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United States History: PRQ 7 – World War II and its Aftermath
According to Woodrow Wilson, America had entered the
First World War to make the world “safe for democracy.”
Less than two decades after the signing of the Versailles
treaty, however, democracy seemed doomed throughout
much of the world as totalitarian regimes came to power
in a number of countries. Shortly after W. W. I, a wave
of anti-radical hysteria had swept through Italy, bringing
Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party to power. Russia
emerged from its civil war as the Soviet Union, where
Josef Stalin assumed dictatorial control, implementing a
series of Five Year Plans to rapidly industrialize his
communist country. In Germany, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi
party took control. All of these nations were marked by
one party rule with significant limits on civil liberties. In
1935, Hitler and Mussolini formalized an alliance,
creating the Rome-Berlin Axis. After the start of the
Second World War, they were joined by Japan, where
Emperor Hirohito’s government was controlled by
military leaders, most notably General Hideki Tojo. All
three of these powers had signed on to treaties limiting
the sizes of their militaries, but all three had abandoned
these agreements as they prepared to threaten their
neighbors.
The Versailles treaty had created a number of new
republics throughout eastern Europe, and redrew the
boundary between Germany and France. Hitler was
intent on creating a new German Empire, which he
called the “Third Reich.” In 1938 he annexed Austria,
then later in the year, he demanded a region of
Czechoslovakia. British and French leaders met with
Hitler and Mussolini in Munich, agreeing to Hitler’s
territorial demands in return for a pledge to seek no
further aggrandizement. This pledge was broken six
months later when the rest of Czechoslovakia was
occupied, and Hitler soon made moves to seize portions
of Poland. In late August Hitler and Stalin signed a nonaggression Pact, and within weeks, World War Two
began when Nazi forces invaded Poland, with Soviet
forces occupying the Eastern part of the country. British
and French forces declared war on Germany, but there
was very little direct engagement that winter, leading
journalists to write about a “phony war.”
In the spring of 1940, Nazi troops invaded the majority of
Western Europe, marching into Paris in May. An aerial
bombardment of major British cities then ensued in the
following summer and fall, in which Royal Air Force
battles against the Luftwaffe were called the “Battle of
Britain.” The next spring, congress passed the LendLease Act, authorizing direct aid to British forces. The
horrors of war were compounded in areas under Nazi
control as a systematic mass murder known as the
holocaust was perpetrated against groups considered
inferior from the Nazi perspective, particularly Jews.
However, it was not events in Europe, but in Asia, that
led America to enter World War Two. Japan had
invaded China and was eying other possessions in the
Far East. As negotiations with America were breaking
down, Japanese forces attacked the US naval base at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The US declared war on Japan,
then Germany and Italy declared war on the United
States.
The US economy, still suffering from the economic
downturn of the 1930s at the outbreak of the war, quickly
went from high unemployment to a labor shortage, as
the defense industry demanded a huge labor force to
supply two fronts. Meanwhile, Germany, repelled by
Britain, turned its forces on the Soviet Union. As
American and British forces battled Axis forces across
North Africa, up the Italian peninsula, across the English
Channel into France, and on into Germany, Soviet
forces battled Germans on the Eastern Front.
Agreements made between President Roosevelt, Prime
Minister Churchill of Britain, and Stalin at Yalta set the
postwar spheres of influence between democratic and
communist powers in Europe. The “iron curtain” these
agreements established marked the boundaries in the
Cold War between the US and its allies, and the Soviets
and theirs. In the Pacific, Japan finally surrendered
following the first and only uses of atomic weapons in
warfare against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
While US strategies against the expansion of
communism succeeded in Europe, the ideology spread
to China where Mao Zedong proclaimed victory for the
communists in the Chinese civil war. In the years that
followed, US forces battled communists on the Korean
Peninsula, and US politicians launched campaigns to
expose domestic communists. Throughout the 1950s
and 60s, American efforts to dominate the so-called
“Third World,” while preventing the spread of Soviet
influence to these areas characterized cold war foreign
policy. Militarily, the US and USSR competed to develop
more and more devastating weapons, and more
impressive missile technology, including the Russian
achievement of launching the first artifical satellite into
orbit: Sputnik.
The Central Intelligence Agency,
established after WWII, was involved in numerous
schemes to support pro-American regimes and
destabilize those viewed as leftist. Despite its activities,
Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba in 1959
shocked Americans. As the presidency of the hero
credited with defeating the Nazis, Dwight Eisenhower,
came to an end, America was in fierce competition with
a new international adversary. At home, meanwhile, the
US economy was marked by unprecedented prosperity
as television and interstates shaped postwar society.