World War II Home Front and Aftermath Notes
Conditions for Allied Prisoners and Native Workers on the Thailand-Burma Railway
The construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway involved:
Allied prisoners of war (POWs).
Almost 300,000 workers from Burma, Malaya, Thailand, and the Dutch East Indies.
Completion of the railway resulted in:
12,000 Allied prisoners of war deaths.
90,000 native worker deaths.
Deaths were attributed to inadequate diet, appalling working conditions, and an unhealthy climate.
World War II as a Total War
World War II was described as more of a total war than World War I due to:
More widespread fighting across the globe.
More extensive economic mobilization.
Greater mobilization of women.
Higher number of civilian deaths (almost 20 million) due to:
Bombing raids.
Mass extermination policies.
Attacks by invading armies.
Mobilization of Peoples
Great Britain
Mobilization of resources was more thorough than allies or even Germany.
By the summer of 1944, 55% of British people were in armed forces or civilian war work.
Emphasis was placed on utilizing women, with most women under 40 called to war work.
By 1944, women held almost 50% of civil service positions.
The number of women in agriculture doubled as "land girls".
The "Dig for Victory" campaign encouraged food production, turning fields into gardens.
Despite 1.4 million new gardens in 1943, Britain faced food shortages due to German submarines.
Food rationing intensified, with weekly allotments of bacon, sugar, fats, and eggs.
The British became accustomed to a diet dominated by bread and potatoes.
Many people spent time in wartime activities like "Dig for Victory", Civil Defence, or the Home Guard.
The Home Guard was founded in 1940 to fight off German invaders.
Even elderly people were expected to help manufacture airplane parts in their homes.
Emphasis was placed on a planned economy.
In 1942, the government created a ministry for fuel and power to control the coal industry.
A ministry for production oversaw supplies for the armed forces.
Most British citizens accepted governmental interference due to the total war.
Substantial gains were made in manufacturing war materials.
Tank production quadrupled between 1940 and 1942.
Aircraft production grew from 8,000 in 1939 to 26,000 in 1943 and 1944.
The Soviet Union
World War II had an enormous impact and was known as the Great Patriotic War.
The German-Soviet war witnessed the greatest land battles and ruthlessness.
To Nazi Germany, it was a war of oppression and annihilation.
Two out of every five persons killed in World War II were Soviet citizens.
The shift to a war footing necessitated only limited administrative changes.
Joseph Stalin created a system of "super-centralization" to direct military and political affairs.
All civil and military organizations were subjected to the control of the Communist Party and the Soviet police.
Initial defeats led to drastic emergency mobilization measures.
Leningrad experienced a nine-hundred-day siege, with inhabitants resorting to eating dogs, cats, and mice.
Factories in the western Soviet Union were dismantled and shipped to the interior.
The Kharkov Tank Factory produced its first 25 T-34 tanks only ten weeks after being rebuilt.
This military, industrial, and economic mobilization created another industrial revolution.
Stalin labeled it a "battle of machines," and the Soviets produced 78,000 tanks and 98,000 artillery pieces.
55% of Soviet national income went for war materials, compared to 15% in 1940.
Soviet citizens experienced shortages of food and housing.
Civilian food consumption fell by 40% during the war.
Workers lived in dugouts or dilapidated barracks.
Soviet women played a major role.
They worked in factories, mines, and railroads.
Women constituted between 26% and 35% of laborers in mines and 48% in the oil industry.
The number of women working in industry increased almost 60%.
They dug antitank ditches and worked as air-raid wardens.
The Soviet Union was the only country to use women as combatants, serving as snipers and aircrews.
Female pilots who helped defeat the Germans at Stalingrad were known as the "Night Witches."
Soviet peasants bore enormous burdens, furnishing 60% of the military forces.
They were expected to feed the Red Army and the Soviet people under trying conditions.
The German occupation resulted in the loss of 47% of the country’s grain-producing regions.
A shortage of labor and equipment hindered the effort to expand agricultural production, even with new land opened.
Women and children were harnessed to do the plowing.
Peasants worked long hours on collective farms for no pay.
In 1943, the Soviet harvest was only 60% of its 1940 figure.
Total mobilization produced victory.
Stalin and the Communist Party realized that the Soviet people would fight to preserve "Mother Russia."
Government propaganda played on patriotic feelings, referencing past heroes and tsars.
The United States
The home front was quite different because the United States faced no threat of war in its own territory.
The United States became the arsenal of the Allied powers.
Mobilization had a great impact on American social and economic developments.
The immediate impact of mobilization was a dramatic expansion of the American economy, ending the Great Depression.
Old factories were converted, and new factories were built.
Massive amounts of government money financed new industries like chemicals and electronics.
A new government Office of Scientific Research and Development provided funds for contracts with universities and scientists.
The Manhattan Project employed 130,000 people and cost .
American industry supplied the U.S. armed forces and the other Allies with tanks, trucks, jeeps, and airplanes.
Gross national product (GNP) rose by 15% a year.
At the high point of war production in November 1943, the nation was constructing six ships a day and worth of other military equipment a month.
The production of airplanes increased from 6,000 in 1939 to more than 96,000 in 1944.
Industrial mobilization led to an increased government role in the economy.
The federal bureaucracy grew dramatically, with the establishment of:
The War Production Board, which allocated resources and managed production.
The War Labor Board, which settled labor disputes.
The Office of Price Administration, which controlled prices and rationed scarce goods.
The mobilization of the American economy also caused social problems.
The construction of new factories created boomtowns where thousands came to work but faced a shortage of housing, health facilities, and schools.
The transformation of small towns into large cities brought a breakdown in traditional social mores and an increase in teenage prostitution.
Economic mobilization led to a widespread movement of people, creating social tensions.
men and women were enrolled in the military, and another relocated.
More than one million African Americans migrated from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North and West.
The presence of African Americans in new areas led to racial tensions and riots.
Many of the one million African Americans who enlisted were angered.
Japanese Americans were treated shabbily and removed to camps, despite 65% being born in the United States.
This was justified for security reasons, with no similar treatment of German Americans or Italian Americans.
The racism was evident in comments by officials, such as the California governor.
Germany
In August 1914, Germans had cheered soldiers marching off to war, but in September 1939, the streets were quiet.
Hitler believed that the collapse of the home front in World War I had caused Germany’s defeat.
To maintain morale, Hitler refused to convert production from consumer goods to armaments during the first two years of the war.
Blitzkrieg enabled the Germans to win quick victories and plunder resources to avoid diverting resources away from the civilian economy.
After defeats on the Soviet front and the American entry into the war, Hitler ordered a massive increase in armaments production in 1942.
Albert Speer was made minister for armaments and munitions in 1942.
He tripled the production of armaments between 1942 and 1943 despite the intense Allied air raids.
Speer’s plea for a total mobilization was unheeded; Hitler feared undermining the home front.
A total mobilization of the economy was not implemented until 1944.
Schools, theaters, and cafes were closed.
Speer was permitted to use all remaining resources for the production of a few basic military items.
Total war mobilization was too little and too late to save Germany from defeat.
The war produced a reversal in Nazi attitudes toward women.
Nazi resistance to female employment declined.
Nazi magazines proclaimed women as working and fighting comrades.
The number of women working in industry, agriculture, commerce, and domestic service increased only slightly.
Many women resisted regular employment, especially in factories.
Even the introduction of labor conscription for women in January 1943 failed to achieve much.
Japan
Wartime Japan was a highly mobilized society.
To ensure control over national resources, the government set up a planning board to control prices, wages, the utilization of labor, and the allocation of resources.
Traditional habits of obedience and hierarchy, buttressed by the concept of imperial divinity, were emphasized.
Citizens were encouraged to sacrifice their resources, and sometimes their lives, for the national cause.
The code of bushido, or the way of the warrior, was revived.
The code of bushido was based on an ideal of loyalty and service.
It emphasized the obligation to honor and defend emperor, country, and family and to sacrifice one’s life if one failed.
Young Japanese were encouraged to volunteer en masse to serve as pilots in suicide missions—known as kamikaze—against U.S. warships.
Women’s rights were sacrificed to the greater national cause.
Japanese women were exhorted to fulfill their patriotic duty by bearing more children and espousing the slogans of the Greater Japanese Women’s Association.
Japan was extremely reluctant to mobilize women on behalf of the war effort.
General Hideki Tojo opposed female employment, arguing that the weakening of the family system would weaken the nation.
Female employment increased during the war, but only in areas where women traditionally had worked.
Instead of using women to meet labor shortages, the Japanese government brought in Korean and Chinese laborers.
Bombing of Cities
Bombing was used against military targets, troops, and civilian populations.
The use of bombs made World War II devastating for civilians and soldiers.
Giulio Douhet argued that bombing civilian populations would coerce governments into making peace.
European air forces developed long-range bombers in the 1930s.
Luftwaffe Attacks
The first sustained use of civilian bombing contradicted Douhet’s theory.
From early September 1940, the German Luftwaffe subjected London and other British cities to nightly air raids (the Blitz).
Londoners refused to panic.
Smaller communities were more directly affected, with destruction producing morale problems.
Coventry was destroyed on November 14, 1940.
War production was little affected by the raids.
The Bombing of Germany
The British bombed German cities, believing this would break civilian morale.
Major bombing raids began in 1942 under Arthur Harris.
On May 31, 1942, Cologne was first attacked by one thousand bombers.
American planes flew daytime missions, while the British Bomber Command continued nighttime saturation bombing.
Bombing raids added terror to circumstances made difficult by shortages of food, clothing, and fuel.
Germans feared incendiary bombs, which created firestorms.
Four raids on Hamburg in August 1943 produced temperatures of degrees Fahrenheit.
The ferocious bombing of Dresden from February 13 to 15, 1945, may have killed as many as 35,000 inhabitants and refugees.
Some Allied leaders criticized the terror bombing of German cities.
Urban dwellers lived in air-raid shelters but could be crushed to death or die by suffocation.
Nazi leaders began to evacuate women and children to rural areas in 1943, but this created its own problems.
Germany suffered enormously from the Allied bombing raids.
Millions of buildings were destroyed.
Possibly half a million civilians died.
The Allied bombing did not sap the morale of the German people.
Nor did the bombing destroy Germany’s industrial capacity.
However, the destruction of transportation systems and fuel supplies made it difficult for material to reach the German military.
Air raids were costly for the Allies, with nearly 40,000 Allied planes destroyed and 160,000 airmen lost.
The destruction of German cities from the air accomplished a major goal: preventing a stab-in-the-back myth after World War II.
The Bombing of Japan: The Atomic Bomb
The bombing of civilians reached a new level with the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan.
The American government pursued a dual strategy, fearing German attempts to create a superbomb.
Sabotaging German efforts.
Recruiting scientists, including those who had fled from Germany, to develop an atomic bomb.
Allied scientists built and tested the first atomic bomb by the summer of 1945.
Japan was vulnerable to air raids due to its destroyed air force and flimsy construction.
Attacks on Japanese cities by American B-29 Superfortresses began on November 24, 1944.
By the summer of 1945, many of Japan’s factories had been destroyed, along with one-fourth of its dwellings.
The Japanese government decreed the mobilization of all people between the ages of thirteen and sixty.
President Truman and his advisers feared heavy American casualties and dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).
The destruction was incredible.
Of 76,000 buildings near the hypocenter of the explosion in Hiroshima, 70,000 were flattened.
140,000 of the city’s 400,000 inhabitants died by the end of 1945.
By the end of 1950, another 50,000 had perished from the effects of radiation.
Aftermath of the War
World War II was the most destructive war in history.
Nazi Germany and Japan followed worldviews based on racial extermination/nationalist ideals.
Fighting the Axis powers required the mobilization of millions of ordinary men and women.
The Costs of World War II
At least soldiers died.
Civilian deaths were even greater, estimated at around , of whom more than were Russian and Chinese.
The Soviet Union experienced the greatest losses: soldiers and civilians.
In 1945, millions of people around the world faced starvation..
Millions of people had also been uprooted by the war and became "displaced persons."
Europe alone may have had displaced persons.
Millions of Germans were expelled from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and from former eastern German territories.
In Asia, millions of Japanese returned from the former Japanese empire to Japan, while thousands of Korean forced laborers returned to Korea.
Everywhere cities lay in ruins.
The total monetary cost of the war has been estimated at .
The economies of most belligerents, with the exception of the United States, were left drained and on the brink of disaster.
The Allied War Conferences
The total victory of the Allies in World War II was followed by a new conflict known as the Cold War.
The Cold War stemmed from military, political, and ideological differences, especially between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Allied leaders were motivated by differing visions of postwar Europe.
The Conference at Tehran
Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met at Tehran in November 1943 to decide the future course of the war.
Their major tactical decision concerned the final assault on Germany and invasion of the Continent through France, scheduled for the spring of 1944.
Soviet and British-American forces would meet in defeated Germany along a north-south dividing line.
Eastern Europe would be liberated by Soviet forces.
The Allies also agreed to a partition of postwar Germany, but differences over frontiers of Poland were set aside.
The Yalta Conference
By the time of the conference at Yalta in Ukraine in February 1945, the defeat of Germany was a foregone conclusion.
The Western powers were faced with the reality of Red Army soldiers taking possession of eastern and much of central Europe.
Stalin was still operating under the notion of spheres of influence and desired a buffer to protect the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt was moving away from the notion of spheres of influence to the ideal of self-determination.
At Yalta, Roosevelt sought Soviet military help against Japan, agreeing to Stalin’s price for military assistance.
The creation of the United Nations was a major American concern at Yalta.
The Big Three reaffirmed that Germany must surrender unconditionally and created four occupation zones.
Churchill insisted that the French be given one occupation zone.
German reparations were set at .
A compromise was also worked out with regard to Poland.
Stalin agreed to free elections in the future to determine a new government.
The issue of free elections in eastern Europe caused a serious rift between the Soviets and the Americans.
The eastern European governments were also supposed to be pro-Soviet.
Intensifying Differences
Western relations with the Soviets were deteriorating rapidly even before the conference at Potsdam took place in July 1945.
The Grand Alliance had been one of necessity.
Each side committed acts that the other viewed as unbecoming of "allies."
The United States’ termination of Lend-Lease aid and its failure to respond to the Soviet request for a loan exposed the Western desire to keep the Soviet state weak.
The Soviet Union’s failure to fulfill its Yalta pledge on the "Declaration on Liberated Europe" set a dangerous precedent.
The Soviets seemed to be asserting control of eastern European countries under puppet Communist regimes.
The Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference of July 1945 began under a cloud of mistrust.
Roosevelt had died and had been succeeded by Harry Truman.
Truman received word that the atomic bomb had been successfully tested.
Truman demanded free elections throughout eastern Europe.
Stalin responded that such governments would be anti-Soviet
Stalin sought absolute military security by the presence of Communist states in eastern Europe.
Emergence of the Cold War
The Soviets did not view their actions as dangerous expansionism but as legitimate security maneuvers.
There was little sympathy in the West for Soviet fears and even less trust in Stalin.
The Soviet Union rejected a twenty-five-year disarmament of Germany.
Byrnes responded by announcing that American troops would be needed in Europe for an indefinite time and made moves that foreshadowed the creation of an independent West Germany.
The reality of conflicting ideologies reappeared.
Many in the West interpreted Soviet policy as part of a worldwide Communist conspiracy.
The Soviets viewed Western policy as global capitalist expansionism.
Vyacheslav Molotov referred to the Americans as "insatiable imperialists" and "warmongering groups of adventurers."
In March 1946, Winston Churchill declared that "an iron curtain" had "descended across the continent."
Stalin branded Churchill’s speech a "call to war with the Soviet Union."
World War II was described as more of a total war than World War I due to several factors which impacted civilians more intensely:
More widespread fighting across the globe: This meant that more civilian populations were directly affected by military operations, not just those in specific regions.
Higher number of civilian deaths: Almost 20 million civilian deaths were recorded in World War II, attributed to bombing raids, mass extermination policies, and
World War II was considered more of a total war than World War I due to more widespread fighting, extensive economic mobilization, greater mobilization of women, and a higher number
The differences in visions for postwar Europe among the Allied leaders—particularly regarding the future of Eastern Europe—significantly contributed to the emerging tensions that led to the Cold War.
Specifically, the Soviet Union's desire for Communist states in Eastern Europe to serve as a buffer for security directly clashed with the American ideal of self-determination and free elections. This fundamental disagreement created an environment of mistrust and ideological conflict, setting the stage for the Cold War's division of Europe into opposing spheres of influence.