WWI - WWII Study Guide

WWI

Imperialism and Nationalism among European powers

Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princep

Sets off a series of secret alliances and war begins

Allied Powers- France, Russia, Italy, United Kingdom

Central Powers- Germany, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman Empire

Submarine Warfare- Germans attack military ships and ships carrying military freight

Sink Lusitania- passenger ship

Trench Warfare- new weapons and technologies are hard to defend against, militaries stay in trenches in the ground between attacks

Fighting leads to unprecedented amounts of death, over 8 million dead in 4 years

2 million soldiers die in Verdun and Somme in France

Russia is weak and behind in production of weapons, heavy casualties, 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Tsar killed, Communist leadership leaves the war, giving land to Germany

USA remains neutral from 1914-1917

President Woodrow Wilson runs for second term on the slogan “he kept us out of war” and then immediately enters the war a month after second inauguration

The USA had given out loans to France and England, Germany was near victory. If the US had not entered the war, they risked not getting those loans paid back.

US Military small, only 200,000 soldiers, draft instated with the Selective Service Act (still in existence today, get ready to sign up after your birthday, gentlemen)

US forces kept separate from European forces under American Expeditionary Force (AEF)

400,000 black Americans fight in segregated units, return home thinking that after fighting for democracy and freedom they may be treated well, they aren’t. 

Americans arrive just in time to help England and France repel the German advances

November 11, 1918 Germany signs an armistice (cease fire) and War ends

America fights in war for 8 months, has 7%  of the casualties

Treaty of Versailles

Wilson 14 Point Plan

Includes plans for a League of Nations, colonial self determination, reduction in military size, free trade, “peace without victory”

While Wilson argued for leniency on the Germans, Europeans had another opinion, revenge

Germany forced to pay reparations of $33 billion over 30 years, reduce military size, give up significant amounts of land 

New countries created including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon

Treaty is unpopular in the US, Senate must approve all treaties (it’s in the constitution) 

Strong Reservationists want the treaty to be stronger, Irreconcilables want to retreat to old ways of isolationism

Wilson travels the country trying to convince people of the worth of the Treaty, has a stroke

Unable to move or communicate, Wilson’s condition is hidden from the public, his wife, Edith Wilson makes decisions in his name, secretly, unofficially becoming the first woman president of the United States.

Return To Normalcy 1920s

Warren Harding rises to the Presidency as Republican calling for a “Return to Normalcy”

Rejection of Progressive Era and change

Rejection of Wilson and feeling “duped” or “fooled” into war, a return to isolationism

Selective isolationism- colonies in Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, intervention in Haiti and Cuba.

“The chief business of the American people is business”- Calvin Coolidge

Harding is a bit of freak, heavy drinker, babies outside of his marriage, has a heart attack and Calvin Coolidge becomes president

Worker’s wages rise, wealth begins to concentrate at the top at rates higher than before.

Consumer goods increase as war factories start to make modern household goods like vacuums, ovens, radios, etc.

Entertainment- movies, radio, music, sports

Urban populations increase every year

Those consumer goods are bought on credit/installment payments

Harlem Renaissance- jazz, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong authors- Langston Hughes

Great Migration is the movement of African Americans from the South to urban industrial areas in the North and Midwest

Women- flappers, changes in styles of dress, hairstyles, makeup, drinking habits

1920- Women get the right to vote (19th amendment) 

Literature- “Lost Generation” Hemingway, Fitzgerald

Sports- Babe Ruth catches the imagination of the country, followed in newspapers and radio broadcasts

Boxing- Jim Jeffries vs. Jack Johnson (first black heavyweight champion)

Movies- first movies with audio (talkies) 100 million people a week go to the movies each week by 1929 (there are 160 million people in the country)

Cars- assembly line, Henry Ford, Model T, 

Airplanes- Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic, Amelia Eirhardt attempts to fly across the globe

Rural Americans resist all of this change

Prohibition (18th amendment, Volstead Act) bans alcohol in the country starting 1920

Rise in organized crime

Fear of the immigrant

Sacco & Vanzetti executed for robbery they probably did not commit

Quotas introduced by mid 1920s to limit immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe

KKK rise in power and numbers in the 1920s, anti-immigrant, African Americans, Jewish, Catholic, etc. Hate and murder/terrorize anyone who is not white and Protestant

6% of Americans in KKK during the 1920s

Scopes “Monkey” Trial- substitute teacher gets arrested for teaching evolution in a science class

Trial is followed closely across the country

Lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow

Scopes loses the trial, case dismissed on a technicality on appeal

Great Depression

The excesses of the 1920s, credit, corporations taking advantage of the system come to a disastrous outcome in October 1929 Black Tuesday, stock market crashes

Over 70% of Americans living below poverty line

Stocks bought on “margin” meaning loans are taken out to buy stock, this is fine as long as the stocks go up. Line go down, not so good.

25,000 banks fail, 90,000 businesses fail

25% unemployment nationwide, some areas have 50% unemployment

Bank runs, people try to pull out all of their money, banks don’t have enough cash on hand

“Hoovervilles” homeless Americans live in shanty towns built of scrap wood and metal

Dust Bowl- 

Bad farming practices and a drought lead to the loss of rich topsoil in the Great Plains of the Midwest

Dust Bowl Refugees “Okies” or “Arkies” head to farming jobs in the West (California and Washington state)

Bad reaction- President Hoover

Tells the country that they have to fix this themselves, nothing he can do

Eventually tries some things like unemployment payments and building the Hoover Dam

Hoover is going to lose the next election badly to FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”

Wins election in a landslide, promising a “New Deal” to address the Great Depression.

FDIC- protects your money in the bank

SEC- keeps corporations from committing fraud

NLRB- protects worker rights

Social Security- old age insurance

Expand Electricity to rural areas

Work programs- WPA, CCC

First 100 days- FDR promises to introduce legislation and programs to address Depression quickly, 15 major pieces of legislation approved by Congress

Bank Holiday- all banks close, government inspects banks to see if they can stay in business, only banks determined to be “healthy” allowed to stay in business, restores public confidence in banks

Fireside Chats- weekly radio addresses from FDR to public to communicate with them on the progress of the nation

CCC- massive program, 3 million men put to work, plants 8 billion trees, builds 800 state parks

Republicans oppose New Deal because they view it as government overreach and would lead to socialism

Four Freedoms- Freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from fear, freedom from want

WWII

Mobilizing the economy 

War production board directs industry to build up weapon production

Rationing

“No strike pledge” peace enforced between labor and businesses

Farmers see a rise in income

Income taxes - 94% for top income bracket

Bonds

Continued urbanization (people moving from rural areas to cities)

Migration to the West, this time for industrial jobs

South sees an increase in military bases

200,000 women join the military in non combat roles

6.5 million women join the workforce

Rosie The Riveter- women working on the assembly line producing weapons of war

2nd Great Migration- movement of African Americans out of the South into the North and Midwest

1 million + African Americans in segregated units

A Phillip Randolph threatens FDR with the March on Washington (happens in 1963) FDR bans discrimination in any factories making weapons for war

Japanese Internment

Japanese Americans are rounded up in the Military Exclusion Zone (West Coast of the US) out of an unfounded fear that they would assist a Japanese invasion

Sent to concentration camps far away from their home, they will return to see their homes and businesses taken by white Americans

1944 FDR wins fourth term as President (dies in April 1945)

War in Europe

North Africa, then Italy, then D-Day, Battle of The Bulge

Russians repel Germans at Stalingrad, push them all the way back to Berlin

April 30 1945, Hitler kills himself, June 7, 1945 Germany surrenders

Japan/War in Pacific

Pearl Harbor December 7, 1945

Philippines- Batan Death March January 1942

The US fights the war by “island hopping” making their way to Japan through a series of fights on islands that dot the Pacific ocean

General Douglas MacArthur leads military in the Pacific

Iwo Jima & Okinawa bring US forces close to Japan

Atom Bomb

August 1945- Japan offers to surrender, but it does not meet US conditions (emperor stepping down)

Manhattan Project begins in 1942 making the atom bomb in secret

Alamogordo, NM July 16 1945 test of “Trinity” atomic bomb successful

Hiroshima August 6, 1945

Nagasaki August 9, 1945

~240,000 dead immediately.

Japan surrenders 9/2/1945