Transcript Lend-Lease

Chapter 11
Section 4: World War II
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION
 How did World War II affect Georgians?
Increasing Tensions

Dictator: individual who ruled a country through military
strength
Country
Leader
Quick Facts
Japan
Emperor
Hirohito
Attacked China seeking raw
materials
Italy
Mussolini
Attacked Ethiopia and Albania
Germany
Adolf Hitler
Soviet
Union
Josef Stalin
Nazi leader; began rebuilding
military forces, persecuting Jews,
and silencing opponents
Built up industry and military, forced
peasants into collective farms,
eliminated opponents
The War Begins
1938: Hitler’s Germany attacks France to
“take back” land lost in WWI (Rhineland)
 Sent troops to take over Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Poland
 Great Britain and France declared war
 Soviet Union invaded nearby countries and
agreed to split Poland with Germany
 By 1940, Hitler controlled
Denmark, Norway, Holland,
Belgium, Luxembourg and
a large part of France and
began bombing Great Britain

A Neutral United States
Most Americans did not want to get involved
in the war, but Roosevelt wanted to help
Britain
 Hitler turned on Stalin in 1941 and invaded
the Soviet Union
 Lend-lease: policy to lend or lease (rent)
weapons to Great Britain and the Soviet
Union
 American ships began escorting British ships
in convoys

Lend-Lease
Japan, Italy, the Soviet Union, and Germany were
fighting Great Britain
 Most Americans felt the U.S. should not get
involved
 1930’s Congress had passed “neutrality acts” to
keep the U.S. out of another
war (we could not sell weapons
to any warring nation)
 1939 FDR got Congress to
pass a new law that allowed the
Allied Powers to buy arms if they
paid cash and carried them in
their ships

Lend-Lease (continued)
1940 FDR gave Great Britain old weapons and
traded 50 destroyers for British bases in the
Western Hemisphere
 1941 British ran out of $ so Congress let FDR
“lend or lease” arms to them
 Germany “turned” on the Soviet Union and
invaded them so FDR gave lend-lease aid to the
Soviets
 FDR built air bases in Greenland and Iceland. The
planes from these bases tracked German
submarines.
 U.S. Navy escorted British ships part of the way
across the Atlantic

“A Day that Will Live in
Infamy”







President Roosevelt stopped exports to Japan
to protest its expansion into other countries
Exports of oil, airplanes, aviation gasoline and
metals were stopped
The Japanese attacked the U.S. Navy fleet at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941
Japan hoped to destroy the fleet giving them
control of the Pacific Ocean
The USA declared war on Japan
Allied Powers: USA, Great Britain, Soviet Union
Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan
Pearl Harbor
Japanese-American relations got worse
 U.S. stopped exporting planes, metals,
aircraft parts, and aviation gas to Japan
 1941 Japan invaded French IndochinaFDR seized all Japanese property in
U.S.
 Late 1941 Japan decided to invade
Indonesia to get gas
 U.S. Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor
were the only ones that could stop them

Pearl Harbor (continued)
Dec. 7, 1941 Sunday morning 8:00 AM
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
 8 battleships destroyed or damaged
 More than 180 planes were destroyed
 Over 2,000 people killed/over 1,000
wounded
 “day that will live in infamy”
 Dec. 8 Congress declared war on Japan

American Military Forces
Millions of Americans enlisted after the attack
on Pearl Harbor
 330,000 women joined – could not serve in
combat roles
 Segregation in the military kept African
American and white service men in different
units
 Tuskegee Airmen: famous African American
flyers of the Army Air Force

U.S. enters World War II
Allied Powers-U.S., Great Britain, and
the Soviet Union
 Axis Powers-Germany, Japan, and Italy
 U.S. fighting on two fronts-Germany and
Italy in Europe and Africa and Japan in
the Pacific

The War in Europe
1942-1943: British and American troops won control
of Africa
 1943: Mussolini overthrown and Italy joined the
Allies
 American general Dwight D. Eisenhower
coordinated plan to recapture Europe
 D-Day: June 6, 1944 – Allied forces land in northern
France
 Early 1945: Germans
pushed out of France
 April 1945: Soviet and
American troops meet and
Germany surrenders –
Hitler commits suicide

Georgia Loses a Friend





President Roosevelt visited
Georgia often at his “Little
White House” in Warm
Springs
His polio symptoms were
eased in the mineral springs
April 24, 1945: President
Roosevelt died suddenly of a
stroke in Warm Springs, GA
Millions of Georgians and
Americans mourned
Vice President Harry Truman
became president
FDR’s Impact on Georgia
Got Congress to pass laws to protect
workers
 ND created the Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) which created Blue Ridge Lake,
Lake Chatuge, and Lake Nottely
 FDR’s body was carried by train to
Washington as thousands of crying
Georgians lined the tracks

The War in the Pacific







1942: Japan expanded its territory throughout
the Asian Pacific region
1945: Allied forces began to retake Japanese
controlled lands
Japan refused to surrender
President Truman authorized the use of atomic
bombs to force Japan’s surrender
Enola Gay: plane that dropped first atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
Japan surrendered after a second atomic bomb
dropped on Nagasaki
Over 50 million people died in the war
The Holocaust
The Holocaust: name given to the
Nazi plan to kill all Jewish people
 Auschwitz, Buckenwald, Dachau,
Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen infamous
concentration camps
where Jews and others
were executed
 6 million people killed
in the Holocaust

(Picture: Jews at the
Warsaw Ghetto)
The Holocaust
Spring 1945-Allied troops
pushed into Poland, Austria,
and Germany
 They found Auschwitz,
Buckenwald, Dachau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen
(concentration camps) set up by the Nazis as the “final
solution to the Jewish problem”
 Those alive were emaciated skeletons from years of
starvation, disease, cruel treatment, forced labor, and
medical experiments
 “systematic extermination (killing) of 6 million Jews”
 5-6 million others labeled as “undesirables” were also
killed by the Nazis

The Holocaust (continued)
Prisoners, including children, were gassed in chambers
they thought were showers
 Their bodies were incinerated in huge ovens or thrown
into mass graves
 Hitler wanted to rid the world of “inferior” people
including Jews, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Gypsies,
homosexuals, and the mentally or physically disabled
 1986 the GA Commission
on the Holocaust was
established
 The Commission fosters
tolerance, good citizenship and
character development among the
young people of GA
 Annual art and writing contest
for middle and high school students

The War’s Effects on Society
Everyone was expected to help in the war
effort
 Women began working in jobs to replace
men who had gone to war
 G.I. Bill: law to help returning soldiers adapt
to civilian life

 Low cost loans for homes or business
 College education opportunities
Women and African
Americans did not want
to go back to the kind of
life they had before the war

Georgia During World War II







320,000 Georgians joined the armed forces –
over 7,000 killed
Military bases were built in the state which
improved the economy
Farmers grew needed crops – income tripled for
the average farmer
Limits were put on the consumption of goods
such as gasoline, meat, butter, and sugar
(rationing)
Students were encouraged to buy war bonds
and defense stamps to pay for the war
Victory Garden: small family gardens to make
sure soldiers would have enough food
POW (prisoner of war) camps in Georgia at
some military bases
Bell Aircraft
Needed to build aircraft
plants to build more B-29
bombers
 Bell Aircraft Co. of Buffalo, N.Y. got the
contract for a new plant in Marietta
 Largest aircraft assembly plant in the world
with 4.2 million square feet
 1943 they began assembling bombers with
1200 employees
 1945-27,000 employees making 60-65 planes
a month
 1950 Lockheed Aircraft Corp. reopened the
plant

Military Bases
WW II brought millions of federal $ to GA
strengthening the economy
Major Bases in GA:
 Fort Benning (Columbus) largest infantry
center in U.S.
 Camp Gordon (Augusta)
 Fort Stewart/Hunter Air Field (Savannah)
 Warner Robins Air Field (near Macon)
 Glynco Naval Air Station (Brunswick) flew
blimps to search for German submarines

Military Bases (continued)





Fort McPherson (Atlanta) induction center
for newly drafted soldiers
Fort Gillem (Clayton County) army storage
facility and railroad yard
Prisoners of war (POWs) were held at
Forts Benning, Gordon, Oglethorpe, and
Stewart
At Fort Oglethorpe, 150,000 women
(Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp-WACs)
trained to become postal workers, clerks,
typists, switchboard operators, code clerks,
and drivers or aides
Atlanta Airport became an air base in 1941
Savannah Shipyard
Built “Liberty” ships (named after Patrick
Henry’s famous quote)
 Nov. 1942 launched first Liberty ship-the
U.S.S. James
Oglethorpe (sunk by a
German sub in 1943)
 88 Liberty ships built
by 15,000 workers, many
of whom were women

Brunswick Shipyard
1943-1944 over 16,000 men and women
worked around the clock on 6 ships at a
time
 1944 set a record by building 7 ships in
just one month
 Worked on Christmas day and donated
$ for that day to the war effort
 Produced 99 Liberty ships

Richard B. Russell, Jr.





June 1931, Winder resident Richard
Russell became GA’s youngest governor in
the 20th Century
Sworn in by his dad, GA Supreme Court
Justice, Richard B. Russell, Sr.
Former member and speaker of the GA
House of Representatives
Combined 102 state offices into 17
agencies
Combined the boards of trustees of state
colleges and universities into one
governing group-the Board of Regents of
the Univ. System
Richard B. Russell, Jr. (continued)
Gov. Russell tried to run the state like a successful
business
 1932 he was elected to the U.S. Senate (served
for 38 years)
 He favored national military preparedness and
states’ rights
 Served on the Senate Appropriations Com
 Co-sponsored legislation to provide a school lunch
to all children
 Advisor to 6 U.S. Presidents
 Served as president pro tempore of the Senate
(third in line for the presidency)

Richard Russell, Jr.
Carl Vinson
Carl Vinson





U.S. House of Representatives (served 25
consecutive terms from 1914 -1965)
Promoted a strong national defense
1934 Vinson-Trammel Act (manufactured 92
warships)
Law to expand naval aviation system to
10,000 planes,16,000 pilots, and 20 air bases
Law to ease labor restrictions in shipbuilding to
allow faster construction of navy ships
Carl Vinson (continued)
After World War II:
 Wanted a strong defense throughout the
Cold War with the Soviet Union
 1964-President Johnson awarded him
the Presidential Medal of Freedom
 Retired to his Milledgeville farm in 1965
 1972-President Nixon named the 3rd
nuclear carrier for him
 He died in 1981

http://www.gpb.org/georgiastories/storie
s/women_of_world_war_two