World War One left a mixed legacy for President Woodrow Wilson and lessons for future leaders, according to a British historian.
David Reynolds is a historian at Cambridge University and the author of a book on World War One. He spoke about what he calls “America’s Forgotten War,” and international politics, at the Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities last week.
Reynolds says the U.S. was reluctant to enter World War One, with President Wilson doing so because he believed it would keep democracy safe. But Reynolds says U.S. leaders had a different view about involvement in World War Two.
"For the United States, the second war, which is clearly a war that America has an interest in, Pearl Harbor is bombed, there is a sense that we’re fighting a bestial regime in Europe, this has a clarity and a moral purpose that the first war lacked."
Reynolds says the argument about getting involved in a war to keep democracy safe was also used after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. He says World War One should be more than “on the edge of America’s memory.”
Reynolds says the anti-enemy propaganda from World War One carried over after the war ended. In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a 1919 Nebraska law that only English could be taught to students younger than eighth grade violated civil liberties.
The Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities will air December 7th at noon on KIOS.