Transcript America and World War II

The “Good War”
The Roots of Isolationism
• Nye Committee’s “merchants of
death” thesis on WW1 profiteering
• Neutrality Acts, 1935, 1936,
1937 -- "upon the outbreak or during the
progress of war between, or among, two or
more foreign states, the President shall
proclaim such fact, and it shall thereafter be
unlawful to export arms, ammunition, or
implements of war to any port of such
belligerent states."
• America First movement
• 1939 Neutrality Act: “cash and carry”
law
Gerald P. Nye (R-ND)
Charles Lindbergh
FDR and the agony of neutrality
• “This nation will remain…neutral. But I
cannot ask that every American
remain neutral in thought as well as
deed.” (September 1939)
• “The US cannot survive as a lone island
in a world dominated by the
philosophy of force [that fatuous
dream is] the nightmare of a people
lodged in prison.” (June 1940)
“All Outers” v “Isolationists”
TWO REPUBLICANS:
Henry Stimson, Secretary of War
Senator William Borah (R-ID)
Churchill and America
“If England falls the whole world, including
the US and all that we have known and
cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new
Dark Age… We shall never
surrender…until in God’s good time, the
new world, with all its power and might,
steps forth to the rescue and the liberation
of the old.” June 4, 1940
Four Freedoms Speech, January 1941
Four Freedoms Speech, January 1941
The Agonies of “Neutrality”
• Lend-Lease Bill, March 1941
• Churchill: “Give us the tools and we’ll
finish the job”
• “Short of war” strategy
pushed to the limits
• Atlantic Charter,
August 1941
Dilemmas of 1941
• How to convert to war economy;
difficult relations between
administration and business;
proliferation of agencies
• U-Boat war on Atlantic convoys
• The implications of Operation
Barbarossa; how to deal with Soviets
• How to contain Japanese
expansionism
Convoys or Patrols?
The Problem of Japan, 1941
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
“…a date which will live in infamy…”
FDR to Congress
THE IMPACT OF THE WAR ON THE SIZE OF THE ECONOMY AND
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Federal Budget
1940
$9 B
1945
$100 B
Gross Domestic Product
$91B
$166 B
Civilian Federal Employees
1M
4M
National Debt
$49 B
$259 B
Rationing, 1943
Zoot suit riots,
Los Angeles,
June 1943
…war
mobilisation
re-drew racial
boundaries
World War II
A. Phillip Randolph: “…there can be no
national unity where one tenth of the
population are denied their basic rights as
American citizens.”
Women
and the
war
economy
• 6 million new female
workers
• Most stayed at home
• 10% of female
workforce worked in
defence industry
• Limited challenge to
gender roles
Women
and the
war
economy
• 6 million new female
workers
• Most stayed at home
• 10% of female
workforce worked in
defence industry
• Limited challenge to
gender roles
“Motherhood’s
Back in Style!”
• Highest Birth and
marriage rates of the
C20
• Baby boom began in
1940
Movement, energy, unity, diversity
• Pressure for integration
• Racial tension
• Japanese internment
• Insulation from attack
• America on the move: East  West;
8M Americans moved state; rural
depopulation
Wartime Politics
The End of the New
Deal?
FDR’s “Second Bill
of Rights”, Jan 1944
GI Bill of Rights,
June 1944
1944 Election:
Fala and Dewey and the promise of
prosperity
Yalta, February 1945
USSR enters war against Japan
“Declaration of Liberated Europe”
Agreement to set up UN
The War against Japan
“Arizona war worker writes her
Navy boyfriend a thank-you
note for the Jap skull he sent
her. When he said goodby two
years ago to Natalie Nickerson,
20 a war worker of Phoenix,
Ariz., a big, handsome Navy
lieutenant promised her a Jap.
Last week Natalie received a
human skull, autographed by
her lieutenant and 13 friends,
and inscribed: "This is a good
Jap - a dead one picked up on
the New Guinea beach."
Natalie, surprised at the gift,
named it Tojo. The armed
forces disapprove strongly of
this sort of thing."
•
• LIFE MAGAZINE, 5/22/44 p.35
"Picture of the Week"
Battle of Iwo Jima, Feb-March, 1945
March 20, 1945, death of FDR at
Warm Springs, GA
“The United States
stands at this moment at the summit of the world”
Winston Churchill, 1945
The Myth of the Good War
• American memory: a just war waged
by a peaceful people
• American realities: consumerism,
prosperity, relatively unscathed
(405,399 deaths by far the lowest
proportion of belligerents)
• The war had exceeded the dreams
and in some respects confounded the
assumptions of the New Deal, but it
clinched Keynesianism for a
generation