World War II: At Home & Abroad

Rise of Aggression in Europe and Asia

• 1930s = Authoritarian governments in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Greece

• 1922 – 1943 = Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy

• Nationalist Socialist Party (Nazis) gained power in Germany in late 1920s

• 1933 = Hitler became Chancellor of Germany

• Nazis targeted Jews, homosexuals, communists, & disabled as “inferior races”

Appeasement

• Practiced by Great Britain & France

• 1938 = Hitler demanded Germany’s right to Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia

• Britain’s Chamberlain gave in to

Hitler

Japan

• Interested in expansion

• 1937 = Declared war against China

Neutrality Acts, 1935 - 1937

• Outlawed the sale of weapons & loans to nations at war

• Forbade Americans from traveling on ships of warring countries

• August 1939 = Hitler & Stalin formed German-Soviet pact

• Soviet Union & Germany promised not to fight & to divide Poland after it was invaded by Germany

• Britain & France promised to defend Poland• September 1, 1939 = Hitler invaded Poland• September 3, 1939 = Britain & France declared war

on Germany

Cash & Carry Plan, 1939

• Neutrality Acts amended for U.S. to sell weapons to countries at war

• Required they pay cash & carry weapons on their own ships

• Allowed the U.S. to profit from the war

Pearl Harbor• Japan wanted empire to

include China, southeast Asia, western Pacific

• September 1940 = Japan, Germany, Italy signed “Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis” military alliance

• Japan warned attack in December 1941

• Sunday, December 7, 1941 = Japanese planes attacked navy base on Oahu, Hawaii

• 2,400 Americans killed, 1,200 wounded

• December 8, 1941 = U.S. declared war against Japan

• 3 days later = Germany & Italy declared war against U.S.

The Battlefront in Europe

• Approach of Allies = Attack Germany first, Japan second

War in the Pacific

• Philippines, Australia, China, Indonesia, Thailand, plus smaller South Pacific Islands

• General Douglas MacArthur’s “Island Hopping”

Jewish Migration?• By 1939 = 300,000 Jews fled

Germany, 200,000 fled Austria

• June 1939 = 900 Jewish refugees arrived on St. Louis ship in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida & sent back to Germany

• 700 of the 900 died in concentration camps

Victory in Europe

• April 12, 1945 = FDR died

• April 30, 1945 = Hitler committed suicide

• May 2, 1945 = Berlin captured by the Soviet Union

• May 8, 1945 = Germany surrendered, “V-E Day”

WWII at Home

Mobilizing for War• Pearl Harbor, December

1941 = 1.6 million in Army

• War Power Act granted FDR authority over war mobilization

• 15 million men, 350,000 women served in military

• Economy, government, military coordinated

• War Production Board = distributed defense contracts

• War Manpower Commission = supervised mobilization of soldiers

• Office of Price Administration rationed food

• End of 1942 = 1/3 of economy devoted to war production

• 300,000 aircraft, 2.6 million machine guns, 6 million tons of bombs, 86,000 warships

Defense Spending Ends Great Depression

• U.S. spent $320 billion total to defeat the Axis

• 17 million new jobs created

• Brought prosperity to many American workers

Rationing

• O.P.A. rationed gas, coffee, sugar, butter, cheese, meat

• “Uncle Sam’s Scrappers” & “Tin Can Colonels” collected scrap metal and trash

War Bonds

Propaganda & Politics

• Office of Censorship suppressed war footage & casualty numbers

• Office of War Information hired 4,000 advertisers, writers, artists to create unity through

propaganda

Rosie the Riveter

• Federal government urged women to work in 1942

• Over 6 million women worked in war production

• 1945 = 1/3 of workforce were women

• 75% married, 60% over 35, 33% had kids under 14

Hostility Towards Rosie• Women earned 35% less pay

than men

• Government portrayed their work as temporary

• “A woman is a substitute like plastic instead of metal”

• 1945 poll = Only 18% approved of married women working

Japanese Internment

• Issei: First generation Japanese Immigrants (37,000 interned)

• Nisei: U.S.-born Japanese Americans (75,000 interned)

• FDR’s Executive Order 9006 = February 1942, all Japanese on West Coast forcibly removed from homes

Star Trek’s George Takei Reflecting on Life in an Internment Camp

• $2 billion lost in property & belongings

• Supreme Court upheld constitutionality of internment policy, Korematsu v. U.S. (1942)

• 1982 = U.S. government admitted internment “not based on military necessity” & $20,000 given to 62,000 survivors in 1988

The Atomic Bombs

• 1939 = Einstein warned U.S. about German development of A-bomb

• Manhattan Project began in 1941 between U.S. and Britain

• 2 bombs completed in Los Alamos, NM

• July 16 1945 = test bomb exploded in Alamogordo, NM

• U.S. threatened to drop bomb if Japan did not surrender by August 3, 1945

• August 6, 1945 = Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over Hiroshima

• August 8, 1945 = Bock’s Car dropped “Fat Man” over Nagasaki

• September 6, 1945 = Japan surrendered

• Hiroshima = 60,000 died immediately, 75,000 later from radiation and burns

• Nagasaki = 30,000 died immediately