As Bright As Heaven

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and substance use.

World War I, also called the Great War, began in 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His death ignited international tensions that were building among European powers. Austria-Hungary joined forces with Germany and declared war on Serbia, blaming Serbia for the assassination. In response, Russia, Belgium, France, and Great Britain formed an alliance known as the Allied Powers. Though fought mostly in Europe, the sites of conflict expanded as the Ottoman Empire joined Austria-Hungary and Germany to form the Central Powers. When the Russian Revolution led Russia to withdraw from the war in 1917, the Allies struggled to keep German forces from advancing across Europe.

US President Woodrow Wilson initially kept the US neutral, but, in response to American loss of life from the sinking of Allied ships by German submarines called U-boats, the United States joined the Allied Powers in 1917. Mounting military losses and internal unrest caused the Central Powers to surrender one by one: the Ottoman Empire in October 1918; Austria-Hungary on November 4; and the German Empire on November 11, 1918, when it signed an armistice agreement. A formal peace agreement, the Treaty of Versailles, was signed in 1919.

Estimates of those killed by World War I, soldiers and civilians, range between 16 and 20 million people. Some deaths were caused by an influenza outbreak that began in 1918. Influenza, a respiratory disease caused by a virus, occurs seasonally, and while there are vaccines, there is no cure. A new strain that began to spread in the fall of 1918 was especially virulent, striking and killing even young and healthy people. War conditions—such as overcrowded military camps, poor nutrition, global troop movements, and weakened immune systems—made the flu particularly lethal and allowed it to spread rapidly across continents.

Warring countries suppressed news of the disease to avoid appearing vulnerable to opponents. Spain, which was not involved in the war, did not censor reports of the disease, and the virus became known as the “Spanish flu.” Four different waves of the pandemic spread worldwide between 1918 and 1920. According to the US National Library of Medicine, 500 million people—about a third of the world’s population at the time—were infected. Up to 50 million people died; the US alone reported 675,000 deaths (Ting Liang, Shu, et al. “COVID-19: A Comparison to the 1918 Influenza and How We Can Defeat It.” Postgraduate Medical Journal, vol. 97, no. 1147, 2021, pp. 273-74).

In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution introduced the era known as Prohibition. Legislation significantly prohibited the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol within the United States. The intent was to address the public health problems associated with alcohol consumption. The consequence was an enormous upsurge in violent crime around efforts to illegally produce and distribute alcohol, an activity called bootlegging. Underground establishments known as speakeasies opened to provide illegal alcohol products and entertainment. According to historians at Washington State University, Philadelphia police estimated that their city had between 8,000 and 13,000 speakeasies in the years 1923-1928 (“Bootlegging During Prohibition.” Washington State University Libraries Digital Exhibits).

Consuming illegal alcohol was not just a legal risk but potentially a lethal one. Efforts to create homemade liquor or “moonshine” could sometimes result in toxic additives, and government regulators attempted to render alcoholic products unpalatable with the addition of chemicals. Incidents of alcohol poisoning rose, as did organized crime in large cities like Chicago and New York City. Eventually, due to problems enforcing the law and the unintended side effects, the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed.