Untitled Flashcards Set

Henry Stimson – Secretary of War: 1940-1945

Oversaw the entire Manhattan Project, and was responsible for appointing key project leaders and authorizing project construction sites across the U.S.

Stimson was initially opposed to the internment of Japanese Americans away from the West Coast, Neither Attorney General Francis Biddle nor Secretary of War Henry Stimson believed the removal would be wise or even legal. Military leaders, however, as high up as Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, insisted that this policy was absolutely necessary to ensure public safety on the Pacific Coast.

Between the public demand for action and pressure from the military, Biddle buckled and told Stimson he would not object to a wholesale removal of Japanese Americans from the region.

Stimson advised Roosevelt accordingly, and on February 19, 1942, the President signed Executive Order 9066, which directed the War Department to create “military areas” that anyone could be excluded from for essentially any reason

To President Truman he recommended that atom bombs be dropped on Japanese cities of military importance.

Secretary of state under Pres. Herbert Hoover (1929–33)

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe; D-Day

Douglas MacArthur

American General, Pacific Theater

George S. Patton

American General, Mediterranean Theater and Italy; Battle of the Bulge

Harry S. Truman - Vice President of the United States (1945) - little less than three months.

Henry A. Wallace - Vice President of the United States (1941-1945)

FDR’s 2nd Vice President for the Third Term

Vice President James Nance Garner (1933-1941)

Retires in 1941

Key Historians from PPP #7 – (PPP #7 – Neutrality Era: 1939-1941; Homefront: 1941-1945) - Matching

William Leuchtenburg - Historian/Writer

Miller Center

Former professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Author of over a dozen books on FDR

Another notable work: The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy (1997)

Jay Winik - Historian/Writer

1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History (2016)

William Hitchcock - Historian/Writer

Professor at the University of Virginia; “The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (2018)

Jennifer Sessions - Historian/Writer

Professor at the University of Virginia; Specializes in European and French history; D-Day

James Holland – British Historian/Writer

Specializes in the history of the Second World War; Normandy “44: Day and the Battle for France” (2019).

Presidential Administrations-Watershed Events Chronology Fill-In the Blank Question Options

Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1933-1945

Second World War in Europe: 1939-1945

Review – Selected Presidents Chronology (1897-1933)

Past HOA Presidential Administrations

Hoover: 1929-1933 - R

Coolidge: 1923-1929 - R

Harding: 1921-1923 - R

Wilson: 1913-1921 – FDR Mentor - D

Taft: 1909-1913 - R

TR: 1901-1909: – FDR Mentor – R

William McKinley Jr.: 1897-1901

Past Watershed Events

The Great War (First World War) 1914-1918

American Society and Historically Marginalized Groups during the Second World War: In-Class Content

Treatment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S.

During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were relocated because of fear of possible subversive activity against the war effort

Subversive activity is the lending of aid, comfort, and moral support to individuals, groups, or organizations that advocate the overthrow of incumbent governments by force and violence

In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, especially Secretary of War Henry Stimson authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan.

Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon.

Although it is not well known, the same executive order (and other war-time orders and restrictions) were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States who were of Italian or German descent

Location of the Japanese Internment Camps in the U.S...

The impact of Korematsu v United States (1944)

The Supreme Court ruled that relocation of Japanese Americans was constitutional because it was based on military urgency.

African Americans and the Second World War

The head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who pressured Roosevelt to provide jobs for African Americans in U.S. defense factories in 1941 was Philip Randolph. The result was the Fair Employment Act which is generally considered an important early civil rights victory.

After Executive Order 8802 in 1941, the FDR administration encouraged a greater acceptance of African American workers in wartime industrial jobs

The peak of the Second Great Migration

“Double V” Campaign

As a result of wartime demands and federal pressure on defense industries to eliminate discrimination against minorities and women, but also inspired by African American efforts to support the war and gain new economic rights through the Double V campaign, African American industrial employment rose dramatically during the Second World War.

More than one million African American men and women served in every branch of the US armed forces during World War II. In addition to battling the forces of Fascism abroad, these Americans also battled racism in the United States and in the US military. The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all segregated African Americans into separate units because of the belief that they were not as capable as white service members. Adding to this indignity, the Army frequently assigned White officers from the American South to command Black infantrymen.

The famous “Tuskegee Airmen”

Tuskegee Airmen, black servicemen of the U.S. Army Air Forces who trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama during World War II. They constituted the first African American flying unit in the U.S. military

Flying ground support missions and escorting bombers on missions over Europe

Women and the Second World War

The Rosie the Riveter campaign during the Second World War from 1941-1945 encouraged women enter the industrial labor force

Women in the Military

When the U.S. officially entered the war in December 1941, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, pressed for a women’s branch of the armed forces; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, agreed that womens’ service would be essential for victory. Thus the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (later renamed Women’s Army Corps or WAC) was established.

During this time the Navy also established the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) program, with more than 100,000 women joining and performing critical jobs including military intelligence, cryptography and parachute rigging.

Women also began to take flight. More than 1,000 women joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), as licensed pilots who flew planes transporting essential cargo from factories to bases

Other Historically Marginalized Groups and the Second World War

Latinos in the United States

Over 500,000 Latinos (including 350,000 Mexican Americans and 53,000 Puerto Ricans) served in WWII. Exact numbers are difficult because, with the exception of the 65th Infantry Regiment from Puerto Rico, Latinos were not segregated into separate units, as African Ameri-cans were

The war also opened up opportunities for Mexican Americans, many of whom took agricultural jobs Bracero Program

Thousands of Latino men and women on the Home Front worked on railroads, in mines, shipyard and airplane factories and as crucial agricultural labor. A shortage of manual labor jeopardized the war effort, so the US government established the Bracero Program, allowing 50,000 Mexican agricultural workers and 75,000 railroad workers to come as guest workers to the United States. These workers were crucial to the country’s wartime economy.

Zoot Suit Riots

In the summer of 1943, Mexican American youth in Los Angeles faced discrimination and violence in their own neighborhoods at the hands of U.S. servicemen

During the 1930s and 40s, many Latino youths in the Southwestern U.S. developed their own sub-culture, which included distinctive fashions, music, and slang. These youths, rebelling both against Anglo culture and even against elements of their own culture, called themselves Pachucos. To the White community, Pachuco culture soon became synonymous with gang culture, and social tensions threatened to erupt in several urban areas.

Indigenous Population (Native Americans)

U.S. Population of 350,000 to 400,000 by 1941

By mid-1942, the annual enlistment for Native Americans was approximately 7,500. By the beginning of 1945, the yearly average had jumped to 22,000.

Selective Service reported in 1942 that 99% of all Native Americans who were eligible for the draft (healthy males between the ages of 21 and 44) had registered for the draft. On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, approximately 5,000 Indians were in the service. That number escalated to over 44,000 (both reservation and off reservation) by the time the war ended.

An estimated 40,000 Native Americans (men and women ranging in age from 18 to 50) left their reservations for the very first time and sought jobs in the defense industry.

“Code Talkers”

After the successful use of the Choctaw language (to befuddle the Germans) in World War I in sending messages to field phones, the USMC began recruiting Navajo Indi-ans for the same purpose. They would become known as Navajo Code Talkers.

Their code allowed for faster transmitting and deciphering and it was a code the Japanese were never able to break.

Jewish Americans

Anti-Semitic attitudes by most Americas prevented the United States from relaxing its immigration standards in order to grant asylum to a larger number of Jewish refugees in the late 1930s and early 1940

President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944 to aid and rescue Jewish refugees

The Roosevelt administration was pressured to create safe havens for Jewish refugees in other European countries during the war but failed

550,000 Jewish American men and women fought in World War II

Like all Americans, they fought against fascism, but they also waged a more personal fight—to save their brethren in Europe.

Asian Americans

When the United States entered World War II, about 29,000 persons of Chinese ancestry were living in Hawaii and another 78,000 on the mainland. By war's end, over 13,000 were serving in all branches of the Army Ground Forces and Army Air Forces

Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943.

Arab Americans

Thousands of Arab American military service members served in World War II.

Thousands of Arab Americans worked in the Second World War Defense Industry

Detroit’s exploding auto industry has drawn immigrants from Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, but also from Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, many Gulf countries, and Libya

The Gay and Lesbian Communities in America during the Second World War

Historian John D'Emilio has called World War II "a nationwide coming out experience."

Men and women from all over the country moved from farms and small towns into sex-segregated environments in the military and war industries, away from the supervision of family and community, and into urban centers like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Buffalo

Gay and lesbian communities in these cities were booming. For some men and women, it was their first contact with gay men and women

The American Diplomatic and Military Overview: 1941-1945

Overview of Geography of the Second World War in Europe

Eastern Front (Started after June, 1941)

Germany vs Soviet Union

Battle of Stalingrad Turing Point – Eastern Front

The entire German Sixth Army, considered the best of the German troops, was lost, making it a turning point on the Eastern Front.

During the fighting from 1941 to 1943 on the Eastern Front, Stalin was most interested in securing a guarantee that Britain and the United States would open a second front in France to force Germany to withdraw troops from Russia

Southern Front

Focus North Africa/Italy (Soft Underbelly)

Operation Torch was created because the Soviet Union wanted the other Allies to open another front to distract the German army from fighting the Soviets. However, members of the British military proposed another front in North Africa, rather than another in Western Europe. Though United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his doubts about the invasion, he supported the British prime minister, Winston Churchill

Western Front (Started after Day, June, 1944)

Operation Overlord/D-Day - Western Front

Some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning.

Key roles of Eisenhower (Planner) and Patton (decoy)

The landing of Allied forces on the Normandy coast of France to establish the Western Front

Battle of the Bulge – Western Front

The largest battle fought in Western Europe during World War II.

Bombing Campaign by the Allies of Germany – 1945

Overview of the Geography Pacific Ocean

The Diplomatic/Military Role of the U.S. During the Second World War – Europe

The Arcadia Conference: December, 1941-January, 1942

At Arcadia, the Allies established an organization to administer the new Anglo-American military project: the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS).

The Allied leaders conferring in Washington affirmed their “Germany First” strategy promising to tackle the Nazis before trying to subdue Imperial Japan.

Casablanca Conference (FDR and Churchill)

Military Strategy in 1943 vs. Italy

Focus on Axis Powers unconditional surrender

Tehran Conference (FDR, Churchill, and Stalin)

First Meeting of the “Big Three”

Focus on planning of Operation Overload – D-Day (Western Front)

Plans of a partition of postwar Germany

Bretton Woods Conference

New World Economic Order

Dumbarton Oaks Conference

Planning for the United Nations

Yalta Conference (FDR, Churchill, and Stalin)

New Soviet Territorial Concessions to the Soviet Union

Future Soviet Help to Fight Japan

Planning for the United Nations (New U.N Security Council)

FDR Dies – April, 1945

V-E Day

Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945

Potsdam Conference (Truman, Churchill/Atlee, and Stalin)

Debate over Free Elections in Eastern Europe

Potsdam Declaration and Japan

The Diplomatic/Military Role of the U.S. During the Second World War – Asia/Pacific

Aftermath of the Pearl Harbor Attack – December, 1941

Battle of Coral Sea

Battle of Midway

The turning point of the war in the Pacific in June, 1942 when the United States defeated Japan?

After Midway – The Island-Hopping Campaign

MacArthur’s Strategy vs. Nimitz’s strategy

Kamikaze Suicide Pilots in the Pacific Theater

Kamikaze attacks were a Japanese suicide bombing tactic designed to destroy enemy warships during World War II. Pilots would crash their specially made planes directly into Allied ships.

Key Battle for Okinawa – Spring 1945

The battle for Okinawa drug out over nearly three months and included some of the worst kamikaze attacks of the war.

New President Harry Truman - April 1945) and the Atomic Bomb Option

In mid-July, President Harry S Truman was notified of the successful test of the atomic bomb, what he called “the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.” Thousands of hours of research and development as well as billions of dollars had contributed to its production. This was no theoretical research project. It was created to destroy and kill on a massive scale. As president, it was Harry Truman’s decision if the weapon would be used with the goal to end the war. “It is an awful responsibility that has come to us,” the president wrote.

The analysis of historians indicated that President Truman had four primary options: 1) continue conventional bombing of Japanese cities; 2) invade Japan; 3) demonstrate the bomb on an unpopulated island; or, 4) drop the bomb on an inhabited Japanese cites.

Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration in late July, 1945 demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese government, warning of “prompt and utter destruction.”

The Japanese refused to surrender.

New American President Truman makes a crucial decision in the summer of 1945 of dropping atomic bombs on inhabited Japanese cites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan

This action significantly altered the course of the Second World War.

V-J Day

Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) would officially be celebrated in the United States on the day formal surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay: September 2, 1945