YouSaid · the spoken record

Christopher Capozzola

lines on the record: 111
first: 2022-09-14
most recent: 2022-09-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, I mean, we like to argue with each other or nitpick with each other, but the one thing I have no patience for is when we pull rank on each other, you know, I think we depend on if you're a historian in a university with degrees and research materials, you depend on the work of people in some local community like recording oral histories, saving documents. History is a social science, but it's also a storytelling art. And history books are the ones you find on the shelves and bookstores that people read for fun. And you can appreciate both the knowledge production as well as the storytelling. And when you get a good oral storyteller like Dan Carlin, there's a reason that thousands and hundreds of thousands of people tune in.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Book as a window into the Third Reich. Of course, drugs don't explain all of it, but it helps us see the people who supported Hitler, the ways in which mind-altering and performance altering drugs were used to kind of keep soldiers on the battlefield, the ways in which I think that we don't fully understand the extent to which the Third Reich is held together with duct tape from a pretty early phase by like 1940 or 41 even. It's all smoke and mirrors. And I think that wartime propaganda, both Germans trying to say, you know, we're winning everything and America trying to mobilize and the other allies to mobilize against Germany. A more formidable enemy than it really was by 1941 and 1942.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I have read it, and I also had this sort of eye-opening experience that a lot of historians did. And they're like, why didn't we think about this? And I think. Whether he's the author Oler is sort of not a trained academic historian, but the joy of history is like you don't have to be one to write good history. And I don't think anyone sort of criticizes him for that.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But Europe, you know, depression era Europe was so unstable and democracies collapsed throughout Western Europe over the course of the 1930s, whether they had charismatic totalitarian leaders or not.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, part of what you're talking about is Hitler the individual as a sort of charismatic leader who's able to mobilize the nation. And part of it is Hitlerism, his own sort of individual ability to play, for example, play off his subordinates against one another to set up a system of that nature that in some ways escalates violence, including the violence that leads to the Holocaust. And some of it is also Hitlerism as a leader cult. And we see this in many other sort of things where a political movement surrounds one particular individual who may or may not be replaceable. So yes, the World War II we got would have been completely different if a different sort of faction had risen to power in Germany.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish it were that easy. And I think It's useful to think in counterfactuals, what if. And if you believe, as historians do in causation, then that one thing causes another, then you also have to believe in counterfactuals, right? That if something hadn't happened, then maybe that wouldn't have worked differently. But I think all the things that led to World War I are multicausal and nuanced. And this is what historians do. We make things more complicated. And so, you know, there was no one thing that could have turned the tide of history. And oh, if only Hitler had gotten into art school or, oh, if only Fidel Castro had gotten into the major leagues, those are interesting thought experiments, but few events in history, I think, are that contingent.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was respected, but resentfully in some ways by the European powers, Britain and France and Italy to a lesser extent, who felt that they had sacrificed more. They had two goals. They wanted to shape the imperial system in order to make sure that their kind of fundamental economic structures wouldn't change. And they also wanted to sort of weaken Germany as much as possible so that Germany couldn't rise again. What this leads to is a peace treaty that maintains some of the fundamental conflicts of the imperial system and makes bankrupts Germany, starves Germany, and kind of feeds this politics of resentment that make it impossible for Germany to kind of participate in a European order.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the war ends, and very soon, even before the war is over, the United States in particular is trying to shape the peace. And the United States is the central actor at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Woodrow Wilson is there. He's presiding. And he knows that he calls the shots.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot of that sort of economic wealth is poured into sort of greater industrialization and militarization. And so when the military wing in Japanese politics takes over in the 1930s, they're in some ways flexing muscles that come out of the First World War.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in some ways, that lays the groundwork for the kind of politics of resentment and hate that comes from the Nazis. You know, for the United States, in some ways, the failure to win the peace sets up the possibility for the next war, right? That the United States, through Wilson, is sort of crafting a new international order in order that this will be the word end-all wars. Because the United States failed to join the League of Nations, you see the United States really sort of on the hook for another generation. In Asia, the story is more complicated, right? And I think it's worth bearing that in mind that World War II is a two-front war. It starts in Asia for its own reasons. World War I is transformative for Japan, right? It is a time of massive economic expansion.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you're right. The answer is different for each country that in some ways in Germany, the culture of defeat and the experience of defeat at the end of World War I leads to a culture of resentment, recrimination, finger-pointing, blame that makes German politics very ugly, as one person puts it, brutalizes German politics.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, you know, at the same time, they're worried that British propaganda is shaping their news system. They are worried that German espionage is undermining them. They're worried that both Britain and Germany are trying to interfere in American elections and American news cycles. And at the same time, a revolution is breaking out in Mexico. So there are sort of, you know, concerns about what's happening in the Western Hemisphere as well as what's happening in Europe.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always say that the United States entered the war in April of 1917, but Americans entered it right away. They entered it, you know, some of them actually went and volunteered and fought almost exclusively on the side of Britain and France. At least 50,000 joined the Canadian Army or the British Army and serve. Millions volunteer. They sent humanitarian aid, I think in many ways. modern war creates modern humanitarianism and we can see that in the neutrality period and even if they wanted the United States to stay out of the war a lot of Americans get involved in it by thinking about it caring about it you know arguing”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And ultimately irreconcilable visions of that. But that sort of nationalism that comes out of the union after the victory and the war is a kind of crucial force shaping America ever since.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, the Civil War in both the North and the South, troops are raised overwhelmingly through volunteer recruitment. There is a draft in both the North and the South, but it's not significant. Only 8% of Confederate soldiers came in through conscription. So, in fact, the mobilization for volunteers often organized locally around individual communities or states create sort of multiple identities and levels of loyalty where people both in the North and the South have loyalty both to their state regiments, to their sort of community militias, and as well to the country. They are fighting over the country, right? Over the United States. And the Union and the Confederacy have”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's true. And the American Civil War defines American identity in some ways along with the revolution and the Second World War, more so than any other conflict. And it's a fundamentally different war, right? It's one because it is a civil war, right? Because of secession, because of the Confederacy, this is a conflict happening on the territory of the United States between Americans. And so the dynamics are really quite different, right? So, you know, the leaders, particularly Lincoln, have a different relationship to the home front, to civilians than, say, Wilson or Roosevelt have in World War I and II.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. I mean, that keeps me up at night, and I think it should keep the citizens of both the United States and Russia up at night. And I think. Again, it gets back to what I was saying in the summer of 1914, even then, things that looked like a march toward war could have been different, right? And so I think it's important for leaders of both countries and of all of the sort of related countries of Ukraine, of the various NATO powers, to really sort of imagine off-ramps and to imagine alternatives and to make them possible, whether it's through diplomacy, whether it's through other formats. I think that's the only way to prevent sort of greater escalation.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's very easy to draw parallels between World War I and the war in Ukraine. I don't think they really work. That the First World War in some ways is generated by Fundamental conflict in the European system of empires, right, in the global system of empires. So in many ways, if there's a parallel, the war in Ukraine is the parallel to some of the conflicts in the Mediterranean and the Balkans in 1911 to 1913 that then later there was a much greater conflict, right? And so I think if there's any lessons to be learned for how not to let World War III look like World War I, it would be to make”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those discussions are often marginalized, framed as conspiracy theory, et cetera. And I think it's important to realize that in the generation after World War I, this was a serious civic conversation. It led to sort of investigations of defense finance. It led to experiments in Britain and France in public finance of war material. And I think those conversations need to be reconvened now in the 21st century.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say throughout the Cold War and even after the end of it, there has not been a sustained conversation in the United States about our defense establishment. What we really need and what serves our interest and to what extent other things like market forces, profit motives belong in that conversation what's interesting is that in the generation after the First World War, that conversation was on the table, right? Through a series of investigations in the US, the NI committee in Britain, a royal commission, journalistic expose. This would have been just talked about constantly in the years between about 1930 and 1936 as people were starting to worry, right? That storm clouds were gathering in Europe again.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is certainly one of the concerns of both people who are critical of the First World War and then also of Dwight Eisenhower when he's president and sort of in his farewell address where he sort of introduces the term military industrial complex. And some of it is about the profit motive, but some of it is a fear that Eisenhower had that no one had an interest in stopping this, right? And that no one had a voice in stopping it. And that the ordinary American could really do nothing to sort of dial things down.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one way to think about it is it's the Cold War is a point at which it switches from being a dial to a ratchet. So during World War I, the relationship between the military and industry dials up fast and high and stays that way and it dials back down. Whereas during the Cold War, sort of the relationship between the two often looks more like a ratchet.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were generally manufactured by private industry. There were, of course, arsenals sort of 19th century iterations where the government would produce its own weapons, partly to make sure that they got what they wanted. But most of the weapons of war for all of the European powers and the United States are produced by private industry.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I guess I would maybe break that into two parts. On the one hand, yes, there is war profiteering. There are investigations of it in the years after the war. There's a widespread concern. Know too much of a part in the war, and that's definitely the case. But I think when you try to think of this term military industrial complex, it's best to think of it as, you know, at what point does the one side lock in the other, right? That military choices are shaped by industry objectives and vice versa. And I don't think that that was fully locked into place during World War I. I think that's really a Cold War phenomenon when the United States is on this intense kind of footing for two generations in a row.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it's exponential growth, right? That over the course of the war by almost any metric you use, the size of the federal budget, the number of federal employees, the number of soldiers in the standing army, all of those things skyrocket during the war. They go down after the war, but they never go down to what they were before.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the espionage act sort of empowers federal organizations to watch other Americans. They are particularly interested in anyone who is obstructing the draft, anyone who is trying to kind of organize labor or strikes or radical movements. And anyone who might have sympathy for Germany, which basically means all German Americans come under surveillance. Initially, this is very small scale, but soon every government agency gets involved from the Treasury Department Secret Service to the post office, which is sort of breeding mail, to the Justice Department, which mobilizes 200,000 volunteers. It's a really significant enterprise. Much of it goes away after the war. But of all the things that go away, this core of the surveillance state is the thing that persists most fully.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what we see is a change, right? So citizenship during World War I now includes the obligation to defend the country, right? To serve and to, if asked, to die for it. And we certainly see that. And I think we see the close linkage of military service and U.S. citizenship coming out of this time period. But when you start making lots of demands on people to fulfill obligations, in turn, they're going to start demanding rights. And we start to see not necessarily during the war, but after, more demands for free speech protections, more demands for equality, for marginalized groups. And so, you know, obligations and rights are sort of developing in a dynamic relationship.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Espionage Act is a sort of omnibus bill that contains about 10 or different provisions, very few of which have to do with espionage. But one key provision basically makes it illegal to say or do anything that would interfere with military recruitment. And that provision is used to shut down radical publications, to shut down German language publications. And this really has a chilling impact on speech during the war.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. Right. And so very soon after the Selective Service Act is passed, then you get the Espionage Act, which of course is back in the news in 2022.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Yes. And there were small provisions for conscientious objectors, solely those who had religious objections to all war, right? not political objections to this war. And so, you know, several thousand were able to take those provisions. But even then, they faced social sanction, they faced ridicule. Some of them faced intimidation. So those liberty interests, both individual freedom, religious freedom, those are some of the first things to go.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think on some level of the fundamental right is liberty, that conscription sort of demands sacrifice on the behalf of some for notionally for the protection of all.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a significant movement before 1917, but it becomes very hard to keep up an organized anti-war movement after that, particularly when the government starts shutting down protests.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, and that's what I sort of tried to dig in to figure out how did you get 24 million people to register for the draft. And it's certainly not coming from the top down, right? You know, there are maybe 100 sort of agents in what's now called the FBI. It's certainly not being enforced from Washington. It's being enforced through the eyes of everyday neighbors, through community surveillance, all kinds of ways.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a bigger turning point than we might think, right? In some ways, this is a tougher demand of the American public than entering the war. It's one thing to declare war on Germany. It's another thing to go down to your local post office and fill out the forms that allow your own government to send you there to fight. And this is especially important at a time when the federal government doesn't really have any other way to find you unless you actually go and register yourself. And so ordinary people are participating in the building of this war machine, but at least a half a million of them don't, right? And simply never fill out the forms, move from one town to another.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a legal requirement to register, not, of course, not everyone who registers is selected, but over the course of the war, 24 million men register almost 4 million servants, some fashion”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the very first things that Uncle Sam wants you to do is to register for selective service, for the draft, right? And the law is passed very soon after the US enters the war. demanding that all men, first between 21 and 30, then between 18 and 45 register for the draft. And they'll be selected by a government agency, by a volunteer organization.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And the American people responded for sure, but they didn't build what Uncle Sam asked them to do in that poster, right? And I think that's kind of a crucial aspect that there never would have been sort of global U.S. power without the response that begins in World War I.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I think as historians, we need to be at least as interested in what happens to the people who are getting pointed to by Uncle Sam, right? Rather than just the one, you know, whether he's pointing at us. And so yes, he's asking us to do that, but how do we respond?”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're still neutral. In 1917, it's turned into a U.S. Army recruiting poster. And then it reappears in World War II, reappears generations after, you know, like you said, it's now gets remixed, memeified. It's all over the place. I think For me, it's a turning point. It's a sort of window into American culture at a crucial moment in our history, where the federal government is now embarking on a war overseas that's going to make enormous demands on its citizens. And at the same time, where sort of technologies of mass production and mass media and what we would probably call propaganda are being sort of mobilized for the first time in this new kind of way.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So the image, in fact, I think one of the most recognizable images, not only in the United States, but in the entire world, right? And you can bring it almost anywhere on Earth in 2022. And people will know what it refers to, right? And so this is an image that circulated first as a magazine cover later as a recruitment poster where the figure is Uncle Sam sort of pointing at the viewer with his finger sort of pointing and saying, I want you. And the I want you is a recruitment tool to join the U.S. Army. And this image really kind of starts as a kind of, like I said, a magazine cover in 1916 by the artist James Montgomery Flag. It initially appears under the heading, what are you doing for preparedness, meaning to prepare in case war comes to the United States? At that point in 1916,”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you think about citizenship, what it means is two things. First of all, what are your rights and obligations? What is sort of the legal citizenship that you have as a citizen of the United States or any other state? And the second is a more amorphous definition of like, what does it mean to belong, right? To be part of America, right? To feel American, to love it or hate it or be willing to die for it, right? And both of those things really are crystal clear in terms of their importance during the war. So both of those things are on the table. Being a citizen who is a citizen who isn't matters. So people who had never carried passports or anything before suddenly have to, but also what it means to be an American, to feel like it, to be part of this project is also kind of being defined and enforced during World War I.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“American people were absolutely divided about whether to enter this war, right? From 1914 to 1917, there is a searing debate across the political spectrum. It doesn't break down easily on party lines about whether it was in the U.S. interest to do this, whether American troops should be sent abroad, whether Americans would end up just being cannon fodder for the European empires. Eventually, As American ships are sunk first in the Lusitania in 1915, then in much greater numbers in 1917, the tide starts to turn and Americans feel that our response is necessary. And the actual declaration of war in Congress is pretty lopsided, but it's not unanimous by any means. Yeah, yeah.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Country that, at least on paper, is deeply divided about whether to join the war. And so they say, let's do it, right? They're not going to get any American soldiers there in time. It was a gamble. But I think probably their best chance. They took that gamble, they lost, right? In part because French resistance was strong, in part because Americans mobilized much faster and in much greater numbers than the Germans thought they would.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the 1916 presidential election on a campaign to keep the United States out of war. But then in early 1917, the Germans in some ways sort of twist the Americans' arms, right? The Germans sort of high command comes to understand that they're stuck, that they're stuck in this trench warfare. They need a big breakthrough. Their one big chance is to sort of break the blockade and to push through that the British have imposed on them, to break through against France. And so they do. And along with this, they start sinking ships on the Atlantic, including American ships. The Germans know full well this will draw the United States into war. But the Germans look at the United States at this moment. A relatively small army, a relatively small navy.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To answer your last question first, yes, right, that the United States could have stayed out of the First World War as a military power. The United States could not have ignored the war completely, right? It shaped everything. It shaped trade. It shaped goods and services, agriculture, whether there was a crop coming, whether there were immigrants coming across the Atlantic to work in American factories. So the U.S. can't ignore the war. But the U.S. makes a choice in 1917 to enter the war by declaring war on Germany and Austria. And in that sense, this is a war of choice, but it's kicked off by a series of events. So President Woodrow Wilson has been president through this entire period of time. He has just run”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that is absolutely the case. And in some ways, that's true even for the home fronts in Europe, you know, except for the areas where, you know, in Belgium and France, where the war is right there in your backyard, for other people, yeah, there is a distance. Soldiers, of course, feel this very strongly, European soldiers, when they're able to go home on leave, often deeply resent what they see as the luxury that civilians are living during the war.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. You know, we don't in 1917 have the mass media that we have now. But there are images and newspapers. There are newsreels that play at the movie theaters. And of course, some of it is sanitized. But that combined with press accounts, often really quite descriptive press accounts, gory accounts reached anyone who cared to read them. Certainly plenty of people didn't follow the news, felt it was far away. But most Americans who cared about the news knew how devastating this war was.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the beginning, no, but very quickly, the scale of the devastation of these sort of massive over-the-top attacks on trenches is apparent to the military officers. And it very quickly becomes apparent even at home. There is, of course, censorship of the battlefield and specific details don't reach people. But for civilians in any of the warring powers, they know fairly soon how destructive the war is. And to me, that's always been a real sort of puzzle, right? So that by the time the United States comes to decide whether to join the war in 1917, they know exactly what they're getting into, right? They're not backing into the war in the ways that the European powers did. They've seen the devastation. They've seen photographs, they've seen injured soldiers, and they make that choice anyway.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into the conflict, right? So Britain and France, of course, have enormous sort of global empires that begin mobilizing soldiers as well as raw materials. Germany has less of an overseas empire. Russia and the Ottoman Empire, of course, have their own sort of hinterland within the empire. And very soon, you know, sort of all of the warring powers are bringing the entire world into the conflict.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So Britain, France, and Russia are at this time that are in alliance. And so the conflicts in the summer of 1914 that lead sort of to the declarations of war happened sort of one after another in August, in late August of 1914. And all three powers essentially come in at the same time because they have promised to do so through a series of alliances conducted secretly in the years before 1914 that committed them to defend one another. Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire have their own sort of set of secret agreements that also commit them to defend one another. And what this does is it sort of brings them all into conflict at the exact same moment. There also, for many of these countries, bringing not just their national armies, but also their empire.”
2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source