Chapter 25-26: The Global Crisis (1921-1941)

Era of Isolationism

• post WW1

• economic policies: not isolationist

• military intervention: isolationist

• Sec of State Charles Evans Hughes (Harding Admin): key figure in negotiating peace treaties after WW1

Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1921

• focused on decrease tensions between nations engaged in naval arms race (GB, US, and Japna)

• 5-power act: halting construction of battleships for ten years + protect the open door policy in china

The Kellog-Briand Act

• 1928

• 14 nations outlaw war as a policy

• condemn militarism

• no mechanism of enforcement

The Dawes Plan

• offered Germany substantial loans from American Banks

  • circular loans: money loaned to germany used to pay reparations to GB and France in turn owed the US debt

• reduced amount of reperations

• plan to promote financial stability

• Charles G. Dawes: won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts

Fordrey-McCumber Act of 1822

• republican tariffs

• added to debt problem because other nations struggled to make money needed to pay them

Economic Expansion in Latin America

• US investment in Latin American more than doubled between 1924 and 1929

• American corps invested in infrastructure to weaken appeal of revolutionary forces and increase access to Latin America’s riches

• loans given to Latin American countries - could not pay off loans due to tariffs

• Accusations of American Imperialism: rising resentment of American business and military presence

Hoover and the World Crisis

• world financial crisis that began in 1929 produced nationalism that threatened the weak international agreements

• Hoover promised to recognize new Latin American govs if any older govs collapses

• removed troops from Haiti - backing off from Roosevelt Corrolary

• Refused to forgive debts owed by nations - upholding policies of republican predecessors

Rise of Fascism

• 1929: Mussolini solidifies power in Italy

• 1933: Hitler solidifies power in Germany

• fascism spreading in Europe

Japanese imperialism

• Japan invades Manchuria and later mainland China: Sino-Japanese War

• Hoover warns Japan to stop aggression but does not implement any sanctions cus US was the main supplier of oil to japan

Depression Diplomacy

• FDR’s “Bombshell”

  • US repudiates currency stabilization (international gold standard)

  • end to reciprocal loan system: forbid American banks to give loans to any nations in default on its debt

  • every nation (except finland) stop paying their debts

• Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act (1934): lowered tariffs and advanced principles of free trade; increased American exports by 40%

America and the Soviet Union

• 1933: FDR recognize the SU in hopes of increasing trade between two countries

• relations sour when US stayed neutral in the face of Japanese aggression: the USSR had interests in Manchuria

The Good Neighbor Policy

• Inter-American Conference: worked to expand Hoover initiatives in Latin America

• focused on free trade and not to intervene in affairs of Latin America

• Decreased military force but used economic influence to grow american dominance

The Rise of Isolationism

• majority of americans want to focus on domestic issues of GD + remembered horrors of WW1: emboldened isolationism

• Disarmament agreements, league of nations, and treaty of versailles fail - increased international tension

• Italy invades Ethiopia - pleads for help, gets none

• Neutral state of US, GB, and France assured fascist victory in Spanish Civil War

"Quarantine” Speech

• unpopular speech by FDR

• said aggressive nations should be prevented from spreading war - american intervention may be inevitable

Neutrality Acts

• The Neutrality Act 1935: imposed embargo on arms trading w/ countries at war, declared Americans traveling on ships of belligerent nations at their own risk

• 1936: expaned to ban loans to belligerents

• 1937: adopted “cash-and-carry” provision: could purchase non war supplies for immediate cash payment; foreign nation would have to transport goods

Hitler’s Aggression

• Hitler took back the Rhineland (remilitarizes it) and in 1938 marched into Austria (Anschluss) and demanded Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland

Munich Conference

• 1938

• GB and France try to appease Hitler by recognizing Germany’s newly acquired lands in return for a promise to stop aggression

• supported by FDR but vocally opposed by Winston Churchill

Failure of “Appeasement”

• 1939 Hitler makes a non-aggression pact with SU

• invades czechoslovakia and poland (Sep 1st 1939)

• GB and France declare war and US declares neutrality

Move towards Intervention

• Cash-and Carry ammended in 1939 to allow for sale of armaments

• Phony War: months pass before military action will take place in 1940

• Fall of France: 1940 - shifting public opinion: Germany now seen as a threat to US

• still maintain neutrality

• England is last democracy fighting nazis

Calls for Isolation

• American First Committee: large proportion of the Republican party that urged isolationism

• Gerald P. Nye: senator from North Dakota, headed a congressional investigation into the profits of munitions makers during WW1: “merchants of death”

Election of 1940

• Republican Candidate: Wendell Willkie

• FDR won easily

Lend Lease Act

• allowed sale and lending of armaments to GB

• used navy to patrol atlantic for subs to protect US ship carrying goods to GB

• abandoned cash and carry

Burke Wadsworth Act

• 1940

• aka the Selective Training and Service Act

• first peacetime draft in US history

Consolidation of the Allied powers

• GB and US create the Atlantic Charter in 1941 tying the nations together in an effort to stop Nazi’s

  • US supplied materials not troops

• Germany invaded USSR: US extends lend-lease to Soviets

• informal naval engagements between US merchant ships and Nazi uboat

Four Freedoms Speech

• FDR highlights the peril we face through inaction

• 4 freedoms: speech, worship, from want, and from fear

Japanese aggression

• Japanese military advances in China - upset balance of political and economic power: Roosevelt suggested that aggressors be “quarantined”

• Japan signs Tri-Partite Pact w/ Germany and Italy in 1940: creates the axis powers

• Japan occupies part of French Indochina, Roosevelt retaliated w/ trade restrictions and embargoes on aviation fuel and scrap metal - escalated also to include oil shipment

The US enters the war

• Dec 7, 1941: Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor

• Day of Infamy Speech: FDR addresses congress and asks for a declaration of war

• Congress voted to declare war on Japan - Germany and Italy declare war on US and US subsequently declare war on them

First years of the war

• After Peal Harbor, America was psychologically ready for war - unity of opinion

• US surrenders the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island

• Dark times: faltering allies (SU and GB) + mounting losses in the pacific

The Silent Service

• US submarines

• go after cargo ships to cut off Japan’s supplies

• the offense and defense in the Pacific while fleet is repaired at Pearl Harbor

Island Hopping Campaign

• General MacArthur launches offensive from south - plan to take one island at the time

• Island hopping campaign: main US strategy for the pacific

• Admiral Nimitz will move from Hawaii to West

Battle of the Coral Sea

• first aerial battle where all aircraft launch from carriers

• carriers vs. carriers

• US stops Japanese aggression toward Australia

Midway

• turning point battle for the Pacific front

• last offensive of the Japanese

• US code breakers discover Japanese offensive

• Japanese lose 4 carriers, US loses one (USS Yorktown)

Guadalcanal

• first significant victory in US island-hopping strategy

• gets us a foothold in the pacific

Stalingrad

• Hitler turns on Stalin and invades USSR

• orders attack on Stalingrad simply b/c of the name of the town and the Caucasus Oil Fields

• winter settled in

• lost more than 1 Million Germans - turning point battle in the European theater

Dispute over the Second Front

• Stalin demands US and UK invade France

• FDR waits: decides the battle in North Africa and the invasion and defeat of Italy need to happen first

• Soviets angered over decision: believe would make soviets take brunt of attack

• postponed invasion of France for over a year

Collapse of Mussolini

• southern invasion led to collapse of fascists in italy

• ties up eight german divisions to fight south of rome later pushed north of rome

• Battle of Monte Cassino

The Holocaust

• as early as 1942: Washington had evidence that Hitler’s forces were rounding up Jews and non-Jewish poles, gypsies, queer people, and communists and murdering them

• The US refused to let Jews enter the US: 90% of the available quota remained unused

  • anti-semitism

  • Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long of the State Department blocked entry

• calls to bomb railway lines as well as the infrastructure of the concentration camps (denied by the War Department)

• believed the way to stop the holocaust was not w/ direct intervention but to defeat the nazis on the battlefield

Economic Prosperity

• war-induced economic recovery: ended great depression

• # of employed civilians by gov increased 4-fold

• volunteer business executives lead government agencies: “dollar men”

  • Henry J. Kaiser: shipyards in west coast

War spending

• gov spending rose to 100 billion $ in 1945

• The Revenue Act of 1942: taxed the wealthy, corporations, and average citizens - tax collection rose to $35.1 billion

  • paying taxes seen as patriotic

War in the West

• west benefited the most from gov expansion.

• Pacific coast became a major industrial center for shipbuilding, aircraft; launching the stage for the war w/ Japan

• Los Angeles and Oakland experience population boom due to availability of jobs

• of all funds on war effort, 10% went to Cali

Labor and the War

• union gains

  • labor shortage gave them leverage

  • wage increased

  • gov allowed workers to automatically join unions in return to mandate “no strike promise”

  • set stage for powerful middle class

  • income increased for workers - nowhere near the increase in corporate profits

• Roosevelt set up the National War Labor Board: regulate labor conditions + authority to seize plants

Regulating the Economy/Resources

• office of Price Administration: freeze prices and wages to fight inflation

• on the homefront: people worked on civilian defense committees, collected old materials, served on rationing and draft boards, planted “victory gardens”

• limitations on consumption: rationing and regulation (rationing books)

Mobilizing Production

• war production board: ineffective cause couldn’t conduct direct military purchases

• replaced by Office of War Mobilization: awarded defense contracts, evaluated military and civilian requests for scarce resources, oversaw conversion of industry to military production

• by 1944: US has 2x the production of axis powers

Women and Children At War

• dramatic increase in female employment

• '“Rosie the Riveter” : famous Norman Rockwell Painting

• women taking men’s role

  • limited child care

• teenagers work - less school attendance

  • increase in crime (unsupervised youth)

• beginning of the “baby boom”

Wartime science and technology

• National Defense Research Committee: heavily funded

• radar and sonar: allies advanced beyond axis capabilities

  • sonar: limited U-Boat effectiveness

  • Anti-Aircraft tech: UK radar very effective (Battle of Britain)

• Ultra: UK project to break German “Enigma” code

• Magic: US project to break the Japanese “purple” code

African Americans during the war

• A.A. leaders pointed out parallels between German anti-semitism and american racism

• Double-V campaign: victory over Nazis and victory over racism

  • A. Phillip Randolph

• in response to threat of “March on Washington,” FDR issued executive order 8802 declaring no discrimination in employment based on race - established fair employment practices commission

• NAACP grew

• Congress of racial equality

League of United Latin American citizens

• built on patriotic contributions to challenge discrimination

Native Americans and the war

• Navajo “code talkers” : speak in native language

• japanese could not decode

The military

• armed forces increase to 15 million

• more than half of the men that registered failed to meet military physical standards

  • tried to screen out queer people

Minorities in the military

• Segregated A.A. : often had most menial jobs

  • Tuskegee Airmen

• Japanese Americans - segregated units

  • most decorated: 442nd regiment

  • “go for broke”

• Mexican and Native American were never officially segregated

• Many women enlisted - led to permanent status in military

  • limited type of duty

Wartime life and culture

• rise in theater and movie attendance

• magazine and news circulation

• hotel, casino, dance halls

• fighting for future prosperity

• United Service Organization (USO): provide services to soldiers and their families to raise morale - entertainment

Migration

• families followed service members

• lure of high-paying jobs caused migration

  • CA = center of defense industry so had the highest wartime migration

  • African Americans migrated to defence centers

Zoot-Suit Riot

• LA male Latinos in “Pachuco” gangs dressed in “zoot suits”

• target of white hostility toward mexican americans

• Jul 1943: rumors a pachuco gange had beaten a white sailor set off a four day riot

Executive Order 9066

• issued by Roosevelt in 1942

• gave the war department authority to relocate Japanese Americans from the west coast and intern them in relocation camps (fear of spies)

• The “War Relocation Authority” rounded up 112000 Japanese Americans (most of which were citizens) and sent them to internment camps

• J. Americans in Hawaii were not interned - Hawaiian economy could not function without them

• season work, college, and enlistment = way out of camps

Korematsu v. US

• Fred Korematsu sues US gov over Japanese Internment/violation of civil liberties

• Supreme Court sides w/ US gov: wartime powers

Strategic Bombing

• focus on industrial and military targets forcing the Luftwaffe further into Germany

• weakened Germans + damaged Germany’s ability to replace war materials

Chinese americans and the war

• Chinese exclusion act repealed

• China major ally

The liberation of France

• invasion of france on D-Day (Jun 6 1944) under General Eisenhower’s command

• millions of troops cross the English channel: Operation Overlord

• major offensive — opens a western front focused on the liberation of France

• US, UK, and France attack from South West and USSR from the east - ultimate target = Berlin

Battle of the Bulge

• last ditch effort by Germans to stop ally advances — fails

• Germany has problems with supply lines (gasoline)

Germany defeated

• April 30th 1945

• Hitler kills himself

• VE Day (victory over europe)

Election of 1944

• following D-Day invasion

• republican candidate: Dewy

• democratic ticket: FDR + Truman (moderate democrat)

Battle of Leyte Gulf

• Japanese navy destroyed - aircraft carriers sunk — US dominates Sea

• Kamikaze attacks: shows desperation

Okinawa

• last major military offensive to get bomber planes in range of Japan

• biggest loss of life of soldiers and civilians

The Manhattan Project

• in response to germany trying to create an atomic bomb

• Enrico Fermi: discovered radioactive uranium

• use of plutonium - UC Berkeley

• US army poured billions in project

• The Trinity Bomb: developed by Oppenheimer, successfully detonated - US has atomic bomb first

Atomic Warfare

• debating bomb use: cost of direct invasion into Japan could have immense casualties (200k-500k)

• Truman decides atomic bomb is best option

• Hiroshima: bomber “Enola Gay” drops bomb - 80k instantly killed

• told Japan that the US had more bombs - no reply

• Nagasaki: second bomb on Aug 8, 1945: 100k killed

• US threatens additional strikes — Japan surrenders Sep 2, 1945 on the deck of the USS Missouri