Download Ch 35 World War II - Brookville Local Schools

Chapter 35
America in
World War II,
1941–1945
I. The Allies Trade Space for Time
• Time was the most needed munition:
– Expense was no limitation
– America’s problem was to retool itself for all-out
war production
• Dictators would not crush their adversaries
• German scientists might find the unbeatable secret
weapon.
– America’s task:
• It had to feed, clothe, and arm itself
• It had to transport its forces to regions as far
separated as Britain and Burma.
I. The Allies Trade Space for Time
(cont.)
– It had to send a vast amount of food and
munitions to its hard-pressed allies
• Who stretched all the way from the USSR to Australia.
II. The Shock of War
• National unity was no worry, since the
bombing of Pearl Harbor:
• American Communists denounced the Anglo-French
“imperialist” war
– Clamoring for an unmitigated assault on the Axis powers
• Pro-Hitlerites in the United States melted away
• Millions of Italian Americans and German Americans
were loyal supporters of the nation’s war programs
• World War II speeded the assimilation of many ethnic
groups into American society
• No government witch-hunting of minority groups.
II. The Shock of War
(cont.)
• Painful exception—the plight of 110,000 Japanese
Americans, mainly on the Pacific Coast (see pp. 800801)
– Government forcibly herded them together in concentration
camps
• Executive Order No. 9066:
– The internment camps deprived these uprooted Americans
of dignity and basic rights
– The internees lost hundreds of millions of dollars in
property and forgone earnings
– The Supreme Court 1944 upheld the constitutionality of the
Japanese relocation in Korematsu v. U.S.
– In 1988 the U.S. government officially apologized and
approved the payment of reparations of $20,000 to each
camp survivor.
II. The Shock of War
(cont.)
• War prompted changes in the American
mood:
– Many New Deal programs were wiped away
– The era of the New Deal was over
– World War II was no idealistic crusade
– U.S. government now put emphasis on action.
p800
p801
p801
p802
III. Building the War Machine
• American economy snapped to attention:
• Massive military orders—over $100 billion in 1942
alone—soaked up the ideal industrial capacity
• War Production Board (WPB):
– Halted the manufacture of nonessential items—passenger
cars
– Assigned priorities for transportation and access to raw
materials
– Imposed a national speed limit and gasoline rating in order
to conserve rubber and built 51 synthetic-rubber plants
– By war’s end they were far outproducing the prewar supply.
III. Building the War Machine
(cont.)
• Farmers increased their output
• The armed forces drained the farms of workers
• But heavy new investment in agricultural machinery
and improved fertilizers more than made up the
difference
• In 1944 and 1945 the farmers hauled in recordbreaking billion-bushel wheat harvests.
• Economic strains:
• Full employment and scarce consumer goods fueled a
sharp inflationary surge in 1942.
III. Building the War Machine
(cont.)
– The Office of Price Administration (OPA):
• Eventually brought ascending prices under control
with extensive regulations
• Rationing held down the consumption of critical
goods
• Though some “black marketeers” and “meatleggers”
cheated the system
– The National War Labor Board (NWLB):
• Imposed ceilings on wage increases
III. Building the War Machine
(cont.)
• Labor conditions:
– Labor union membership increased from 10
million to more than 13 million during the war
• They fiercely resented the government-dictated wage
ceilings
• A rash of labor walkouts plagued the war efforts
• Prominent among the strikers were the United Mine
Workers:
– Called off the job by the union chieftain, John L. Lewis.
III. Building the War Machine
(cont.)
• The Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act: June,
1943:
– Authorized the federal government to seize and
operate tied-up industries
– Strikes against any government-operated
industry were made a criminal offense
– Washington took over the coal mines, and for a
brief time, the railroads
– Work stoppages actually accounted for less than
one percent of the total working hours of U.S.’
wartime laboring force.
p803
IV. Manpower and Womanpower
• The armed service enlistments:
– 15 million men in World War II
– 216,000 women, who were employed for
noncombat duties
– “Women in arms” were the WACs (Women’s
Army Corps), WAVES (Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service) (navy), SPARs
(U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve)
– Millions of young men were clothed in “GI”
government issue) outfits.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower
(cont.)
– Exempted industrial and agricultural workers
from the draft
– Still there was a shortage of farms and factory
workers
– The Bracero program:
• Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, came
to harvest the fruit and grain crops of the West
• The Bracero program outlived the war by some
twenty years, becoming a fixed feature of the
agricultural economy in many western states.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower
(cont.)
• 6 million women took joys outside their
homes:
– Over half had never before worked for wages
– Government was obliged to set up 3,000 daycare centers to care for “Rosie the Riveter’s”
children
– At the end of the war many women were not
eager to give up the work
– The war foreshadowed an eventual revolution in
the roles of women in American society.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower
(cont.)
• Many women did not work for wages in the wartime
economy, but continued traditional roles
• At war’s end, 2/3 of women war workers left the
labor force
• Many were forced out by returning service-men
• Many quit their jobs voluntarily because of family
obligations
• There was a widespread rush into suburban domesticity and the mothering of the “baby boomers.”
p804
p804
V. Wartime Migrations
• Demographic changes:
– 15 million men and women decided not to
return home again
– War industries sucked people into boomtowns—
Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, Baton Rouge
– California’s population grew by 2 million
– The south experienced dramatic changes:
• Here were the seeds of the postwar blossoming of
the “Sunbelt” (see Map 35.1)
V. Wartime Migrations
(cont.)
– Some 1.6 millions blacks left the South for jobs
in the war plants of the West and North
– Forever after, race relations constituted a
national, not a regional, issue
– Explosive tensions developed over employment,
housing, and segregated facilities
• Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding
discrimination in defense industries
• He established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC):
– To monitor compliance with his edict.
V. Wartime Migrations
(cont.)
– Blacks were drafted into the armed forces:
• Assigned to service branches rather than combat
units
• Subjected to petty degradations:
– Segregated blood banks for the wounded
• In general the war helped to embolden blacks in their
long struggle for equality
• Slogan—“Double V”—victory over the dictators
abroad and over racism at home
• Membership in the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shot up to
the half-million mark:
V. Wartime Migrations
(cont.)
– A new militant organization committed to nonviolent “direct
action”, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 1942.
– The northward migration of African Americans
accelerated after the war:
• Thanks to the advent of the mechanical cotton picker
• Introduced in 1944, this machine did the work of 50
people at about 1/8th the cost
• The Cotton South’s historic need for cheap labor disappeared
• Some 5 million black tenant farmers and sharecroppers headed north in the decades after the war
– One of the great migrations in American history.
V. Wartime Migrations
(cont.)
– By 1970 half of the blacks lived outside the
South
• And urban became almost became a synonym for
black
• The war prompted an exodus of Native
Americans from the reservation
– Thousands, men and women, found work in the
major cities
– Thousands more went into the armed forces
• 90% of Indians resided on reservations in 1940
• 6 decades later ½ lived in cities, more in southern
Calif.
V. Wartime Migrations
(cont.)
– 25,000 men served in the armed forces
– Served as “code talkers”
• They transmitted radio messages in their native
languages, which were incomprehensible to the
Germans and Japanese.
• Rubbing together created some violent
friction:
– Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were viciously
attacked by Anglo sailors
– Brutal race riot killed 25 blacks and 9 whites in
Detroit.
Map 35-1 p805
p806
p806
p807
VI. Holding the Home Front
• Americans on the home front suffered little:
– The war invigorated the economy
– Lifted the country out of a decade-long
depression
– The gross national product rose from $100
billion in 1940 to more than $200 billion in 1945
– Corporate profits rose from $6 billion in 1940 to
almost twice that amount four years later
– Despite wage ceiling, overtime pay fattened pay
envelopes.
VI. Holding the Home Front
(cont.)
– Prices rose up to 33% in 1948
– The hand of the government touched lives more
• Post-1945 era of big-government interventionism
• Households felt the constraints of the rationing
system
• Millions, men/women, worked for the government in
the armed forces
• Millions worked in the defense industries
• The Office of Scientific Research and Development
channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into university-based scientific research—establishing partnerships with the government.
V. Holding the Home Front
(cont.)
• Government dollars swept unemployment from the
land
• War, not enlightened social policy, cured the
depression
• 1941-1945 as the origins of a “warfare-welfare state.”
– The conflict was phenomenally expensive
• War bill amounted to more than $330 billion—
– 10 times the direct cost of World War I
– Twice as much as all previous federal spending since 1776
• Roosevelt would have preferred a pay-as-you-go
• The cost was simply too gigantic
V. Holding the Home Front
(cont.)
• The income tax net was expanded and the rate rose
as high as 90%
• Only two-fifths of the war costs were paid from
current revenues
• The remainder was borrowed
• The national debt skyrocketed from $49 billion in
1941 to $259 billion in 1945 (see Figure 35.1).
• When production slipped into high gear, the war was
costing about $10 million an hour
• That was the price of victory over such implacable
enemies.
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific
• Early successes of the efficient Japanese
militarists were breathtaking:
– They would have to win quickly or lose slowly
– They expanded into the Far Eastern bastions:
• American outposts of Guam, Wake, the Philippines
• They seized the British-Chinese city port of Hong Kong
and British Malaya
• They plunged into the snake-infested jungles of
Burma
• They lunged southward against the oil-rich Dutch East
Indies
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific
(cont.)
– Better news came from the Philippines, which
succeeded in slowing down the Japanese
– When the Japanese landed, General Douglas
MacArthur withdrew to a strong defensive
position at Bataan, not far from Manila:
• Here 20,000 American troops, supported by a force of
ill-trained Filipinos, held off the Japanese attacks until
April 9, 1942
• Before the inevitable American surrender, MacArthur
was ordered to depart secretly for Australia
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific
(cont.)
• His army remnants were treated with vicious cruelty
in the infamous eighty-mile Bataan Death March to
prisoner-of-war camps:
– First in a series of atrocities committed by both sides.
• The island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila harbor,
– Held out until May 6, 1942, when it too surrendered
– Which left Japanese forces in complete control of the
Philippine archipelago (see Map 35.2).
Figure 35-1 p808
VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway
– The Japanese continual march:
• Invaded New Guinea, and landed on the Solomon
Islands
• Their onrush finally checked by a crucial naval battle
fought in the Coral Sea, May 1942
• America, with Australian support, inflicted heavy
losses on the victory-flushed Japanese
• First time the fighting was done by carrier-based
aircraft
• Japan next undertook to seize Midway Island:
– Epochal Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942—Admiral Chester
W. Nimitz, fighting done by aircraft and the Japanese broke
action after losing four vitally important carriers.
VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway
(cont.)
• Midway was a pivotal battle:
– Combined with the Battle of the Coral Sea, the
U.S. success at Midway halted Japan’s fighting
• They did get America’s islands of Kiska and Attu
• These victories caused fear of an invasion of the
United States through Alaska
– Japanese imperialists, overextended in 1942,
suffered from “victory disease”
• Their appetites were bigger than their stomachs
Map 35-2 p809
p809
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward
Tokyo
• America seized the initiative in the Pacific:
– In 1942 American gained a toehold on
Guadalcanal Island
• Japanese troops evacuated the island in February,
1943
• Japan losses were 20,000, compared to 1,700 for the
Americans
• American and Australian forces under General
Douglas MacArthur held on in New Guinea, the last
buffer protecting Australia
• The scales of war began to tip.
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward
Tokyo (cont.)
– The U.S. Navy, with marines and army divisions,
began “leapfrogging” the Japanese-held islands
in the Pacific
• As the American forces drove toward Tokyo, they
reduced the fortified Japanese outposts
• Island hopping strategy called for:
–
–
–
–
–
Bypassing the most heavily fortified Japanese posts
Capturing nearby islands
Setting up airfields on them
Then neutralizing the enemy bases through heavy bombing
Deprived of essential supplies from the homeland, Japan’s
outpost would slowly wither on the vine—as they did.
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward
Tokyo (cont.)
• Brilliant success crowned American attacks
on the Japanese island strongholds in the
Pacific:
– Islands were being recaptured from the
Japanese
– Especially prized were the Marianas, including
America’s conquered Guam
• Assault on the Marianas opened June 19, 1944:
• 250 Japanese antiaircraft destroyed, with only a loss
of 29 American planes
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward
Tokyo (cont.)
• The following day, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
U.S. naval forces sank several Japanese carriers
• The Japanese navy never recovered
• A mass suicide leap of surviving Japanese soldiers and
civilians from “Suicide Cliff,” the major islands of
Marianas fell to U.S. attackers in July-August, 1944
• Bombing of Japan began November 1944 (see Map
35.3)
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler
• Hitler entered the war in 1942:
– The tide of subsea battle turned slowly
• The old techniques of warfare were being
strengthened by new methods:
– Air patrol
– The newly invented technology of radar
– The bombing of submarine bases
• Eventually Allied antisubmarine tactics improved:
– British code breakers
• 1945 the Allies had the upper hand against the Uboat.
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler
(cont.)
• The turning point of the land-air war against
Hitler had come late in 1942:
• British had launched a thousand-plane raid on
Cologne in May
• In August they joined the American air force with
cascading bombs on German cities
• The Germans under Marshal Erwin Rommel—the
“Desert Fox”—drove across North Africa into Egypt
• In October 1942, British general Bernard Montgomery
delivered an attack at El Alamein, west of Cairo
• With the aid of American tanks, he speedily drove the
enemy back to Tunisia.
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler
(cont.)
• In September 1942 the Russians stalled the
German steamroller at Stalingrad, graveyard
of Hitler’s hopes:
– Scores of invading divisions surrendered
– In November 1942 the Russians unleashed a
crushing counteroffensive
– 1943 Stalin had regained about 2/3 of the bloodsoaked Soviet motherland from the German
invader.
Map 35-3 p811
XI. A Second Front from North Africa
to Rome
• Losses:
• Soviet—millions of soldiers and civilians lay dead
– Hitler’s armies had overrun most of western USSR
• Anglo-American losses—counted only in the
thousands
• By war’s end some 20 millions Soviets had died
– Americans, including FDR, wanted to invade
France in 1942 or 1943:
• British military were not enthusiastic about a frontal
attack on German-held France.
XI. A Second Front from North
Africa to Rome (cont.)
• They preferred to attack Hitler’s Fortress Europe
through the “soft underbelly” of the Mediterranean
• The American reluctantly agreed to postpone a
massive invasion of Europe
• An assault on French-held North Africa was a compromise second front
– The highly secret attack in November 1942 was led by
American general Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower
– With joint Allied operations the invasion was the mightiest
waterborne effort up to that time in history
– After savage fighting, the remnants of the German-Italian
army were finally trapped in Tunisia and surrendered in
May, 1943.
XI. A Second Front from North
Africa to Rome (cont.)
• Casablanca:
– Roosevelt met with Churchill in January 1943:
– The Big Two agreed to:
•
•
•
•
Step up the Pacific war
Invade Sicily
Increase pressure on Italy
Insist on “unconditional surrender” of the enemy.
– Unconditional surrender was one of the most
controversial moves of the war:
• Main criticism—it steeled the enemy to fight to a last
bunker resistance
XI. A Second Front from North
Africa to Rome (cont.)
• While discouraging antiwar groups in Germany from
revolting
• No one can prove that “unconditional surrender”
either shortened or lengthened the war
• But what is known:
– By helping to destroy the German government utterly, the
harsh policy forced a thorough postwar reconstruction
– The Allied forces, victorious in Africa, now
turned against the not-so-soft underbelly in
Europe:
• Sicily fell in August 1943
• Mussolini was deposed
XI. A Second Front from North
Africa to Rome (cont.)
• Italy surrendered unconditionally in September 1943
• Hitler’s well-trained troops stubbornly resisted the
Allied invaders
• The Germans unleashed their fury against the Italians
who had declared war on Germany October 1943
• Italy appeared to be a dead end
• Rome was finally taken on June 4, 1944
• The Allies continued to fight into northern Italy
• May 2, 1945, only five days before Germany’s official
surrender, several hundred thousand Axis troops in
Italy laid down their arms and became prisoners of
war.
p812
p813
XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944
• The Soviets:
• Never ceased their clamor for an all-out second front
• Marshall Joseph Stalin balked at leaving Moscow
– Tehran, the capital of Iran (Persia) was finally
chosen at the meeting place:
– Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin—November 28-December 1,
1943
– Progressed smoothly
– Most important achievement was agreement on broad
plans, especially those for launching Soviet attacks on
Germany
• Preparations for the cross-channel invasion of France
were gigantic
XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944
(cont.)
– D-Day, June 6, 1944:
• The enormous operation, involved some 4,600
vessels, unwound
• After desperate fighting, the invaders finally broke
out of the German iron ring that enclosed the
Normandy landing zone
• Spectacular were the lunges across France by
American armored divisions under General Patton
• The retreat of the German defenders was hastened
when an American-French force landed in August
1944 on the southern coast of France and swept
northward
XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944
(cont.)
• With the assistance of the French “underground”
Paris was liberated in August 1944.
• Allies forces rolled irresistibly toward Germany
• The first important German city (Aachen) fell to the
Americans in October 1944
• And the days of Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” were
numbered (see Map 35.4).
p814
XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944
• The presidential campaign of 1944:
– Republicans:
• Met in Chicago with hopeful enthusiasm
• They quickly nominated Thomas E. Dewey—mild
internationalism
• Nominated for vice president, a strong isolationist,
Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio
• Platform called for unstinted prosecution of the war
and the creation of a new international organization
to maintain peace.
XIII. FDR: the Fourth-Termite of
1944 (cont.)
– Democrats:
• FDR was the “indispensable man”
• He was nominated at Chicago on the first ballot by
acclamation
• In a sense he was the “forgotten man” of the
convention
• An unusual amount of attention was focused on the
vice presidency:
– Henry A. Wallace, having served four years as vice
president, desired a renomination
– Conservative Democrats distrusted him as an ill-balanced
and unpredictable liberal
XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of
1944 (cont.)
– A “ditch Wallace” move developed tremendous
momentum, despite his popularity
– With Roosevelt’s blessing, the vice-presidential nomination
went to Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri (the new
Missouri Compromise”)
Map 35-4 p815
XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey
• Dewey took the offensive:
• Denounced the tired and quarrelsome “old men” in
Washington
• He proclaimed repeatedly that after “twelve long
years” of New Dealism, it was “time for a change”
• As for the war: he would not alter the basic strategy
but would fight it better—a type of “me-tooism”
ridiculed by the Democrats
• The fourth-tem issue did not figure prominently; they
did fear fifth and sixth terms by the “lifer” in the
White House.
XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey
(cont.)
• New political action committee of the CIO:
– Was organized to get around the law banning
the direct use of union funds for political
purposes
– FDR was opposed by a majority of the
newspapers, which were owned chiefly by
Republicans
• Results of the election:
– Roosevelt won a sweeping victory
– 432 to 99 in the Electoral College
– 25,606,585 to 22,014,745 in the popular vote.
XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey
(cont.)
– Roosevelt won primarily because the war was
going well
– Foreign policy was a decisive factor:
• Strength and experience was needed in fashioning a
future organization for world peace
• Dewey had spoken smoothly of international
cooperation
• His isolationist running mate, Bricker, had implanted
serious doubts
• The Republican party was still suffering from the taint
of isolationism fastened on it by the Hardingites.
XV. The Last Days of Hitler
• Hitler’s last attempt:
– On December 16, 1944, he hurled an attack against the
American lines in the Ardennes Forest
– His objective was the Belgian port of Antwerp, key to the
Allied supply operation
– Ten day operation was halted after the 101st Airborne
Division had stood firm at the vital bastion of Bastogne
– Brigadier General A. C. McAuliffe defiantly answered the
German demand for surrender with one word: “Nuts.”
– Reinforcements were rushed up, and the last-gasp Hitlerian
offensive was stemmed in the Battle of the Bulge (Map
35.5).
• In March 1945 forward-driving American troops
reached Germany’s Rhine River
XV. The Last Days of Hitler
(cont.)
– General Eisenhower’s troops reached the Elbe River in April
1945
» Americans and Soviets clasped hands
» American found blood-spattered and still-stinking concentration camps where the Nazis had engaged in the
scientific mass murder of “undesirables” and an
estimated 6 million Jews.
• The American government had long been informed of
Hitler’s campaign of genocide against the Jews:
– Had been reprehensibly slow to take steps against it
– Roosevelt’s administration had bolted the doors against
large numbers of Jewish refugees
– And even refused to bomb the rail lines that carried the
victims to the camps
XV. The Last Days of Hitler
(cont.)
– The Soviets reached Berlin in April 1945
– Adolf Hitler committed suicide in an
underground bunker on April 30, 1945
– President Roosevelt suddenly died at Warm
Springs, Georgia, April 12, 1945
– Vice President Truman took the helm
– On May 7, 1945, the German government
surrendered unconditionally
– May 8 was officially proclaimed V-E (Victory in
Europe) Day.
p816
Map 35-5 p816
p818
XVI. Japan Dies Hard
– American submarines—“the silent service”—
were destroying the Japanese merchant marine:
• These “undersea craft” destroyed 1,042 ships
– 50% of Japan’s entire life-sustaining merchant fleet
• Giant bomber attacks were more spectacular:
– They were reducing the enemy’s cities to cinders
– The massive firebomb raid on Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945, was
annihilating
– It destroyed over 250,000 buildings, a quarter of the city,
and killed an estimated 83,000 people.
• General MacArthur was on the move:
– Completed the conquest of New Guinea, he moved northwest for the Philippines—600 ships and 250,000 men
XVI. Japan Dies Hard
(cont.)
– Landed on ashore at Leyte Island on October 20, 1944
– Japan’s navy made one last effort to destroy MacArthur
– A gigantic clash at Leyte Gulf, fought on the sea, and in the
air, was actually three battles (October 23-26, 1944)
• The Americans won all of them
– Japan was through as a sea power
– It had lost about 60 ships
– Overrunning Leyte, MacArthur landed on the main
Philippine island of Luzon in January 1944
– Manila was his major objective—the ravaged city fell in
March
– But the Philippines were not conquered until July
– The American toll was over sixty thousand
XVI. Japan Dies Hard
(cont.)
– Japan’s capture:
• Iwo Jima was captured in March 1945
– 25 day assault cost over four thousand American dead
• Okinawa from April to June, 1945
– Sold Okinawa for 50,000 American casualties, while
suffering far heavier losses themselves
– The U.S. Navy, which covered the invasion of Okinawa,
sustained severe damage
• Japanese suicide pilots (“kamikazes”) crashed their
bomb-laden planes on to the decks of the invading
fleet.
– All told, the death squads sank over thirty ships and badly
damaged scores more.
p819
XVII. The Atomic Bombs
• Washington planning an all-out invasion of
the main islands of Japan:
• Tokyo had secretly sent out peace feelers to Moscow
• Americans, having broken the secret Japanese radio
codes, knew of these feelers
• Bomb-scorched Japan still showed no outward
willingness to surrender unconditionally to the Allies
– The Potsdam conference:
• Near Berlin July 1945, sounded the death knell of the
Japanese
• Truman met in a 17 day parley with Joseph Stalin and
the British leaders
XVII. The Atomic Bomb
(cont.)
• The conference issued a strong ultimatum to Japan:
– Surrender or be destroyed
– American bombers showered the dire warning to Japan in
tens of thousands of leaflets; no encouraging response
– America had a fantastic ace up its sleeve
– Roosevelt persuaded Albert Einstein to push for unlocking
the secret of an atomic bomb
– Congress, at Roosevelt’s request, made available $2 billion
• The Manhattan Project pushed feverishly forward:
– In the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16,
1945, the experts detonated the first awesome and devastating atomic device.
XVI. The Atomic Bomb
(cont.)
• With Japan still refusing to surrender, the
Potsdam threat was fulfilled
– On August 6, 1945, a lone American bomber
dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
• About 180,000 people were killed, wounded or
missing
• Some 70,000 of them died instantaneously
• 60,000 more soon perished from burns and radiation
disease.
– Two days later, August 8, Stalin entered the war
against Japan
• XVI. The Atomic Bomb
(cont.)
• Soviet armies speedily overran the depleted Japanese
defenses in Manchuria and Korea in a six-day “victory
parade”:
– That involved several thousand Russian casualties
– Japanese, facing atomization, still did not surrender.
• On August 9 American aviators dropped a second one
on the city of Nagasaki:
– Toll of about 80,000 were killed or missing (see p. 825)
• On August 10, 1945 Tokyo sued for peace on one
condition:
– That Hirohito, the bespectacled Son of Heaven, be allowed
to remain on his ancestral throne as nominal emperor
– Accepted by the Allies on August 14, 1945.
XVI. The Atomic Bomb
(cont.)
• The formal end came, with dramatic force,
on September 2, 1945:
– Official surrender was conducted by General
MacArthur on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo
Bay
– At the same time, Americans at home
hysterically celebrated V-J (Victory in Japan) Day
p820
XVIII. The Allies Triumphant
• World War II proved to be terribly costly:
– American forces suffered some 1 million
casualties
• More than one-third of which were deaths
• Sharply reduced because of the use of blood plasma
and “miracle” drugs, notably penicillin
– The Soviet suffered casualties many times
greater; more than 25 million people were killed
– The first war that killed more civilians than
armed combatants (see pp. 822-823).
XVIII. The Allies Triumphant
(cont.)
• Other results:
– America emerged with its mainland virtually
unscathed
– A few Japanese fire-bombs had drifted across the Pacific,
killing six in Oregon
– Much of the rest of the world was utterly destroyed and
destitute
• It was the best fought war in American history:
– Unprepared at first , the nation was better prepared than
others
– It was fighting German submarines before Pearl Harbor
– The United States proved itself to be resourceful, tough,
adaptable, able to accommodate itself to the tactics of an
enemy who was relentless and ruthless.
XVIII. The Allies Triumphant
(cont.)
• American leadership proved to be of the
highest order:
• Brilliant generals—Eisenhower, MacArthur, and
Marshall (chief of staff), admirals Nimitz and
Spruance
• Collaboration between Roosevelt and Churchill in
planning strategy
• Industrial leaders were skilled, marvels of production
were performed daily
• Assembly lines proved as important as battles lines
• Victory went again to the side of the smokestacks
XVIII. The Allied Triumphant
(cont.)
– The enemy was almost literally smothered by bayonets,
bullets, bazookas, and bombs
• The American way of war was simply more:
– More men, more weapons, more machines, more
technology, and more money than any enemy could hope to
match
– From 1940-1945 the output of American factories was
simply phenomenal
• Americans had given its answer:
– Democracy had overthrown and discredited dictators
– Washington exercised a large among of control over the
individual during the war emergency
– But the American people preserved their precious liberties
without serious impairment.
p821
p822
Table 35-1 p823
p823
p824
p826