Time Period 7 - Key Terms

Roosevelt Square Deal Quote (1905)

This quote means that not everyone will have the same resources, but everyone will have equal opportunity.

One word that supports this is crookedness. This is significant because the U.S was coming out of the extreme crookedness of the Gilded Age in 1905.

• Political crookedness

  • The extreme patronage which was not solved by the Pendleton Act

  • The corruption of the government, including the Credit Mobilier and Whiskey Ring

  • Tammany Hall/Boss Tweed: exploiting immigrants for votes

  • Government support for big business.

  • Coxey’s Army

• Social crookedness

  • Nativism- Chinese Exclusion Act

  • Jim Crow- Literacy tests, Grandfather clause, KKK

  • Child labor

  • Social Darwinism

  • Forced Assimilation: Carlisle school

• Economic crookedness

  • Monopolies exploiting farmers

  • Businesses exploiting workers; trade unions and strikes

  • Laissez Faire

Progressives

Progressive Causes

• Growing power of big business

• Uncertainties in the economy

• Increasingly violent conflicts between labor groups and their employers

• Political machine power

• Jim Crow Segregation

• Women’s suffrage

• Prohibition

Society on some level, was deteriorating, and could not be saved without significant government i

How The Other Half Lives (1890)

Muckrakers

Secret Ballot

Direct Primaries

People vote directly for the presidential candidate; candidates need to campaign

17th Amendment

Progressives called for direct election of senators, as many were wealthy and represented big business. Prior to this they were elected by state legislatures. A success of the progressives at putting power back into the hands of the people.

Initiative

Referendum

Recall

Commision Plan

Allowed the people to vote for city management officials (police commissioner, sanitation, etc.); forced these officials to have a plan in the interest of the people

National Child Labor Committee

Most companies were run by men, who did not care who was working in their factories. Women’s role as mothers came into play here, as they attacked child labor. They also drew attention to the fact that children need to be in school. Lewis Wix Heinz was hired to photograph the working conditions of child laborers. These photos were published in muckraking journals, spreading awareness of the issue.

National Consumer League (1899)

Women were also working in factories and being exploited. This was a union created to help factory workers in their fight for better conditions, better pay, etc. Led by Florence Kelley.

Muller v Oregon SC Case (1908)

A landmark Supreme Court case in which crusading attorney (and future supreme court justice) Luis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of limiting the hours of women workers. Coming on the heels of Lochner v. New York, it established a different standard for male and female workers.

Triangle Shirtwaist

Anti-Saloon League

• Immigrants were often the ones bringing alcohol. People were beginning to drink harder alcohol brought in by immigrants, or made with western grain. It was beginning to hurt families. Women lead the charge against liquor.

The Anti-Saloon League, along with the WCTU claimed that liquor prevented men from being able to work, leading to injuries and unemployment, to domestic issues. The ASL tried to raise awareness of this. Their main goal was an amendment banning alcohol. Their use of pamphlets and public campaigning helped them achieve this.

18th Amendment (1919)

Banned the production, selling, and transportation of alcohol in the United States. By the time it was passed, a majority of states already had dry laws. It was a success of women and progressives in enacting political change.

Square Deal

3 C’s: Conserve Resources, Control Corporations, Care for Consumers

Coal Strike 1902

Northern Securities Company

The Jungle

Pure Food and Drug Act

Meat Inspection Act

Conservation vs Preservation

Hetch Hetchy Valley

Dollar Diplomacy

Triple P’s

Underwood Tariff

Federal Reserve Act

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Working Comp Act

Moral Diplomacy

Wilson’s belief that the U.S’s role is to make the world safe for democracy through peaceful negotiation, and to extend democratic beliefs of self determination globally.

WWI

Causes

• Militarism

• Alliances

• Imperialism

• Nationalism

• Empires

• The actions of German soldiers during their occupation of Belgium while it was a neutral nation proved them to be the aggressor. Americans feared what they would do if they reached other countries or the U.S.

• Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare and was sinking American ships

• Lusitania

• Zimmerman note

Countries

• Central Powers: Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by Turkey and Bulgaria

  • vs

• Allies: Great Britain, Russia, and France, later joined by Italy, Japan, and the United States

Because of isolationism, Americans wanted to remain neutral in the conflict. Additionally, they wanted to continue selling goods and loaning money to both sides of the war.

Outcomes

• There was a desire for a new international order to prevent a war from happening again.

• Treaty of Versailles

• League of Nations

Lusitania

Germany blew up the ship Lusitania, killing American sailors.

Zimmerman Note

Homefront

What is happening at home while a nation is at war.

• CPI

• Espionage Act and Sedition Acts

• Nineteenth Amendment

• Great Migration

Committee on Public Information (CPI) (1917)

• A government office during World War I known popularly as the Creel Committee for its chairman George Creel, it was dedicated to winning everyday Americans’ support for the war effort. It regularly distributed pro-war propaganda and sent out an army of “four-minute men” to rally crowds and deliver “patriotic pep”.

  • The purpose of the CPI was to convince Americans to participate in the war effort voluntarily. Document C is a picture of Uncle Sam saying I want you for the U.S army. This shows how the CPI appealed to American patriotism to convince people to enlist in the army and avoid a draft. Document B is a picture of Lady Liberty encouraging women to make gardens and save food in order to help with the war. America wanted to avoid compulsory rations to conserve food as European countries were doing, so they wanted to appeal to American patriotism so they would save food on their own accord.

  • Creel promoted Wilsonian idealism so much that people were disillusioned when its promises were not all fulfilled.

  • If homefront morale was high, soldiers’ morale would be too.

  • The Army grew by 4-5 million people between drafts and enlists

  • Propaganda promoted Anti-German sentiment

Espionage and Sedition Act (1917)

Schenck v. U.S (1919)

• Schenck v. United States (1919): A Supreme Court decision that upheld the Espionage Act and Sedition Acts, reasoning that freedom of speech could be curtailed when it posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation.

  • Schenck wrote a pamphlet encouraging young men to resist the draft.

  • Context: The U.S needed as many people as they could to join the army. They were trying to play up the democratic cause of the war, which Schenk was challenging.

  • Violates: the 13th amendment since it was involuntary servitude & The 1st Amendment because it restricted freedom of speech

  • SC argued that encouraging men to avoid the draft was a clear and present danger.

National security trumps civil liberty in a time of war

Great Migration

Silent Sentinels

19th Amendment

AEF

Meuse-Argonne

League of Nations

• A world organization of national governments proposed by President Woodrow Wilson and established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It worked to facilitate peaceful international cooperation. Despite emotional appeals by Wilson, isolationists’ objections to the League created the major obstacle to American signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Treaty of Versailles

Signed in France’s famed palace after six months of tough negotiations, it established the terms of settlement of the First World War between Germany and the Allied and Associated Powers (most notably France, Britain, Italy, and the United States). Article 231, soon dubbed “the war guilt clause,” blamed the war on Germany as justification for forcing German disarmament and saddling Germany with heavy reparation payments to the Allied victors. Germans detested the treaty as too harsh, the French feared it was too weak to prevent future aggression, and the U.S Senate rejected it, largely because it obliged the United States to join the League of Nations.

• During the Paris conference, the allies formed an alliance called the Big Four, with Wilson representing the U.S.

• The winning countries would receive conquered territories as trustees of the League of Nations.

  • Created countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia

• Put Germany in deep debt, conrtibuting to WWII and the Great Depression

Election 1920

• In the election of 1920, Wilson appealed to calls for a “solemn referendum” even though it was clearly not feasible.

• Reps nominated Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge for VP. Dems nominated James Cox and FDR for VP.

  • Cox would’ve pushed for the League of Nations

  • Harding sold a return to normalcy (isolationism)

• Harding won the election of 1920, with help from newly enfranchised Women.

• Americans sought the “return to normalcy” after the war, which Harding promised.

This tells the globe that America is not interested in foreign affairs or entanglements if national security is not threatened. It is also a return to Republican Laissez Faire policy.

Prohibition

Drys vs Wets

Drys

• Southerners: Fundamentalists in the Bible Belt; White people did not want black people to be able to drink in fear that they would break Jim Crow Laws

• Westerners: Westerners wanted to shake the reputation of lawless saloons.

Wets

• East and Midwest: These were the more urbanized and progressive areas.

• Immigrants: Many European immigrants brought alcohol into the U.S and it was an important element of their culture.

Bible Belt

Scopes Trial

Fundamentalism

Modernism

Organized Crime

St Valentine's Day Massacre

Al Capone’s gang bribed police officers to take their uniforms, dressed up as them, and gunned down members of a rival gang in broad daylight. No one was charged with the crime. A case study of the extreme gang warfare and corruption of the prohibition era.

21st Amendment

Repeals the 18th amendment (prohibition).

Government regulates harmful substances rather than taking them away completely.

Consumer Culture

• Icons:

• Tech: iPhones, airpods, laptops, social media

• Fashion:

• Music: Taylor Swift, Drake, Kanye West

• Fads/Trends: TikTok, clean girl aesthetic, sephora makeup, stanley, hydroflask

• Transportation: Cars

In the 1920’s American consumerism was created. After WWI, Americans had an attitude of “eat, drink, and be merry”. Business began to mass produce. Sports became a

Mass Production

Businesses began producing cheaper and faster to supply American consumerism

Ads

Advertisement emerged as an industry

Installment Plans

“Buy today and pay later” Americans began buying on credit excessively, putting them into debt at a rate so alarming that they did not actually own any of their goods. Businesses were also not getting fully paid off for their goods. This was the foundation for the Great Depression

Assembly Line

Model T

Spirit of St. Louis

Social, Economic, Environmental= Cars

Social

• Cars lead Americans to travel for vacations,

• Migrate to more attractive states

• Further liberated women.

• Automobiles allowed for churches and schools to be consolidated, developing the suburbs.

• Car accidents became an issue before the government placed regulations.

• Cars raised concerns about young people having too much freedom. Exacerbated the clash of cultures.

• Aided the rise of crime.

Economic

• The rise of automobiles created millions of jobs through rubber, fabric, highway construction, etc.

• Oil, steel, glass industries.

• Mechanics and gas stations created jobs.

• Hotels and Motels; roadside rest stops.

Environmental

• Road construction introduced pollution into the environment

• Petroleum and Oil industry boomed.

Social, Economic, Political= Radio

Social

• As radios became mass produced, Americans united over a common interest.

• Fictional radio shows also took off

• Sports became much more popular, as people were able to listen to the same game at the same time

• Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh became cultural icons.

Political

• The 1920 elections were broadcast

• The news became much quicker and accessible

Economic

• Radio advertising

• National products rose as everyone was listening to the same advertisements.

• Consumerism becomes essential to American culture

Hollywood

Social

• Transcended the entertainment industry.

• Creates Hollywood icons and trendsetters.

• United Americans over the same films

• Created dance crazes.

• A universal national culture was created; America lost some of its regional distinctions

UNIA

Harlem Renaissance

• A creative outpouring among African American writers, jazz musicians, and social thinkers, centered around Harlem in the 1920s, that celebrated black culture and advocated for a “New Negro” in American social, political, and intellectual life.

  • Cause: Great Migration, Jim Crow. Context: Segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson

  • First time where African American culture and arts were accepted into mainstream society.

  • The NAACP was located in Harlem, meaning it was a safe place.

  • Expressing daily struggles through art.

  • Jazz music became a soundtrack for the 1920’s.

  • 1921 Shuffle Along was the first African American play to be on Broadway, and became popular among white Americans

  • Foundation for the Civil Rights movement.

Flappers

5 power naval treaty

Limited the construction of certain types of large naval ships, and it applied ratio limits to the number of ships a country could build (ex: Japan could build 3/5 as many ships as America). Submarines and destroyers were not restricted. It also stated that the British and Americans would refrain from fortifying their Far Eastern possessions, including the Philippines. The Japanese were not subjected to such restraints in their possessions.

• Limits the navy of each nation in order to prevent war

Kellog Briand Pact

Dawes Plan

Ohio Gang

Teapot Dome Scandal

The secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, convinced the secretary of the navy to transfer valuable oil-laden land to the Interior Department (the land was owned by the navy). Fall was then bribed with $100,000 to leased the lands to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny.

Causes of Great Depression

Rugged Individualism

Hoovervilles

Bonus Army

Stock Market Crash=Great Depression

• It was partially triggered by the British, who raised their interest rates in an effort to bring back capital lured abroad by American investments.

• The British needed money, and they were unable to trade with the United States due the high tariffs.

• On "Black Tuesday" of October 29, 1929, millions of stocks were sold in a panic.

  • Overspeculation: people thought the companies would continue to increase in value, but they stopped.

  • Companies lose their value.

  • There was not enough paper value to go around to pay for the stock; stockholders ended up being left with nothing.

• By the end of 1929, two months after the initial crash, stockholders had lost $40 billion.

• As a result of the crash, millions lost their jobs and thousands of banks closed.

  • Banks were also investing in the stock market without telling customers

  • This caused a run on banks, as Americans realized their money was being unwisely invested. They went to get their paper currency out, but the banks didn’t have enough to go around. This caused bank failures.

  • Less consumerism=less money for workers=unemployment/cut salaries..

• The United States was the hardest industrialized nation to be hit.

• This crash led to the Great Depression.

New Deal

The economic and political policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s, which aimed to solve the problems of the Great Depression by providing relief for the unemployed and launching efforts to stimulate economic recovery. The New Deal built on reforms of the progressive era to greatly expand an American-style welfare state.

• 3 Rs: relief, recovery, reform.

  • Relief: Immediate help for unemployed and certifiable poor

  • Recovery: Bring back the economy

  • Reform: Change the financial system to prevent another depression

• Expands the power of the federal government and uses it to take action.

Fireside Chats

FDR declared a banking holiday as his first action in Congress. In fireside chats, FDR came over the radio and explained why he did this to the American people. He assured Americans that it was safer to put money in banks than “under the mattress”. Banks were failing, Americans were fearful of a bank withdrawal when they reopened. FDR explained how the banking system was supposed to work, how it had failed, and what Congress was intending to do.

• He used the radio to speak in a calm, intimate manner and connect with Americans.

• Set the tone for FDR explaining what he was going to do, how he was going to do it, and taking action, instilling confidence in the American people.

Glass-Steagall Act (1933)

A law creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured individual bank deposits and ended a century-long tradition of unstable banking that had reached a crisis in the Great Depression.

• Insured bank deposits up to $5,000, assuring Americans that the government was doing what it could to solve the banking crisis, and that it was safe to put money into the banks.

• After the bank holiday, bank failures stopped and Americans regained confidence in the banks.

New Deal Outcomes

• Sets the foundation for modern liberalism in the Democratic party

  • Concern for economic poor

  • Concerned with labor rights

• Appeals to the forgotten man in the U.S. This changed the demographic of the Democratic party.

  • African Americans

  • Immigrants

  • Laborers

  • Urbanites

  • Farmers

  • Women

• Expands the Federal Government

  • Taking over public utilities and hiring people.

  • Providing welfare and assistance

• Republican= Less government; Democrat= Big government

• Questions about national identity: Is the U.S a rugged individualist nation or a welfare state?

Court-Packing Plan

Franklin Roosevelt’s politically motivated and ill-fated scheme to add a new justice to the Supreme Court for every member over seventy who would not retire. His objective was to overcome the Court’s objections to New Deal reforms.

• FDR felt that the people and the legislative branch had all shown their support for the New Deal, so the SC was going against the will and needs of the people by shooting down so much legislation.

• FDR accused of breaking down checks and balances and behaving as a dictator; Americans doubled down on the SC. This would’ve given the Executive Branch an unprecedented amount of power, Context: WWII and the rise of fascism; Americans were worried about the fall of their own democracy.

• Owen J Roberts flipped; SC started passing New Deal legislation; SC voted full pay for retired justices over 70.

• The SC began passing New Deal legislation that they were not expected to pass, which allowed the bill to die. This was the first political failure by FDR. Although the SC passed reforms in 1937, any further reforms were much more difficult to pass from then on. FDR lost political goodwill. However, over the course of FDR’s presidency, 8 justices died or resigned, giving him the opportunity to appoint new justices.

• Americans do NOT support presidents who take advantage of their power at the expense of the Constitution and balance of power.

Foreign policy during Great Depression

Context: Through leadership, FDR preserved American democracy during a crisis and a time when it was failing in other nations. In doing so, he prepared America for its role in World War II.

Will he support democracies around the world?

Totalitarianism

• Government holds complete control over society.

• Regulates all aspects of life.

• Government eliminates political opposition.

• Government is more important than the individual.

• Totalitarianism on the rise in Europe during the 20’s and 30’s.

• Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini

• Totalitarianism on the

Fascism

Created by Benito Mussolini, it was copied by Hitler in Nazi Germany.

• Fascism=form of totalitarianism

• Eliminates political opposition

• Led by dictator with total control.

• Believes in social hierarchy

• Extreme nationalism

• Restricts civil liberties

• Believes in militarism.

Nazism

Hitler’s form of fascism. Shares all the qualities of fascism, but with an extreme social hierarchy. Jewish people were blamed for all of Germany’s problems.

• After WWI, Germany was heavily impacted by the Treaty of Versailles. They lost huge sums of land. They had to pay reparations, and their military was shot. They were also hit by the Great Depression. They felt betrayed by their democratic leadership.

• Hitler used the struggle of Germans to get political support.

• Hitler violates the Treaty of Versaille. He built the German military, stopped paying reparations, and sought out lost German land.

• He promised economic stability and nationalism to the German people.

• He sought global domination for living space for Germans.

Rome-Berlin Axis (1936)

• 1935: Italy invades and conquers Ethiopia, violating the League of Nations.

• 1936: Hitler reclaims Rhineland (land lost in Treaty of Versailles).

Nazi Germany, under Adolf hitler, and Fascist Italy, led by Benito Mussolini, allied themselves together under this nefarious treaty. The pact was signed after both countries had intervened on behalf of the fascist leader Fransisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

• 1937: Sino-Japanese War-Japan invades china

• 1938: Hitler reclaims Sudetenland.

• League of Nations did not take action.

Appeasement

• Britain and France (largest European democracies) did not want to recreate the death toll from WWI.

In 1938, GB Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, agreed to let Hitler reclaim lost land from the Treaty of Versailles, if he agreed to not make any more territorial claims from then on.

WWII

• 1939: Germany invades Poland. This breaks the appeasement contract, officially beginning WWII.

• WWII was fought over two things:

  • Respecting international borders

  • Democracy vs. Fascism

Neutrality Acts 1935, 1936, 1937

Shortsighted acts passed to prevent American participation in a European war. Among other restrictions, they prevented Americans from selling munitions to foreign belligerents.

• FDR recognized the prevalence of isolationism.

• No belligerent ships

• Ended the free trade policy.

• This kept the U.S at the mercy of dictators, failing to realize its power to shape international events.

• By failing to use its strength against dictators, America unwillingly sided against democracy. Allowed for the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and Japanese invasion of China.

• Isolationism allows for fascism to rise.

Quarantine Speech (1937)

An important speech delivered by Franklin Roosevelt in which he called for “positive endeavors” to “quarantine” land-hungry dictators; presumably through economic embargoes. The speech flew in the face of isolationist politicians.

• Compares war to a contagious disease,

• Said the U.S “cannot insure ourselves” against the effects of war; it can’t prevent a German invasion.

• Recognition that fascism is on the rise and could reach American shores and alarming the American people.

• Because of the sheer amount of isolationist sentiment, FDR sought less direct means of curbing dictators.

Tripartite Pact (1940)

Japan joins with Italy and Germany

Selective Service Act

• Selective Service Act 1940: America passed the first peacetime conscription law, later adapted for the war. It was a preparation for if America had to fight. It faced backlash from isolationists

Four Freedoms Speech

FDR gives a speech regarding foreign policy

• Freedom of Speech

• Freedom of warship

• Freedom from fear

• Freedom from want

Tells Americans that their way of life around the world, if democracy was the way America wants the world to go, they need to preserve those freedoms around the world and can not remain isolated. Completely against fascism.

Lend Lease Act (1941)

Based on the motto “Send guns, not sons,” this law abandoned former pretenses of neutrality by allowing Americans to sell unlimited supplies of arms to any nation defending itself against the Axis powers. Patriotically numbered 1776, the bill was praised as a device for keeping the nation out of World War II.

• Meant Britain didn’t need cash to get American munitions, and FDR could decide where American munitions went.

• England was running out of money to buy American munitions.

• Positive: Allowed Britain to keep fighting and defending democracy overseas even though they were running out of money.

• Negative:

  • Giving the president too much power to choose where American resources went

  • Hitler recognized it as an unofficial war declaration; There was now a target on the U.S’s back.

  • If America declared war economically, then a military war was not far off.

• What extent is it breaking away from isolationism:

  • Moderate extent: Using government property to side with the allied powers but not fully entering the war with soldiers.

Pearl Harbor (1941)

An American naval base in Hawaii where Japanese warplanes destroyed numerous ships and caused three thousand casualties on December 7, 1941–a day that, in President Roosevelt’s words, was to “live in infamy.” The attack brought the United States into World War II.

• First time American national security was physically threatened.

• Destroyed American ships, submarines, and aircrafts.

• Japan thought that destroying the westernmost naval base would make it more difficult for the U.S to attack Japan.

• U.S joins allied powers.

  • Protecting its borders

  • Protecting democracy

  • No more isolationism

Allied Powers

U.S, England, Soviet Union,

Mobilization

Propaganda

The WPD produced a lot of propaganda to convince Americans to rally around the flag and make sure that all citizens were doing their part.

Rosie the Riveter

Asked women to join the workforce. On top of this, they still had to care for their families at home. Women would test out planes, work in factories, be nurses on the battlefield, etc.

• Women took up factory jobs, and many kept them after the war, precursing the revolution of women’s roles in U.S society.

• However, the majority of women continued their domestic roles during the war.

• After the war, two-thirds of women left the workforce and returned to family obligations.

Rationing

The WPD set prices and limits on how much families could buy. Every family got a rationing book, and needed a coupon to prove that they could buy something. This was to prevent the rich from buying up all of the supplies.

Office of Price Administration (OPA) (1941-1947): A critically important wartime agency charged with regulating the consumer economy by rationing scarce supplies, such as automobiles, tires, fuel, nylon, and price of goods. Rents were controlled as well in parts of the country overwhelmed by war workers. The OPA extended after World War II ended to continue the fight against inflation.

• Led to the rise of recycling.

• Shows the total war effort in the homefront

War Bonds

The war was very expensive, and the government needed to pay businesses to make munitions. They asked Americans to buy war bonds to help pay for the war, which they would be paid back with interest once the war was over. The American people were essentially funding the war through war bonds and income tax. War bonds made the national debt rise. Americans were essentially betting on the U.S winning the war.

WWII impacts: economic

WWII impacts: social

Mexican Americans

Japanese Americans

African Americans

Bracero program (1942)

Program established by agreement with the Mexican government to recruit temporary Mexican agricultural workers to the United States to make up for wartime labor shortages in the Far West. The program persisted until 1964, by which time it had sponsored 4.5 million border crossings.

• Farms needed workers because they all went to fight in the war.

• Zoot Suit Riots (1943): Economic clash between white Americans and Mexians that were coming in to work in the United States.

EO9066 (1942)

Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, it authorized the secretary of war to designate military zones from which certain categories of people could be excluded. Fueled by historic anti-Japanese sentiment as well as panic following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the order led to the forced removal of some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry (70,000 of them U.S citizens) form the Western Military Zone (the coastal sections of Washington, Oregon, and California). Most but not all of those removed were interned in relocation camps in the interior West.

• Germans and Italians were also detained, but could hide more easily among the white population. Japanese Americans were not able to blend in. Almost all of the Japanese population was detained.

• Shows the wartime hysteria that trickled into the federal government.

• Federal government racial profiling.

• Social freedom restricted,

• Economic freedom restricted- Japanese businesses shut down and jobs lost.

• Political freedom restricted- no trial.

• Korematsu v U.S: The Supreme Court sided with the U.S against Japanese Americans.

• Japanese Americans were still drafted into the war, and were loyal to the U.S despite the U.S not being loyal to them.

• In 1988, the federal government paid Japanese families $20,000 in reparations

Double V Campaign

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (1942): Nonviolent civil rights organization founded in 1942 and committed to the “Double V”--victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. After World War II, CORE would become a major force in the civil rights movement.

Allied Powers

U.S, Great Britain, Soviet Union, (France under Nazi control).

Hitler broke the nonaggression pact, so the Soviet Union joined the allied powers.

Unconditional Surrender

No guarantees, No assurances, No promises. The losing side has no power at the negotiation table, and is completely destroyed until it surrenders unconditionally.

Operation overlord

• Allied forces went in through north Africa and Italy surrendered in 1943. Germany was now spread very thin militarily. The allies told the Soviets to take the eastern front and march into Berlin.

Allies needed a way to get into continental Europe from the West. Operation overlord was the plan of invasion, led by Dwight Eisenhower.

• Phase 1: Cross the English Channel and get into France.

  • D-Day

• Phase 2: Bring military supplies and troops into Europe. Take the homefront to Europe (military construction very important)

  • Bringing in supplies after cracking the wall at D-Day

• Phase 3: Liberate France

• Phase 4: March toward Berlin for unconditional surrender.

  • As Eisenhower’s army marched toward Berlin, they discovered and liberated concentration camps.

Atlantic Wall

German wall of military fortifications going from the tip of Norway to the South of France.

A ghost army was created to deceive the Germans into thinking they were invading a different place.

D-Day (1944)

A massive military operation led by American forces in Normandy beginning on June 6, 1944. The pivotal battle led to the liberation of France and brought on the final phases of World War II in Europe.

• Largest military operation in history; took overwhelming resources to crack the Atlantic Wall.

• America overwhelmed the Germans with a continuous stream of soldiers and supplies.

• The Germans were depleted from fighting the Soviets on the Eastern front.

• America’s industrial strength and homefront mobilization helped the invasion succeed (Outproduce and overwhelm).

• After they cracked the Atlantic Wall, they were able to bring even more supplies and soldiers (Phase 2 fulfilled).

Iwo Jima & Okinawa

Strategic islands that gave the Allies access to Japan

• Allied forces took Iwo Jima in March 1945, letting them take their planes and build airstrips to bomb Japan from there.

• Tokyo Firebombings: Allies drop thousands of firebombs on Tokyo from Iwo Jima.

• The Allies took Okinawa in April 1945. It was seen to be a clear preview of a land invasion of Japan (rules of war thrown out); Kamikaze pilots flying straight into ships.

Potsdam Conference (1945)

From July 17 to August 2, 1945, President Harry S Truman met with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British leaders Winston Churchill and later Clement Attlee near Berlin to deliver an ultimatum to Japan: surrender or be destroyed.

• Japan refused to surrender, so the U.S dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• Truman could

  • Hold a demonstration of the Atomic bomb to warn the Japanese

  • Or

  • Drop the atomic bomb without warning.

Manhattan Project (1942)

Code name for the American commission established in 1942 to develop the atomic bomb. The first experimental bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the desert of New Mexico. Atomic bombs were then dropped on two cities in Japan in hopes of bringing the war to an end: Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

• Created because of Albert Einstein’s letter to FDR saying that the Germans were in the works of building an atomic bomb.

• Used America’s superior industry and technology to build a weapon of mass destruction.

• The atomic bomb meant ending the war immediately and saving American lives at the expense of Japanese ones.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Two Japanese cities hit by atomic bombs. Thousands of civilians were killed, and the cities were completely destroyed. The bombs represented a shift in the target of war from militaries to civilians as well, a new form of total war.

• Hiroshima (August 6, 1945)

• Nagasaki (August 9, 1945)

V-J Day (1945)

August 15. 1945, heralded the surrender of Japan and the final end to World War II.

The United States played the most significant role in ending World War II. It emerged as the only major democratic world power, forcing it to play a larger role in international affairs.