Led by: Prof. Michael Neiberg (US Army War College)
Course Number: AMHI 655
Semesters: Summer 2017, Summer 2020, Summer 2022, Summer 2024 (Term I)
Image: Adolph Treidler, For Every Fighter a Woman Worker/ Care for Her through the YWCA, 1918 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09550)
The era of the First World War was a crucial period in the development of modern America both as a nation on the international scene and in terms of economic, social, and political institutions at home. This course explores American reluctance to enter the war as well as the forces that caused it to abandon its stance of official neutrality; the country’s involvement in the war on the home front and on the fighting front; and its emergence into the post-war world. Instead of focusing on the Great War itself or the influence of the US on its outcome, lectures and readings will examine how American conceptions of identity, democracy, and the nation’s role in the world changed over the course of the war.
Lecture 1: “The Causes of the First World War”
Michael Neiberg, Professor of History and Chair of War Studies, US Army War College
Michael Neiberg has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a founding member of the Société Internationale d’Étude de la Grande Guerre, and a trustee of the Society for Military History. He is the author of The Blood of Free Men (Basic Books, 2012), a history of the liberation of Paris in 1944, and Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe (Basic Books, 2015).
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.