The Second World War

The Second World War

Introduction

• The Second World War was the deadliest military conflict in human history.
• There are disturbing and upsetting images and topics associated with this war, including:
  • The Final Solution/The Holocaust
  • The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • The firebombings of German and Japanese cities
  • Racial atrocities on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific War
• It is estimated that approximately 80 million people died in World War II, compared to about 21 million in World War I.
• In the United States, the war is often framed as a great moral crusade or "the last good war."
• American losses were comparatively light (405,000 battlefield-related deaths) compared to other countries like Russia (20-25 million) and China (estimates vary from 20-50 million).
• The U.S. home front thrived during the war, with industries booming, full employment, high wages, and new opportunities for women and minorities.
• The war is seen as having clear moral sides, with imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy as ethically compromised adversaries.
• The United States is unique in remembering World War II as a "good war," as many other countries have more ambivalent memories.
• The U.S. has a government agency dedicated to finding and repatriating the remains of American soldiers lost during the war.
• In Japan, memories of the war are fraught and ambivalent due to shame over the country's actions.
• Germany and Italy have negative memories due to their nefarious roles in the war.
• The lecture aims to explore why the U.S. remembers World War II as a "good war" and to place the U.S. experience within a broader global context.

Focus Questions

• What were the arguments for and against American intervention in World War II, and what do these arguments say about the political and economic atmosphere of the 1930s?
• Who benefited from the wartime economy, and what financial limitations did various members of society face and why?
• What role did the United States play in the ultimate Allied victory?
• How did the wartime experiences of America's minorities affect political debates around economic rights and claims to equal citizenship?

The Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Radical Ideologies

• Much of Europe was in ruins after World War I, leading to economic hardship and political upheaval in Germany, Russia, and Italy.
• Victor countries like Britain and France also suffered economically, with France losing a generation of young men.
• Radical ideologies rose in the losing countries and successor states of dismembered empires due to violence, turmoil, and economic hardship.
• Enduring racial animosities, especially antisemitism, existed in these countries.
• In Germany, there were virulent strains of racism towards Slavic peoples and other groups seen as contributing to Germany's loss.
• Lingering resentments over World War I existed, with many German veterans believing they were "stabbed in the back" by subversive elements at home.
• Antisemitism had a long history in Europe, dating back to the belief that Jews were complicit in the death of Christ.
• By the 19th century, antisemitism was rooted in the idea that Jews controlled the world's economies and governments and had no allegiance to anything but money.
• These radical beliefs rose as more Europeans were driven by hardship and grievances.

Fascism

• Fascism is a hypernationalistic, hypermilitaristic political ideology in which everything is subsumed to the needs of the state.
• It is antiliberal, antidemocratic, and against Marxism, emphasizing the nation as everything.
• Fascism sees certain peoples as having legitimate belonging to the nation, with anyone not furthering the state's interests as an enemy.
• Nazism, a specific strain of fascism in Germany, combines nationalism, anticommunism, antiliberalism, antisemitism, and a mystical attachment to the German Volk or Aryans.
• Fascism holds the army/military as the ideal social model for organizing society, with military service seen as the quintessential display of belonging.
• Fascism is described as a yearning for old certainties, an imagined past where everyone understood their place and shared the same culture.

Hitler's Vision

• Hitler's vision combines rearmament, racial purity, and expansion of German territory.
• He wrote his political manifesto, Mein Kampf, while in prison in the 1920s.
• Hitler came to power legitimately through the Nazi party winning a plurality of seats in the 1932 German parliamentary elections; he then consolidated power through manipulation and terror.
• By March 1933, all vestiges of democracy were gone, and laws were put in place regarding pure bloodlines.
• Rearmament was central to Hitler's plan; he broke almost every limitation imposed on the German military under the Versailles treaty in the mid-1930s.
• Hitler's vision also encompassed racial purity, establishing a true Germanic people and bloodline.
• The centerpiece of his long-term goals was Lebensraum or living space, the expansion of German territory eastward.

Appeasement

• Western democracies were caught off guard by Hitler's quick rearmament and expansionist ideology.
• France and Britain were not eager to stop Germany due to the devastation of World War I and their own economic depressions.
• Many Europeans believed Hitler's actions were legitimate and justified, leading France and Britain to negotiate a policy called appeasement.
• In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and demanded the Sudetenland, a German-speaking province of Czechoslovakia.
• At the Munich Conference in 1938, Western leaders agreed to allow Germany to occupy Czechoslovakia and take the Sudetenland, believing Hitler's claims that he only wanted to reunite German-speaking peoples.
• Appeasement convinced Hitler that the Western democracies were too weak to oppose him militarily.
• Germany then turned its gaze towards Poland.

The Start of World War II

• Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Joseph Stalin in August 1939 to avoid fighting a two-front war.
• Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, leading France and Britain to declare war, officially starting World War II.
• In April 1940, Hitler began his assault on Western Europe, invading Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, and France.
• Germany employed a new kind of war called blitzkrieg or lightning war, using artillery, aircraft, and tanks to disrupt communications and terrorize the French army.
• France surrendered in June 1940, and German troops entered Paris.
• Axis nations, led by Germany, took control of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
• Britain stood alone as the last liberal democracy in Europe; it survived a massive bombing campaign known as the Battle of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940.
• Between June 1940 and June 1941, Britain was forced to limit itself to fighting in peripheral theaters like North Africa, while the United States remained neutral. This year is often called "one of the darkest years in human history."

American Neutrality

• The United States maintained its neutrality until the end of 1941 due to the belief that World War I had been a mistake.
• Senator Gerald Nye led investigations arguing that the war had been fought at the behest of American arms manufacturers.
• Congress passed a series of neutrality acts between 1935 and 1939 to restrict the sale of arms and loans to nations at war.
• These laws encapsulated a noninterventionist vision that held that the U.S. should stay out of overseas conflicts that did not directly threaten its territory.
• The America First movement exemplified noninterventionism, with figures like Charles Lindbergh blending isolationism with sympathy for Nazism and antisemitism.
• FDR was no isolationist but understood the public mood; his policies, like the Good Neighbor policy in Latin America, signaled the U.S. would mind its own business.
• Despite neutrality, American public opinion favored Great Britain in the war.
• FDR took steps in 1940 and 1941 to nudge the American public into supporting the allies, beginning with the revision of the Neutrality Act of 1939.
• He proposed turning the nation into a "great arsenal of democracy," supplying those fighting for democracy around the world.
• FDR agreed to trade 50 American destroyers for the rights to use British air and naval bases.

Lend-Lease Policy

• By 1941, Britain had run out of cash but needed U.S. support to continue fighting the war.
• FDR circumvented restrictions by proposing the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the U.S. to loan arms to Great Britain.
• This benefited the U.S. by requiring factories and farms to supply war goods to Britain, helping to get the country out of the depression.
• Throughout the war, the U.S. gave material, food, clothing, and munitions to Great Britain and later to the Soviet Union, ultimately worth about 50,000,000,000.
• The debate between noninterventionists and interventionists intensified throughout 1941.
• Noninterventionists embraced the slogan "America First" and urged Americans to remember the debt and death of the last war.
• Interventionists argued that noninterventionism was folly; one of the strongest interventionists was Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), who depicted noninterventionists as dangerously ignorant.
• Many African Americans were noninterventionists, remembering the broken promises after World War I and arguing that the U.S. should focus on its own problems at home.

Pearl Harbor

• The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was the catalyst for America's formal entry into the war.
• The attack was the culmination of two decades of tension between the U.S. and Japan.
• Japan desired to establish itself as the major power in the Pacific, alarming the U.S., which had island possessions and a strong naval presence in the Pacific to support its trade with China.
• Japan wanted to build a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, creating satellite states throughout Asia to free Japan from dependence on Western-controlled resources.
• The U.S. and Japan mediated differences in the 1920s, but by the end of the decade, the Japanese government was overtaken by hypernationalistic factions with anti-Western beliefs.
• The Japanese army invaded Manchuria in 1931, beginning a direct confrontation between Japan and the U.S.
• The conflict escalated in July 1937 when Japan invaded Mainland China, leading to brutal warfare, including the Rape of Nanking, in which over 250,000 Chinese citizens died.
• The Japanese would ultimately kill over 6,000,000 Chinese, equivalent to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis.

American Embargoes and the Tripartite Pact

• FDR decided to prioritize Europe and contain Japan's Imperialist ambitions through sanctions and warnings.
• Throughout 1940 and 1941, FDR issued a series of escalatory embargoes, restricting the sale of certain materials to Japan.
• The embargoes led directly to war, especially when the U.S. embargoed oil and scrap iron; Japan responded by signing the Tripartite Pact in September 1940 with Nazi Germany.
• The Tripartite Pact pledged mutual assistance during the war.
• Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941.
• By 12/11/1941, the United States was firmly in the war.

Aftermath of Pearl Harbor

• The attack on Pearl Harbor was the deadliest attack on American soil in American history, with 2,400 Americans killed.
• The attack prevented the U.S. from interfering with Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia.
• Japan failed to destroy the American Pacific fleet, as the aircraft carriers happened to be out on training exercises and escaped the attack entirely.
• Pearl Harbor was ultimately a Pyrrhic victory, a short-term victory for Japan that portended long-term loss.