Interwar Foreign Policy and WWII: Mobilization

American Foreign Policy of the 1920s Republican Presidents

Disarmament Initiatives

• Washington Naval Conference
  • Five-Power Treaty
  • U.S., Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy
  • Warship tonnage ration 5:5:3
  • 10-year pause on construction of naval capital ships
• Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)
  • International promise to avoid war as an option for international disputes
• London Naval Conference (1930)
  • Expanded construction caps on naval auxillary ships

Economic Policies

• Protective Tarrifs
  • Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922)
  • Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930)
• Dawes Plan (1924)
  • Resolved the issue over Germany’s reparation payments

Stimson Doctrine

• Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931)
  • Need for raw materials
• Stimson Doctrine
  • United States will not recognize territories assumed by force and aggression

Good Neighbor Policy

• United States transformed its relationship with Western Hemisphere
  • Apply a policy of non-aggression and non-intervention in Central and South American nations
  • Establish reciprocal agreements
• Hoover
  • Clark Memorandum (1930)
  • Rejected Roosevelt Corollary as extension of Monroe Doctrine
  • Emphasized U.S. role to prevent further European intervention per the Monroe Doctrine
• FDR
  • Montevidge Convention (1933)
  • U.S. renounced the right to unilaterally intervene in the affairs of Central and South American nations
  • Ended occupations in Haiti and Nicaragua
  • Annulled the Platt Amendment
  • Returned Cuban autonomy

American Isolationists

• Characteristics
  • Midwest region
  • Rural sectors
  • Progressives and conservatives
• Nye Committee
  • “Merchants of Death”
  • Munitions manufacturers and bankers pro-WWI to make a profit
  • Support for the Neutrality Acts
• America First Committee
  • Avoid possible entanglements with European affairs in WWII
  • Anti-Semitic Leaders
  • Charles Lindbergh
  • Henry Ford

The Axis Powers and Appeasement

• Japan
  • Invasion of Manchuria (1931)
  • Invasion of China (1937)
• Italy
  • Invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
• Germany
  • Re-militarization of the Rhineland (1936)
  • Anschluss and the Sudetenland (1938)
• Global Response
  • Munich Conference (1938)
  • Motov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact (1939)
  • German-Soviet Non-Aggression
  • German invasion of Poland begins World War II in Europe (1939)

Japanese Aggression in the Pacific

• Show Statism
  • Ultra-nationalist philosophy
  • Military dictatorship
  • Territorial expansionism
• Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
  • Asia for Asians
• Invasion of Manchuria (1931)
• Invasion of China (1937)

Italian Fascism

• Fascism
  • Far-right authoritarian and totalitarianism
  • Black shirts terrorized anyone to the left of the organization
  • Ultra-nationalism
  • Protectionist economics
• Invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
  • Annexation of former colony lost in 1896
• Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism

German Nazism

• Weimar Republic
  • Suffered under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression
  • Liberal democracy
• Beer Hall Putsch
  • 1923 - failed coup d’etat by the Nazis
  • Wrote Mein Kampf
• Rise to power
  • Nov. 1932: Nazi’s gain 32% of votes
  • Form coalition with conservative party
    • Keep the Communists out of power
  • Jan. 1933: President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor
  • Feb. 1933: Reichstag fire
  • Hitler seizes control using emergency powers

Quarantine Speech

• Speech by FDR on October 5, 1937
  • FDR sounded alarm on escalating global conflicts
  • Will not enter war without reason
  • Maintain U.S. security

American Isolationism: Neutrality Acts

• Neutrality Act of 1935
  • Prohibited export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” for foreign nations at war
  • Arms manufacturers required an export license
  • Couldn’t trade with belligerent nations
• Neutrality Act of 1937
  • Americans forbidden to travel on belligerent ships or non-American ships
  • American merchant ships prohibited to transport arms to belligerent nations
  • Cash and Carry: sale of items to belligerents if paid in cash up front
• Neutrality Act of 1939
  • Cash and Carry expanded to include arms to belligerent nations

World War II Begins in Europe

• Axis Powers
  • Germany, Italy, Japan
• Non-Aggression Pact (1939)
  • No fighting between Germany and USSR
  • Tentative alliance
• German invasion of Poland (Sept. 1, 1939)
  • Blitzkrieg campaign
  • Shock and speed
  • Rapid expansion
  • “Lightning war”
  • Poland surrenders in 35 days
  • Britain and France declare war on Germany - Sept. 3, 1939
  • France and Belgium invaded
    • Fell in 46 days
• Dunkirk - June 5th, 1940
  • 330,000 British, French, Dutch soldiers evacuated the English channel
  • Avoiding German use of machinery and weapons
• Blitzkrieg bombing in London, Britain
  • Germany planned to invade the UK

Election of 1940

• Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
  • “Drafted” for unprecedented third term
  • Immense popular support
  • Would not send soldiers to fight in Europe
  • Large portion of electoral collage
• Wendell Willkie (R)
  • Make New Deal programs more efficient

Preparedness

• Cash and Carry maintained
• Destroyers-for-Bases (1940)
  • Executive order to trade 50 cruisers and destroyers for 99-yearrent-free leases on British bases
  • UK was running out of money
  • America gains military presence worldwide from the UK
• Lend-Lease Act (1941)
  • Authorized free trade of American arms to nations “vital to the defense of the United States”: United Kingdom, Soviet Union, China
  • Provides supply needed for the war (increased manufacturing)
  • Effectively ended American neutrality
• Selective Service Act of 1940
  • First ever peacetime conscription act
  • 21-35 year old men register with local draft board
  • Allowed for conscientious objection for non-combatant or civilian employment

FDR’s Four Freedoms

• Freedom of speech, from want, worship, from fear
• Freedoms Americans enjoy

“Arsenal of Democracy”

• Lend-Lease Act (1941)
  • Provide arms to Great Britain on credit and decisively pro-British “neutrality”
• Atlantic Charter (1941)
  • UK and US
  • Plan for the world after the war
  • Promote and secure self-determination and free trade
  • No pursuit of territorial expansion
  • Blueprint for United Nations following WWII
  • Solidifies partnership with the UK

Pearl Harbor

• U.S. Embargoes on Japan
  • Prohibited trade of steel and oil
  • Required Japan’s halt on expansion and removal from China
  • Neutered Japanese economy and industries
  • Provoked attacks against the U.S.
• December 7, 1941
  • Japanese surprise attack on U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii
  • 2,400 Americans killed
  • USS Arizona and Oklahoma
• United States enters WWII
  • U.S. declares war on Japan on Dec. 8, 1941
  • Germany and Italy declare war on U.S.
  • German invasion of Soviet Union (1942)
  • Operation Barbarossa
    • June-December, 1942

Office of Price Administration (OPA) and Ration Books

• Regulated all aspects of civilian life
  • Froze rents, wages, and prices
• Rationed
  • Meats, sugar, gas, and tires
• Wartime spending increased 1000%
  • Great Depression could be solved by gov’t spending

Natives in World War II

• 44,000 Natives served in American armed forces
• Navajo Code Talkers
  • Code based on Navajo language completely oral and variations in syntax and tone
  • Contributed to successful island hopping campaign in Pacific Theater
  • Japanese never broke the code
• Served also during WWI
  • Choctaw and Cherokee

Hispanics on Home Front

• Braceros Program
  • Bi-lateral agreement between Mexico and United States contracting Mexican agricultural laborers
  • General safeguards of housing, but low wages and tough work conditions given high demand
• Zoot Suit Riots (June 1943)
  • Series of altercations between white military servicemen and Mexican-American youths in Los Angeles

Women on the Home Front

• “Rosie the Riveter”
  • Women in the workforce
  • 1940 - 27%
  • 1945 - 37%
  • Earned 65% of what men earned
  • Domestic sphere included the home front
• US gov’t subsidized child care
  • Mary T. Norton (Rep, D-NJ)
  • Commonly Facilities Act of 1942
    • Made families, regardless of income, eligible for 6 days of childcare per week

Women and the Armed Forces

• 350,000 served in military
  • Clerks, typists, drove trucks, repaired airplanes, laboratory technicians, rigged parachutes, analyzed photographs, flew military aircraft, test-flew repaired planes, and trained anti-aircraft artillery gunners by acting as flying targets
• Women’s Army Corps (WAC)
• Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Saves (WAVES)
• Marine Corps Women’s Reserve
• Coast Guard Women’s Reserve (SPARS)
• Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS)
• Army Nurses Corps and the Navy Nurse Corps.

African Americans on the Homefront

• Great Migration
  • Detroit Race Riot (1943)
• FDR and African-Americans
  • Proposed March on Washington (1943)
  • A. Phillip Randolph
  • Executive Order 8802
  • Desegregation of national defense industry
  • Committee on Fair Employment Practice
• Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E)
• Double V Campaign
  • Slogan and movement to promote victory for democracy overseas (against fascism) and at home (segregation, discrimination)

African Americans in World War II

• 1.2 million served during the war
• Endured Jim Crow segregation in the military forces
  • Segregated units
  • Unable to hold officer positions about whites
• Tuskegee Alabama
  • Airmen (Red Tails)
  • Fighter and bomber pilots
  • First Black military aviators in armed forces
  • Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male
  • 1932-1972 - United States Public Health Service

Japanese Internment

• Executive Order 9066
  • Japanese internment camps
  • 110,000-120,000 Japanese families on the west coast
  • Lost property (homes, farms, business, and employment)
  • Korematsu v. United States (1944)
  • SCOTUS ruled E09066 constitutional
  • Financial compensation granted in 1988

Japanese in World War II

• 442nd Combat Regiment

  • Composed of Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans)
  • Total of 14,000 men served

• Most decorated unit in U.S. military history

• Rescued the “Lost Battalion”

  • Texas National Guardsmen

• April 5th is Go for Broke Day in honor of Sadao Munemori KIA on April 5, 1945

  • First Medal of Honor recipient