Download Chapter 28: America in a World at War

Aldrin Bigay, Jonathan Chakrian, LisaMarie Guzman, Monsterrat Holguin,
APUSH P.3
3.21.11
Chapter 28: America in a World at War
 The world saw the horrors of the First World War and sought for peace among all
nations and unfortunately peace negotiations failed, tensions rose, and the world
was again at war.
Section I: War on Two Fronts
 America’s unity and confidence were tested in the months of 1942, the
year following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
 Britain was on the verge of collapse.
Subsection 1: Containing the Japanese
 After Pearl Harbor, Japan launched a hug attack on American bases/ territories in
the Pacific including the Philippines, Guam, Wake Islands, as well as other
European territories in the region.
 Americans quickly responded by placing General Douglas Macarthur and
Admiral Chester Nimitz in charge of the American forces in the Pacific.
 The first important Allied victory was in the Battle of Coral Sea in Australia on
May 7-8, 1942.
 Also, the victory at Midway was a key victory, in which American forces sunk
four Japanese aircraft carriers.
 August 1942-> American forces assaulted three of the islands: Gavutu, Tulagi,
and Guadalcanal. (Japanese were forced to leave the islands.)
Subsection 1 Sentence: After Pearl Harbor, American forces responded quickly to
the Pacific and started to become victorious.
Subsection 2: Holding off the Germans
 While the Soviet Union fought the Germans in Eastern Europe, American
General George C. Marshall (Army chief of staff) was planning an allied
invasion to take place in the English Channel in the spring of 1943.
 Soviet Union wanted the invasion to happen earlier.
 October 1942-> British opened a counteroffensive against the Nazi forces
(Gerneral Erwin Rommel) in North Africa and Rommel, who was threatening
the Suez Canal at El Alamein.
 The Germans threw the full weight of their forces in Africa against the
inexperienced Americans and inflicted a serious defeat on them at the
Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
 U.S. General George S. Patton and British General George Montgomery were
the commanders of the allied forces for much of the European allied force
under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
 Patton and Montgomery created the American offensive that finally drove out
all the German out of Africa in May 1943.
 Over in the Eastern Front, Soviets and Germans were fighting in a very long
battle in Stalingrad, Russia.

The Soviet victory came at a terrible cost, with Germans killing the Stalingrad
civilian population and devastating the countryside. (Soviets loss the most
soldiers out of everyone in the war)
 July 9, 1943-. American and British forces launched an invasion of Sicily
(southern island of Italy) and 38 days later, reached Italian mainland.
 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini fled to Germany, while successor PIETRO
BADOGLIO committed Italy to the Allies, while Germany created a strong
defense in southern Rome. (Allies took Rome on June 4, 1944)
 The invasion of Italy contributed to the Allied war effort in several important
ways, but It postponed the invasion of France by as much as a year, deeply
embittering the Soviet Union.
Subsection 2 Sentence: The Allies started attacking the Western Front by
entering North Africa, pushing the Axis forces north as they crossed into Europe
through Sicily.
Subsection 3: America and the Holocaust
 While the war was going on, the Nazi gov’t began their campaign to exterminate
the Jewish population of Europe, as well as non-Jewish Poles, gypsies,
homosexuals, and communists from all over Europe, transporting them to
concentration camps in eastern Germany and Poland, and systematically
murdering them.
 The U.S. also resisted entreaties that it admits large numbers of the Jewish
refugees attempting to escape Europe. (Ship of St. Louis carried German Jews to
U.S., only to be refused entry and forced to go back to Europe.)
 They insisted that the most effective thing they could do for the victims of the
Holocaust was to concentrate their attention solely on the larger goal of winning
the war.
Subsection 3 Sentence: Germans exterminated Jews and other groups, and before the
war, Jews tried to escape to the U.S., but were not allowed to enter, forcing them back to
Europe.
Section I Sentence: The Japanese faced opposition immediately after Pearl Harbor from
the South, while the Germans faced opposition in North Africa from the South too, and
Jews and other groups were being murdered by Germans and were not allowed to go to
the U.S.
Section II: The American People in Wartime
 American armed forces engaged in combat around the globe for nearly four years.
Subsection 1: Prosperity
 WWII ended the Great Depression, creating jobs for Americans.
 Mid of 1941-> economic problems of the 1930s disappeared as a result of
wartime industrial expansion.
 Federal spending was pumping money into the economy than all the New Deal
relief agencies combined had done.
 The demands of wartime production created a shortage of consumer goods, so
many wage earners diverted much of their new affluence into savings, which
would later help keep the economic boom alive in the postwar years.
Subsection 1 Sentence: World War II ended the depression and restored economic
prosperity.
Subsection 2: The War and the West
 The West Coast, naturally, became the launching point for most of the naval war
against Japan, and the gov’t created large manufacturing facilities in CA and
elsewhere to serve the needs of its military.
 Henry J. Kaiser, built some of the great western dams in the 1930s and singlehandedly steered billions of federal dollars into vast capital projects in the West.
(Major centers for shipbuilding)
 The Pacific Coast had become the center of the growing American aircraft
industry.
 Los Angeles turned into a major industrial center.
Subsection 2 Sentence: The West Coast was turned into manufacturing sites to build
warships for the military.
Subsection 3: Labor and the War
 War created serious labor shortage/ the armed forces took more than 15 million
men and women out of the civilian work force at the same time that the demand
for labor was rising rapidly.
 The war gave enormous boost to union membership.
 The gov’t was principally interested in preventing inflation and in keeping
production moving w/o disruption.
 Little Steel formula-> 15 percent limit on wartime wage increases.
 “No strike” pledge, by which unions agreed not to stop production in wartime.
 Many rank-and-file union members, and some local union leaders, resented the
restrictions imposed on them by the gov’t and the labor movement hierarchy.
 Smith Connally Act or War Labor Disputes Act-> required unions to wait 30 days
before striking and empowered the president to seize a struck war plant.
Subsection 3 Sentence: War created shortages in labor, union membership rose, unions
agreed to not strike, and there was an act enabling unions to wait 30 days to strike and for
the president to seize a struck war plant.
Subsection 4: Stabilizing the Boom
 Anti- Inflation Act- gave the administration authority to freeze agricultural prices,
wages, salaries, and rents throughout the country.
 Office if Price Administration (OPA), led first by Leon Henderson and then by
Chester Bowles was the office that enforced the provisions above.
 The OPA was never popular; there was widespread resentment of its controls over
wages and prices.
 The national debt rose from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in 1945.
 The gov’t borrowed about half the revenues it needed by selling $100 billion
worth of bonds.
 Revenue Act of 1942-> it increased income taxes.
Subsection 4 Sentence: U.S. attempted to control the boom and make sure it would not
get out of control.
Subsection 5: Mobilizing Production
 War Production Board (WPB)-> under Donald Nelson was to be a powerful
agency with broad powers over the economy, but in reality did not have as much
authority. (Similar to WWI’s War Industries Board under Bernard Baruch).

Office of War Mobilization-> took over the WPB and was lightly more powerful
than the WPB under James F. Byrnes.
 Despite the administrative problems, the war economy managed to meet almost
all the nation’s critical war needs.
 Enormous new factory complexes sprang up in the space of a few months, many
of them funded by the federal government’s Defense Plants Corporation.
Subsection 5 Sentence: It was a struggle to find a good agency to mobilize the economy
for war, but found it years later.
Subsection 6: Wartime Science and Technology
 Due to overcome the effects of the 1920s and the 1930s, money was poured into
scientific research and development of technologies beginning in 1940. (National
Defense Research Committee headed by the MIT scientist Vannevar Bush).
 In the first years of the war, all the technological advantages seemed to lie w/ the
Germans and Japanese.
 German u-boats and Japan naval air technology dominated the war.
 American techniques of mass production were converted efficiently to military
production in 1941 and 1942 and soon began producing airplanes, ships, tanks,
and other armaments in much greater numbers than the Germans and Japanese
could produce.
 By late 1942-> Allied weaponry was at least as advanced, and coming to be more
plentiful, than that of the enemy.
 American and British physicists made rapid advances in improving radar and
sonar technology. (“Centimetric radar”)
 The Allies also learned early how to detect and disable German naval mines->
“acoustic mine:
 Antiaircraft technologies improved too-> rocket-propelled bombs.
 American and British forces seized the advantage in the air war by producing new
and powerful four- engine bombers in great numbers.
 The Allied Naval forces also used the Gee navigation system.
 ULTRA (advanced)- Britain’s ability to gather intelligence by stealing German
and Japanese intelligence devices.
 Alan Turning created a faster device to decipher German Enigma messages
(Brombe)
 Colossus II-> first real programmable, digital computer.
 MAGIC-> America’s ability to break Japanese coding system, a device known as
Purple. (America would have the power to decode every Japanese information
and could have prevented Pearl Harbor if Purple was created earlier.)
Subsection 6 Sentence: Advances in military technology and intelligence gathering
soared during WWII.
Subsection 7: African Americans and the War
 WWII-> blacks were again determined to use the conflict to improve their
position in society- this time, however, not by currying favor but by making
demands.

A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, began
to insist that the gov’t require companies receiving defense contracts to integrate
their work forces.
 He finally persuaded Randolph to cancel the march in return for a promise to
establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate discrimination
against blacks in war industries.
 The demand for labor in war plants greatly increased the migration of blacks from
the rural areas of the South into industrial cities.
 The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (1942) was a mobilized mass popular
resistance to discrimination in a way that older, more conservative organizations
had never done.
 Randolph, Baynard Rustin, James Farmer, and others helped organize sit-ins, and
demonstrations in segregated theaters and restaurants.
 Gradually, however, military leaders were forced to make adjustments because of
public and political pressures, but also because they recognized that these forms
of segregation were wasting manpower.
 Black servicemen increased sevenfold to 700,000.
Subsection 7 Sentence: Blacks demanded a better role in society and organized
strikes and sit-ins, but in the end the military decided to use the segregation in the
military, so that blacks can serve in WWII.
Subsection 8: Native Americans and the War
 25,000 Native Americans served in the military, one of them in combat who was
part of the men who raised the flag in Iwo Jima, (Ira Hayes).
 Others walked as “code-talkers,” working and speaking their won languages (that
would make the enemy misunderstand) over the radio and the telephones.
 Many talented young peopled left the reservations, some to serve in the military,
even more than 70,000 to work in war plants.
 This brought some Native Americans into contact with white people for the first
time and opened their eyes to the new, materialistic, and capitalist society of
America.
 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934-> revitalization of tribal autonomy caused by
wartime’s national unity.
 New pressures emerged to eliminate the reservation system and require the tribes
to assimilate into white society.
 Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs- John Collier, who reinvigorated the
reservations, reigned in 1945 as a result of these pressures.
Subsection 8 Sentence: Native Americans served in the military, worked in the new
society of America, and were pressured to integrate to white society.
Subsection 9: Mexican- American War Workers
 Large numbers of Mexican workers entered the U.S. during the war in response to
labor shortages on the Pacific Coast, in the Southwest, and eventually everywhere
else.
 Americans and Mexicans agreed in 1942 a program by which BRACEROS
(contract laborers) would be admitted to the U.S. for a limited time to work at
specific jobs, and American employers in some parts of the Southwest began
actively recruiting Hispanic workers.
 The wartime labor shortages caused farm owners to begin hiring them again.
 Mexicans were able for the first time to find significant numbers of factory jobs.
 White residents of Los Angeles became alarmed at the activities of MexicanAmerican teenagers, many of whom were joining street gangs (pachucos).
 “Zoot-suit” outfits worn by these teenagers were a symbol of rebellion against and
defiance toward conventional white, middle-class society.
 June 1943-> zoot-suitors produced a four day riot in L.A., during which white
sailors stationed at a base in Long Beach invaded Mexican American
communities and attacked zoot-suitors.
 The policemen did not arrest the sailors, but beat, destroyed the suits, and arrested
the Mexican- American zoot suiting teenagers. (L.A. passed a law prohibiting the
wearing of zoot suitors)
Subsection 9 Sentence: Mexican immigrants entered into the U.S. to earn a better
life through labor, but white residents were worried of the growing number of
immigrants, and then there was a clash between Mexican America street gangs and
the police force.
Subsection 10: Women and Children at War
 The war drew increasing numbers of women into roles from which they had been
largely barred.
 Women in work force increased by 60 percent.
 Many women entered the industrial work force to replace male workers serving in
the military.
 Many factory owners continued to categorize jobs by gender.
 Special recruiting materials presented factory employers assumed females would
find easily comprehensible: cutting airplane wings was compared to a dress
pattern, mixing chemicals to making a cake.
 The famous wartime image of “Rose the Riveter” symbolized the new importance
of the female industrial work force.
 Most women workers during the war were employed not in factories but in
service- sector jobs.
 They worked for the gov’t and in Washington D.C., in particular, was flooded
with young female clerks, secretaries, and typists known as “government girls”
most of whom worked long hours in the war agencies.
 Even within the military, which enlisted substantial numbers of women as WACs
(army) and WAVEs (navy), most female work was clerical.
 The scarcity of child-care facilities or other community services menat that some
women had no choice but to leave young children- “Latchkey children” or “eighthour orphans” at home alone.
 Perhaps in part because of the family dislocations war produced, juvenile crime
rose markedly in the war years.
 The arrest rate for prostitutes, many of whom were teenage girls, rose too, as did
the incidence of sexually transmitted disease.

More than a third of all teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 were employed
late in the war causing some reduction of in high-school enrollments.
 The return of prosperity during the war helped increase the rate and lower the age
of marriage, young married couples could not survive wartime separations,
causing the divorce rate to rise.
 The rise of birth rate from the young marriages was known as the great postwar
“baby boom.”
Subsection 10 Sentence: Women started to work in the factories and in service
sector jobs for long hours, while their kids were left alone to fend for themselves due
to the lack of day cares, and that either their dad was in the war and their mom was in
the factory, causing a high divorce rate among these young married couples.
Subsection 11: Wartime Life and Children
 War created a constant strain on families who awaited their loved ones, such as
husbands, brothers, and sons, to return from the front.
 In consequence to the war, Americans were able to live a more carefree life as
families acquired more money to spend because different forms of entertainment
such as the theaters, books, magazines, and the radio rose in population.
 Americans were encouraged to support the war by engaging in mass employment
and mass production.
 Men fighting at the front created a fanaticizing image of coming home to comfort:
wives, movies, food, materialisms, families, etc.
 The most infamous pinup was Betty Grable, who became sexually attractive and a
symbol of romanticism that was waiting at home.
 Many women were recruited to serve as hostesses and attend social events at
military bases.
 A shortage of student population increased as a result of military drafts and
opportunities of a higher job position.
Subsection 11 Sentence: War created the worry and anxiety for American families to
support and wait for their loved ones to return and as soldiers developed a desire for
the comfort for home.
Subsection 12: The Interment of Japanese Americans
 World War II was not a war of promotion to hatred or violence.
 Communists and the prejudice were often left unbothered or unpunished.
 Although discrimination against most ethnicity groups lessened, tolerance on the
Japanese American heightened as a result of the bombing at Pearl Harbor.
 Due to the bigotry, the Japanese continued to reside in communities isolated from
the rest.
 Considering that several military officials believed that Japanese were not loyal
and should still be feared, the president created the War Relocation Authority
which evacuated over 100,000 Japanese to a different area.
 Relocation centers were similar to prisons and usually located in the western
mountains and in the desert with brutal conditions.
 By 1943, resentment and cruelty towards the Japanese eased as they began
leaving the camps and gained authority to work and attend school.
Subsection 12 Sentence: Although bigotry towards most ethnicities decreased,
Japanese continued to hold the title of an enemy and many were moved to interment
camps.
Subsection 13: Chinese Americans and the War
 In 1943, Congress discontinued the Chinese Exclusion Act as an approach to
enhance their alliance with them.
 Over 4,000 Chinese women pursued their entry into the United States and
residents were allowed to become citizens.
 Negative propaganda on the Chinese by the government decreased and they were
given a more respectable, positive stereotype.
Subsection Sentence: As an effort to enhance the alliance with the Chinese,
American government repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and gave them a more
positive, less degrading title.
Subsection 14: The Retreat from Reform
 During the 1940s, Franklin D. Roosevelt changed his ideology on war and
focused more on being victorious, rather than reforming the economy.
 Increasing number of conservatives and decreasing number of mass
unemployment became the cause to demolish the New Deal.
 Ultimately, the president accepted to erosion of the New Deal.
 Republicans nominated Thomas E. Young as their candidate
 The reelection revolved around the concern with economic issues and although
Roosevelt was ill, he managed to gain a higher percent of the vote over Dewey.
Subsection 14 Sentence: Despite the fact hat FDR accepted the end of the New Deal
due to his believe that he would not be reelected, he won the election by 53.5 percent
against Dewey’s 46 percent.
Section II Sentence: War had affected the views on different cultural groups, the
increasing economy of mass unemployment, the anxiety of awaiting family members,
and the hope of soldiers to return safe to home from the front.
Section III: The Defeat of the Axis Powers
 America succeeded in defeating the Axis powers and continued on a victorious
launch.
Subsection 1: The Liberation of France
 Production and transportation was hindered due to the continuous and drastic
bombings in Germany by Americans and the British.
 The worst attack occurred in Dresden as over 135,000 people were killed and
three-fourths of the city was damaged.
 Germany’s weakened air force was an advantage to the allied powers.
 D-Day occurred on June 1944 when invasion in England where the Germans least
expected them.
 Allied powers had driven out nearly all Germans out of France and Belgium.
 The Battle of Ardennes Forest ended German resistance in the west.
 During January 1945, the Soviet Union focused on launching offensives on
Russians.
 The Soviets were able to occupy Germany and Czechoslovakia when Americans
ended their plans to move in towards Germany.

German forces surrendered to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945 after the death of
Adolf Hitler.
Subsection Sentence: American, along with the British as their alliance, succeeded
to defeat Germany with their continuous, overpowering invasions such as D-Day.
Subsection 2: The Pacific Offensive
 American naval forces as well as American submarines, won a series of victories
against Japan which decreased their shipping of food and possession of gas.
 In the pursuit of reentering Japan along with Chinese and Indians, Americans
were threatened with the termination of their Burma Road which allowed them to
enter into territory.
 Japanese fought back with great naval and nighttime attacks which caused the
United States over 5,000 casualties.
Subsection Sentence: The Japanese began to make sacrifices of losing soldiers to
fight back after Americans did not respect their request to disburse from their
territory.
Subsection 3: The Manhattan Project
 Subsequent to becoming aware of the planning of an atomic bomb by the
Germans, America and Britain took charge to create it before them.
 According to Albert Einstein, he believed that matter could ultimately be
converted into energy, which was a prime source of an atomic bomb along with
uranium.
 A nuclear chain reaction occurs during nuclear fission.
 The development of any atomic weapon began in the 1940s because uranium was
discovered by Enrico Fermi where he worked on it at Berkley and the University
of Chicago.
 This project became known as the Manhattan project because it was prepared in
the Manhattan Engineer District Office of the Army Corps of Engineers.
 Over $2 million was spent on this project to provide proper elements and open,
private places to test them out.
 However, the war in Europe was over before Americans could perform their
weapon.
 The first witnessed explosion took place in New Mexico on July 16, 1934.
Subsection Sentence: The Manhattan project began the process and race of creating
the first atomic weapon before the Germans, however, war was over before
Americans were able to perform.
Subsection 4: Atomic Warfare
 President Harry S. Truman gave Japan the two decisions of surrendering
(unconditional surrender) before August 3, or suffering extreme devastations.
 When the Japanese failed in given a reply before August 3, Truman confirmed
atomic attack against them.
 Truman believed that the weapon should be used simply because the weapon was
in their position and it was a simpler way to end war.
 The atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945 and was responsible for the
deaths of 80,000 civilians, a four square mile area damaged, and birth defect due
to the radioactivity.

On august 8, the Soviet declared war on Japan and the second bomb was dropped
in the city of Nagasaki which caused the death of over 100,000 people.
 On September 2, 1945, the Japanese signed a document of surrender.
 World War II had come to an end as a victory to the United States; however it
also served as a struggle due to the 322,000 deaths and 800,000 injuries.
Subsection Sentence: President Harry S. Truman used the advantage of atomic bomb
as a source to end war with Japan on August 6, 1945, which was prior to the
agreement to surrender.
Section Sentence: Soon after the United States and the British had engaged in several
military and naval attacks, war had finally ended with the bombings in Japan and a
confirmation of surrender.
IV. Conclusion
 The United States was the critical player in deciding the victor in the war in
Europe and single-handedly defeated the Empire of Japan in the Pacific.
 The home front experienced shortages in supplies, family dislocations, and the
absence of most men, who went to fight.
 The servicemen and women experienced a lot of changes in morale.
 Due to the sacrifices, the Allies were able to topple down the Nazi regime and
ended the war with Japan with the deadliest weapon ever created, the atomic
bomb.
 The fate of the world rested in the hands of the two greatest powers, the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R, which transitioned into the era of the Cold War.