John Milton Cooper\'s Analysis of the WWI

Military -- Analysis of World War I by John Milton Cooper

John Milton Cooper, Jr.'s Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920, explores the political aspects of many societal arenas and war aspects. Rather than reciting mere historical facts, Cooper apparently knows underlying mindsets and motivations of acknowledged great men/groups and lesser known characters in early 20th Century history. His very facile discussions about political underpinnings and interplay, particularly during the War years, make his work exceptionally historically interesting.

John Milton Cooper, Jr.'s Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920, is an ambitious work addressing American culture, military forces, society and classic politics during the early 20th Century. His analysis of the war years focuses on political orientations, motivations, actions and interplay. Politics, whether international, national, local, cultural, military or social, infuse Cooper's writing and appears to be his forte. Clearly, Cooper has conducted in-depth research on the politics of every aspect of American life in the early 20th Century. Rather than simply reciting biographies of the great individuals and tactical facts of great battles during World War I, Cooper apparently assumes that we know basic facts and concentrates on political interplay, orientations and motives within the United States and on the world stage. For example, when analyzing the U.S.'s 3 major contributions to Allied victory in World War I: his discussion of naval influence includes Admiral William S. Sims' decision to side with junior British officers to adopt convoys, directly conflicting with senior British officers[footnoteRef:1]; his discussion of U.S. financial assistance revealed the desperate negotiations, mistrust and tension connected with the war debt[footnoteRef:2]; his discussion of the U.S. military contribution shows the mutinies, military collapses and the Russians' separate peace with Germany.[footnoteRef:3] Meanwhile, on the home front, Cooper reveals such chronic political problems as union struggles, class struggles, agricultural overproduction and xenophobia.[footnoteRef:4] In addition, Cooper appears to intimately know the characteristics and motivations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, discussing their motivations and actions in interesting detail and highly influencing national and international developments in the United States and abroad. [1: John Milton Cooper, Jr. Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920. New York, NY W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1990, pp. 275-6.] [2: Ibid., p. 276.] [3: Ibid.] [4: Ibid., pp. 302, 306.]

3. Conclusion