| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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Chapter I
Italian Americana 1920s–1930s
Overview
Post World War I America was confronted with a variety of perplexing issues that challenged its character as an open society wherein everyone, regardless of his or her background, was fully accepted. The republic had just engaged in a global contest that dwarfed other comparable wars in the scope of nations engaged and in the number of casualties suffered; it was justified as “a war to end all wars,” a war “to make the world safe for democracy,” in President Woodrow Wilson’s felicitous phrase. However, it quickly led to disillusionment over the non-statesman-like grubby behavior of winning Allied powers that reverted to vindictiveness and revenge in dealing with enemies. A heightened form of nationalism infected the country expressing itself in such incidents as the Red Scare that sought to curb radicalism, socialism, and communism by harassing and expelling aliens connected with those ideologies.