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The Library of Congress Is Using These Images to Tell the Story of World War I

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Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Hand-colored lithograph by an unknown artist created ca. 1915.Library of Congress
By Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk
Updated: | Originally published: ;

When the United States entered World War I 100 years ago this spring — a decision made when it seemed there was no other choice left — changed the course of the war, and the trajectory of American history. So it’s no surprise that people all over the world expressed their complicated feelings about that turning point in a wide variety of visual formats, from newspaper cartoons to fine art.

Seen above are just a few of the many such artifacts from the collection of the Library of Congress that, through combined firsthand accounts and arguments from the time, the library is using to tell the story of that time, in the new book by Margaret E. Wagner, America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History, a companion to an exhibition there. It was, as Stanford’s David M. Kennedy notes in the introduction to the book, a “dramatic and convulsive” moment in American history, and one that left an extensive record of artifacts that conveyed that tumult.

Kennedy writes that many Americans opposed the idea of going to war — no surprise, given the campaign in support of neutrality that had been waged by Wilson’s administration for years. And yet, once the U.S. was in the fight, citizens took to the patriotic cause “lustily,” buying war bonds, singing war songs, mobilizing industry and even going so far as to rename anything that might carry a whiff of support for the German cause. (Sauerkraut, for example, became “liberty cabbage.”)

The companion exhibition, Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I, will be on view at the Library of Congress through January 2019.

Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Cartoon of U.S. student happy that war has stranded teachers in Europe.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Thank you letters written to the U.S. from Belgian students and teachers.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Color cover of De Nieuwe Amsterdammer magazine — showing Wilson confronting the Kaiser.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
A cartoon by William Allen Rogers, published in the New York Herald on March 24, 1916.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Washington Time "Keep Cool" peace ad from April 1917.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Color chart of "Amis — Ennemis."Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Steinlen etching: La nuit a Souchez.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Hand-colored lithograph by an unknown artist created ca. 1915.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Cartoon by William Allen Rogers published by the New York Herald celebrating Uncle Sam's expanded authority.Library of Congress
Rare Library of Congress illustrations from American and the Great War book.
Color print by William de Leftwich Dodge, "Signing of the Peace Treaty at Versailles."Library of Congress

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com