World War II

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World War II

• Part I - Europe

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Mobilization

• Draft Sept 1940
• Selective Training and Service Act
• All males 21-36 had to register
• One year minimum
• Diversity in the military
• 300,000 Mexican-Americans join
• 25,000 Native Americans also join
• Navajos develop secret code
• 1,000,000 African-Americans join
• At first, kept behind scenes
• Heavy casualties forced army to integrate them in
  1944
• 350,000 women in military support roles

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Office of War Mobilization

• War effort required sacrifice from every industry
• War Production Board banned production of some
  consumer goods
• Office of War Mobilization turned auto
  factories into tank and airplane factories
• By 1944 US was producing twice as much as Germany
  and Japan combined

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Paying for the war

• Federal spending skyrockets
• 9 billion in 1939
• 95 billion in 1945
• Total spent 321 billion (10 times what was spent
  in WW I)
• How? Higher taxes, government bonds
• Also deficit spending borrowed money
• 43 billion in debt on 1939
• 259 billion in debt in 1945

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Home front

• Industrial production and government spending got
  us out of the depression
• Is war worth the price of economic recovery?
• Consumer goods rationed
• Even with more , nothing to buy
• Food shortages
• Not severe, but limits on sugar, butter, coffee,
  and meat
• Victory Gardens
• People raising their own vegetables
• By 1943, 33 of produce in the US came from
  peoples backyards

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US helps retake Europe

• Before US involvement, Britain had survived the
  blitzkrieg
• Germans start attacking US ships in the Atlantic
• 175 ships sunk in June 1942 alone
• First land battles for US troops North Africa
• Initial defeat, then huge victory as 250,000
  German and Italian troops surrender

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Invasion of Italy

• After US and British forces win in North Africa,
  they hop over to Italy and invade
• 1943 Mussolini flees Rome as Allies approach
• Germans then occupy Italy
• 1944 Allies land at Anzio, south of Rome
• Brutal fighting, eventually US troops liberate
  Rome
• April 1945 Mussolini captured and executed

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Invasion of France

• US, British, Canadian and French troops mass in
  southern England
• Germans are tricked into thinking Allies would
  land in southern France
• June 6, 1944
• 4000 warships sail from England
• 1000 RAF bombers attack German positions in
  Normandy
• 23,000 troops parachute into Normandy

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D-Day 1944

• Hitler still thought this was a diversion and
  didnt reinforce troops in Normandy
• 2000 Americans and British killed on the beaches
  as they landed
• 7 days later 500,000 allied troops came ashore
• By August, 2,000,000 allied troops were in
  Northern France

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Liberating France

• Germans on the run
• US and French troops on their way to Paris
• General De Gaulle of the French demands he be
  allowed to march his troops into Paris, even
  though Americans did the dirty work
• De Gaulle leads first, then followed by American
  troops on August 25,1944

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Battle of the Bulge

• US and allies push toward Germany
• German counter-offensive in Belgium traps
  American troops, cuts them off from the rest of
  the army
• Battle of the Bulge
• Many US troops captured and sent to concentration
  camps
• Germans almost regain Northern France
• Allies win, but at huge cost
• 80,000 Allies troops dead or injured
• 100,000 Germans

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End of the war in Europe

• Eisenhower and troops roll into Germany
• Soviet troops rolling from the east, capture
  Berlin
• Hitler commits suicide
• US and Soviet troops meet at the Elbe river in
  central Germany
• Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had met in Feb
  1945
• Roots of the Cold War