. 537 00:37:23,408 --> 00:37:26,011 With its manpower and its industrial might... 538 00:37:26,178 --> 00:37:30,849 ...the U.S. presence had an enormous psychological effect on the war... 539 00:37:32,551 --> 00:37:33,585 [GIBBERS LOUDLY] 540 00:37:36,455 --> 00:37:39,591 ...and demoralized the Germans, who finally surrendered. 541 00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:46,331 The long, dreary war ended on November 11th, 1918. 542 00:37:55,707 --> 00:37:58,010 The losses were staggering. 543 00:37:58,176 --> 00:38:00,746 Of the 2 million American soldiers who reached France... 544 00:38:00,912 --> 00:38:05,284 ...over 116,000 died and 204,000 were wounded. 545 00:38:05,450 --> 00:38:09,087 European losses were truly beyond reason. 546 00:38:09,254 --> 00:38:14,259 Up to an estimated 8 million soldiers and 6 to 10 million civilians dead. 547 00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:17,896 The latter often due to disease and starvation. 548 00:38:19,398 --> 00:38:21,266 But as happened in World War II... 549 00:38:21,433 --> 00:38:24,503 ...no people suffered more in this war than the Russians... 550 00:38:24,670 --> 00:38:28,473 ...with 1.7 million dead and almost 5 million wounded. 551 00:38:30,475 --> 00:38:33,845 Those who survived were living in a new world order. 552 00:38:34,012 --> 00:38:38,684 Britain, France had been badly weakened. The German Empire had collapsed. 553 00:38:38,850 --> 00:38:42,754 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, more than 50 years old, was over... 554 00:38:42,921 --> 00:38:47,159 ...resulting in the chaotic restructuring of Eastern Europe. 555 00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:51,096 And the great polyglot Ottoman Empire of Arabs... 556 00:38:51,263 --> 00:38:54,700 ...Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Muslims, Christians and Jews... 557 00:38:54,866 --> 00:38:59,738 ...which had lasted for 600 years, now crumbled. 558 00:38:59,905 --> 00:39:04,843 In Russia, a mysterious group of revolutionaries known as the Bolsheviks... 559 00:39:05,010 --> 00:39:10,515 ...promising land, bread and peace, took power in October 1917... 560 00:39:10,682 --> 00:39:13,185 ...in the ruined realm of Tsar Nicholas II... 561 00:39:13,352 --> 00:39:16,822 ...who had lost the army in the slaughterhouse of World War I... 562 00:39:16,988 --> 00:39:20,125 ...and with it the trust of both soldiers and workers... 563 00:39:20,292 --> 00:39:22,494 ...who were fed up by the brutality of this war. 564 00:39:24,029 --> 00:39:28,967 The Bolsheviks were deeply inspired by German-Jewish intellectual Karl Marx... 565 00:39:29,134 --> 00:39:34,172 ...calling for the social and economic equality of man. 566 00:39:34,339 --> 00:39:38,477 And they immediately set out to reorganize Russian society at its roots... 567 00:39:38,643 --> 00:39:42,681 ...nationalizing banks, distributing land and estates to the peasants... 568 00:39:42,848 --> 00:39:48,086 ...putting workers in control of factories and confiscating church property. 569 00:39:48,253 --> 00:39:52,824 And in March 1918, eight months before the end of World War I... 570 00:39:52,991 --> 00:39:57,562 ...and almost two months before the U.S. troops saw action in France... 571 00:39:57,729 --> 00:40:00,799 ...Vladimir Lenin signed a peace treaty with Germany... 572 00:40:00,966 --> 00:40:03,935 ...pulling Russian troops from the war. 573 00:40:04,102 --> 00:40:06,505 Woodrow Wilson and the Allies were furious. 574 00:40:06,671 --> 00:40:09,775 [LENIN SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN] 575 00:40:12,310 --> 00:40:15,480 NARRATOR". The Bolsheviks were vowing to destroy the old secretive ways... 576 00:40:15,647 --> 00:40:21,219 ...of capitalism and empire building, throwing them into the dustbin of history. 577 00:40:21,386 --> 00:40:24,022 They were promising, incredibly, world revolution... 578 00:40:24,189 --> 00:40:29,227 ...and there were uprisings in Budapest, Munich, Berlin. 579 00:40:29,394 --> 00:40:35,000 The remaining European empires, Belgium, Britain and France, trembled. 580 00:40:35,167 --> 00:40:39,371 Not since the French Revolution some 125 years before... 581 00:40:39,538 --> 00:40:43,608 ...had Europe been so profoundly shaken and changed. 582 00:40:51,917 --> 00:40:53,952 NARRATOR". Inspired by the Russian Revolution... 583 00:40:54,119 --> 00:41:00,792 ...a wave of hope gripped colonized and oppressed peoples on six continents. 584 00:41:00,959 --> 00:41:03,428 In one brazen act, Lenin's Red Guard... 585 00:41:03,595 --> 00:41:07,098 ...ransacked the old foreign office and published what was found: 586 00:41:07,265 --> 00:41:11,303 A web of secret agreements between the European Allies... 587 00:41:11,470 --> 00:41:16,842 ...dividing the post-war map into exclusive zones of influence. 588 00:41:17,843 --> 00:41:21,980 Much as the United States would react to the WikiLeaks publications... 589 00:41:22,147 --> 00:41:25,884 ...of its diplomatic cables in 2010... 590 00:41:26,051 --> 00:41:30,655 ...the Allies were outraged by this violation of the old diplomatic protocol... 591 00:41:30,822 --> 00:41:33,558 ...which now exposed the hollowness... 592 00:41:33,725 --> 00:41:38,029 ...of Woodrow Wilson's call for self-determination after the war. 593 00:41:40,465 --> 00:41:44,703 Wilson, appalled as he was by Lenin's actions, was already aware... 594 00:41:44,870 --> 00:41:49,641 ...and disgusted by what the French and British had secretly agreed to. 595 00:41:50,141 --> 00:41:52,677 But nonetheless, he sent American troops into battle... 596 00:41:52,844 --> 00:41:55,947 ...on behalf of the French and British Empires. 597 00:42:02,087 --> 00:42:06,791 The conservative counter-revolution against the Bolsheviks was ferocious. 598 00:42:06,958 --> 00:42:11,229 Separate armies were attacking the new Russia from all directions. 599 00:42:11,396 --> 00:42:15,066 Native Russians and Cossacks, the Czech Legion... 600 00:42:15,233 --> 00:42:18,837 ...Serbs, Greeks, Poles in the west... 601 00:42:19,004 --> 00:42:24,476 ...the French in Ukraine and some 70,000 Japanese in the far east. 602 00:42:26,177 --> 00:42:30,248 In reaction, Lenin's co-revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky... 603 00:42:30,415 --> 00:42:35,754 ...ruthlessly put together a Red Army of approximately 5 million men. 604 00:42:43,128 --> 00:42:47,933 The outspoken but influential ex-Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill said: 605 00:42:48,099 --> 00:42:52,103 "Bolshevism ought to be strangled in its cradle." 606 00:42:52,270 --> 00:42:55,774 An estimated 40,000 British troops arrived in Russia. 607 00:42:55,941 --> 00:43:01,046 Some deployed to the Caucasus to protect the oil reserves at Baku. 608 00:43:01,212 --> 00:43:04,082 Though most of the fighting would be over by 1920... 609 00:43:04,249 --> 00:43:08,620 ...pockets of resistance persisted until 1923. 610 00:43:08,787 --> 00:43:12,691 In a foreshadowing of what was to come some 60 years later... 611 00:43:12,857 --> 00:43:17,329 ...Muslim resistance in central Asia lasted into the 1930s. 612 00:43:17,495 --> 00:43:21,099 Wilson initially hesitated to join the invading forces... 613 00:43:21,266 --> 00:43:25,070 ...rejecting the notion of overthrowing the new regime... 614 00:43:25,236 --> 00:43:28,673 ...but ended up sending more than 13,000 American troops... 615 00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:32,410 ...and helping arm and finance the anti-Bolshevik forces. 616 00:43:32,577 --> 00:43:35,647 Robert La Follette, in the Senate, deplored this action... 617 00:43:35,814 --> 00:43:38,516 ...as a mockery of Wilson's idealism. 618 00:43:39,384 --> 00:43:43,221 To deny the counter-revolutionaries their major rallying point... 619 00:43:43,388 --> 00:43:49,027 ...in July 1918, in a devastating shock to the ways of pre-war old Europe... 620 00:43:49,194 --> 00:43:53,298 ...Lenin ordered the execution of the czar and his family. 621 00:43:53,465 --> 00:43:56,568 The family, who had been exiled into the interior... 622 00:43:56,735 --> 00:44:01,373 ...were shot and brutally finished off with bayonets in the cellar. 623 00:44:01,539 --> 00:44:04,943 Lenin's secret police, the Cheka, were successful in mopping up... 624 00:44:05,110 --> 00:44:07,812 ...many of the Bolsheviks' remaining enemies. 625 00:44:07,979 --> 00:44:13,318 Tales of the Red Terror, often exaggerated, were carried west... 626 00:44:13,485 --> 00:44:17,088 ...and when Wilson allowed U.S. troops to remain in Russia until 1920... 627 00:44:17,255 --> 00:44:21,660 ...it deeply poisoned the beginnings of any U.S.-Soviet relationship. 628 00:44:21,826 --> 00:44:24,062 The U.S. would not recognize Soviet Russia... 629 00:44:24,229 --> 00:44:28,833 ...until Franklin Roosevelt's presidency in 1933. 630 00:44:31,703 --> 00:44:36,808 When he arrived in Europe in December 1918 for the Paris Peace Conference... 631 00:44:36,975 --> 00:44:40,011 ...Wilson was mobbed by adoring crowds. 632 00:44:40,178 --> 00:44:41,646 Two million in Paris. 633 00:44:41,813 --> 00:44:43,081 When he entered Rome... 634 00:44:43,248 --> 00:44:47,519 ...the streets were sprinkled with golden sand as per ancient tradition. 635 00:44:47,686 --> 00:44:51,556 The Italians proclaimed him "the God of peace." 636 00:44:51,723 --> 00:44:56,995 Twenty-seven nations met in Paris on January 12th, 1919. 637 00:44:57,162 --> 00:45:00,231 Wilson was a star. The world was going to be remade. 638 00:45:00,398 --> 00:45:04,769 It was indeed his most glorious moment in time. 639 00:45:04,936 --> 00:45:07,839 But as with Alexander in Babylon... 640 00:45:08,006 --> 00:45:11,776 ...Caesar in Rome and Napoleon on the frontiers of Europe... 641 00:45:11,943 --> 00:45:15,213 ...a zenith of success had been reached. 642 00:45:15,380 --> 00:45:19,451 Wilson considered himself the personal instrument of God... 643 00:45:19,617 --> 00:45:24,089 ...and the peace conference was the crowning moment of his divine mission. 644 00:45:24,255 --> 00:45:27,125 In reinterpreting World War I ideologically... 645 00:45:27,292 --> 00:45:31,730 ...along the lines of the wars of the French Revolution a century earlier... 646 00:45:31,896 --> 00:45:35,967 ...Wilson was claiming that this was a war to change humanity... 647 00:45:36,134 --> 00:45:38,470 ...a war to end all war. 648 00:45:38,636 --> 00:45:42,741 In an address to the United States Senate that year, he was to say: 649 00:45:42,907 --> 00:45:46,644 WILSON: America's world role has come by no plan of our conceiving... 650 00:45:46,811 --> 00:45:48,847 ...but by the hand of God. 651 00:45:49,013 --> 00:45:52,250 It was of this that we dreamed in our birth. 652 00:45:52,417 --> 00:45:57,088 America shall indeed, in truth, show the way. 653 00:45:57,255 --> 00:46:00,325 NARRATOR". In Wilson's view, America's manifest destiny... 654 00:46:00,492 --> 00:46:03,795 ...was no longer a case of continental expansion. 655 00:46:03,962 --> 00:46:08,767 It was now a divinely ordained mission to humanity. 656 00:46:08,933 --> 00:46:12,170 This idea of saving humanity became essential... 657 00:46:12,337 --> 00:46:17,742 ...to the American national myth in all subsequent wars. 658 00:46:17,909 --> 00:46:21,613 In an attempt to counter Lenin's revolutionary appeal... 659 00:46:21,780 --> 00:46:26,017 ...Wilson had one year earlier, while the war was still raging... 660 00:46:26,184 --> 00:46:29,721 ...announced a set of international democratic principles... 661 00:46:29,888 --> 00:46:34,592 ...including free trade, open seas and open agreements between nations... 662 00:46:34,759 --> 00:46:39,464 ...that would become the basis of a new international peace. 663 00:46:39,631 --> 00:46:42,801 He called this the Fourteen Points. 664 00:46:42,967 --> 00:46:46,538 The Germans surrendered on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points... 665 00:46:46,704 --> 00:46:50,308 ...believing he would guard them from dismemberment by the Allies. 666 00:46:50,475 --> 00:46:53,945 They even changed their form of government, adopting a Republic... 667 00:46:54,112 --> 00:46:58,716 ...and opposed the Kaiser, who soon disappeared into exile. 668 00:46:58,883 --> 00:47:01,786 The United States was the new dominant force in the world. 669 00:47:01,953 --> 00:47:07,559 Although it had been a debtor nation in 1914, owing $3.7 billion... 670 00:47:07,725 --> 00:47:11,162 ...by 1918 it had become a creditor nation... 671 00:47:11,329 --> 00:47:15,433 ...and was owed 3.8 billion by its allies. 672 00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:19,938 Nonetheless, the old multinational empires that had stood since the middle ages... 673 00:47:20,104 --> 00:47:23,041 ...had no interest in Wilson's idealism. 674 00:47:23,208 --> 00:47:26,244 They wanted revenge and money and colonies. 675 00:47:26,411 --> 00:47:29,981 British Prime Minister Lloyd George noted that in the United States... 676 00:47:30,148 --> 00:47:32,116 ...not a shack had been destroyed. 677 00:47:32,283 --> 00:47:34,819 French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau... 678 00:47:34,986 --> 00:47:39,090 ...whose country had lost over 1 million soldiers, commented: 679 00:47:39,257 --> 00:47:42,527 "Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points. 680 00:47:42,694 --> 00:47:45,630 Why, God almighty has only 10." 681 00:47:45,797 --> 00:47:50,935 As a result of this attitude, several of Wilson's ill-defined Fourteen Points... 682 00:47:51,102 --> 00:47:54,539 ...would be removed from the Treaty of Versailles. 683 00:47:54,706 --> 00:48:00,278 Britain, France and Japan divided the former German colonies in Asia and Africa... 684 00:48:00,445 --> 00:48:04,849 ...and paying lip service to the promised self-determination of the Arabs... 685 00:48:05,016 --> 00:48:08,019 ...who had revolted against the Ottoman Empire... 686 00:48:08,186 --> 00:48:11,856 ...Winston Churchill and the Foreign Office divided that empire... 687 00:48:12,023 --> 00:48:15,260 ...creating new client states such as Mesopotamia... 688 00:48:15,426 --> 00:48:17,862 ...which was arbitrarily renamed Iraq. 689 00:48:18,730 --> 00:48:20,798 LAWRENCE: They have only one suspicion. 690 00:48:20,965 --> 00:48:25,637 We let them drive the Turks out and then move in ourselves. 691 00:48:25,803 --> 00:48:30,375 I've told them that that's false, that we have no ambitions in Arabia. 692 00:48:30,541 --> 00:48:31,576 Have we? 693 00:48:31,743 --> 00:48:34,312 I am not a politician, thank God. 694 00:48:34,479 --> 00:48:37,649 Have we any ambition in Arabia, Dryden? 695 00:48:38,583 --> 00:48:40,885 Difficult question, sir. 696 00:48:42,820 --> 00:48:44,656 I want to know, sir... 697 00:48:44,822 --> 00:48:50,061 ...if I can tell them in your name that we have no ambitions in Arabia. 698 00:48:51,296 --> 00:48:52,830 Certainly. 699 00:48:52,997 --> 00:48:56,734 NARRATOR". The prospect of a future Jewish homeland in Palestine... 700 00:48:56,901 --> 00:49:01,406 ...was also established in a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour... 701 00:49:01,572 --> 00:49:04,142 ...to the Jewish banker Lord Rothschild. 702 00:49:04,309 --> 00:49:08,846 A protectorate was established by the League of Nations over Palestine. 703 00:49:09,013 --> 00:49:12,984 Approximately 85 percent of the native population... 704 00:49:13,151 --> 00:49:17,288 ...was Palestinian Arab, and under 8 percent Jewish. 705 00:49:17,455 --> 00:49:24,062 The old empires sanitized their actions by calling these new colonies "mandates"... 706 00:49:24,228 --> 00:49:26,364 ...and Wilson went along with it by arguing... 707 00:49:26,531 --> 00:49:29,400 ...that the Germans had ruthlessly exploited their colonies... 708 00:49:29,567 --> 00:49:33,104 ...whereas the Allies had treated their colonies humanely... 709 00:49:33,271 --> 00:49:36,474 ...an assessment that was greeted with incredulity... 710 00:49:36,641 --> 00:49:39,877 ...by the inhabitants of French Indo-China. 711 00:49:40,044 --> 00:49:44,248 Ho Chi Minh, as a young man, rented a tuxedo and bowler hat... 712 00:49:44,415 --> 00:49:49,053 ...and visited Wilson carrying a petition for Vietnamese independence. 713 00:49:49,220 --> 00:49:53,091 Like other third-world leaders in attendance, Ho would learn that liberation... 714 00:49:53,257 --> 00:49:58,396 ...would only come through armed struggle, not Woodrow Wilson's largess. 715 00:49:58,563 --> 00:50:00,465 Although Lenin was not invited to Paris... 716 00:50:00,631 --> 00:50:03,601 ...Russia's presence cast a pall over the meetings. 717 00:50:03,768 --> 00:50:05,970 Lenin called Wilson a smoother-over. 718 00:50:06,137 --> 00:50:10,074 He said, "Only genuine revolutionaries may be trusted." 719 00:50:10,241 --> 00:50:14,312 And as the delegates sat, Communists took over Bavaria and Hungary... 720 00:50:14,479 --> 00:50:17,615 ...and threatened Berlin and Italy. 721 00:50:17,782 --> 00:50:22,353 Lenin's call for worldwide revolution was heard in the third world... 722 00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,790 ...in lands as far away as China and Latin America. 723 00:50:26,624 --> 00:50:29,394 Focused intently on his League of Nations... 724 00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,797 ...which he considered essential to preventing future war... 725 00:50:32,964 --> 00:50:39,837 ...Wilson failed to secure the kind of non-punitive treaty he publicly advocated... 726 00:50:40,004 --> 00:50:44,142 ...as Britain and France perversely applied Wilson's concept... 727 00:50:44,308 --> 00:50:47,445 ...of self determination against Germany... 728 00:50:47,612 --> 00:50:52,550 ...leaving millions of citizens stranded outside their new shrunken border. 729 00:50:53,818 --> 00:50:56,220 In its famous War Guilt Clause... 730 00:50:56,387 --> 00:50:58,890 ...the Treaty of Versailles placed the entire blame... 731 00:50:59,057 --> 00:51:02,593 ...for starting the war on Germany and not the other colonial empires... 732 00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:08,599 ...and required them to play almost $33 billion to the Allies in war reparations... 733 00:51:08,766 --> 00:51:12,236 ...more than double what Germany expected. 734 00:51:12,937 --> 00:51:16,140 Prominent in Wilson's delegation was Thomas Lamont... 735 00:51:16,307 --> 00:51:21,312 ...the House of Morgan's leading partner, upon whom Wilson relied. 736 00:51:21,479 --> 00:51:25,983 Lamont would make sure that Germany's payments to Britain and France... 737 00:51:26,150 --> 00:51:29,554 ...would in turn allow them to repay the fortune... 738 00:51:29,720 --> 00:51:33,257 ...they had borrowed on Wall Street to survive the war. 739 00:51:33,424 --> 00:51:37,161 In reality then, the entire new structure of international finance... 740 00:51:37,328 --> 00:51:41,532 ...was built on the shaky foundation of German war reparations... 741 00:51:41,699 --> 00:51:46,370 ...which would shortly contribute to a German economic collapse... 742 00:51:46,537 --> 00:51:49,140 ...out of which Adolf Hitler would emerge. 743 00:51:56,414 --> 00:51:59,150 NARRATOR". In years to come, the U.S. Congress would investigate... 744 00:51:59,317 --> 00:52:03,287 ...the machinations of the so-called "merchants of death." 745 00:52:03,454 --> 00:52:08,159 These were the industrialists and bankers who made obscene profits from the war. 746 00:52:08,326 --> 00:52:10,695 No one was convicted, nothing proven... 747 00:52:10,862 --> 00:52:17,101 ...but there remained a lingering populist feeling of distrust for World War I. 748 00:52:17,902 --> 00:52:22,673 Many including Congressional leaders felt that millions had been sacrificed... 749 00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:27,111 ...in a financial boondoggle for bankers and other war profiteers. 750 00:52:28,112 --> 00:52:30,848 The bitterness of this feeling was intense. 751 00:52:31,015 --> 00:52:35,753 Wilson came home to a country where American labor was rife with discontent... 752 00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:37,588 ...and desperate for reform. 753 00:52:38,789 --> 00:52:40,658 In the year 1914, by example... 754 00:52:40,825 --> 00:52:46,664 ...as many as 35,000 workers were killed in industrial accidents. 755 00:52:46,831 --> 00:52:50,701 Over 4 million workers went on strike in 1919 alone. 756 00:52:50,868 --> 00:52:54,205 Three hundred and sixty-five thousand steel workers... 757 00:52:54,372 --> 00:52:59,911 ...450,000 miners, 120,000 textile workers. 758 00:53:00,077 --> 00:53:04,282 In Seattle a general strike shut down the entire city. 759 00:53:04,448 --> 00:53:06,884 In Boston, even the police force walked out... 760 00:53:07,051 --> 00:53:12,456 ...leading the Wall Street Journal to warn, "Lenin and Trotsky are on the way. " 761 00:53:12,623 --> 00:53:16,394 President Wilson, in response, wanted to kill off Lenin's message. 762 00:53:16,561 --> 00:53:20,965 Communism was a European madness, not an American one. 763 00:53:21,132 --> 00:53:26,437 In the so-called Red Summer of 1919, even race riots exploded out of control... 764 00:53:26,604 --> 00:53:31,642 ...in Chicago and several other cities, including Washington D.C. 765 00:53:31,809 --> 00:53:34,378 Federal troops arrived to restore order. 766 00:53:36,113 --> 00:53:38,983 President Wilson continued to travel the land... 767 00:53:39,150 --> 00:53:43,154 ...arguing that the U.S. needed to ratify the Versailles Treaty... 768 00:53:43,321 --> 00:53:48,059 ...and establish the League of Nations to ensure his vision of world peace. 769 00:53:48,226 --> 00:53:52,697 Progressive Republicans denounced Wilson's League of imperialists... 770 00:53:52,863 --> 00:53:57,034 ...bent upon defeating revolutions and defending their own imperial designs. 771 00:53:57,602 --> 00:54:03,674 Critics demanded changes, but no modifications were acceptable to Wilson. 772 00:54:03,841 --> 00:54:08,145 His health began to suffer and in a final speech in Pueblo, Colorado... 773 00:54:08,312 --> 00:54:12,149 ...in September 1919, he collapsed. 774 00:54:12,316 --> 00:54:18,055 He suffered a severe stroke and was incapacitated for the rest of his life. 775 00:54:18,222 --> 00:54:23,027 In November 1919, federal agents were unleashed... 776 00:54:23,194 --> 00:54:27,665 ...under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in the first of a series of raids... 777 00:54:27,832 --> 00:54:32,503 ...on radical and labor organizations across the country. 778 00:54:32,670 --> 00:54:35,373 The operation was run by the 24-year-old director... 779 00:54:35,539 --> 00:54:40,945 ...of the Justice Department's Radical Division, J. Edgar Hoover. 780 00:54:41,112 --> 00:54:45,950 Estimates vary. From 3- to 10,000 dissidents were arrested... 781 00:54:46,117 --> 00:54:48,786 ...many incarcerated without charges for months. 782 00:54:48,953 --> 00:54:53,891 Hundreds of foreign-born radicals, including Russian-born Emma Goldman... 783 00:54:54,058 --> 00:54:59,163 ...were deported as civil liberties were increasingly abused... 784 00:54:59,330 --> 00:55:02,366 ...identifying dissent with un-Americanism. 785 00:55:04,869 --> 00:55:08,205 The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty by seven votes. 786 00:55:08,372 --> 00:55:10,074 The League of Nations was born... 787 00:55:10,241 --> 00:55:14,078 ...but was crippled without the participation of the United States. 788 00:55:15,379 --> 00:55:19,950 Wilson died in 1924, a broken man. 789 00:55:22,420 --> 00:55:26,424 By the early 1920s, the America of Jefferson... 790 00:55:26,590 --> 00:55:29,927 ...Lincoln and William Jennings Bryan had ceased to exist. 791 00:55:30,094 --> 00:55:33,064 It had been replaced by the world of Morgan... 792 00:55:33,230 --> 00:55:37,101 ...Wall Street bankers and huge corporations. 793 00:55:37,268 --> 00:55:43,007 Wilson had hoped to transform the world, but his record is much less positive. 794 00:55:43,174 --> 00:55:47,478 While supporting self-determination and opposing formal empire... 795 00:55:47,645 --> 00:55:52,049 ...he intervened repeatedly in other nations' internal affairs... 796 00:55:52,216 --> 00:55:56,387 ...including Russia, Mexico, and throughout Latin America. 797 00:55:56,554 --> 00:56:02,560 While encouraging reform, he maintained a deep mistrust of the kind of fundamental... 798 00:56:02,727 --> 00:56:07,431 ...and at times revolutionary change that would actually improve people's lives. 799 00:56:07,598 --> 00:56:11,502 While endorsing human brotherhood, he believed non-whites were inferior... 800 00:56:11,669 --> 00:56:14,372 ...and re-segregated the federal government. 801 00:56:14,538 --> 00:56:17,675 While extolling democracy and the rule of law... 802 00:56:17,842 --> 00:56:21,512 ...he oversaw egregious abuses of civil liberties. 803 00:56:21,679 --> 00:56:27,651 Wilson's failures capped a period in which America's unique mixture of idealism... 804 00:56:27,818 --> 00:56:30,988 ...militarism, avarice and diplomacy... 805 00:56:31,155 --> 00:56:35,025 ...propelled the country towards becoming a new empire. 806 00:56:35,192 --> 00:56:38,829 The public in 1900 had rejected William Jennings Bryan... 807 00:56:38,996 --> 00:56:43,033 ...and embraced William McKinley's vision of trade and prosperity... 808 00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:47,271 ...and in so doing, legitimized his imperial conquests. 809 00:56:47,438 --> 00:56:52,676 The 1900 election had indeed started the United States on a trajectory... 810 00:56:52,843 --> 00:56:56,147 ...upon which there was no turning back. 811 00:57:36,654 --> 00:57:38,656 [English - US - SDH]