Download Ch. 24 and 25 World War II

Ch. 24:
World War
Looms
The Rise of Dictators
• The roots of WWII went back to the
end of WWI and the 1920s.
• The Treaty of Versailles had left the
defeated nations bitter.
• In addition, 3 nations – Germany,
Italy, and Japan – felt shut out of the
economic growth of the 1920s.
• They envied Britain and France,
which had overseas colonies.
Colonies gave nations access to raw
materials and customers.
• New leaders in Germany, Japan, and
Italy promised to expand territory and
improve living standards.
• They planned to do this through
aggression – attacks on other nations.
Mussolini
in Italy
• Italian WWI veteran Benito
Mussolini, along with many other
Italians, felt shortchanged in the
peace settlement after the war.
• In 1919 Mussolini banded together
with a group of war veterans to
found the revolutionary Fascist
Party, the first of its kind.
• The term fascism refers to a political
philosophy that values the nation or
race above the individual, and may
apply to any country that operates its
government in this manner.
• The worth of the individual was
replaced by the good of the whole
society.
• In other words, the individual was
there to serve the government.
• During WWII, Italy, Germany, and
Japan were ruled by fascist
governments that wielded absolute
power (totalitarian).
• The fascist powers looked back in
history to their nation’s great and
glorious past – a crucial difference
between them and the communists,
who looked forward to a
transformation of society in the future
• In 1922 Mussolini and his followers,
known as black shirts for the color of
their uniforms, threatened to march on
Rome unless his authority was
recognized.
• King Victor Emmanuel III, who
feared the disruption that could occur,
asked him to share power with him by
becoming Italy’s prime minister.
• Mussolini, calling himself Il Duce
(the leader), painted himself as a
modernizer and a champion of
order and efficiency.
• He challenged Italians to join with
him in rebuilding their shattered
economy and in restoring Italy’s
power in the Mediterranean region.
• Fascists won elections by frightening
people into supporting them.
• Black-shirted gangs roamed the
streets, smashing the offices of
opposing political parties and
breaking up their meetings.
• By late 1923, Mussolini had declared
himself dictator of all of Italy, making
him the western world’s first dictator
since a Roman dictator in the 1300s.
• Many Italians, as well as some
Americans, saw Mussolini as a
model of strength and
determination.
• Once in power, he succeeded in
bringing energy and discipline to
Italian society with a flood of new
government economic and social
programs.
• Under Mussolini, for example,
Italian trains ran on time, and
engineers built 400 bridges and
4,000 miles of roads.
• Mussolini also kept his
promise to restore Italy’s
power in the Mediterranean.
• In Oct. 1935, his armies invaded the
African nation of Ethiopia.
• Ethiopian soldiers on horseback,
armed with outdated guns and spears,
were no match for the bombers and
machine guns of the modern Italian
army.
• By May 1936, Mussolini controlled
Ethiopia.
Hitler in
Germany
• Adolph Hitler had been wounded
and temporarily blinded in WWI.
The War left him feeling enraged
by Germany’s defeat and by the
degrading terms of the Treaty of
Versailles.
• In 1919 Hitler joined the 40member German Workers’ Party.
• With his powerful public speaking,
he soon became a leader in the
growing party.
• In 1920, the group changed its
name to the National Socialistic
German Workers’ Party, more
commonly known as the Nazi
party.
• The Nazi party included a military
organization that eventually
became Hitler’s private army
called the SA, or Brownshirts.
• Hitler introduced the swastika arm
bands to the Nazis. He began
calling himself Der Fuhrer (the
leader).
• In November 1923, by which time
the party’s membership had
swelled to 55,000, Hitler and the
Nazis attempted to seize power in
the city of Munich.
• This effort to overthrow the
Weimar Republic (Germany’s
government) was known as the
Beer Hall Putsch.
• Although many in Munich supported
Hitler, the rebellion was put down
quickly and Hitler was tried and
convicted of high treason, for which
he spent 9 months if jail (where he
was treated very well).
• During this time he began writing an
autobiography entitled Mein Kampf
(My Struggle).
• In Mein Kampf Hitler laid out his
plans to restore German power.
• Hitler blamed Jews, intellectuals, and
Communists for Germany’s decline.
• He also explained Germany’s need for
more land, which he called
Lebensraum (Living Space).
• Mein Kampf became the bible of the
Nazi party.
• Hitler and the Nazis continued
their crusade throughout the
1920s and 1930s.
• Hitler promised to stabilize the
economy, and revive the
German empire that had been
shattered by the war.
• Hitler also said that Jews and
others who were not blond, blueeyed members of what he called
the “Aryan” or Germanic race had
“stabbed Germany in the back” in
WWI.
• The Jews, Hitler said, were to
blame for Germany’s economic
problems.
• The Great Depression was a gift to the
Nazis.
• By 1932 unemployment had reached
44% in Germany. Many of these
desperate people turned to Hitler as
their last hope.
• The Nazis won more votes than any
other party in the 1932 elections, and
Hitler was appointed chancellor
(prime minister) of Germany in 1932.
• Once in power, Hitler quickly
dismantled the Weimar Republic.
• It its place he established the Third
Reich, or Third German Empire.
• In contrast to the first two shortlived German empires, Hitler
predicted that the Third Reich
would last 1,000 years.
• Hitler convinced the Reichstag
(German legislature) to grant him the
power to make laws without its
consent.
• In June 1934, Hitler demanded that
members of the military swear
allegiance to him.
• Shortly thereafter, he declared himself
dictator.
• With all power concentrated in his
hands, Hitler defied the Treaty of
Versailles by rebuilding the German
military.
• In 1936 he took his defiance a step
further and sent troops into Germany’s
Rhineland, putting German soldiers on
the eastern border of France. When
Great Britain and France did not resist
the action, Hitler’s plans grew even
more ambitious.
• Meanwhile, Hitler’s anti-Semitism, or
hatred of the Jews, became official
government policy. He deprived Jews
of their German citizenship and
authorized the destruction of Jewish
property.
• On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi thugs burned
down synagogues (Jewish houses of
worship) and destroyed Jewish
businesses.
• Known as Kristallnacht (“the night of
the broken glass”), the violence
provided a chilling preview of the still
more-terrible fate that awaited
European Jews and others who fell
victims to Hitler’s murderous rule.
• Still, most Americans remained
unwilling to intervene in Germany or
to encourage Jewish immigration.
• Hitler and Mussolini were two
powerful leaders who had dreams of
expanding their borders, and were
building armies mighty enough to
seize new lands at will.
• When these two dictators formed an
alliance in 1936, named the Axis
Powers, fear struck the hearts of many
Europeans, including the soviets
whose communism clashed with
fascism.
Stalin in the
Soviet Union
• In 1922, Joseph Stalin became a
member of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party under Vladimir
Lenin.
• When Lenin, the first leader of the
Soviet Union, died in 1924, Stalin
competed for control of the country.
• By 1929 he was in complete control
of the Soviet Union.
• Stalin focused on creating a
model communist state.
• Stalin launched his massive
drive to make the Soviet Union
a truly socialist country, which
meant stamping out all private
enterprise – especially private
farming.
• He forced Russia’s peasants to give
up their small plots of land to form
large state-owned, or collective farms.
• They were expected to work on the
farms as wage earners.
• Meanwhile, Stalin turned to his
second great goal, the transformation
of the Soviet Union from a backward
rural nation into a great industrial
power.
• By 1939, the Soviet Union had
become the world’s third largest
industrial power, surpassed in overall
production by only the United States
and Germany.
• To accomplish his ambitious goals,
Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a
vast police state -- a state in which no
one was safe from the prying eyes and
ears of Stalin’s spies and secret police
• Anyone even suspected of criticizing
the Soviet leader or his goals was
arrested and shipped off to a forced
labor camp in the frozen wastelands
of Siberia.
• In his drive to purge, or rid, the Soviet
Union of people who disagreed with
the government’s policies, Stalin did
not even spare his most faithful
supporters.
• During the Great Purge of the 1930s,
tens of thousands of Communist Party
officials, bureaucrats, and army
officers were branded “enemies of the
people” and were executed.
• While the final toll will never be
known, historians estimate that Stalin
was responsible for the deaths of 20
million people. Millions more died in
famines caused by the restructuring of
Soviet society.
• The Communists controlled the
Soviet Union from 1918-1991.
• Temporary partner with
Germany at the beginning of
WWII, the Soviet Union would
eventually fight with the Allies
against the Axis powers.
Militarists in
Japan
• As German aggression threatened
Europe, Japanese expansion
loomed in Asia.
• Although Japan had moved toward
democracy in the 1920s, the
leaders of Japan’s military forces
remained independent of the
government.
• These military men wanted to lessen
Japan’s reliance on foreign imports, to
reduce the influence of Western
countries in Asia, and to promote
Japanese expansion throughout Asia.
• The creation of a Japanese empire in
Asia would give Japan direct control
over territories that produced rubber,
petroleum, iron, and timber.
• Worsening conditions in Japan caused
by the world-wide Depression
strengthened the appeal of the
militarists.
• Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria
signaled its imperial ambitions.
• In 1934 and 1935, breaking their
Washington Naval Conference
pledges, the Japanese began a rapid
naval buildup.
• On July 7, 1937, Japanese and
Chinese troops clashed near Beijing
(Peking). This incident soon
developed into a full-scale war.
• Japan occupied northern China and
launched devastating bombing raids
against Chinese cities.
• Although the League of Nations and
the U.S. condemned Japan’s actions,
they failed to stop Japanese expansion
• Meanwhile, Japan’s war against
China continued.
• The Japanese were also threatening to
invade European colonies in Asia.
• FDR tried to warn Japan by cutting
back trade with it.
• In Sept. 1940, Japan allied with the
Axis powers (Germany and Italy).
This relationship became known as
the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.
• In July 1941, the Japanese military
occupied French Indochina (Vietnam)
• FDR responded by “freezing”
(holding) all Japanese investments
and property in the United States.
• He also cut off oil shipments to Japan.
Japan had no oil of its own. Without
imported oil, Japan’s economy would
collapse.
• The military leader who controlled the
Japanese government at the time of
WWII was General Hideki Tojo.
• Tojo’s title was first minister of the
divine emperor of Japan – Emperor
Hirohito.
• The Tojo government began to plan
an attack on the Dutch East Indies (a
source of oil), British Malaya, and the
Philippine Islands.
• The Philippines were at that time still
an American possession.
• Tojo knew that if Japan attacked the
Philippines, the U.S. would declare
war against Japan.
• To ensure victory, Japanese leaders
decided to cripple the U.S. Navy in a
giant, preemptive attack.
• They planned to destroy the huge
navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Franco in
Spain
• In 1931 a parliamentary
government under a democratic
constitution replaced the Spanish
monarchy.
• Led by Spanish army General
Francisco Franco, conservative
and pro-monarchy rebel troops
attempted to overthrow the new
Spanish government in 1936.
• The fighting that ensued became
known as the Spanish Civil War, a war
that quickly grew into an international
struggle.
• Because Franco, like Mussolini,
strongly opposed communism,
Mussolini felt compelled to aid
Franco’s cause. He sent airplanes and
thousands of soldiers from the Italian
Army. Hitler also sent Franco bombers
and troops.
• On the other side, the Soviet Union
supported the Republicans who
fought for the elected government.
• Though the governments of Great
Britain, France, and the United
States were officially neutral,
many citizens in these countries
backed the Republicans.
• Some 3,000 Americans who opposed
Franco’s political stance formed the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought in
Spain for the Republican cause. Many
were far-left supporters of Stalin.
• Some of the Americans who
volunteered feared that if Germany and
Italy could come to the aid of Franco
and overturn a democracy in Spain,
France would be next.
• By 1939, Franco’s forces had
prevailed in the Spanish Civil War
and Spain became fascist.
• At the beginning of WWII, Spain
was friendly toward the Axis
powers, but later would lean
toward the Allies.
• Franco’s official position was one
of neutrality.
American
Isolation and
Neutrality
• The suffering the Great Depression
caused convinced most people in
the United States that their top
priority lay at home, not overseas.
• The enormous cost of victory in
WWI – both in money and in lives
– convinced many that the nation
should stay out of Europe’s
troubles.
• They had fought to make the world
safe for democracy, but questioned
later whether their actions had made
any difference at all.
• Many Americans wanted to follow a
policy of isolationism.
• Many believed that the people who
benefited most from WWI were the
arms manufacturers, called by some
critics the “Merchants of Death.”
• Keeping with public sentiment,
FDR’s foreign policy concentrated
at first on making the U.S. a “good
neighbor” in the western
hemisphere.
• At his inauguration in 1933, he
announced the Good Neighbor
Policy. This policy supported the
idea of nonintervention among
nations.
• FDR pledged that the U.S.
would not interfere in the
internal affairs of Latin
American neighbors.
• Events in Italy and Germany,
however, would soon make it
impossible for the U.S. to avoid
intervention in Europe.
• Congress responded to isolationist
sentiment in the 1930s by passing a
series of three Neutrality Laws.
• Taken together, these laws declared
that the U.S. would withhold weapons
and loans from all countries at war
and would sell other goods to warring
powers only if they paid cash and
picked up the goods themselves, a
policy known as “cash and carry.”
• By 1937 FDR had become
convinced that the U.S. must resist
aggression.
• In October, he gave what became
known as the Quarantine Speech,
in which he urged other countries
to quarantine, or isolate, aggressor
countries.
• Most Americans, however, were
not yet ready to accept U.S.
involvement in the quarantine.
• Even in early 1941, a Gallup
poll revealed that 88 percent of
the American people still
opposed entering the war.
The European
War
Austria
• One of Hitler’s goals was to bring
all the German speaking peoples in
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and
Poland under his rule.
• He first turned his attention to
Austria.
• When Hitler moved his army to the
Austrian border, the Austrian
president resigned rather than face
Hitler’s massive modern army.
• In April 1938, Austria was officially
incorporated into the German Reich.
• Hitler called this union of Germany
and Austria Anschluss.
• Britain and France did nothing.
Czechoslovakia
• Along the border with
Germany, a section of
Czechoslovakia called the
Sudetenland was home to
many Germans. Hitler insisted
that these Germans should be
in the German Empire.
• Worried that war was about to break
out, Neville Chamberlain, prime
minister of England, and Edouard
Daladier, French premier, met with
Hitler and Mussolini at Munich,
Germany, in Sept. 1938.
• Chamberlain returned to cheering
crowds in England waving a copy of
the agreement and saying that there
would be “peace in our time.”
• Promising that the Sudetenland was
the only part of Czechoslovakia that
he wanted, the British and French
leaders had given into his demands.
• This represented a dangerous policy
of appeasement (giving in to the
demands of an aggressor).
• Hitler was not satisfied with just the
Sudetenland. All of Czechoslovakia
was taken by March 1939.
• Not all British politicians agreed
with appeasement.
• Winston Churchill, who would
soon replace Chamberlain as prime
minister, remarked, “Britain and
France had to choose between war
and dishonor. Those chose
dishonor. They will have war.”
Hitler-Stalin
Pact
• Even though they were political
enemies, Hitler and Stalin signed a
non-aggression pact on August 23,
1939, in which they agreed not to fight
each other.
• They also agreed to divide Poland
between them.
• Some historians believe that Stalin was
trying to stall for time so that he could
prepare his military to fight Hitler’s.
The German
Offensive Begins
War in Poland and Finland
• The Polish army was no match for the
combined air and ground forces of
Germany that invaded Poland on
Sept. 1, 1939 (this marks the
beginning of WWII).
• This blitzkrieg, or lightning war,
enabled the Germans, with some help
from the Soviets, to control Poland in
less than a month.
• Britain and France declared war on
Germany on Sept. 3, but were
unable to send troops to Poland.
• Stalin used this opportunity to
expand the borders of the Soviet
Union, seizing the three Baltic
nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia with little effort.
• The Soviet Union then attacked
Finland, which resisted for three
months in a fierce winter.
• Stalin seemed to be trying to
establish a buffer zone on land
in case of the expected war with
Germany.
Blitzkrieg in Western
Europe
• Following the defeat of Poland, there
was a period in the winter of 1939-40
of no fighting.
• Some referred to the situation as the
“phony war.” Others called it the
Sitzkrieg, or sit down war.
• The situation did not last long. In April
1940, Germany captured Denmark and
Norway.
• By the end of May 1940, Holland and
Belgium also fell under Hitler’s control.
• In England, Churchill replaced
Chamberlain as prime minister as the
English prepared to help France, which
was expecting a German invasion.
• In May 1940, Churchill told
the British people, “We shall
defend our island, whatever
the cost may be. We shall fight
on the landing grounds; we
shall fight in the fields and in
the streets; we shall fight in the
hills. We shall never
surrender.”
• Before the war, France had built the
massive fortifications of the Maginot
Line on its border with Germany.
• With the invasion of Belgium,
however, Germany threatened to
bypass the defenses.
• French and British troops were sent
north into Belgium to stop the
German advance.
• Hitler had anticipated this move and
sent his tanks slicing through the
Ardennes Forrest, a region of wooded
ravines in northeast France that the
Allies thought was impassable.
• The Germans then turned on the
Allied troops, forcing them to retreat
to the shores of the English Channel
at Dunkirk in northern France.
• Using any type of ship that would
float, the Allies were able to
evacuate over 300,000 troops
(became known as the “miracle at
Dunkirk”).
• The Germans entered Paris on
June 13, 1940. France had been
defeated in 6 weeks.
• During WWII, France had 3
governments.
• 1)Germany occupied northern France
and ran the government directly.
• 2)In the south of France, a puppet
government was set up at Vichy.
• 3)Charles de Gaulle fled to England,
where he set up a government-inexile, called the Free French.
• From London, de Gaulle broadcast
radio reports that encouraged the
French underground to resist
German control.
• These resistance fighters risked
their lives to sabotage
transportation and communication
equipment needed by the Germans.
The Battle of
Britain
• In the summer of 1940, Germany
began Operation Sea Lion, the
proposed invasion of England.
• First, the German air force, the
Luftwaffe, would have to control
the air routes over the English
Channel.
• The Germans sent a steady stream
of planes to hit targets in England.
• A series of nighttime attacks were
known as the London Blitz.
• Churchill said to the English citizens,
“I have nothing to offer [you] but
blood, tears, and sweat.”
• In spite of fewer planes and pilots, the
British air force, the Royal Air Force
(RAF), managed to neutralize the
Luftwaffe.
• The British also had radar to detect
incoming planes.
• In addition, the British had broken
the German code and knew the
location of some of the planned
targets.
• By the autumn of 1940, the
Germans recognized that they
could not win control of the air.
• Hitler postponed Operation
Sea Lion.
• Churchill in praise of the
RAF said, “Never in the
field of human conflict was
so much owed by so many
to so few.”
The Holocaust
• The Holocaust was the systematic
murder of over 11 million people
across Europe. It has been
estimated that about 6 million of
these were Jews.
• When Germany first started
persecuting the Jews, many started
to flee Germany.
• The Nazis were in favor of this,
but many nations were not
willing to accept the Jewish
refugees.
• Some refugees, including Albert
Einstein, were allowed to come
to the United States. Others
were turned back.
• By 1939, the Nazis adopted the “final
solution to the Jewish problem.” Jews
and, in the words of the Nazis, other
“subhumans” were sent to
concentration camps, where the
healthy ones were forced to work and
the others were killed.
• This amounted to an attempt at
genocide, the deliberate and
systematic killing of an entire people.
• By 1941 the Nazis, led by the SS
(Security Staff), the black-shirted
private guard of Hitler, and the
Gestapo, his secret police force,
were sending thousands of the
prisoners every day to gas
chambers in six death camps in
Poland, of which Auschwitz was
the largest.
• As the decaying bodies in mass
graves gave off a stench that could
be smelled for miles and left
evidence of their slaughter, the
Nazis installed huge crematoriums,
or ovens, in which to burn the dead.
• Various other experiments were
conducted on prisoners as well.
United States’
Draft
• Roosevelt asked Congress to increase
spending for national defense.
• After years of isolation, the United
States was militarily weak.
• Congress passed the nation’s first
peacetime military draft in 1940.
• By the end of the war, 10 million men
had been drafted and another 6
million men and women had enlisted
voluntarily.
Election of
1940
• FDR was elected to a third
term in 1940.
• He became the first and
only United States
President to break George
Washington’s unwritten
two-term precedent.
Aid From the
United States
• Roosevelt told the American people in
a fireside chat that the U.S. “must
become the great arsenal of
democracy.”
• In January 1941, he gave his Four
Freedoms speech, stating that the U.S.
was fighting for freedom “of speech
and religion, and freedom from want
and fear.”
• In March 1941, the U.S.
Congress passed the LendLease Act, under which
massive supplies of arms could
be shipped to Britain on credit.
• In all, the United States
eventually spent $50 billion
under the act.
Battle of the
Atlantic
• Because German U-boats, in swarms
called wolf packs, were sinking ships
loaded with war materials from the
United States, the U.S. occupied
Greenland with air and naval bases,
which would provide protection for
allied ships in the North Atlantic.
• This struggle for control of the North
Atlantic shipping lanes is known as
the Battle of the Atlantic.
Atlantic
Charter
• In August 1941 Roosevelt and
Churchill met on a yacht off the coast
of Newfoundland. Churchill was
hoping for a military commitment
from the United States.
• Instead they agreed on why the allies
were fighting the war (even before the
U.S. eventually entered the war).
• The Atlantic Charter made the
following statements of purpose:
The principles shared by
Churchill and FDR
become known as the
Atlantic Charter and
would serve as the basis
for the creation of the
United Nations
following the war.
• 1) the Allies wanted no new territory
• 2) they wanted to guarantee the right
of people to choose their own leaders
• 3) they wanted to guarantee free trade
among people
• 4) they wanted to organize a system
of international cooperation
• 5) they wanted some type of arms
control
• FDR and Churchill’s shared
principles that they outlined in
the Atlantic Charter later
served as the foundation for
the establishment of the
international organization we
know today as the United
Nations.
The
Undeclared
War
• In Sept. 1941, the United States
destroyer Greer was attacked by a
German U-boat off the coast of
Iceland.
• Afterward, Roosevelt ordered the
U.S. convoys to escort British
ships across the Atlantic and to
“shoot on sight” any German
submarines spotted.
• In Oct. 1941, the Germans sank the
U.S. destroyer Reuben James, killing
over 100 sailors.
• The U.S. then engaged in an
undeclared naval war with Germany.
• FDR knew that it would take
something more dramatic than
German attacks on U.S. ships would
be needed to persuade Congress to
declare war.
Attack on Pearl
Harbor
• United States experts had broken the
Japanese code but were expecting an
attack against either British or Dutch
possessions in the Pacific.
• In spite of new radar equipment, Pearl
Harbor was taken completely by
surprise.
• The commanders at Pearl Harbor had
taken precautions only against
sabotage by Japanese secret agents in
Hawaii.
• From 7:55 to 10:00 a.m. on Sunday,
December 7, 1941, the Japanese
destroyed most of the U.S. Pacific
fleet (the aircraft carriers were spared
because they were out to sea).
• It was the worst defeat in U.S. history.
• The Japanese hoped to handicap the
U.S. militarily. They wanted to
conquer most of the Pacific territories
before the U.S. could recover.
• After the news spread, the high
numbers of Americans opposing
American involvement disappeared.
Most Americans enthusiastically
supported war.
• President Roosevelt asked for a
declaration of war on December 8,
1941.
• He referred to Dec. 7, 1941, as “a date
which will live in infamy.”
• Immediately, Germany and Italy
declared war on the United States.
• The U.S. was now faced with a war in
Europe and in the Pacific.
• The plan of attack focused on trying to
win in Europe first because Hitler was
considered a greater threat than the
Japanese.
• As a result, the American effort
suffered in the Pacific during the first
year of the war.
Pearl Harbor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ozaPhOy7ilE
Battle of the Atlantic
http://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=RMiXJuJkpTA
Ch. 25: The
United States
in WWII
Mobilization on the Home
Front
• Of the some 15 million members of
the armed services during WWII,
about 2/3 were draftees and the rest
volunteers, including more than
300,000 women.
• Women were incorporated into all
branches of the armed services.
• Women did not serve in combat roles.
They worked as nurses, did office
work, and ferried planes in order to
free men for active duty.
• While most women military personnel
served on the home front, women in
the Army Nurse Corps and the Navy
Nurse Corps tended wounded soldiers
overseas.
• At the beginning of WWII, fewer than
5,000 African Americans were in the
armed services. Not more than a dozen
were officers.
• In 1941, the Tuskegee Institute became
a training base for African American
flyers.
• The Tuskegee Airmen earned a good
reputation because of their success in
escorting all-white bomber crews over
Europe during the war.
• The success of of African American
units like the Tuskegee Airmen led
more people to accept the idea of
African Americans in the armed
services.
• By the end of WWII, 1 million
African American men and women
had served. Six thousand of these
were officers.
• Despite this massive improvement in
opportunities for blacks in the
military, they still faced
discrimination.
• They served in segregated units in the
army and were barred from serving in
the Army Air Corps and the marines.
• Of the 4,000 African Americans in the
navy in 1940, most were mess
attendants.
• Other minority groups also enlisted.
Nearly 350,000 Hispanic Americans
served, suffering many of the same
kinds of discrimination as African
Americans.
• Hispanics were the most decorated of
American ethnic groups, while the
Japanese American 442nd Regiment
was the most decorated unit.
• Japanese American soldiers fought
loyally during the war in spite of the
severe discrimination suffered by their
families back home.
• Many Native Americans also joined
the war effort. One group of Navajo
became part of the Marine Signal
Corps. These Navajo “code talkers”
outwitted the Japanese by sending
messages in a code based on the
Navajo language.
War Effort at
Home
• Private industry, directed by the
government’s War Production
Board, turned the U.S. into the
“arsenal of democracy” that FDR
had spoken of.
• Automobile factories made planes
and tanks. Pencil-makers turned
out bomb parts. Shipyards and
defense plants expanded.
• The shipyards produced
“liberty ships”needed to win
the Battle of the Atlantic with
amazing speed. A shipyard
could build a warship in 6
weeks.
• Planes were produced at a rate
of 10,000 per month.
• About 18 million workers kept these
war industries going.
• Some 6 million new factory workers
were women. Many former
housewives worked in factories,
shipyards, offices or wherever they
were needed.
• Ads and a popular song promoted
“Rosie the Riveter,” the symbol of
patriotic women defense workers.
• The government hired scientists to
develop new weapons and medicines.
• They made improvements in radar
and sonar; and in “miracle drugs” like
penicillin.
• On the advice of Albert Einstein, the
government set up the Manhattan
Project to research and develop the
atomic bomb.
• Even Hollywood contributed to the
war effort with patriotic films.
• They also made escapist romances
and comedies that Americans flocked
to to forget about the dangers faced by
their loved ones overseas.
• As the public hunger for news of the
war increased, magazines and radio
became more popular.
Japanese
Internment
• The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
created anger toward Japanese
Americans, most of whom lived in
California, Oregon, and Washington.
• In early 1942, FDR signed an order
calling for Japanese Americans to be
moved away from the Pacific Coast.
• 112,000 Japanese Americans were
rounded up by the government and
placed in internment camps far from
the coast.
• They were essentially prisoners.
• About 2/3 of those interned were
Nisei, or Japanese Americans who
had been born in the United States
and were thus American citizens.
• No one ever found evidence of
disloyalty among Japanese
Americans.
Shortages
• Since most resources were going to
the armed services, Americans
sometimes had to do without.
• For example, no automobiles were
made between 1942 and 1945.
• Gasoline was also in short supply.
This meant the end of Sunday drives
and long car trips. Carpooling
increased, and trains and buses were
always crowded.
• To divide goods fairly, the
government set up a system of
rationing. Rationing means to give a
fixed amount of something.
• Every family got ration books of
stamps.
• Every time people bought such items
as gasoline, tires, shoes, meat and
sugar, they gave up a number of
stamps.
• To help the war effort, people
saved kitchen grease, scrap metal,
and rubber. Grease could be used
in making explosives. Scrap metal
and rubber were reused by war
industries.
• A common slogan of the day was:
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do,
or do without!”
The Wartime
Economy
• Defense jobs gave Americans the
money to buy goods they had been
unable to buy during the Depression.
• Yet because of the war, there were
few goods to buy.
• The result was inflation (an increase
in prices).
• The government started an Office of
Price Administration (OPA) to hold
down prices.
• The OPA set limits on prices for
items in short supply.
• Since housing too was scarce,
limits were also placed on rents.
• To help pay for the war, the
government raised income taxes. It
extended the tax to more people
and started the payroll deduction
plan.
• Under this plan, income taxes were
deducted (taken out) from a person’s
paycheck. This was easier for people
than paying all their taxes at once
each year.
• Another way the government paid for
the war was by selling war bonds.
• The bonds were a kind of loan that the
government promised to repay with
interest.
• Movie stars traveled across the
country to appear in war bond drives.
• These were huge rallies where the
stars urged people to show their
patriotism by buying bonds.
• Americans bought billions of dollars
worth of bonds. It was a powerful
expression of their support for the
drive to victory.
Wartime
Propaganda
http://www.history.com/shows/w
wii-in-hd/interactives/insidewwii-interactive
The
European
Theater
• June 22: Hitler invades the
Soviet Union, blitzing into
the Soviet Union and
capturing many Russian
prisoners. As the winter of
1941-42 begins, both
armies are stalemated near
Moscow.
•Dec. 11, 1941 - After the
US declares war on
Japan following Pearl
Harbor, Italy and
Germany declare war on
the US.
• Jan. 26 - For the first time since
the end of WWI, US troops arrive
in Europe, landing in Northern
Ireland.
• Aug. 22 - The Battle of Stalingrad
begins. This courageous Russian
stand costs hundreds of thousands
of lives on both sides.
• Nov. 25 - The 3-month siege
of Stalingrad turns against the
Germans, who are eventually
surrounded. The Russian
victory marks the end of the
German offensive in Russia,
and Germany begins its retreat
from the Eastern Front.
• Feb. 14-25 (N. Africa) - Rommel, the
Desert Fox, defeats US forces in
Tunisia. US troops regroup under the
new command of George S. Patton and
stop Rommel’s drive. They link up
with British forces and chase Rommel
from Egypt.
• May 7 - US and British forces force
the surrender of all German and Italian
troops in N. Africa.
• July 10 - The Invasion of Sicily
begins. Allied forces under the
command of Dwight D. Eisenhower
will capture the strategic island by
August 17.
• July 19 - Allies begin a massive
bombing attack against Rome and
surrounding areas.
• Sept. - Italy secretly surrenders to the
Allies.
• Jan. 22 - The invasion of Anzio
begins. The Allied forces hit this
coastal town near Rome in an
attempt to encircle German forces,
but get pinned down on the
beaches of “Bloody Anzio.”
• March - 600 US bombers make
their first raids on Berlin.
• May - Americans trapped at Anzio
break through and begin driving
towards Rome, arriving on June 4.
• June 6 - D-Day. The Allied invasion of
Europe, code-named Operation
Overlord, commences just after
midnight. The largest invasion force in
history, it includes 4,000 invasion ships,
600 warships, 10,000 planes, and
175,000 troops.
http://www.history.com/shows/ame
rica-the-story-ofus/videos/playlists/exclusivevideo#d-day-invasion
• June - On D-Day, the Allies were able
to force the Germans backward despite
heavy losses. Soon 1,000,000 Allied
troops are in Europe.
• June 13 - Germany launches the
world’s first guided missile, the V-1,
across the English Channel at London.
• July 20 - Hitler escapes an
assassination attempt and executes the
conspirators.
• Aug. 25 - Paris is retaken by the Allies.
• Sept. 12 - The second generation
German guided missile, or V-2, which
is the first modern rocket, is launched
across the Channel.
• Dec. 16 - The Battle of the Bulge
begins. In the last major German
counteroffensive, Allied troops are
pushed back in Belgium’s Ardennes
Forest. The Germans are eventually
pushed back and forced to retreat.
• Feb. - Dresden, a city of little strategic
value, is firebombed by US planes,
killing more than 100,000 Germans.
• Feb. 4-11 - Churchill, Stalin, and
Roosevelt meet at Yalta. They agree to
create the United Nations after the war.
• March 7 - US forces cross the Rhine
River, and by the end of the month, all
German forces have been pushed back
into Germany.
• April 12 - FDR dies of a cerebral
hemorrhage. VP Harry S. Truman is
sworn in as President.
• April 25 - US troops halt at the Elbe
River in Germany, where they meet
Russian troops who had been advancing
from the east.
• April 30 - With Russian shells falling on
Berlin, Hitler marries his mistress Eva
Braun, poisons her, and shoots himself.
• May 7 - The Germans
formally surrender to General
Eisenhower in France, and to
the Soviet Union in Berlin.
President Truman pronounces
the following day VE Day, for
victory in Europe.
The Pacific
Theater
• Dec. 7 - Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor.
• Dec. 17 - Admiral Chester Nimitz
is given command of the Pacific
Fleet.
• Dec. 23 - Japanese take Wake
Island, a US possession in the
North Pacific.
• Jan. 2 - Japan takes the
Philippines as General
Douglas MacArthur retreats to
Corregidor in Manilla Bay.
• March - MacArthur leaves the
Philippines for Australia,
vowing, “I shall return.”
• April - 75,000 US and Filipino troops
surrender to overwhelming Japanese
forces. It is the largest US surrender
in history. The captives are marched
over 100 miles in the infamous
“Bataan Death March,” during which
thousands of prisoners are executed or
die of starvation or thirst before they
reach the Japanese prison camps.
• April 18 - Led by Major General James
Doolittle, US bombers raid Tokyo and
other Japanese cities.
• May 4-8 - The Battle of the Coral Sea.
Off the coast of New Guinea, US Navy
planes severely damage a Japanese fleet,
forestalling a Japanese invasion of
Australia. Ships do not engage each other
in battle; all fighting is carried out by
carrier-launched planes.
• June 3-6 - The Battle of
Midway. The US Navy wins
another crucial battle in the
Pacific war. The Japanese naval
advantage is eliminated. At this
point in the war, Japan controls
an enormous amount of territory
representing 10% of the Earth’s
surface.
• Aug. 7 - In the first US offensive of
the war, marines land on
Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
It is the beginning of an offensive
aimed at dislodging the Japanese
from islands that will provide
stepping-stones for an eventual
invasion of Japan. This is known as
the island-hopping strategy.
• Nov. 12-15 - In the naval
battle of Guadalcanal, the US
fleet under Admiral William
Halsey destroys a Japanese
fleet, sinking 28 warships and
transports rendering the
Japanese unable to reinforce
their troops on Guadalcanal.
•Nov. 20 - The Battle of
Tarawa. US forces take
the tiny island of Tarawa
and the airstrip located
on that island.
• Jan. 31 - After taking control
of the airstrip at Tarawa, the
US amphibious invasion
force under Admiral Nimitz
continues its step-by-step
sweep into the North Pacific
with an invasion of the
Marshall Islands.
• Feb. 9 - US Marines take
control of Guadalcanal after
months of savage combat in
which they have been cut
off from supplies and were
reduced to eating roots.
•June - US troops begin
an offensive on the
Marianas -- Saipan,
Guam, and Tinian, all of
which are secured at
high costs.
• Oct. 20 - General MacArthur wades
ashore at Leyte Island in the
Philippines, fulfilling his promise to
return. Three days later, the Battle of
Leyte Gulf results in a major Japanese
naval defeat.The Japanese now begin
to resort to the infamous kamikaze
attacks, which will result in the loss of
some 400 ships and nearly 10,000
American seamen.
•Feb. - A month-long
siege in the
Philippines ends with
US troops retaking
Manila.
• March - Iwo Jima. A month-long
struggle for this rocky, 8-squaremile volcanic island comes to an
end. The famous image of six
marines -- 3 of whom never make it
off the island -- raising the flag atop
Mt. Suribachi becomes an
American icon of the day.
• April 1 - US troops invade
Okinawa on Easter Sunday. The
fight will last 3 months and become
the bloodiest battle of the Pacific,
costing the US 80,000 casualties.
• June 21 - Okinawa falls. The
Japanese have lost 160,000 soldiers
attempting to defend the island.
• July 16 - (Home front) The first
atomic bomb is successfully
detonated in a secret test at
Alamagordo, New Mexico, the fruits
of the top-secret Manhattan Project
begun in 1943 by FDR and continued
under Truman. Robert Oppenheimer,
the lead scientist of the project, states
privately that “The world is forever
changed.”
http://www.history.com/shows/w
wii-in-hd/interactives/insidewwii-interactive
http://www.history.com/shows/ame
rica-the-story-ofus/videos/playlists/exclusivevideo#manhattan-project
• Aug. 6 - The US B-29 Enola Gay
drops the atomic bomb on the
Japanese industrial city of
Hiroshima. The destructive capacity
of this now-primitive weapon levels
the city, killing 80,000 immediately,
seriously injuring another 100,000,
and leveling 98% of the city’s
buildings.
• Aug. 9 - A second atomic bomb is
dropped on Nagasaki, with similar
results. Stalin declares war on Japan
and invades Manchuria.
• Aug. 14 - Fighting ends in the Far
East. Three days later the Allies
divide Korea along the 38th parallel,
with Soviet troops occupying the
north and US troops occupying the
south.
• Sept. 2 - General MacArthur,
named Supreme Commander of
Allied Powers in Japan, accepts
the formal, unconditional
surrender of Japan aboard the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
MacArthur heads an occupation
government designed at rebuilding
and democratizing Japan.
The Price of War
• Casualties: 7.5 million
Russian, 3.5 million Germans,
1.2 million Japanese, 2.2
million Chinese.
• US casualties: 300,000 dead,
700,000 wounded.