Chapter 24: World War ll

Sections 1-3 are on paper.

Section 4: The United States & the European War

• In 1939, the US dissolved its trade treaties with Japan & the following year cut off supplies of war materials by embargoing oil, steel, rubber, & other vital goods

  • in response, considering the oil embargo a de facto declaration of war, Japan's resource-starved military launched invasions across the Pacific to sustain its war effort

• On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

  • believing that American intervention was inevitable, Japanese military planners hoped to destroy enough battleships & aircraft carriers to cripple American naval power for years

note: the attack on Hawaii threw the US into a global conflict

• Britain & the US's superior tactics & technology won them the Battle of the Atlantic

  • British code breakers cracked Germany's radio codes, & the surge of intelligence, coupled with massive naval convoys escorted by destroyers armed with sonar & depth charges, gave the advantage to the Allies

• In January President Roosevelt & Prime Minister Churchill met, & Roosevelt announced to the press that the Allies would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender

• The Army Air Force (AAF) began bombing Germany around the clock, hitting ball-bearing factories, rail yards, oil fields, & manufacturing centers during the day, & cities at night

  • they flew in formation, unescorted, believing that they were flying too high & fast to be attacked, however, advanced German technology allowed fighters to easily shoot them down

• Following the Soviets’ victory at Stalingrad, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin all met - Stalin demanded that Britain and the US invade France to relieve pressure

• Operation Overlord; the long-awaited invasion of France by British and Canadian forces

  • D-Day was the largest amphibious assault in history

  • allied bombing expeditions meanwhile continued to level German cities and industrial capacity

• The Battle of the Bulge failed to drive the Allies back to the English Channel, but they delay cost them the winter

  • the Soviet Union continued its relentless push westward

• German counterattacks in the east failed to dislodge the Soviet advance, destroying any last chance Germany might have to regain the initiative

• The Big Three met again, reaffirming the demand for Hitler's unconditional surrender, planning for postwar Europe

• The Soviet Union reached Germany in January, taking the capital in May, days after Hitler had died from suicide

• The Allied leaders met again, deciding that Germany would be divided into pieces according to current Allied occupation, with Berlin likewise divided, pending future elections

  • Stalin also agreed to join the fight against Japan in approximately 3 months

Section 5: The United States & the Japanese War

• After Pearls Harbor, the American-controlled Philippine archipelago fell to Japan, and prisoners were marched 80 miles to their prisoner-of-war camp without food, water, or rest, in what came to be known as the Bataan Death March

• American naval victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the aircraft carrier duel at the Battle of Midway crippled Japan's Pacific naval operations

• Island hopping; a strategy used by the US military in which they attacked island after island, bypassing the strongest but seizing those capable of holding airfields to continue pushing Japan out of the region

• During the Battle of the Philippine Sea/the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Japanese soldiers bled the Americans in their advance across the Pacific

• At Iwo Jima, Japanese soldiers held against the Marinas for over a month before eventually losing

• To spare bombers crews from dangerous daylight raids and to achieve maximum effect against Japan's wooden cities, many American bombers dropped 'fire bombs'

• In June 1945, the Americans captured the island of Okinawa, and the end of the war was in sight

• Manhattan Project; a hugely expensive, ambitious program to harness atomic energy & create a weapon capable of leveling entire cities

  • started out of fear that the Germs might develop an atomic bomb

• The Americans successfully exploded the world's first nuclear device, Trinity, in New Mexico in July 1945

  • Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the bomb was designed

• Americans used numbers (the possibility of half a million American casualties and millions of Japanese civilians) to justify their use of atomic weapons

• They dropped said atomic weapons over Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, leading Emperor Hirohito to announce the surrender of Japan on August 15

  • delegates from the Japanese government formally signed their surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri on September 2

Section 6: Soldier's Experiences

• During the war, soldiers were either volunteers or drafted

  • volunteers could express their preference for assignment, so many preempted the draft by volunteering

• During basic training, soldiers were developed physically and trained in the basic use of weapons and military equipment

• During specialized training, an individuals’experience varied depending on what service he entered and to what theater he was assigned

  • combat infantrymen received additional weapons and tactical training, radio operators learned transmission codes and the operation of field radios, etc.

• Soldiers and Marines were expected to march carrying packs weighing anywhere from 20-50 pounds

• Sailors, once deployed, spent months at sea operating their assigned vessels

  • most sailors lived and worked in cramped conditions, often sleeping in bunks stacked in rooms housing dozens of sailors

• Large bombers required pilots, navigators, bombardiers, radio operators, and four dedicated machine gunners

  • airmen on bombings raids endured hours of flight before approaching enemy territory

  • they used oxygen tanks to breathe

  • once in enemy airspace, crews confronted enemy fighters and anti-aircraft flak from the ground

• While fighter pilots flew as escorts, the Air Corps suffered heavy casualties

note: WWll saw the institutionalization of massive bombing campaigns against cities and industrial production

• Soldiers in Europe endured freezing winters, impenetrable French hedgerows, Italian mountain ranges, and dense forests

• Soldiers in the Pacific endured heat and humidity, monsoons, jungles, and tropical diseases

note: the Pacific theater was significantly more violent than the European theater

Section 7: The Wartime Economy

• The war converted American factories to wartime production, reawakened Americans’economic might, armed Allied belligerents and the American armed forces, effectively pulled american out of the Great Depression, and ushered in an era of unparalleled economic prosperity

• Once the US entered the war, governmental entities such as the War Production Board and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion managed economic production for the war effort and economic output exploded

  • there were also a lot more jobs available

• Government spending during the four years of war doubled

• The government's massive intervention annihilated unemployment and propelled growth

• Military production came at the expenses of the civilian consumer economy, and consumer choice was foreclosed

  • appliance and automobile manufacturers converted their plants to produce weapons and vehicles

• Every American received rationing cards, and many goods couldn't be purchased without them

• The housing industry was shut down, and the cities became overcrowded

• The Roosevelt administration urged citizens to save their earnings or buy war bonds to prevent inflation

• African Americans continued to leave the agrarian South for the industrial North

• Women joined the workforce to fill the positions left unoccupied by men leaving for the military

• Bracero Program; a program jointly administered by the State Department, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice, that contracted thousands of Mexican nationals to work in American agriculture and railroads

• 5 million contracts across 24 states, discriminatory policies toward people of Mexican descent prevented bracero contracts in all states

• The Bracero Program survived the war, enshrined in law until the 1960s, when the US liberalized its immigration laws

• Many braceros suffered exploitative labor conditions, though the program did help reestablish Mexican migration, institutionalized migrant farm work across much of the country, and further planted a Mexican presence in the southern and western US

Section 8: Women and World War ll

• During the war, most women opted to remain at home or volunteer with charitable organization, but many did work, even as part of the military

note: industrial labor, an occupational sphere dominated by men, shifted in part to women for the duration of wartime mobilization. Over a million administrative obs at the local, state, and national levels were transferred from men to women for the duration of the war

• Women applied for jobs in converted munitions factories

• They also worked in various auxiliary positions for the government

• The American Red Cross encouraged women to volunteer with local city chapters

  • it required all female volunteers to certify as nurse's aides, providing an extra benefit and work opportunity for hospital staffs that suffered severe personnel losses

• Women organized community social events for families, packed and shipped almost half a million tons of medical supplies overseas, and prepared 27 million care packages of nonperishable items for Americans and other Allied prisoners of war

• They also volunteered with church and synagogue affiliates, benevolent associations, and social club auxiliaries

• Over 350,000 women served in several all-female units of the military branches, such as the Army and Navy Nurse Corps Reserves, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, the Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, the Coast Guard's SPARs, and Marina Corps

  • these women served as either commissioned officers or enlisted members at military bases at home and abroad

  • military nurses worked at base hospitals, mobile medical units, and onboard hospital 'mercy' ships

• Supervisors who hired Black women still often relegated them to the most menial tasks on factory floors

• Many Black women were forced to work at night to keep them separate from whites

• Online the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and the Nurse Corps Reserves accepted Black women for active service

  • even then, the army set a limited quota of 10% of total end strength for Black female officers and enlisted women and segregated Black units on active duty

• Black Army and Navy nurses worked in segregated military hospitals on bases stateside and overseas

• After the war ended the men returned and most women voluntarily left the workforce or lost their jobs

• Formed military women faced many obstacles in obtaining veteran's benefits during their transition to civilian life

Section 9: Race and World War ll

• In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest Black trade union in the nation, threatened President Roosevelt with a March on Washington, DC

  • many defense contractors still refused to hire Black workers and the armed forces remained segregated

• In exchange for Randolph calling off the march, Roosevelt issued Executive order 8802, the Fair Employment Practice in Defense Industries Act, banning racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to monitor defense industry hiring practices

  • armed forces remained segregated throughout the war, FEPC had limited influence, but it showed that the federal government could stand against discrimination

• Most Black servicemen served in segregated, noncombat units led by white officers

• Tuskegee Airmen; all-Black pilot squadrons that completed more than 1,500 missions, escorted heavy bombers into Germany, and earned several hundred merits and medals

• Near the end of the war, the army and navy began integrating some of their units and facilities

• The US government finally ordered the full integration of its armed forces in 1948

• On the home front, Black Americans became riveters and welders, rationed food and gas, and bought victory bonds

• Double V campaign; a campaign headed by the Pittsburgh Courier, called on African Americans to fight two wars: the war against Nazism and fascism abroad and the war against racial inequality at home

  • to achieve 'real democracy', it encouraged its readers to enlist in the armed forces, volunteer on the home front, and fight against racial segregation and discrimination

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in 1942 and spearheaded the method of nonviolent direct action to achieve desegregation

• Between 1940 and 1950, some 1.5 million Black southerners indirectly demonstrated their opposition to racism and violence by migrating out of the Jim Crow South to the North

  • racial tensions erupted in 1943 in a series of riots

• The FBI targeted many on suspicions of disloyalty for detainment, hearings, and possible interment under the Alien Enemy Act

  • those who received an order for interment were sent to government camps secured by barbed wire and armed guards

• Executive Order 9066; authorized the removal of any persons from designated 'exclusion zones' - which ultimately covered nearly a third of the country - at the discretion of military commanders

  • people of Japanese descent, both immigrants and American citizens, were detained and placed under the custody of the War Relocation Authority, the civil agency that supervised their relocation to interment camps

  • over 10,000 German nationals and a smaller number of Italian nationals were interned at various times in the US during the war

note: American policies disproportionately targeted Japanese-descended populations, and individuals didn't receive personalized reviews prior to their interment

• In its 1982 report, Personal Justice Denied, the congressionally appointed Commission on Wartime Relocation and Interment of Civilians concluded that the exclusion orders were unconstitutional

• In 1988, President Reagan signed a law that formally apologized for interment and provided reparations to surviving internees

• At the first signs of trouble in the 1930s, the State Department and most US embassies did relatively little to aid European Jews

• Evian Confrence (1938): international leaders discussed the Jewish refugee problem and worked to expand Jewish immigration quotes by tens of thousands of people per year

  • the conference came to nothing, and the US turned away countless Jewish refugees who requested asylum in the US

• In 1939, a German ship St. Louis carried over 900 Jewish refugees that couldn't find a country that would take them

  • the passengers couldn't receive visas under the US quota system, and the ship was forced to return to Europe

• Even if Roosevelt wanted to do more, due to antisemitism, he judged the political price for increasing immigration quotas too high

• Wagner-Rogers Bill; would allow 20,000 German-Jewish children into the US

  • the bill, although endorsed by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was opposed by roughly 2/3 of the American public

note: Roosevelt, anxious to protect the New Deal and his rearmament programs, was unwilling to expend political capital to protect foreign groups that the American public had little interest in protecting

• The US military considered bombing either the camps or the railroads leading to them, but those options were rejected by military and civilian officials who argued that it would do little to stop to deportations, would distract from the war effort, and could cause casualties among concentration camp prisoners

• War Refugees Board (WRB); formed by Henry Morgenthau in 1944, it saved many Jewish people

  • Morgenthau also convinced Roosevelt to issue a public statement condemning the Nazi's persecution

Section 10: Toward a Postwar World

• The inability of the League of Nations to stop German, Italian, and Japanese aggressions caused many to question whether any global organization or agreements could ever ensure world peace

• Roosevelt believed that postwar security could be maintained by an informal agreement between the US, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, but others disagreed and convinced him to push for a new global organization '

• The Four Freedoms were freedom of speech, worship, from want, and from fear, which Roosevelt believed all of the world's citizens should enjoy

• Atlantic Charter; signed with Churchill, it reinforced those ideas and added the right of self-determination and promised some sort of postwar economic and political cooperation

• The United Nations was eventually created in August 1944. Original plans included the:

  • Security Council, the original Four Policeman, plus France, which would consult on how best to keep the peace and when to employ the military power of the assembled nations

  • General Assembly, made up of all nations

  • International Court of Justice

  • council for economic and social matters

• American politicians and interest groups sought to avoid another economic depression by gradually easing returning veterans back into the civilian economy

• G.I. Bill; a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar entitlement program that rewarded honorably discharged veterans with numerous benefits

  • it offered a year's worth of unemployment benefits for veterans unable to secure work, made post secondary education a reality for many, and encouraged home ownership by doing away with down payment requirements

• The Veterans Administration (VA) paid for educational expenses, including tuition, fees, supplies, and even stipends for living expenses

• It also helped nearly 200,000 veterans secure farms and offered thousands more guaranteed financing for small businesses

note: the G.I. Bill and VA led to a massive increase in education, home ownership, and construction

• Since the military limited the number of female personnel, men qualified for the bill's benefits in far higher numbers

  • colleges also limited the number of female applicants to guarantee space for male veterans

• Segregation forced Black veterans into overcrowded ‘historically Black colleges’ that had to turn away close to 20,000 applicants

• Residential segregation limited Black home ownership in various neighborhoods, dying Black homeowners the equity and investment that would come with ownership

• Veterans accused of homosexuality were similarly unable to claim GI benefits

note: the effects of the G.I. Bill were significant and long-lasting, helping sustain the great post-war economic boom and establishing the hallmarks of American middle class life

Section 11: Conclusion

• Stalin’s Soviet Union and the proliferation of nuclear weapons would disrupt postwar dreams of global harmony