Download Chapter 35 Rejoinders

Question 1
a. In 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to postpone the planning for the
launch of a second front or massive invasion of Western Europe because of
British fears that launching a frontal assault on German-held France would
result in a military disaster and the realization that America and Britain lacked
the requisite available human and material resources for a successful massive
Allied invasion of Western Europe.
b. Roosevelt and Churchill delayed the Allied invasion of Italy, characterized by
Churchill as the “soft underbelly of Europe,” until July 1943, when the Allies
launched an invasion of Sicily. Shortly before the Allied conquest of Sicily in
August 1943, Mussolini was deposed, and Italian fascists surrendered
unconditionally soon thereafter, in September 1943.
c. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that it would preferable to emphasize actionoriented strategies and goals rather than launch an idealistic Wilsonian
crusade for democracy in order to mobilize popular support for the war in the
United States.
d. Correct answer. In the so-called ABC-1 agreement of March 1941, Roosevelt
and Churchill agreed to prioritize winning the war in Europe over securing
victory in the Pacific over Japan. Churchill and Roosevelt feared that if
America diverted most of its military resources and strategic attention to the
Pacific theatre, Hitler might vanquish both the Soviet Union and Britain and
emerge as the unconquerable dominant power in Europe.
e. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that the weight of Allied military resources
must be concentrated in the battle against the Axis powers occurring in the
European theatre. Moreover, the two leaders agreed that Allied naval and air
warfare engagement with Japan, while militarily necessary, could not be
permitted to drain military resources necessary for victory in Europe.
Question 2
a. Some 110,000 Japanese Americans, who were concentrated on the West Coast,
were forcibly relocated into internment camps in the United States during
World War II. The political and military leadership of the United States feared
these Japanese Americans, including American-born citizens, might act as
saboteurs for Japan in the event of an invasion.
b. As part of the punitive U.S. government’s internment program, Japanese
American internees forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars in property,
assets, and foregone earnings.
c. During World War II, many Japanese Americans demonstrated that the U.S.
government’s coercive and discriminatory internment program was
unwarranted by distinguishing themselves as a loyal, brave, and effective
members of the American armed forces.
d. Relatively few German-American and Italian-American citizens were forcibly
interned by the U.S. government during World War II. Japanese-American
citizens were singled out by the U.S. government for the most punitive and
coercive treatment by the United States government because of post-Pearl
Harbor hysteria, a history of anti-Japanese prejudice on the West Coast, and
unfounded doubts and fears about the loyalty of Japanese-Americans.
e. Correct answer. In the case of Korematsu v. United States (1944), the United
States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the U.S. government’s
Japanese relocation and internment camp program. In 1988, the U.S.
government offered an official apology for its actions and approved a
reparations program of $20,000 to each camp survivor.
Question 3
a. The War Production Board, a wartime economic agency of the U.S.
government, assigned manufacturing priorities to goods that were most
essential to advancing the war effort, such as military uniforms and
armaments. The production of nonessential items, such as passenger cars,
were halted or significantly reduced, regardless of consumer demand.
b. War profiteers and black marketers who made windfall profits over the
production and sale of critical goods in short supply, such as meat, butter,
fresh vegetables, and tires, generally escaped prosecution from the U.S.
government.
c. While the U.S. government permitted large numbers of Mexican migrants to
enter the agricultural workforce through the bracero campaign program, this
program was designed to address the agricultural manpower shortage in
wartime America and not to keep inflation in check throughout the wartime
economy.
d. The United States did not sharply constrict the flow of credit through Federal
Reserve reductions in the money supply because that would have interfered
with the wartime demands of increased industrial and agricultural production.
e. Correct answer. The wartime Office of Price Administration (OPA) eventually
brought increasing prices for wartime goods under control with tight price
controls and rationing schedules for a variety of scarce and high-demand
goods. The War Labor Board (WLB) imposed ceilings on wage increases that
sparked a series of wartime labor strikes by unions that resented these
government-imposed wage restrictions.
Question 4
a. The membership of workers in labor unions grew from approximately 10
million to more than 13 million during the war.
b. United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis led several wartime strikes by
unionized mine workers that periodically disrupted wartime coal production in
the United States.
c. In June 1943, Congress passed the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act that
permitted the federal government to seize and operate any industry paralyzed
by union strikes.
d. Work stoppages actually accounted for less than 1 percent of the total working
hours of the United States’ wartime laboring force, which represented a
superior, nearly uninterrupted commitment to the war effort by American
workers and their unions, compared to the strike-plagued experiences of their
British labor counterparts.
e. Correct answer. While labor unions bristled under the restrictions of
government-dictated wage ceilings, wartime union leaders, overall,
demonstrated remarkable restraint in their wage demands and an admirable
patriotic commitment to the war effort. Radical socialist and communist
elements did not assume leadership over any prominent labor unions during
World War II.
Question 5
a. Congress did not pass legislation that guaranteed equal pay for men and
women doing work that required equal effort, skill, and responsibility and
performed under similar working conditions until 1963, nearly twenty years
after the conclusion of World War II.
b. In both Britain and the Soviet Union, a far greater percentage of women,
including mothers were pressed into industrial employment because both
Britain and the Soviet Union possessed an even more acute shortage of
employable men who were not already serving in their nation’s respective
military forces.
c. Correct answer. The U.S. government established some 3,000 wartime
government-financed and operated child care centers to care for the children
of mothers who were working in industries to produce goods necessary for the
war effort.
d. Many employers and unions discouraged women from remaining in the labor
force or forced them to leave their jobs at the conclusion of the war.
Employers and unions were eager to reemploy returning servicemen and did
not believe that the postwar consumer demand for goods and services would
be a sufficient to sustain a prospective American postwar workforce
composed of 15 million returning servicemen and 6 million wartime working
women.
e. At war’s end, two-thirds of women workers left the labor force either
voluntarily because of family obligations or because they were forced out by
their employers and unions anxious to reemploy returning servicemen.
Question 6
a. Correct answer. The armed forces of the United States, including combat units,
were not integrated until after World War II through a presidential executive
order issued by President Truman in 1948.
b. African Americans serving in the U.S. armed forces rallied behind the Double
V slogan (victory over dictators abroad and racism at home).
c. The northward and westward migration of African Americans accelerated
during and after the war. This development was partly attributable to the
advent of the mechanical cotton picker, which substantially reduced the
South’s need for cheap labor. Some 5 million black tenant farmers and
sharecroppers headed north in the three decades after the war.
d. African-Americans formed a new civil rights organization, the Congress for
Racial Equality (CORE), which used nonviolent civil disobedience to try to
end racial segregation in the South and eliminate racial discrimination and
segregation in other parts of the United States.
e. The African-Americans who composed the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the famed
Tuskegee Airmen, served with exemplary distinction in a segregated unit of
the U.S. Army Air Corps that flew more than 1,600 fighter-support missions
in North Africa during World War II.
Question 7
a. The revenue raised by tariff collections during World War II represented an
insignificant portion of U.S. government revenue during the war. Trade
embargoes with Japan, Germany, and Italy; bilateral trade agreements reached
by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s that reduced or eliminated U.S.
tariffs; the introduction of Lend-Lease trading arrangements; and wartime
interruption of normal trade relationships made tariff collections a minimal
source of revenue for the U.S. government.
b. Excise taxes on luxury goods were not a significant source of revenue during
World War II. The domestic production of nonessential luxury goods was
curtailed during the war to advance the overall war effort.
c. While President Roosevelt raised maximum tax rates to as high as 90 percent
and expanded the income tax net to make about four times as many people
subject to income taxes as before the war, only about 40 percent of war costs
were paid from current revenues. The remaining 60 percent of monies used to
finance the war was borrowed by the U.S. government.
d. Voluntary financial contributions to the U.S. war effort represented a minimal
source of financing for the war effort.
e. Correct answer. 60 percent of the monies needed to finance the U.S. war effort
were raised through government borrowing. The national debt increased
exponentially during the war years from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in
1945.
Question 8
a. The Japanese military forces were able to expel the American forces, led by
General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines, in 1942 and establish a
brutal military occupation over the Philippine archipelago until the triumphant
return and re-taking of the Philippines by General MacArthur and the
American armed forces by the end of 1944.
b. The Japanese successfully attacked and assumed military control of the oilrich Dutch East Indies in 1942 after the combined British, Australian, Dutch,
and American naval and air forces had been routed by the numerically
superior Japanese forces.
c. Correct answer. The Japanese Pacific advance was repelled by American
naval and air forces at the Battle of Midway (June 1942) and the Battle of the
Coral Sea (May 1942), which both represented pivotal Pacific battles that
staunched Japan’s military juggernaut. The defeat of Japanese naval and air
forces in these two critical Pacific battles of 1942 revealed that Japanese
forces had overextended themselves militarily by engaging in these highstakes, ill-advised naval thrusts. Military strategists later claimed that if the
Japanese had only dug in and consolidated their previous territorial gains in
the Pacific, they would have been much more difficult to dislodge and defeat
in the battle for Pacific and Asian supremacy.
d. The Japanese did not send their submarine force on a suicide mission at the
Battle of Corregidor in 1942. The American and Philippine forces staged a
heroic but ultimately futile defense of the island fortress of Corregidor,
surrendering to Japanese forces in May 1942.
e. The Japanese military never directly attacked Alaska or Australia during
World War II.
Question 9
a. After 1942, the United States did not make a military push to re-occupy
heavily fortified Japanese strongholds in Southeast Asia, such as British
Malaya. Top American generals, particularly General Douglas MacArthur,
were concerned that this proposed military strategy would result in many
months, if not years, of protracted, bloody, and inconclusive combat against
an implacable Japanese foe and a military stalemate in the Pacific war.
b. While the United States sought to use the Chinese theater to tie up a large
number of Japanese troops and as a staging area for American airstrikes
against the Japanese home islands, these limited American bombings of the
Japanese islands from Chinese bases did not constitute the primary military
strategy of the United States in the war against Japan. The potential use of
China as a base for U.S. military operations during World War II was
constrained by the adverse political, military, and territorial consequences and
setbacks experienced by China following the Japanese invasion and
occupation of large, strategic parts of China beginning in 1937.
c. The American airlifting of supplies and war material over the Himalayan
hump to fortify the faltering and besiged Chinese forces represented a
secondary American strategy in its war against Japan. The implementation of
this subsidiary strategy against the Japanese, commenced after the Allied loss
of the Burma Road link to China in May 1942, represented an effort to tie
down Japanese forces in China while the United States pursued its primary
island hopping strategy in the South Pacific in 1942 and 1943.
d. Correct Answer. At the urging of General Douglas MacArthur, the new
strategy of island hopping across the South Pacific was adopted by the United
States by 1943. The island hopping strategy involved American forces
bypassing some of the most heavily fortified Japanese posts, capturing nearby
islands, setting up airfields on them, and then neutralizing key Japanese South
Pacific bases and outposts through heavy bombing. Deprived of critical
supplies previously provided by the mainland Japanese islands, these South
Pacific Japanese outposts, according to the island hopping strategy, would fall
quickly to advancing American naval, air, and amphibious forces, placing
them within striking distance of the Japanese home islands.
e. The conquest of the island of New Guinea was only accomplished in August
1944, after General MacArthur led marine and army divisions through bloody,
hellish, and high casualty fighting in the jungles of this Japanese-occupied
island. The Attu and Kiska islands in the Aleutians, southwest of Alaska, were
retaken in 1943 by the United States as a result of direct thrusts of naval, air,
and ground units.
Question 10
a. The significant military success enjoyed by German U-boats in destroying
large amounts of essential Allied merchant shipping in 1942 and during the
winter of 1943 placed Britain on the precipice of military defeat to Nazi
Germany. Only when Allied antisubmarine tactics and technologies improved
markedly, around the spring of 1943, were the Allies able to gain a tactical
advantage over German U-boats and safely escort threatened Allied merchant
shipping through the hazardous North Atlantic.
b. Hitler’s advance in the European theater of war crested in the winter of 1942–
1943, when the resilient and overwhelming Russian counteroffensive, during
the Battle of Stalingrad, halted Nazi Germany’s progress in the Soviet Union,
marking the start of the gradual decline of Nazi Germany’s military progress
in Europe.
c. The Allies (chiefly American forces joined by British, Canadian, and Free
French) attacked Hitler’s forces first in North Africa in November 1942 with a
joint Allied operation involving some 400,000 men and about 850 ships. The
Allied invasion of North Africa, commanded by American general Dwight
Eisenhower, immediately preceded the Allied invasion of Italy, commencing
in July 1942 in Sicily. The invasion of France was delayed until June 6, 1944
because Allied commanders were concerned that a premature frontal assault
of Nazi-occupied and heavily fortified France would result in an unmitigated
military disaster for the Allies.
d. Correct answer. Allied (particularly British) military commanders persuaded
President Roosevelt that launching a frontal Allied assault on Nazi-held and
well-fortified France (or through neighboring Nazi-occupied Belgium and
Holland) in 1942 risked an Allied military debacle in Europe. In 1942, Allied
military commanders convinced Roosevelt that the Allies lacked sufficient
soldiers and armaments to open successfully a second front against entrenched
Nazi forces in Western Europe.
e. The Allied opening of the Italian second front in Europe may have delayed the
D-Day invasion of Europe by diverting key military human and material
resources to the successful Italian campaign that would later be needed for the
massive cross-channel invasion of France in June 1944. This delay in the DDay invasion in Europe and the diversion of significant Allied forces for the
Italian campaign, in turn, permitted more time for the Soviet army to advance
further into Eastern Europe without having to coordinate their military
advances in Eastern Europe with the eastward approaching British and
Americans forces.
Question 11
a. Correct answer. The British and American demand for the absolute and
unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, enunciated by President Roosevelt
and Prime Minister Churchill in January 1943, meant that Germany would
have to be economically reconstructed and politically reorganized after the
war. The complex question of how de-Nazification, peaceful economic
rehabilitation, and the complete political reconstruction of Germany would
proceed proved to be one of the most vexing and conflict-ridden postwar
issues addressed by the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain.
b. The question about whether the British and American demand for
unconditional surrender shortened or lengthened the war has been the subject
of inconclusive historical debate and cannot be proved either way.
c. Since the British and Americans had been unable to mount the type of second
front in Europe by January 1943 sought by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt
hoped that their joint demand for the unconditional surrender of Nazi
Germany would appease an anxious, dissatisfied Stalin and foreclose the
possibility that the Soviet leader would seek a separate peace with the Nazis.
d. One of the criticisms of the unconditional surrender demand of Roosevelt and
Churchill is that it discouraged antiwar groups and anti-Hitler members of the
German armed forces from pursuing their efforts to overthrow Adolf Hitler.
e. The sudden fall of Mussolini and the subsequent swift unconditional surrender
of fascist Italian forces to the invading Allied forces were completed by
September 1943, only two months after the commencement of Allied invasion
of Sicily in July 1943. On the other hand, German forces stationed and
shipped to Italy continued to resist fiercely the Allied advance into northern
Italy until their final surrender in May of 1945.
Question 12
a. Correct answer. At the urging of conservative Democrats, President Roosevelt
agreed to dump his liberal Vice-President Henry Wallace from the Democratic
ticket in 1944. Vice-president Wallace was denied his desired renomination
by the Democratic Party at their 1944 national convention in Chicago, and
compromise candidate Senator Harry S Truman of Missouri received the vicepresidential nomination in 1944 with the approval of President Roosevelt.
b. The well-founded rumors about the increasing frailty and declining health of
President Roosevelt had been circulated and discussed by Democratic Party
leaders and elected officials prior to the start of their 1944 convention. Their
concern about Roosevelt’s ability to serve another full four year term
prompted many conservative Democratic Party leaders and elected officials to
organize the successful ditch Wallace campaign at the convention, which
resulted in Senator Harry S Truman receiving the vice-presidential nomination
from the assembled Democratic convention delegates.
c. Party leaders did not develop a campaign downplaying the New Deal’s
success. Indeed, Democratic supporters of Roosevelt, such as the new political
action committee of the CIO, emphasized the vastly improved economic
conditions in the United States in 1944, compared with the depression years of
1930s.
d. President Roosevelt was considered the indispensable man of the Democrats.
No other significant Democratic figure was available to run for president, and
President Roosevelt’s continued leadership of the war effort was considered
by Democrats to be crucial in order to secure the war’s successful and prompt
conclusion.
e. The issue of civil rights did not emerge as a dominant concern of the
Democratic Party in 1944. The issue of civil rights, like all other political
issues in 1944, was subjugated by the Democrats to affirming President
Roosevelt’s critical leadership in bringing about a successful, quick
conclusion to the war and in ushering in a prosperous, peaceful, and stable
postwar era at home and abroad.
Question 13
a. The political fate of Eastern Europe was left undetermined by President
Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and the British leaders at the Potsdam
Conference of July 1945. The communist-dominated political fate of postwar
Europe would be determined by early postwar Cold War political, economic,
and military developments and conflicts among United States, the nations of
Western Europe, and the Soviet Union.
b. France and China did not participate in the Potsdam conference in July of
1945 as part of the Big Five allied powers. France and China achieved their
status as two of the Big Five powers most notably through their wartime
designation as two of the five permanent members of the newly created
United Nations Security Council.
c. No agreement was concluded at the Potsdam conference that the Soviet Union
would enter the war in the Pacific. Stalin had agreed at the Yalta conference in
February 1945 to enter the fight against the Japan within 90 days after the
defeat of Germany, which he did on August 8, 1945, two days after the first
atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the United States.
d. President Franklin Roosevelt died in office on April 12, 1945, approximately
three months before the opening of the Potsdam conference. President Harry
Truman was the lead American participant in the conference with Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin, and British political leaders Winston Churchill and
Clement Atlee.
e. Correct answer. At the Potsdam conference, Japan was given an ultimatum,
which the Japanese government promptly ignored, to surrender to the Allies or
meet "prompt and utter destruction." The ultimatum did not mention the new
devastating atomic bombs that the United States had secretly developed and
was planning to drop on Japan to conclude the war immediately in the Pacific.
Question 14
a. Some historians have pointed to cultural racism against a nonwhite people, the
Japanese, on the part of American political and military leaders as a factor in
b.
c.
d.
e.
the decision-making process that resulted in the dropping of the atomic bombs
on Japan.
Some historians have claimed that the Japanese were already reeling in
August 1945 from multiple, consecutive military defeats and setbacks in the
Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia and would have surrendered in just a few
more months to stave off a complete collapse of their economy, military, and
government.
Some historians have asserted that President Truman believed the dramatic
demonstration of the awesome, deadly destructiveness of the atomic bomb at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki would permit the United States to obtain political
leverage over the Soviet Union in negotiating with Stalin over the complicated
postwar political and economic arrangements.
Some historians have believed that the American insistence on accepting
nothing short of unconditional surrender from the Japanese precluded the real
possibility of negotiating a Japanese surrender to the Allies through Russian
mediation that would have included terms that preserved American supremacy
in the Pacific and prevented a re-militarization of Japan.
Correct answer. Historians have found negligible evidence of any vigorous
dissent from high-level military or political leaders in the American
government concerning President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Japan. The scientific, political, and
military momentum behind the Manhattan Project, the secret American effort
to build the atomic bombs, progressed feverishly and unabated from 1942 to
1945. Throughout the atomic weapon development process, top American
political, military, and scientific leaders had developed a unanimous and
unshakeable consensus that the atomic bomb would be used on Germany or
Japan as soon as it became available to end the war as soon as possible.