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Handout 13: World War II
Japanese Relocation: Just as in World War I, the government and media
worked hard during World War II to convince Americans that the nation’s
enemies were evil. World War II propaganda against the Japanese was
particularly harsh, as the Japanese were often portrayed as being less than
human. Hostility toward the Japanese had unfortunate consequences at home,
as in early 1942 the government ordered that over 110,000 people of Japanese
descent be removed from the West Coast, where it was feared they would aid
Japan. Two-thirds of the people who were relocated to inland internment camps
were American citizens (or "Nisei"; the other third were non-citizens known as
"Issei"). Many of the internees lost everything they had because of the
relocation. In 1988, the U.S. government formally apologized for what is now
generally seen as one of the darker episodes in American history, and provided
$20,000 to each of the 62,000 internees who were still living. (For more
information see the readings in First Person Past and American Journey.)
Early War in the Pacific: For months after Pearl Harbor all of the news from
the Pacific was bad for the U.S. In early 1942, in the largest surrender in U.S.
history, the Japanese took control of the Philippines. If the Japanese had
stopped with the empire they now controlled, they might have been able to hold
on to it. But they succumbed to what one Japanese officer called "victory
disease" and overextended themselves. The turning point in the Pacific was the
Battle of Midway (June of 1942), at which the U.S. inflicted losses on the
Japanese that they would not be able to make up. After Midway, the war would
drag on for three more bloody years, but the tide had turned, as momentum
began to shift from the Japanese to the Americans.
The War Against Germany: Despite these early battles in the Pacific, from
the beginning of the war the U.S. and Great Britain agreed that their top priority
was to defeat Hitler’s Germany, which was deemed the greater military threat.
Japan could be finished off after Germany surrendered. The U.S. and Great
Britain – the "Western Allies" – worked very closely together in planning and
fighting the war. There were tensions between the Western Allies and the
Soviet Union, however, which was fighting a savage war against Germany in
the East. One recurring source of tension was the issue of a "Second Front."
With Western Europe under his control, Hitler could concentrate his forces on
attempting to defeat the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin desperately wanted the
Western Allies to open up a Second Front by invading Western Europe, thus
forcing Germany to divided its forces between Eastern and Western Fronts.
FDR repeatedly promised Stalin that a Second Front was imminent, but the
more cautious Churchill always forced delays. Stalin, suspicious of western
intentions, believed that the Western Allies were simply content to sit back and
allow the Soviets to do all of the fighting and dying in the war against Hitler.
The British, Americans, and Soviets remained Allies, but there were always
undercurrents of suspicion and mistrust between them.
North Africa: The U.S. entered the land war against Germany by invading
North Africa on Nov. 8, 1942, in order to help British forces which were
fighting the Germans there. In May 1943 the last German forces in North
Africa surrendered. While the fighting in North Africa was still going on, FDR
and Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco (January 1943) to plan for the
future. Stalin could not attend, but urged the Western Allies to agree to open a
Second Front in Western Europe. Instead, at Churchill’s urging, the U.S. and
British agreed that the next step would be to invade "soft underbelly" of the
Axis Powers, meaning Sicily and then Italy. FDR also announced at the
Casablanca Conference that the war would only end with the "unconditional
surrender" of each of the Axis Powers.
Italy: In July, the Western Allies invaded Sicily, which they secured by mid
August, and then in September they invaded the Italian peninsula. The Italians
pulled out of the war, but the Germans were unwilling to give up the territory
and poured their own troops into Italy to stop the Western Allies. A long and
bloody war would be fought on the Italian peninsula for the remainder of the
world war. Meanwhile, the first meeting of the "Big Three" – FDR, Churchill,
and Stalin – took place in Teheran, Iran in late 1943. At this conference the
Western Allies agreed to open a Second Front in Western Europe as soon as
they could in 1944.
D-Day: In January of 1944 Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower – who would be the
Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Western Europe – arrived in
London to begin preparations for "Operation Overlord," the invasion of France.
Tens of thousands of troops and thousands of tons of equipment were gathered
in England in preparation for the invasion, while the Western Allies worked to
deceive the Germans as to the planned locations of the Allied landings. On June
6, 1944 – "D-Day" – 150,000 men and 4,000 ships took part in the largest
seaborne invasion in the history of the world. Landing at beaches along the
coast of Normandy, the Allies held their ground and within two weeks had
poured a million men into France. The Western Allies then fought into the
interior of France, liberating Paris on August 25 and taking control of most of
France and Belgium by mid September. Allied leaders spoke of possible
victory over the Germans by Christmas, but at this point the Allied advance
stalled, having outrun its supply lines.
Battle of the Bulge: Hitler’s last, desperate offensive against the Western
Allies began by surprise on December 16, 1944, when 250,000 German troops
slammed into a weak spot in the Allied lines held by 80,000 American troops.
The Germans hoped to fight their way to the crucial port of Antwerp, dividing
the British from the American armies and forcing a negotiated peace in the
West. The Germans pushed an 80-mile "bulge" into the Allied lines and
besieged the key crossroads city of Bastogne, but the Americans regrouped and
counterattacked, and by mid January had restored the Western Front to roughly
its place before the German attack. The Battle of the Bulge surpassed
Gettysburg as the bloodiest battle in American history, as the U.S. suffered
55,000 casualties. But the battle shattered what was left of German power and
morale, and now it was just a matter of time before Germany was crushed
between the advancing Western Allied and Soviet armies.
Victory in Europe: FDR died suddenly on April 12, 1945, making Harry S.
Truman the new President. Germany’s surrender occurred less than one month
later: Hitler committed suicide on April 30, Berlin surrendered on May 2, and
then all of Germany surrendered on May 7. This sparked massive celebrations
in Europe and the U.S., but the excitement was tempered by the realization of
the enormous human cost of the war, by mourning of FDR, and by the
discovery late in the war of the Nazi death machine that had perpetrated the
Holocaust – the slaughter of some 6 million Jews – and had exterminated some
5 million other people deemed "inferior" by Hitler’s regime. There was also the
knowledge among those who celebrated Hitler’s defeat that there was still a
war left to fight, against Japan.
Advancing on Japan: During 1943 and 1944 American forces slowly
advanced through the Pacific, fighting savage battles against the Japanese on
steamy, jungle-filled islands. After the largest naval battle in history – the
October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf – the Americans regained control of the
Philippines. The battle destroyed most of what was left of the Japanese navy,
and was the scene of the first Japanese "kamikaze" attacks. In February of
1945, the Americans took six weeks and lost 7,000 men killed in conquering
the tiny island of Iwo Jima, which was crucial to the American air war against
Japan. From April to June 1945, the Americans fought an even larger and more
costly battle for control of Okinawa, which would provide a staging area for the
eventual Allied invasion of Japan, planned to begin in November 1945. 50,000
Americans were killed, wounded, or missing as a result of Okinawa, and
thousands of Japanese kamikaze attacks sank 34 American ships and damaged
hundreds more, while the U.S. destroyed the remnants of the Japanese navy.
The Japanese killed almost every American prisoner they took at Okinawa.
The End Nears: By early 1945 the U.S. was conducting massive bombing
raids over Japan, destroying vast chunks of cities and killing tens of thousands
of people. On one air raid against Tokyo on the night of March 9, 1945, U.S.
planes dropped incendiary bombs that killed 80,000 people. Still, despite the
devastation that the Japanese were suffering, U.S. war planners saw no
indication that Japan was seriously considering surrender and believed that an
invasion of the Japanese mainland was unavoidable. Given the fanaticism with
which the Japanese had fought to defend small islands in the Pacific, it was
feared that such an invasion would result enormous casualties on both sides.
But then, in the summer of 1945, a force emerged that made the planned
invasion unnecessary.
The Manhattan Project: In 1939, the famed scientist Albert Einstein wrote
FDR to warn him that advances in physics suggested the possibility of splitting
atoms in a way that could be used to produce a devastating new weapon.
Einstein cautioned FDR that the Germans might be working on such a weapon.
After the U.S. entered the war, FDR ordered the beginning of a top-secret
program – code named the Manhattan Project – to develop an atomic bomb as
rapidly as possible. Gen. Leslie Groves was placed in charge of the project, and
was told that he could have whatever money, material, and manpower he
needed. Ultimately the U.S. spent some $2 billion dollars on the project.
200,000 people worked on the project in one capacity or another, though only a
very few of them knew what the ultimate goal of the project was. The project
succeeded spectacularly on July 16, 1945, when the first-ever atomic bomb was
detonated in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. American leaders
decided that in order to deliver the psychological shock necessary to force
Japan to surrender, the bombs would have to be dropped without warning on
occupied cities. After Japan rejected a U.S. and British ultimatum to surrender
or face "prompt and utter destruction," the U.S. dropped the first bomb on
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Approximately 80,000 people were killed
instantly, and tens of thousands died afterward from the effects of the bomb.
The Japanese government was deadlocked over the issue of surrender, and on
August 9 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and the U.S. dropped a
second atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki, where 36,000 people were
instantly killed. Soon afterward, the Japanese agreed to surrender on one
condition: that the Japanese Emperor be allowed to remain on the throne
(though he would be under the command of American occupation forces).
Japan formally surrendered on September 2, 1945. Historians and others still
argue about whether or not the U.S. was justified in dropping the devastatingly
deadly atomic bombs.
Consequences: World War II – the bloodiest and most costly by far in the
history of the world – killed an estimated 15 million military personnel and 35
million civilians. The Soviet Union alone lost more than 20 million people. The
U.S. lost some 408,000 killed. The war involved an estimated $1 trillion in
expenditures and destroyed some $2 trillion worth of property. The war also
left the United States the most powerful country in the world, and set the stage
for a long conflict between the U.S. and its new postwar rival the Soviet Union.