Examine American society, economy and power from the First World War to 1945

What this dot point is asking

The United States entered the First World War in April 1917, and its troops helped turn the tide on the Western Front in 1918. Yet the post-war mood turned inward. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations membership in 1919-1920, returning to a foreign policy often described as isolationism. At home a Red Scare in 1919-1920, immigration restriction (the Quota Acts of 1921 and 1924) and Prohibition (from 1920 under the Eighteenth Amendment) reflected fear of radicalism and social change.

The 1920s, the "Roaring Twenties", brought real prosperity for many. Mass production, symbolised by Henry Ford's assembly line and the Model T, made cars, radios and consumer goods widely available, helped by hire-purchase credit and advertising. Women had gained the vote in 1920 (Nineteenth Amendment), and urban culture flourished, including the Harlem Renaissance. Republican administrations under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover favoured business, low taxes and high tariffs. But prosperity was uneven: farmers suffered low prices, many workers stayed poor, and racial discrimination, including a revived Ku Klux Klan, remained powerful.

The Great Depression that followed was the worst in American history. By 1933 roughly a quarter of the workforce, around 13 million people, was unemployed; thousands of banks failed and savings vanished. Farmers, already struggling, were also hit by the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, driving migrants westward (the "Okies"). President Herbert Hoover's belief in limited government and voluntary action seemed inadequate, and the harsh dispersal of the Bonus Army of veterans in 1932 damaged him further.

Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1932 election promising a "New Deal" and confidence, famously telling Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. After taking office in March 1933 he launched the Hundred Days of emergency legislation. The First New Deal (1933-1934) included the Emergency Banking Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The Second New Deal (1935 onwards) added the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Wagner Act protecting unions, and the Social Security Act (1935) creating pensions and unemployment insurance.

Roosevelt faced strong opposition. Critics on the right attacked the New Deal as expensive and an attack on free enterprise, and the Supreme Court struck down the NRA and AAA in 1935-1936, prompting his failed "court-packing" plan of 1937. Populist figures such as Senator Huey Long argued the New Deal did too little to redistribute wealth. Nonetheless Roosevelt won re-election repeatedly and reshaped the Democratic coalition, including northern African American voters.

The Second World War transformed America's position. Although neutral at first, the US aided the Allies through Lend-Lease (1941). The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 brought the United States into the war. War production ended the Depression, brought women into factories ("Rosie the Riveter") and accelerated African American migration and demands for rights, even as Japanese Americans were unjustly interned. American industry, the development of the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) and the use of those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, made the US the dominant economic and military power as the war ended. Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Harry Truman saw the war to its close.

Historians debate the New Deal's character. Some see it as a pragmatic rescue of capitalism rather than a true revolution; others, the "New Left", criticise how little it changed deep inequalities of race and class. For TASC source analysis, weigh the New Deal's genuine reforms against its limits, and assess how the war, more than domestic policy, both ended the Depression and propelled the United States to superpower status.

A second debate concerns the turn from isolationism to global power. Some historians stress continuity, arguing that American economic expansion and informal influence had been growing since 1917 and that 1941 only formalised a leading role. Others see a decisive break, as the United States abandoned the isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s for permanent global engagement, alliances and military bases. The interwar refusal to join the League of Nations and the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s are the key evidence for the isolationist phase, while Lend-Lease, Pearl Harbor and the postwar order mark the break. A strong TASC answer uses this debate to judge how far 1917 to 1945 was a steady rise or a sudden transformation.