ATAR Modern History Exam Quotes

Daniel Yergin - WW2

“From that moment on, the clock was ticking down. The choice for Japan was narrowed to two options: succumb to American pressure and abandon its empire or go to war to seize the oil fields of the East indies.”

Wayne S. Cole - Americans reluctance to join WW2

“Until the bombs fell on Pearl Harbour, the America Firs Committee represented a massive, formidable barrier that prevented the Roosevelt administration from taking decisive military action.”

David M. Kennedy (historian) - WW2

“Roosevelt has to walk an incredibly tense political tightrope, slowly educating and intensely isolationist public about the global dangers while avoiding any step that locked a back door entry to war.”

Sir Max Hastings (historian) - WW2

“The oil embargo was a virtual declaration of economic war. Washington believed it was applying to a peaceful lever of diplomacy, but to Tokyo, it was an existential noose. No greater military power would allow itself to be starved into submission without a fight.”

WW2 statistic - Japans oil form America

Japan relied on America for over 80% of its oil

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (Premier historian) - The Great Depression

“The depression was getting worse, not better in 1931 and 1932, and the Hoover Administration was all but paralysed in the face of a crisis that quickly became a disaster.”

David M. Kennedy (historian) - The Great Depression

“The Depression fell hardest, you might say, on the most vulnerable people in the society… The meant African American. It meant farm workers, farm labourers of all kinds.”

Pierre Burton (social historian) - The Great Depression

“The germs were already there in the hot dry summer of 1929, when the crops began to fail on the southern prairies and the boom ran wild and out of hand.”

Statistic - most amount of people unemployed in the Great Depression

1933: 24.9% (Peak: 12.83 million people)

Statistic - amount of people below poverty line Great Depression

By late 1930 nearly 50% of all American household were living below the poverty line

Statistic - amount of families with no source of income

In 1932 a fourth of the workforce was unemployed, with around 30 million American families having no source of income.