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WWII, COLD WAR,
KOREAN WAR
American History II - Unit 5
Ms. Brown
Review
• Which act of German aggression led to the start of WWII?
• Invasion of Poland in 1939 – France and GB declared war on Germany
• What were the conditions of the nonaggression pact signed by USSR and
Germany?
• Countries would not attack each other and agreed to split Poland
• France fell due to suffocation from the forces of which 2 countries?
• Germany from the north, Italy from the south
• What was the Battle of Britain? What was the end result?
• Attempted German invasion of GB with several months of air attacks on GB
• Royal Air Force held off German attacks until Hitler called off invasion of GB in Sept.
1940
• What was Hitler’s reasoning behind his “Final Solution?”
• The extermination of Jews and other inferior groups would preserve the Aryan
master race
• During the Holocaust, how many victims died?
• 11M, 6M were Jews
5.3 – US ENTRANCE INTO
WWII
FDR’s Dilemma
• After the invasion of Poland, FDR faced a dilemma:
• Continue neutrality and isolationism
• Stop aggressive and dangerous dictators that threaten peace
“This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every
American remain neutral in thought as well… Even a neutral cannot
be asked to close his mind or his conscience… I have said not once,
but many times, that I have seen war and I hate war… As long as it is
my power to prevent, there will be no blackout of peace in the US.”
- FDR, radio speech, September 3, 1939
Moving Away from Neutrality
• 1939 – revision to the Neutrality Acts of 1935
• “cash and carry” provision - allowed warring nations to
buy US arms if they 1) paid cash, and 2) transported
arms on their own ships
• Designed to aid France and Britain in defeating Hitler
• Isolationists strongly opposed
• Summer 1940 – France had fallen, GB under siege
 FDR – “all aid short of war”
• 500,000 rifles, 80,000 machine guns,
leased 50 old destroyers…
• “a decidedly un-neutral act” –
GB Prime Minister Winston Churchill
The Axis Threat
• Axis Powers – Germany, Italy, Japan
• Sept. 1940 - Signed the Tripartite Pact  agreement to
come to come to the defense of each other in case of
attack
• Designed to prevent other
countries from declaring
war on any of the Axis
powers  war with an Axis
power meant war will all
3 countries in 2 oceans,
too intimidating for 1
country to handle
Building US Defenses
• 1940 – Congress agreed to boost
US defense spending
• 1940 - Selective Training and
Service Act
• 1st peacetime draft
• Men aged 21-35 (16M) required to
register
• 1M to actually serve only in the
western hemisphere (Europe/Africa,
not Asia)
• “This is a most solemn ceremony.” -
Election of 1940
• Democrat – FDR
• Broke 2-term tradition
• Republican – Wendell
Willkie
• Supported FDR’s policy
of aiding GB
• FDR won 3rd term due
to little difference
between candidates
(stick with the devil
you know).
The Great Arsenal of Democracy
• Late 1940 - FDR (via fireside chat) told
Americans it would be impossible to negotiate
peace with Hitler
• France had been captured, if GB fell, the Axis Powers
would be unchallenged  set sights on US (“living at
the point of a gun”)
• US had to help defeat Axis threat by becoming
“the great arsenal of democracy.”
• Continued supply of arms to countries facing threats by
Axis powers
The Lend-Lease Act
• Late 1940 – Britain broke and
cannot afford cash and carry
arms
• March 1941 – Lend-Lease Act
• Lend or lease (rent) arms and other
war supplies to “any country whose
defense was vital to the United
States.”
• Compared the plan to lending a
garden hose to a neighbor whose
house was on fire to prevent the fire
from spreading to your own property
• Isolationists bitterly opposed
The Lend-Lease Act
• Lend Lease Act supported only
GB at first
• 1941 – Hitler invaded Soviet
Union (violation of the
nonaggression pact)  US
sent lend-lease supplies to
Stalin/USSR – “the enemy of
my enemy is my friend”
• Some Americans opposed
• FDR and Churchill agreed – “If
Hitler invaded Hell…” they would
be prepared to work with the devil
himself.
German Wolf Packs
• Hitler used U-boats to destroy
hundreds of lend-lease ships
 wolf pack attacks
• Designed to defeat the convoy
system
• 1) Individual u-boats scan for
supply ships
• 2) once ship is found, u-boat calls
for more boats to gather (wolf
pack)
• 3) once all ships are gathered
(usually at night), each u-boat
commander was allowed to attack
the ship using whatever tactics
they pleased – could last up to
several days
• 1941 – FDR granted US ships permission to fire on u-boats
for self-defense purposes only
FDR Plans for War
• 1941 – Congress extended the draft (by 1 vote in the
HoR)
• FDR’s domestic policy was relatively popular, but foreign policy
was controversial
• Atlantic Charter - 1940, US-Britain declaration of joint
war aims
• FDR confided to Churchill that he wouldn’t ask Congress to declare
war on Germany, but he would “wage war” and do “everything to
force an incident”
• The Atlantic Charter became the basis of the “Declaration
of the United Nations” document
• Term United Nations suggested to express the common purpose of
the Allies – nations against the Axis powers (signed by 26 nations)
Undeclared Naval War with Hitler
• September 1941 – German u-boats fired on US
destroyer Greer  FDR ordered navy to “shoot
on the sight” of a u-boat
• Self-defense due to provocation no longer a requirement to shoot
• Several other US
destroyers sunk
over next months
 Senate repealed
a ban on arming
merchant ships
Japan’s Ambitions in the Pacific
• 1937 – Hideki Tojo (head of
Japanese army) launched a
launched a full-scale invasion of
China
• By 1941, Tojo and Japanese army
had seized all of French, Dutch, and
British colonies in Asia
• US cut off trade with Japan  no oil
• Japan set sights on oil fields in the Dutch
East Indies  inevitable war
Japan’s Aggression
• November 5, 1941 – Tojo ordered the Japanese army to
prepare for an attack on the US
• US broke Japanese secret codes to discover the planned
attack but did not know when or where it would occur  FDR
sent military war warnings to bases in Hawaii, Guam, and the
Philippines
• FDR believed if war was inevitable, then Japan would commit the first
act
• Peace talks went on until December 6, 1941 when the US
decoded a Japanese message instructing the Japanese
diplomats to reject all US peace proposals  “This means
war.” - FDR
Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor
• December 7,1941 – Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
(Oahu Island of Hawaii)
• 1.5 hour attack
• Over 180 aircrafts launched from 6 aircraft carriers
• US could not effectively mount a counterattack – 2,403 Americans killed,
1,178 wounded, 21 ships sunk (8 battleships), over 300 aircraft destroyed
or damaged BUT 3 aircraft carriers were out at sea and were spared.
“It was a mess. I was working on the USS Shaw. It was on a floating dry dock. It was in flames. I started to go down into the
pipe fitter’s ship to get my toolbox when anther wave of Japanese came in. I got under a set of concrete steps at the dry
dock where the battleship Pennsylvania was. An officer came by and asked me to go into the Pennsylvania and try to get
the fires out. A bomb had penetrated the marine deck, and… three decks below. Under that was the magazines:
ammunition, powder, shells. I said, “There ain’t no way I’m gonna go down there.” It could blow up any minute. I was
young and 16. Not stupid.” – John Garcia, Pearl Harbor witness
US Response to Pearl Harbor
• “I never wanted to have to fight this war on two
fronts. We haven’t the Navy to fight in both the
Atlantic and the Pacific… so we will have to build up
the Navy and the Air Force and that will mean that
we will have to take a good many defeats before we
can have a victory.” – FDR during attacks
• “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live
in infamy, [the Japanese launched] an unprovoked
and dastardly attack.” – FDR, address to Congress
Dec. 8, 1941
• Dec. 8, 1941 - Congress approved declaration of
war against Japan  3 days later, Germany and
Italy declared war on US
“Remember Pearl Harbor!”
• 2 front war (Europe and Pacific)  US needed a bigger
military
• Young Americans packed recruiting offices
• Congress expanded the draft – 15M soldiers
• 8 weeks basic training
“The civilian went before the Army doctors, took off his
clothes, feeling silly; jigged, stooped, squatted, wet into a
bottle; became a soldier. He learned how to sleep in the
mud, tie a knot, kill a man. He learned the ache of
loneliness, the ache of exhaustion, the kinship of misery.
He learned that men make the same queasy noises in
the morning, feel the same longings at night; that every
man is alike and that each man is different.” – Sergeant
Debs Myers
Expanding the Military
• George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff
General pushed for the Women’s
Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC),
established 1942
• women volunteers could serve in noncombat
positions with official military status and pay
but few benefits
• Nurses, ambulance drivers, radio operators,
electricians, and pilots – nearly every duty
not involving direct combat
• July 1943, dropped the “auxiliary status” and
granted WACs full US Army benefits
Recruiting and Discrimination
• “Why die for democracy in some foreign country when we don’t
even have it here?” – African American newspaper
• “Just carve on my tombstone, ‘Here lies a black man killed
fighting a yellow man for the protection of white man.’” – African
American upon receiving draft notice
Recruiting and Discrimination
• Despite discrimination in the
military, service found…
• Over 300,000 Mexican
•
•
•
•
Americans
1M African Americans–
segregated units, saw combat
after 1943
13,000 Chinese Americans (1/5
adult males)
33,000 Japanese Americans
(some volunteered to be spies
and interpreters)
25,000 Native Americans
Dorie
Miller
WWII Production
• 1942 – end of automobile production for private
use  many factories produced war time
materials
• plants retooled to manufacture tanks, planes, boats,
and command cars
• Shipyard production skyrocketed using premade
parts that could quickly be assembled by swift,
efficient workers
• By 1944 – despite the draft, nearly 18M workers
in war industry (3x in 1941)
WWII Production
• 6M female workers and 2M
minority workers
• Cheap, effective labor
• paid less than white men for the
same job
Fighting Domestic Discrimination
• NAACP and CORE
(Congress of Racial
Equality) continued to fight
for African Americans
• CORE would protest against
segregation using nonviolent
protests
• 1941 - A. Philip Randolph
organized a march on DC, but
called it off when FDR
publically supported antidiscrimination measures in
the workforce
The Government and the Economy
• As war production increased,
consumer products decreased
 rising prices for consumers
• 1941 executive order - Office of
Price Administration (OPA)
• fought inflation by freezing prices on
most goods
• raised income tax rates (to reduce
demand for consumer goods)
• Encouraged extra money be spent
on war bonds
• Effective - inflation remained below
30% in WWII
The Government and the Economy
• 1942, executive order - War
Productions Board (WPB)
• Ensured constant production of
resources for armed forces
• Set which companies would
convert from peacetime to
wartime production
• Allocated raw materials
• Organized nationwide drives to
collect scrap iron, tin cans,
paper, rags, and cooking fat 
made into war goods
The Government and the Economy
• Rationing – establishing fixed
allotments of goods deemed
essential for the military
• ration books with coupons to be
used for buying scare goods like
meat, shoes, sugar, coffee, and
gasoline
• Carpools established, increased
bicycles
• Hoarding scare goods or buying
on the “black market”
Hollywood Helps Mobilization
• War-oriented propaganda
films
• Glorified new ally USSR –
Why We Fight Series
• Stigmatized Nazis – Hitler,
Beast of Berlin (“hiss and
boo” films)
• Further into the war, movies
returned to romance and
comedy oriented themes as
people need an escape from
war
Mobilization of Scientists
• 1941 – Office of Scientific
Research and
Development (OSRD)
• Improvements in radar and
sonar
• Encouraged pesticides (body
lice)
• Pushed for “miracle drugs,”
ex: penicillin
• ATOMIC BOMB – Manhattan
Project – secret code name
for the project to build an
American nuclear bomb