Download US and WWII

WWII
And the US
Pre-1941
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Little interest in events in Europe
Disgust with Munich Agreement
Mounting anger towards Japan
But no public desire for war, or even sanctions
FDR, however, enlarges navy in 1939
The Anglo-American accord
• Neutrality Act of 1939 permits selling of
weapons to Allies
• “Arsenal of Democracy” speech, 1940
• 1940 Selective Service Act
• The big one: 1941’s Lend-Lease Act—
allowed FDR to sell, exchange or lease arms
to any country whose security to the US
was deemed vital
Lend-Lease, cont’d
• "Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire,
and I have a length of garden hose four or
five hundred feet away. If he can take my
garden hose and connect it up with his
hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire....
• ...I don't say to him before that operation,
"Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you
have to pay me $15 for it."... I don't want
$15--I want my garden hose back after the
fire is over. "
A convoy crossing the Atlantic during the Battle of Britain,
1940
President Roosevelt was a gifted
communicator. On January 6, 1941, he
addressed Congress, delivering the historic
"Four Freedoms" speech. At a time when
Western Europe lay under Nazi domination,
Roosevelt presented a vision in which the
American ideals of individual liberties were
extended throughout the world. Alerting
Congress and the nation to the necessity of
war, Roosevelt articulated the ideological
aims of the conflict. Eloquently, he appealed
to Americans' most profound beliefs about
freedom.
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere in
the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world
terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a
point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a
position to commit an act of physical aggression against any
neighbor --anywhere in the world.
Norman Rockwell turned these words into the most reprinted
Saturday Evening Post covers ever!
After winning public approval, the paintings served as the centerpiece
of a massive U.S. war bond drive and were put into service to help
explain the war's aims…
The accord, cont’d
• The Atlantic Charter, August 1941
–All people have the right to live in
freedom without fear, want, or
tyranny
Japan
• Very quietly, compared to Europe, the US was
moving towards war with Japan
• --1937—conquest of Nanking
• --1939—US support for Chiang Kai-Shek
• --1940—Japan signs Tri-Partite Pact w/
Germany
• --1940 US sanctions against Japan, freezing of
assets
• --Tojo gov’t, October 1941
Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941
“I praise the Army for cutting down like weeds large numbers of
the enemy…”
--Emperor Hirohito
Japanese Victories
1941--1942:
Pearl Harbor
Hong Kong
The Philippines
Malaya
Borneo
Burma
Singapore
Hideki
Tojo
The Bataan Death March, 1941
Despite their claims to be liberating Asian people from
European imperialism, the Japanese army left a trail of
corpses throughout their new empire.
These are Filipino children after the “liberation” of Manila.
The Allies
Regroup:
--the
Battle of
Midway,
June 5,
1942
-Guadalca
nal, 19421943
--”Island
Hopping”
Guadalcanal--the US’ first land victory against the Japanese
Army
FDR—another progressive president at wat
Creates: War Powers Act:
reorganizing fed gov’t
creating new agencies
authorization to suppress civil liberties
seizure of foreign-owned property
award gov’t contracts w/o competitive
bidding
Office of War Information
It would end up costing 250 million dollars
per day to fight the war
Wartime production solved the problems of the
Depression
Created new industries and began emigration of people
and capital to the West
The need for uniforms industrialized and enriched the
South
Same for large-scale farmers
But it finished the monopolization of America
essentially, as small producers disappeared.
Labor signed a no-strike deal, tho’ wildcat strikes
cont’d despite FDR’s threat to draft strikers
Women entered the workforce, as did migrant Mexican
labor and black labor
WORLD WAR II:
A HISTORY IN POSTER ART
“The
Good
War”
‘Nuff
Said?
Masculine strength
was a common visual
theme in patriotic
posters. Pictures of
powerful men and
mighty machines
illustrated America's
ability to channel its
formidable strength
into the war effort.
American muscle was
presented in a proud
display of national
confidence.
REPRESENTING THE ENEMY…
Under their system, the individual is
a cog in a military machine, a cipher
in an economic despotism; the
individual is a slave. These facts are
documented in the degradation and
suffering of the conquered countries,
whose fate is shared equally by the
willing satellites and the misguided
appeasers of the Axis.
--Government Information Manual for the Motion
Picture Industry,
Office of War Information
Many of the fear-inspiring
posters depicted Nazi acts
of atrocity. Although
brutality is always part of
war, the atrocities of World
War II were so terrible,
and of such magnitude, as
to engender a new category
of crime--crimes against
humanity. The images here
were composed to foster
fear. Implicit in these
posters is the idea that
what happened there could
happen here.
The Sowers
by Thomas Hart Benton, 1942
Artist Thomas Hart Benton believed that it was the artist's role
either to fight or to "bring the bloody actual realities of this war
home to the American people." In a series of eight paintings,
Benton portrayed the violence and barbarity of fascism. "The
Sowers" shows the enemy as bulky, brutish monsters tossing
human skulls onto the ground.
Lidice was a Czech mining
village that was obliterated
by the Nazis in retaliation
for the 1942 shooting of a
Nazi official by two Czechs.
All men of the village were
killed in a 10-hour massacre;
the women and children
were sent to concentration
camps. The destruction of
Lidice became a symbol for
the brutality of Nazi
occupation during World
War II.
This is Nazi Brutality
by Ben Shahn, 1942
From the
US’ Life
Magazine
Time magazine, Dec. 22, 1941
“HOW TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS FROM
THE JAPS: Virtually all Japanese are
short. Japanese are likelier to be stockier
and broader-hipped than short Chinese.
Japanese are seldom fat; they often dry up
and grow lean as they age….The Chinese
expression is likely to be more placid,
kindly, open; the Japanese more…
dogmatic, arrogant. Japanese are hesitant,
nervous in conversation, laugh loudly at the
wrong time. Japanese walk stiffly erect,
hard heeled. Chinese, more relaxed, have
an easy gait, sometimes shuffle.”
Chinese immigrants in this country, previously
scorned by the public, and often homesick,
found themselves caught up the war. 40% of
New York Chinatown’s population was drafted,
the most of any national grouping (most
Chinese immigrants were young, single men.)
As a reward for this and amazingly lucrative
war bond drives, and as a slap in the face to
Japanese propaganda stressing anti-Asian
racism in the U.S., Congress finally repealed
the Chinese Exclusion Laws, and Chinese
immigrants could actually gain civil rights in
America.
This poster was
part of a general
line in the
“Know your
allies”
collection—as
the following
items suggest…
Another of the evils of
war…
War on the Home Front
“Words are ammunition. Each word an
American utters either helps or hurts the
war effort. He must stop rumors. He must
challenge the cynic and the appeaser. He
must not speak recklessly. He must
remember that the enemy is listening.”
--Government Information Manual for the
Motion Picture Industry
Office of War Information
A woman--someone who
could resemble the
viewer's neighbor, sister,
wife, or daughter--was
shown on a "wanted"
poster as an unwitting
murderess. The viewer
was to conclude that this
woman's careless talk
resulted in the death of
American soldiers.
How can any one of
us here at home sleep
peacefully tonight,
unless we're sure in
our hearts that we
have done our part?
--Who Died?
Treasury Department motion picture
Rationing was a feature of wartime life, even if it wasn’t all that
painful in reality…
“The Civilian Defense Corps grew to 12 million Americans in mid1943, from 1.2 million in 1942. In Chicago, 16,000 block captains in
the corps took an oath of allegiance in a mass ceremony; they
practiced first aid, supervised blackouts and planned gas
decontamination. Nationwide, Red Cross volunteers swelled to 7.5
million in 1945, from 1.1 million in 1940. By 1943, volunteers at
4,300 civilian-defense volunteer offices were fixing school lunches,
providing day care and organizing scrap drives.
Eighth graders in Gary, Ind., were especially busy. They sold an
average of $40,000 worth of war stamps a month. They campaigned
against buying black-market goods. They took auxiliary fire- and
police-training courses. They held tin-can drives. And this was just
in one medium-sized Midwestern city.”
Robert Putnam, October 19, 2001, New York Times
In case you weren’t getting the picture…
“Civilians must have the war brought
home to them. Every individual must
be made to see the immediacy of the
danger to him. . . .
He must be made to understand that
he is an integral part of the war front,
and that if he loses the war, he loses
everything.”
Government Information Manual for the
Motion Picture Industry
Office of War Information
Poster makers used fear to mobilize the public. In
the absence of any immediate physical danger,
American propagandists exaggerated the physical
proximity of enemy forces. Though separated
from the actual warfare by great distances,
Americans appeared within arm's reach of the
enemy. They were shown to be in imminent
danger--their backs against the wall and living in
the shadow of Axis domination.
In the pictures to follow, the Canadian poster on the left
served as a model for the American poster on the right.
A study undertaken by the U.S. Government found that images of
women and children in danger were effective emotional devices.
How about these faces?
AND WHAT OF EQUALITY?
“We say glibly that in the United States of America
all men are free and equal, but do we treat them
as if they were? . . . There is religious and racial
prejudice everywhere in the land, and if there is a
greater obstacle anywhere to the attainment of the
teamwork we must have, no one knows what it is.”
Arthur Upham Pope, Chairman of the Committee
for National Morale, in
America Organizes to Win the War
Doris ("Dorie") Miller joined
the Navy and was in service on
board the U.S.S. West Virginia
during the attack on Pearl
Harbor. Restricted to the
position of messman, he
received no gunnery training.
But during the attack, at great
personal risk, he manned the
weapon of a fallen gunman and
succeeded in hitting Japanese
planes. He was awarded the
Navy Cross, but only after
persistent pressure from the
black press.
You may have seen him portrayed by Cuba Gooding, Jr. in the worst WWII
movie ever made—Pearl Harbor
The Gov’t was well aware of the demoralizing effects of racial prejudice on the
African American population. In its publicity campaigns, the Gov’t presented
an idealized view of race relations in America. Racial tensions disappeared in
portrayals of black Americans as full and equal participants in American
society.
The images of racial harmony belied
the profound feelings of unrest that, on
occasion, erupted into episodes of
racial violence during the war years.
During World War II, the military
employed policies of racial restriction
and segregation. At the beginning of the
war, for example, blacks could join the
Navy but could serve only as messmen.
The message was rather obvious.
Dear lord, today
I go to war:
To fight, to die,
Tell me what for?
Dear Lord, I’ll fight,
I do not fear,
Germans or Japs;
My fears are here.
America!
From a 1943 Black
newspaper
“The Army Jim Crows us….The
Red Cross refuses our blood.
Employers and unions shut us out.
Lynchings continue. We are
disenfranchised, Jim-Crowed, spat
upon. What more could Hitler do
than that?”
“The Negro…is angry, resentful, and
utterly apathetic about the war. ‘Fight
for what?’ he is asking. ‘This war
doesn’t mean a thing to me. If we win
I lose, so what?’”
In spite of overt racial discrimination and
segregation in the military and in civilian
life, the overwhelming majority of black
Americans participated wholeheartedly in
the fight against the Axis powers. They did
so, however, with an eye towards
reconciling American ideals of equality with
American practices of discrimination. This
objective was expressed in the call,
initiated in the black press, for the "Double
'V'"--victory over fascism abroad and over
racism at home.
“These jobs will have to be glorified
as a patriotic war service
if American women are to be
persuaded to take them and stick to
them. Their importance to a nation
engaged in total war must be
convincingly presented.”
--Basic Program Plan for Womanpower
Office of War Information
Of all the images of working
women during World War II, the
image of women in factories
predominates. Rosie the Riveter-the strong, competent woman
dressed in overalls and bandanna-was introduced as a symbol of
patriotic womanhood. The
accoutrements of war work-uniforms, tools, and lunch pails-were incorporated into the revised
image of the feminine ideal.
Back to the European Campaign…
Rommel
Montgomery
Patton
The heavily reinforced Allied forces under Montgomery and
Patton beat Rommel at the 2nd Battle of El Alamein in late
1942, and chased the Afrika Korps all the way to Tunisia,
and far from Egypt’s oil fields. The Afrika Korps was
decisively defeated in May, 1943, paving the way for…
Despite the fact that the US
may have been more
motivated to fight in the
Pacific, it agreed to
concentrate its forces with
Britain’s on a joint attack
in Europe.
The Italian Campaign was
made possible by the
German losses in the North
African desert.
The Italian defeat led to
Mussolini’s overthrow,
though the Germans
quickly invaded Northern
Italy and set up the Gothic
Line across Tuscany to
protect the German
underbelly--and to give
Mussolini a tiny Fascist
state to rule--the Salo
Republic.
The Beginning of the End
1944-1945
The invasion of Normandy
The liberation of France
The invasion of Germany on two
fronts
The Battle of Berlin
D-Day, and everything after
The End…
By 1944, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin were meeting to
discuss what should be done with Germany and establish
a basis for Collective Security
At the same time, the war with Japan was winding down
FDR wanted USSR to help with Japan, Stalin wanted
secure borders against Germany
In 1945, at Yalta, FDR more or less assented to Soviet
occupation of Eastern Europe in exchange for help
against Japan, and Russian acceptance of the UN
August 6,
1945