Europe's system of alliances helped turn a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a much wider war in 1914.
Correct Answer
True
True. Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia brought in Russia, Serbia's protector, which drew in Germany and then France and Britain. Within weeks most of the major European powers were at war.
Category: Origins of the War
Question 2
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the United States immediately joined the Allies.
Correct Answer
False
False. Wilson declared American neutrality in 1914, and the United States did not enter the war until April 1917. In the meantime it traded heavily with the Allies.
Category: Road to War
Question 3
Wilson won reelection in 1916 in part with the slogan that he had kept the country out of war.
Correct Answer
True
True. Democrats campaigned on the slogan he kept us out of war, and Wilson narrowly defeated Republican Charles Evans Hughes. About a month after his second inauguration the country was at war.
Category: Road to War
Question 4
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan urged Wilson to join the Allies after the sinking of the Lusitania.
Correct Answer
False
False. Bryan believed Wilson's protests to Germany were too harsh and risked war, and he resigned in 1915 rather than sign them. He wanted strict neutrality, not entry into the war.
Category: Road to War
Question 5
The Sedition Act of 1918 made it a crime to use disloyal language about the government, the Constitution, the flag or the military.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Sedition Act expanded the Espionage Act of 1917 to punish criticism of the government and the war. Thousands of people were charged under these wartime laws, and many received long prison sentences.
Category: Controlling Dissent
Question 6
Wartime anti-German feeling led many American schools to expand their German language classes.
Correct Answer
False
False. Anti-German sentiment led many schools to drop German instruction, libraries to remove German books and towns to rename streets with German names. German Americans faced suspicion regardless of their views.
Category: Controlling Dissent
Question 7
Despite promising a less interventionist policy, Wilson sent U.S. Marines into the Dominican Republic.
Correct Answer
True
True. Wilson sent Marines to the Dominican Republic in 1916 to secure payment of its debts, and he also intervened in Haiti, Cuba and Mexico. In practice he used military force in the region repeatedly.
Category: Wilson and Latin America
Question 8
Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, urged suffragists to oppose the war effort.
Correct Answer
False
False. Catt backed the war effort and argued that women's patriotic service proved they deserved the vote. The more radical National Woman's Party under Alice Paul instead protested Wilson directly.
Category: Labor and Women
Question 9
The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, barred the states from denying citizens the vote on account of sex.
Correct Answer
True
True. Ratified in August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women to vote in that fall's presidential election. Many Black women in the South, like Black men, were still kept from the polls by other means.
Category: Labor and Women
Question 10
When the United States entered World War I, the military ended its policy of placing African American troops in segregated units.
Correct Answer
False
False. The armed forces kept African American soldiers in segregated units throughout World War I, and many were assigned to labor and support duties. Some Black regiments, such as the 369th Infantry, fought with distinction under French command. The military was not ordered desegregated until President Truman's executive order of 1948.
Category: African Americans and the War
Question 11
During the war many women took jobs in factories and on the railroads, though many lost them when soldiers came home.
Correct Answer
True
True. Labor shortages opened industrial and railroad jobs to women, usually at lower pay than men. After the war many were dismissed so returning men could have their positions back.
Category: Labor and Women
Question 12
The Meuse-Argonne offensive in the fall of 1918 was a major American campaign that helped break German lines.
Correct Answer
True
True. More than a million American soldiers fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which continued until the armistice. Together with Allied attacks elsewhere, it helped force Germany to seek an armistice.
Category: Fighting in France
Question 13
The armistice that ended the fighting on the Western Front took effect on November 11, 1919.
Correct Answer
False
False. The armistice took effect on November 11, 1918. The peace treaty with Germany was signed at Versailles the following year.
Category: Fighting in France
Question 14
Wilson traveled to Europe and attended the Paris Peace Conference in person.
Correct Answer
True
True. Wilson broke with tradition by leading the American delegation himself and spent months in Paris. There he pressed for his Fourteen Points against Allied leaders who wanted harsh terms for Germany.
Category: Making the Peace
Question 15
The Senate ratified the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States joined the League of Nations in 1920.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Senate rejected the treaty in November 1919 and again in March 1920, and the United States never joined the League of Nations. It later ended the war with Germany through a separate resolution and treaty.
Category: Making the Peace
Question 16
In 1919 Wilson collapsed during a national speaking tour for the treaty and suffered a severe stroke after returning to Washington.
Correct Answer
True
True. Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, in late September 1919, and the rest of the tour was canceled. On October 2, back at the White House, he suffered a stroke that left him partly paralyzed. His wife, Edith, controlled access to him for months, and the treaty fight went on without his leadership.
Category: Making the Peace
Question 17
The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 killed fewer Americans than combat did in World War I.
Correct Answer
False
False. Influenza killed several hundred thousand Americans, far more than died in battle. Schools, theaters and churches closed in many cities as the disease spread.
Category: Postwar Turmoil
Question 18
In 1919, freed from the wartime no-strike pledge, American workers staged a record wave of strikes.
Correct Answer
True
True. Rapid inflation eroded wages, and millions of workers walked out in thousands of strikes that year. Many Americans blamed radicals for the unrest, feeding the Red Scare.
Category: Postwar Turmoil
Question 19
The Red Summer of 1919 was a series of strikes organized by the Communist Party.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Red Summer of 1919 was a wave of violent race riots in which white mobs attacked Black communities in cities across the country. Returning Black veterans and Great Migration newcomers often fought back.
Category: Postwar Turmoil
Question 20
The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought to power a government that strengthened Russia's commitment to fighting Germany.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Bolsheviks under Lenin took Russia out of the war by signing a separate peace with Germany in March 1918. Germany then shifted troops west for a final offensive in France.
Category: Fighting in France