Change & Tradition in 1920s America
The economic growth of the Gilded Age and the devastation of World War I elevated the United States to world power status. However, the bitter experience of the war made American reluctant to assume the role of a great power. Rather, Americans tended to withdraw into themselves; either to some imagined idealized past or to a more rebellious nihilism. The result was a decade of great contradiction. During the 1920s, many Americans enjoyed the excesses of wealth--Jazz, prohibited alcohol, and the rise of popular culture. Other Americans held to traditional beliefs; America remained the most religious modernized nation. The resulting cultural conflicts, as much as the often-celebrated excesses of the Jazz Age, shaped 1920s America.
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DM: National Security (1920)
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