Transcript WWII - Leleua Loupe

World War II
Study Guide Identifications
 Roots of War
 Treaty of Versailles
 Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere
 Adolph Hitler
 Pearl Harbor
 American Propaganda
 Manhattan Project
Study Guide Questions
 What were the causes of WWII?
 Why were most Americans reluctant to get
involved in WWII?
 What were some of the foreign policy of
the United States?
WWII
 Began two decades before it started
– Growing resentments from WWI
R. Senator Gerald Nye committee 1934
Investigate U.S. involvement in WWI
Greed of Big Business/Imperialist intervention
– Worldwide depression
– International political instability
– Rise of ultra-nationalist movements
• Japan, Italy, Germany – economic collapse
• Promise of recovery – military buildup and territorial
expansion
WWI – Treaty of Versailles
 Germany had to accept the Blame for starting the
war
 Germany had to pay £6,600 million (called
Reparations) for the damage done during the
war.
 Germany was forbidden to have submarines or an
air force. She could have a navy of only six
battleships, and an Army of just 100,000
men. In addition, Germany was not allowed to
place any troops in the Rhineland, the strip of
land, 50 miles wide, next to France.
 Germany lost Territory (land) in Europe
Germany’s colonies were given to Britain and
France.
Roots of War
 Treaty of Versailles
– Creation of Small vulnerable nations
– Italy and Japan empire building
– 1930s economic crisis and political instability fueled
the rise of right wing dictatorships
• that offered territorial expansion by military conquest as the
way to redress of rivalries, dominate trade, and gain access to
raw materials.
 Japanese nationalists Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere
 What was the rhetoric of the United
States government during WWII that
argued it was a just and glorious war?
– War against the enemy who represented
totalitarianism, racism, militarism, overt
aggressive warfare.
– The rhetoric included that the US entered the
war to defend the principle of non-intervention
in affairs of other countries.
– The argument included that the US was a
democracy with certain liberties while
Germany was a dictatorship that persecuted
Jews and other minorities, imprisoning
dissidents and proclaiming Nordic supremacy.
Italy Invades Ethiopia
 1922 Benito Mussolini came to power and
launched military buildup
– 1935 invaded Ethiopia.
 General Franco overthrows left-wing
democracy in Spain
 What governments and “conflicts” did
the United States Government support
abroad? What characterized those
governments and their motives for
engaging in conflict?
– The United States supported Mussolini's war
against Ethiopia by sending oil,
– ignored the persecution of Jews,
– supported Franco and his coup against the
socialist/democratic government by claiming
neutrality.

 What were the priorities that
determined foreign policy and who
would be considered allies and who
would be considered enemies?

 National power, economic interest – not
human and civil rights
Japan Invades China
 1937 Rape of Nanjing
– 370,000 civilians killed
– 80,000 women and girls raped, some murdered
 Pro-claimed Japan’s intention to lead a
Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere
– Self sufficient economic zone to liberate peoples
of Asia from Western colonialism
Adolph Hitler
 1933 Hitler and the Nationalist Socialist
Party came to power
– instituted a fascist regime, one party
dictatorship
– Denounced the Versailles agreement
– Blamed Germany’s plight on a Jewish
conspiracy
– Declared genetic superiority of Aryan race and
German speaking peoples
– Promised new Empire of the 3rd Reich
Hitler’s Goals & Domestic Policy
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remove the “cancer” of democracy
create a new authoritarian leadership
forge a new domestic unity
struggle First: all else subordinate
Lebensraum: rearm-prepare for living space
Mein Kampf: race is the key to history (founders,
bearers and destroyers of culture)
Death Camps
 Auschwitz and Treblinka, the SS organized
the extermination of 6 million Jews and 1
million Poles, Gypsies, and others who
failed to fit the Nazi vision of the master
race.
 Soviet soldiers overran the death camps
and freed the few survivors of the
Holocaust.
Further Expansion of Japan
 As European nations lost contact with Asian
colonies
 Japan swept in calling for incorporation of S.E.
Asia into East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere
– U.S. banned aviation fuel & Scrap Metal
– Expanded trade embargo
– Promised further assistance to China
– Accelerated military build up in pacific
– Froze Japanese assets in U.S.
Pearl Harbor
 Japan planned for attack on US
 December 7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor
– 19 ships
– 288 aircraft
– 2,200 Americans
 United & Galvanized a Nation
 Pearl harbor has long been portrayed as
a surprise attack, caused simply by the
barbarism of Japanese. What actions by
the United States led to the bombing and
why did the United States make the
decisions it had that led to a path of
war?
 Pearl Harbor is the event that brought us
fully into war.
– First Japan was empire building and seeking to
be the supreme power in southeast Asia.
• The US in response placed a total embargo on
scrap iron, and oil in 1941.
• Economic sanctions were recognized as a path
leading to war.
– The white house anticipated war with Japan, in fact had
been avoiding it for generations.
– As the United states supported China through
support needed to bolster defense, and by
providing economic credits, this escalated
tensions with Japan
War in Pacific continued
 First 6 months in Japan’s favor
 “War without Mercy” racial prejudice
reinforced brutality.
– Japan – a war to establish superiority of divine
Yamato Race
– Prisoners (most Asian) Brutalized in
unimaginable ways - survival rate low
– Tested bacterial weapons on Chinese
Pacific Campaign
 During 1943 and 1944 submarines choked off
food, oil and raw materials bound for Japan and
other island bases.
 Conventional bombing destroyed 42% of Japans
industrial capacity
– by the time the US captured the Islands of Iwo Jima
and Okinawa in 1945 Japan’s position was hopeless.

 Yalta Conference in 1945: Roosevelt, Stalin and
Churchill debated plans for the postwar world,
American Propaganda
 Images played on themes
of racial inferiority of
Japanese
– Superiority of Americans
– Japanese Animalistic subhumans
Pacific Strategy
 1945 – Japan essentially beat but would
not surrender
 FDR died one month before Germany’s
surrender and Five before Japan’s
 Harry S. Truman
 Atomic Power – Arms Race
– Manhattan project
Why Drop the Bombs?
 August 6 – Hiroshima (80,000)
 August 8 Nagasaki (40,000) immediate
deaths (fat man mushroom cloud)
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 Dropped 2 of 3 available leading to formal
surrender on September 2, 1945
Atomic Age
 New level of Violence
– Instantaneous incineration of humans and
structures
– Radiation disease
 Inaugurated new atomic age
– Dreams of peace mingled with Armageddon
 Formal surrender – September 2, 1945
War at Home
Study Guide Identifications
 Rationing
 Progressive taxation
 Labor gains
 New Job Opportunities
 Social issues raised by the war
 Office of War Information
 Gender inequality
 Double V Campaign
Identifications continued
 FEPC
 Port of Chicago, 1944
 Zoot Suit
 Urban Relocation Program
 Executive Order 9066
 Richard Wright
 Gunnar Mydral
Study Guide Questions
 Why did mobilization for war produce
complex economic and social changes in
American life?
 What major institutions and policies
shaped the reconstruction of the postwar
period?
I. Economy
WWII transformed political economy,
government, business, financial institutions
and its labor force.
Federal bureaucracy quadrupled in size, new
economic agencies proliferated.
 War production Board
Government regulation survived post war
1940-1945 economy expanded GNP rose 15%
every year of the war.
a. Government, Science &
Technology
Unprecedented relationship between
government and industry to promote
scientific and technological research and
development
 The Office of Scientific Research and
Development headed by Vannenar Bush.
c. War bonds, rationing, and
progressive taxation
Few goods - invested in bonds
Rationing of essentials food, fabric and gasoline
 Shared more equitably than before the war
 sense of shared sacrifice, helped ease class tensions of
1930s
Higher taxes on the wealthier (Progressive
Taxes)
 redistributed income
 narrowed the gap between poor and well to do
Work Force
First 2 years of military build up
 Employment rose, jobs created went to men
 skilled labor went to white men
 Government sponsored training progress went
to white men
 Refused women and minorities
Changing Composition
As military service drained supply white male
workers, women and minorities stepped in
 African Americans
 migrated north into the industrial cities
 Mexicans
 entered US as Bracero guest unskilled worker
program.
 Women assumed jobs never before open
 welders, ship builders, lumberjacks and minors
 Minority women
 domestics to clerical and secretarial jobs
Conservation Propaganda
 “Wear it out, use it up,
make it do, or do without
it”
 war now equated
parsimonious life style
with patriotism rather
than poverty.
Anti-discrimination Legislation
 1941 the Fair Employment Practices
Commission tried to band discrimination in
hiring
1943 government would not recognize as
collective bargaining agents any unions that
denied admittance to minorities
 War labor board, outlawed the practice of paying
different wages to whites and non whites doing
the same job.
Labor Unions – Temporary
Gains
Labor unions – scarcity of labor strengthened
unions
Still main beneficiaries remained white males
 Unions fought for contracts stipulating equal pay form
men and women in the same job, but only “male” jobs
for the purpose to maintain wage levels for their return
 During war women held 25% of all jobs in auto
factories, and by mid 1946 only 7.5%
Economic Change
 During war the workplace was more diverse than
ever before
 More people entered paid labor force
 Earned more money than rationing restrictions
allowed them to spend
 Institutional scale of American life was
transformed
 Big government, big business, and big labor grew
bigger
 Science and tech forged new links of mutual interest
among the three sectors.
Social Issues
The war most Americans believed was being
fought to preserve democracy and individual
freedom against political systems that
trampled both
 War time ideals highlighted everyday inequalities
 Defining and redefining the American way of life.
War time Propaganda
 WWI
 Government propagandists asked Americans
to fight for more democratic world and a
permanent peace
Skeptical generation of the 1930 and 1940s
 Failure of Wilson’s promises
Visual propaganda
FDR
 Fight to preserve the
American way of life,
not to save the world
 Norman Rockwell and
Frank Capra
 Hollywood
 “the American
film is our most
important
weapon”
 “ why we fight”
Print Propaganda
Sold benefits of freedom
 Appeared in the guise of new and improved
consumer goods
Americans were fighting to restore the
consumer society of the 1920s
Office of War Information
 coordinate policies related to propaganda and
censorship
 established branches around the world, published
“victory” magazine, hundreds of films, posters and
radio broad castes.
Gender (In) Equality
 Nostalgic portraits of an
American way of life often
clashed with the
socioeconomic changes that
wartime mobilization brought
 lives and status of women
 As women took over jobs
traditionally held by men, many
people began to take more
seriously the idea of gender
equality
Gains?
 350,000 women volunteered for military
duty
 1,000 served as civilian pilots
 (WASP) Women’s Air Force Service
Pilots
 2% of the military personnel they broke
stereotypes
Women’s Roles
 “What has become on the manhood of
America, that we have to call on our women?”
– Women’s Corps with full status for each branch of
the military.
 Framed changes in women’s roles in highly
traditional terms
– short term sacrifice necessary to preserve women’s
special responsibilities, hearth and home
– “a woman can do anything if she knows she looks
beautiful doing it.”
Inequalities exacerbated
 Women to blame
 Rise in juvenile
delinquency
 Rise in divorce rate during
the war years
 Widened the symbolic
gap between femininity
and masculinity
 “Pin – up mentality
 Manliness equated with
brutality and casual sex
Tough guy fiction - violent
and misogynist edge
Racial (In)equality
 Messages about race: wartime culture
both propelled yet firmly resisted change
 Fight against fascism challenged
traditional lack of or limited access to
political, legal, or economic systems of
African Americans
New Thinking
Nazism, a philosophy based on the idea of
racial inequality
 Exposed racist underpinnings of much of the 20th
century social science theory
 The view that racial difference was not a
function of biology but a function of culture
gained wider popular acceptance
 Helped to lay the foundation for the postwar power
struggle against discrimination.
African American Challenge
 Challenged the government
to live up to its own rhetoric
about freedom and democracy
 Harlem newspaper called for a
Double V campaign, victory at
home and abroad.
 A Phillip Randolph threatened
march on Washington to
demand more defense jobs and
integration of the military forces
Precedents for Change
 Roosevelt - concessions in
exchange for canceling the march
 FEPC, Fair Employment Practices
Commission (Executive Order 8802)
"there shall be no discrimination in
the employment of workers in
defense industries or government
because of race, creed, color, or
national origin."
 Conservative coalition in congress
prevented its passage in 1950
 The army remained segregated,
“NAACP paper “a Jim crow army
cannot fight for a free world”
 forced change, need for soldiers
“Are You Beyond the
Call of Duty?”
Discrimination
Peaked 1944
 Explosion at a naval ammunitions depot in Port
Chicago
killed 300
 Next group refused, military court marshaled 50
 Sentences 8-15 years
1994 Freddie Meeks, at 80 requested and
received a presidential pardon.
Rise of Racial Tensions
Urban centers
 California, landlords practices
 Restrictive housing covenants-legal agreements
prohibiting the sale of homes to certain religious
racial groups
 A few black neighborhoods, overcrowded and
impoverished
European immigrants – job competition of the
6 – 10,000 blacks migrating from rural areas
Zoot Suits
Zoot suit incidents of 1943
 Evidences continuing political and social
repression of government, policing Institutions
and military of minority & especially Mexican
communities
 Fearing disruption with Latin American
Good Neighbor Policy prompted
government intervention
American Indians
American Indians compromised a
significant group of new migrants to urban
areas also
 Urban relocation program
 25,000 men and several thousand women
served in the armed forces
 40,000 more worked in cities
 Experienced hostility and racism
Japanese hysteria
Fear of Saboteurs was widespread,
 a menace that justified extraordinary
action according to racists
 Executive Order 9066
Internment Camps
130,000 mainland Japanese lost all their
belongings and wealth
 2/3 were native born. Many had been substantial
landowners in California’s agricultural industries.
 Distinguished military service
 100th battalion from Hawaii was nearly wiped out,
 57% 442nd regimental combat team were killed or
wounded in the mountains of Italy
 6,000members of the military intelligence service
provide invaluable service in the pacific.
Themes of National Unity
 Symbol of the “melting pot” together with
appeals to nationalism remained powerful
 A “peoples war”
 Americas melting pot vs. German and
Japanese obsessions with racial purity
Rise of Civil Rights Movement
American way of life represented a commitment
not to the past but the future
 racial grievances must be addressed
 NAACP jobs and political power
 CORE non violent resistance to segregation
Eroding Barriers – Towards
Civil Rights
Movements of population – eroded
geographical boundaries
Wartime demand for labor weakened barriers to
many occupations
As each of Americas ethnic and racial
minorities established records of distinguished
military service, the claim of equality
“Americans all” in the words of a wartime
slogan took a greater moral force.
 Richard Wright wrote that
American had to do
something about the
“White Problem”
 Swedish scholar, Gunnar Mydral An American
Dilemma: The Negro Problem & Modern
Democracy (1944)
 predicted fundamental changes would have to come
through the nation
 Race problem was solvable if white Americans
acknowledged the contradictions between black
American’s and the Nation’s democratic ideals
 The contradiction he referred to as the “American Creed”
Spheres of Influence Post-war
 Wartime conversations between Stalin,
Churchill and Roosevelt had all assumed
that powerful nations would have special
“spheres of influence”
Agreed on how divide the world.
Against Rhetoric of self- determination
Beginnings of Cold War
FDR contradictory policies toward soviet sphere
of interest became apparent after his death
 As the cold war developed
 US policy would be in favor of supporting
colonization (re assembling) rather than self
determination
• Americas colonies, such as the Philippines
• Grant “independence” and install leaders favorable to the US,
US maintained control and money benefit
New and On going Boundary
Issues
Question of a Jewish homeland, in the middle
east
 Zionism, the movement to found the Jewish state in
Palestine
New state of Israel
When Truman formally recognized Israel,
importance of middle eastern affairs to US
policy makers would take on greater importance
and urgency.