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50 n e w h a v e n B I Z | N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m T H E L O O P A R C H I V E The Arsenal of Democracy N ovember marks the centennial of the end of World War I, which for four years until the shooting ceased at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, was the greatest calamity to befall humankind in history — an infamous distinction that would stand for 20 years until a greater catastrophe commenced with Hitler's invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Today, many history-starved Americans conflate World Wars I and II in the collective conscious- ness — we fought the Germans both times, didn't we, in their funny helmets? But while America's entry into the World War II, two years aer it had engulfed Europe, was imme- diate and unanimous the morning aer Japan's Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941 ("a date which will live in infamy," the President called it, and nary a soul argued), the United States entry into the Great War (so called because of its magnitude, not its awesomeness) was deeply controversial and divisive — to an extent we in the Trump era might relate to. For one thing, the proportion of Americans who claimed German heritage was far greater a century ago than today, and most of them were united in their conviction that Britain and France were no less to blame for igniting the conflagration than was their ancestral homeland. For another thing, Woodrow Wil- son had campaigned successfully for re-election in 1916 on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War." And then, he didn't: On April 6, 1917, just 31 days aer Wilson's second inaugu- ration, Congress declared war. America was wildly unprepared to enter the now global conflict. In April 1917, the U.S. Army was the 18th-largest army in the world — about the size of Portugal's. No so Connecticut's armaments industry, which had gone to war on the Allied side not long aer the guns of August first spoke in 1914. Bridgeport rightly earned the sobriquet "the arsenal of democ- racy," where inside rows and rows of identical brick factory build- ings along Boston Ave. workers in three never-ceasing shis turned out ammunition — bullets by the billions — to be shipped across the North Atlantic to feed the Flanders slaughter. In New Haven, the epicenter of the arms industry sat on Win- chester Ave. Long before Congress declared war on April 6, 1917, Winchester had been feeding the Allied war machine. Under seven major contracts with the British Army, Winchester had produced half a million rifles, 2 million artillery-shell casings and a quarter of a billion rounds of ammunition. And that while America was still officially a non-combatant. Following the war declaration, Winchester's production shied into hyper-drive. Nearly one-third of the Elm City's population in 1918 comprised Winchester work- ers and their families, nearly 20,000 of whom toiled 24/7 on 73 acres of floor space. e company had been a major producer of the .303 Pattern 1914 Enfield rifle for the British army even before the U.S. entered hostilities, and now also produced the similar .30-06 M1917 Enfield rifle for the U.S. Army. e M1917 was the predominant weapon in the hands of the "Dough- boys" who populated the American Expeditionary Force in France, as well as the rest of the U.S. Army, which in scarcely more than 18 months had exploded from 120,000 peacetime soldiers to a force of nearly 3 million under arms. By the time production ceased in 1919, Winchester and two other makers had turned out 2.5 million M1917 rifles — and the gleaming bayonets they brandished, too. e New Haven Museum has mounted two exhibitions to com- memorate the Great War centen- nial. Gilbert Jerome: New Haven's WWI Aviator is part of the NHM's year-long series of micro-level views of the conflict based on personal narratives of individuals from the New Haven area. And e Courier: Tales from the Great War is a series of graphic-novel style murals by illustrator Nadir Balan based on the dramatic WWI diary of New Haven's Lt. Philip H. English. Visit newhavenmuseum.com to learn more. n — Michael C. Bingham At the peak of production in 1918, New Haven's Winchester Repeating Arms employed more than 18,000 workers manufacturing weapons around the clock on 73 acres of floor space. IMAGE: NEW HAVEN MUSEUM

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