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America in a World at War

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Title: America in a World at War


1
America in a World at War
2
I. War on Two Fronts Containing the Japanese
  • Allied territories begin to fall shortly after
    Pearl Harbor
  • General Douglas MacArthur
  • Admiral Chester Nimitz
  • Victorious Battles for U.S.
  • Gavutu
  • With help from Aussies and Kiwis US began long,
    slow march towards Japan

3
Holding off the Germans
  • In Europe US had less control over military
    operations than in Pacific
  • George C. Marshall, supported a plan for a major
    Allied invasion of France across the English
    Channel in the Spring of 1943
  • Roosevelt decides to support the British plan,
    against advice of advisors
  • African difficulties

4
Holding off the Germans Continued
  • General George S. Patton
  • Russians able to hold off huge German offensive
    in the winter of 1943
  • First U.S. European Invasion Sicily

5
America and the Holocaust
  • As early as 1942 America had evidence of Nazi
    extermination of Jews, poles, gypsies,
    homosexuals and communists
  • American government continually resisted almost
    all plans to rescue individuals from Nazi death
    camps
  • U.S. Planes flew missions within miles of
    Auschwitz Military refused to destroy
    crematoriums militarily unfeasible
  • Jews escaping refused entry into the United
    States
  • Anti-Semite Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long
  • Allied forces insisted the most important thing
    they could do to combat Nazi genocide was
    concentrate all forces in an attack against
    Germany

6
II. The American People in Wartime A.
Prosperity
  • WWIIs most profound impact on American Life was
    the ending of the Depression
  • Most important agent in recovery federal
    spending
  • .

7
The War and the West
Henry J. Kaiser
  • US govt created large manufacturing facilities
    in California and elsewhere to serve the needs of
    its military
  • Govt made almost 40 billion in capital
    investments
  • Henry J. Kaiser
  • Western cities grow in size

8
Labor and the War
  • war created a serious labor shortage
  • Civilian workforce increased by almost 20 percent
    during the war groups of people began working
    who before it was considered in-appropriate to
    work

9
Labor and the WarContinued
  • Increase in union membership, but increase in
    federal restrictions on work stoppages
  • Despite these plans, nearly 15,000 work stoppages
    during the war
  • Smith-Connally Act passed despite FDRs veto
    required unions to wait thirty days before
    striking and empowered the president to seize a
    struck war plant

10
Stabilizing the Boom
  • from fear of deflation (not enough currency, low
    prices) to inflation (too much, high prices)
    during the war
  • Anti-Inflation Act gave president the authority
    to freeze agricultural prices, wages, salaries
    and rents
  • Government Spending

11
Mobilizing Production
Fake Smile
  • one failed agency after another finally leads to
    War Production Board (WPB)
  • WPBs authority is transferred to Office of War
    Mobilization (OWM) only slightly more successful
  • Despite administrative problems, economy met all
    of the nations critical war needs
  • Development of synthetic rubber over natural
    rubber
  • USA output was twice of all the Axis countries
    combined

12
The Internment of Japanese Americans
  • WWII different from WWI not as much propaganda
    or hatred directed towards Europe
  • Different attitude towards Asian enemy than
    towards European enemy
  • Despite cultural assimilation, belief was
    widespread that Japanese Americans could never
    become real Americans
  • Leaders make scathing and unfounded comments

13
The Internment of Japanese Americans Continued
  • War Relocation Authority (WRA)
  • Japanese Americans lost everything
  • Nisei army fights with high distinction in Europe
  • Korematsu v. U.S.
  • 1988 Japanese Americans win compensation for
    their loses

14
Chinese Americans and the War
  • Relations increased due to Alliance with China
  • Congress finally repealed the Chinese Exclusion
    Acts which had barred Chinese immigration since
    1892
  • 4,000 Chinese women entered the United States in
    the first years after the war mail order brides
  • Improving image

15
The Retreat from Reform
  • replacing Dr. New Deal with Dr. Win the War
  • Republicans gaining ground in Washington
  • 1944 Election

16
III. The Defeat of the Axis The Liberation of
France
  • By 1944 American and British bombers were
    attacking German industrial centers and other
    targets around the clock
  • Air battles weakened the Luftwaffe
  • American forces obtain an Ultra machine able
    to crack German code
  • June 6, 1944 D-Day
  • Slow advance

17
The Liberation of France Continued
  • Battle of the Bulge
  • Surrounding all corners
  • Soviets made strong advances in the East Oder
    River
  • Omar Bradley moving in from west Cologne
  • Montgomery pushed into Northern Germany with a
    million troops
  • Taking Berlin
  • April 30, 1945 Hitler killed himself in his
    bunker in the capital
  • May 8, 1945 remaining German forces surrender
    unconditionally

18
The Pacific Offensives
  • Feb 1944 Chester Nimitz wins a series of
    victories in the Marshall Islands and cracked the
    outer perimeter of the Japanese Empire
  • American submarines destroying Japanese shipping
    and crippling the nations domestic economy
  • Land battles encounter frustration

19
The Pacific Offensives Continued
  • Decisive battle for Pacific in the Pacific
  • June 1944, enormous American armada struck the
    heavily fortified Mariana Islands, Tinian, Guam
    and Siapan
  • Oct 1944 General MacArthur landed in the
    Philippines
  • Very difficult for troops to advance on land
  • only island U.S. is able to capture is tiny Iwo
    Jima
  • Okinawa taken at the cost of 50,000 troops
  • What next?
  • hard to fight troops on land
  • BUT Japanese has no navy left
  • July 1945, Tokyo firebombed 80,000 dead
  • US Navy able to shell coastal targets in Japan
    from offshore
  • Emperor Hirohito gives directions to military
    leaders to make surrender negotiations could not
    persuade military leaders to give up

20
The Manhattan Project
  • 1939 reports reach U.S. military intelligence
    that the Germans are attempting to produce atomic
    fission in uranium
  • Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi physicists
    from Europe, exile to the U.S.
  • From 1941 on, govt secretly poured 2 billion
    dollars into the Manhattan Project massive
    scientific effort conducted at hidden
    laboratories
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer in charge of creating the
    bomb
  • War in Europe ends just before they are ready to
    test the first bomb
  • July 16, 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico first
    atomic explosion in history
  • Bomb instantly moves from a scientific project to
    a weapon of war

21
Atomic Warfare
  • Roosevelt dies in office in April 1945 News of
    explosion reaches Truman (Truman had no knowledge
    of weapon prior to FDRs death)
  • Truman issues warning to Japan, signed jointly by
    Britain unconditional surrender or face
    complete devastation
  • Should the bomb have been dropped?

22
Atomic Warfare Continued
  • Truman orders the use of atomic weapons on Japan
  • August 6, 1945 Enola Gay drops atomic weapon on
    Hiroshima within moments
  • Japanese government, stunned, unable to agree to
    a response
  • August 8, 1945 Russia declares war on Japan
  • August 9, 1945 another atomic bomb dropped
    Nagasaki
  • September 2, 1945 Japanese surrender signed
    aboard American battleship Missouri
  • In the end
  • This thing must not be permitted to exist on
    this earth. We must not be the most hated and
    feared people in the world.
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