Abstract
President Woodrow Wilson and the critics of his foreign policy in the United States engaged in a bitter confrontation over the Versailles Treaty, including the League of Nations Covenant. This political fight revealed fundamental disagreement over American involvement in postwar international affairs. In 1919 and again in 1920, the Senate rejected the peace treaty with Germany and opposed American membership in the new League of Nations. The country apparently endorsed this repudiation of Wilson’s diplomacy in the presidential election of 1920. Various participants in the treaty fight offered sharply conflicting explanations for this outcome. Yet, there was a remarkable consensus regarding the crucial importance of ethnic politics. Wilson blamed professional ethnic leaders for successfully organizing against the treaty; they claimed credit for its defeat. Historians have subsequently adopted this interpretation. Endorsing Wilson’s vision of American leadership in world affairs, some historians have echoed his criticism of the hyphenates for their obstructive role in the peacemaking. To other historians who have identified with the ethnic groups he denounced, the president appeared as the chief culprit. Still others have taken a more balanced view of the impact of ethnicity on the treaty fight. But most historians have accepted and repeated the common interpretation that ethnic politics vitally affected German-American relations after World War I.
Lloyd E. Ambrosius, “Ethnic Politics and German-American Relations after World War I: The Fight over the Versailles Treaty in the United States,” in Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration, ed. Hans L. Trefousse (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1980), 29–40. Copyright 1981, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. Reprinted by permission of Brooklyn College.
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Notes
Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, eds. The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 6 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1925–7), 6: 78–9, 82–3, 368, 389, 399–400.
George Creel, The War, the World, and Wilson (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920), 201–12, 328–46, 362.
Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1921), 214, 344–9;
John F. Duff, “German-Americans and the Peace, 1918–1920,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59 (June 1970): 439–40.
William E. Dodd, Woodrow Wilson and His Work (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1920), 321–5.
See also Denna Frank Fleming, The United States and the League of Nations, 1918–1920 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1932), 467–8.
Wiseman to Eric Drummond, May 30, 1918; Wiseman, “The Attitude of the United States and of President Wilson towards the Peace Conference,” [c. 20 October 1918], W. B. Fowler, British-American Relations, 1917–1918: The Role of Sir William Wiseman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 275, 292; The Gaelic American (New York), June 1, 1918, 1, 5; Great Britain, Documents Relative to the Sinn Fein Movement (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1921), Cmd. 1108.
Wiseman to Ian Malcolm, July 1, 1919, to Arthur Balfour, July 18, 1919, E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, First Series (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1954), 5: 980–5.
Vierecks The American Monthly (New York), 11: Nov. 1919, 78, 83; 12: March 1920, 5–6, 20; May 1920, 69–70; June 1920, 101–2; July 1920, 133–4; Aug. 1920, 165; Sept. 1920, 197–9, 210; Dec. 1920, 269–97; Jeremiah A. O’Leary to Viereck, Dec. 18, 1919, George Sylvester Viereck Papers (Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City), Box 1. See also Niel M. Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck: German-American Propagandist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 57–108;
Joan M. Jensen, The Price of Vigilance (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 174–5, 293;
Carl Wittke, German-Americans and the World War (Columbus: Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society, 1936), 197–209;
Wittke, The German-Language Press in America (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957), 262–78;
Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 309–31.
John Sharp Williams to Viereck, July 9, 1917, March 29, 1921, Viereck Papers, Box 1; George Coleman Osborn, John Sharp Williams: Planter-Statesman of the Deep South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), 330–80.
The Gaelic American (New York), Jan. 12, 1918, 4; Oct. 5, 1918, 4; Oct. 19, 1918, 4; Dec. 21, 1918, 4; Jan. 18, 1919, 4; Feb. 22, 1919, 1, 4; March 8, 1919, 4; March 15, 1919, 1, 7; Apr. 5, 1919, 3, 11; Apr. 12, 1919, 1; Apr. 19, 1919, 10; Apr. 26, 1919, 2, 4; May 3, 1919, 4; May 10, 1919, 2, 4; May 17, 1919, 4; May 24, 1919, 4; May 31, 1919, 4; June 14, 1919, 1. Diarmuid Lynch to Friends of Irish Freedom, Nov. 19, 1920, Joseph McGarrity Papers (National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ms. 17, 523); Rossa F. Downing to Daniel F. Cohalan, July 24, 1919, John Devoy Papers (National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ms. 18, 007). See also Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight against the League of Nations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), 102–7;
Robert James Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 58–9.
Louis L. Gerson, The Hyphenate in Recent American Politics and Diplomacy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1964), 47–108.
Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (New York: Macmillan, 1945), 22–9;
Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (New York: Free Press, 1957), 73–89;
Selig Adler, The Uncertain Giant: American Foreign Policy between the Wars, 1921–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 4–13;
Julius W. Pratt, Challenge and Rejection: The United States and World Leadership, 1900–1921 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 197–8;
Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), 133–4;
Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing Corporation, 1979), 108.
Charles Callan Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom: 1866–1922 (New York: Devin-Adair, 1957), 284–339;
John Patrick Buckley, The New York Irish: Their View of American Foreign Policy, 1914–1921 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 189–282;
Joseph Edward Cuddy, Irish-America and National Isolationism, 1914–1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 158–245;
Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Diaspora in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 135–7;
Donald Harman Akenson, The United States and Ireland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 43–5.
John B. Duff, “The Versailles Treaty and the Irish-Americans,” Journal of American History 15 (Dec. 1968): 582–98;
Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, 1899–1921 (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1969), 166–213;
Joseph P. O’Grady, The Immigrants Influence on Wilson’s Peace Policies (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1967).
The New Left historians, although focusing on the domestic origins of foreign policy, have ignored ethnic politics while concentrating on political economy; see William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1962), 86–159;
Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 875–93;
N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 253–60.
The American Monthly, 12: Oct. 1920, 229–34, 238; Nov. 1920, 261–2, 270; Dec. 1920, 293–4; Randolph C. Downes, The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1865–1920 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970), 477–85;
James M. Cox, Journey Through My Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 225–87;
Wesley M. Bagby, The Road to Normalcy: The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1920 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 153–5. The 1920 election posed a dilemma for the Devoy-Cohalan faction of Irish-Americans: The Democratic party endorsed Wilson and the League of Nations, and Harding refused to court its support; see Devoy to Cohalan, July 4, 1920, Oct. 31, 1920, John Devoy-D. F. Cohalan Letters (National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ms. 15,416); The Gaelic American (New York), Oct. 9, 1920, 4; Oct. 30, 1920, 4; Nov. 13, 1920, 4.
Patrick McCartan to William Maloney, March 10, 1919, Patrick McCartan Papers (National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ms. 17,675); McCartan to Harry [Boland], Oct. 4, 1919; McCartan to Arthur Griffith, Oct. 29, 1919; McCartan to Michael J. Gallagher, Aug. 7, 1920 (McCartan Papers, Ms. 17,677); McCartan to O’Connell, Nov. 7, 1919; Devoy to Michael Collins, Feb. 16, 1922, Devoy-Cohalan Letters (Ms. 15,416); The Gaelic American (New York), Aug. 9, 1919, 1; Aug. 23, 1919, 1; Sept. 13, 1919, 6–7; Nov. 8, 1919, 1; March 13, 1920, 5; Patrick McCartan, With De Valera in America (New York: Brentano, 1932), 133–88;
Marie Veronica Tarpey, The Role of Joseph McGarrity in the Struggle for Irish Independence (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 96–161.
Thomas M. Henderson, Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants: The Progressive Years (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 300–310. The major studies of the political behavior of various ethnic groups in the 1920 election have lumped “ethnic groups with a pro-German or anti-British bias” or all “immigrant districts” together, thereby blurring the diversity among ethnic voters and the possibility that Irish-American voters may have remained substantially loyal to the Democratic party, as they did in 1916, while German-American, Italian-American, and other voters defected;
see Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 137–43;
David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 28–73.
These conclusions are based on my Guttman scale analysis of Senate roll-call votes in 1919–20. In the 1910 census, 10 percent or more of the white population was of German birth or parentage in 14 states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin). Senators from these states ranked 1 (La Follette), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 50, 51, 53, 64, 72, 80 (Hitchcock), and 89. See also Clifford L. Nelson, German-American Political Behavior in Nebraska and Wisconsin, 1916–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972).
On the idea of cultural pluralism, see Randolph S. Bourne, “Trans-National America,” in War and the Intellectuals: Essays by Randolph S. Bourne, 1915–1919, ed. Carl Resek (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 107–23;
Milton M. Gordon, “Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality,” Daedalus 90 (Spring 1961): 263–85.
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Ambrosius, L.E. (2002). Ethnic Politics and German-American Relations after World War I: The Fight over the Versailles Treaty in the United States. In: Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403970046_9
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