Dubois and World War One

W.E.B Dubois is someone that is well known for his writing about slavery and reconstruction, which has come up in our history class a lot. Something that hasn't come up as much is involvement in World War 1.

Du Bois was seen as a "Black elite" and was one of the founding members of the NAACP in 1909. He was the leader of the Niagara Movement and insisted on full civil rights and political representation for blacks. He had a strong faith in democracy and equality and believed that this change would be brought through the growth of the black intellectual elite. However; the discrimination in the military against blacks and the resurgence of white supremacy during World War 1 shook his faith in democracy.

Dubois, having attended the German school of historical economics after attaining his Ph.D. from Harvard, was heavily influenced by German scholars like Leopold von Ranke and Heinrich von Treitschke, and had a deep affection for German culture. Despite being such a brilliant man, he was still discriminated against in the US shown by the fact that he only held faculty positions at all-black colleges.

His reasoning for siding with the Allied powers was based on the fact that blacks were being sterilized or murdered in Nazi Germany, and he worried about what a Nazi world would mean for the black people. He wrote in the 1914 issue of The Crisis that the war represented “one of the great disasters due to race and color prejudice and it but foreshadows greater disasters in the future" and contained the same underlying causes of the segregation in America. He believed that the true cause was “the wild quest for Imperial expansion among colored races between Germany, England and France primarily, and Belgium, Italy, Russia and Austria-Hungary in lesser degree." Thus the only way to prevent future calamities was to eliminate Imperialism. He saw the Great War as the "unveiling of the lie" thus showing the corruption of European culture due to white supremacy.

However; after Woodrow Wilson said this war was to make the world “safe for democracy”, Dubois immediately started to actively support the war. He used The Crisis to encourage black loyalty and for them to buy war bonds. He believed that like the Civil War, the Great War had the power to change the status of blacks in society.

Unfortunately, this did not appear to be true as shown by the segregation of blacks in the military. There were about 380,000 African American soldiers that served in the racially segregated United States army and they were most part of the Services of Supply. They were responsible for the dirty work such as cleaning latrines and burying the dead. Later two black combat units were created but it wasn't any better for the black soldiers. Sergeant Louis Pontlock of the 92nd Division recalled that they "had no privileges and were same as prisoners..." and "were considered as thieves, ‘cut throats’ and sexual maniacs.” The 92nd Division was seen as inferior and only fit for defensive roles by the US military and has a poor combat record. However; historians believe that the combat record was inaccurate and many veterans say that the reports were inaccurate due to the racism of the evaluators.

Dubois was shocked by the racism that the blacks faced during the war and as previously used history as a weapon against racism. In the May 1919 issue of The Crisis, he described to the public an assessment of the treatment of African American soldiers and the larger significance of the war to the future of the black race. He later attacked the hypocrisy of the United States for being a “natural peacemaker” and “moral protagonist” during the war and reinforced his belief that it was "not the end of world war,—it is but the beginning." In other words, he believed that the war was solely based in white supremacy and only occurred due to the imperialist nature of white countries which will continue preying on colored ones.

To conclude, the war definitely helped develop his views on race and on America and has thus changed our view on history today.

Sources:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blacks-during-the-holocaust-era
https://www.aaihs.org/w-e-b-du-bois-world-war-i-and-the-question-of-failure/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3031477?seq=1
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/world-war-i-in-the-historical-imagination-of-w-e-b-du-bois/6E248883345B4DAB9C7257CFF147D3F2/core-reader
https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/21-world-war-i/w-e-b-dubois-returning-soldiers-may-1919/