Transcript WWII PPT

The United States in WWII
Review from 10th Grade!
1933-39: Aggression goes
unchecked
I. American Isolationism
• 1920s: Let peace and prosperity “Roar”!
– WWI: deadly, expensive mistake (Nye Committee)
• Early/Mid 1930s: From “Bad Neighbor” to “Good
Neighbor”
• Mid/Late 1930s: Majority of Americans opposed
US intervention at beginning of war
– Economic sanctions?
• Neutrality Acts: ‘35, ‘36, ‘37
– Can’t sail on belligerent ships
– No loans, no arms sales
• FDR wanted to aid democracies of Europe: 1939
“Cash-and-carry”
– Many Americans upset: “You’ll push us into war!”
• Debate most heated after fall of France
“America First Committee”
• Charles Lindbergh - outspoken critic
– Fight the USSR, not Germany!
II. America’s Steps Toward
War
• Reports from London blitz about Germans bombing
innocent civilians
• G, I, & J form alliance: Axis Powers
– Peacetime draft
– FDR sends destroyers to GB without consent of Congress
• Election of 1940 = economy improving? War? =
FDR.
• Four Freedoms
• Lend-Lease: “Great Arsenal for Democracy” (# 1776
in Congress)
• Atlantic Charter
• U-Boats…war w/ Germany seemed inevitable
– $40 billion in aid to Allies
Dec. 7, 1941:
Pearl Harbor
• http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.
php?video_id=235420
III. The Home Front
• Total War
• War Production Board
• Ford Motor Company: B-24 Liberator
bombers
• “Liberty Ships”: 14 days
• 1944: U.S. production levels = 2X Axis put
together
• Transport?
– German Wolfpacks
– Radar, long-range aerial bombers turn tide in
North Atlantic
• Enlistment:
• 16 million Americans served in military
• 1941-1942:
– Army 1.4 --> 3 million
– Navy: 300,000 --> 600,000
– Marines: 54,000 --> 150,000
• Minorities enlist
• 25,000 Native Americans
• 300,000 Mexican Americans
• 1 million African Americans
– “Double V” campaign
– “We loyal Negro American citizens demand the
right to work and fight for our country”
“You tell me that Hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
From the Ku Klux Klan.”
- Langston Hughes, qtd. in the The Fight
of the Century
Women in the War
• “WAC” 1943: clerical workers, truck
drivers, instructors, lab techs
• 150,000 women volunteered
–Story of the WAVES
• 15,000 served abroad
• 600 medals for service
• 57,000 nurses in Army Nurse Corps
• 3/4 working women = married (usually quit
job once married)
Challenges to Civil Liberties
• Executive Order 9066: certain areas are war
zones, anyone could be removed for any
reason
• 100,000 Japanese Americans evacuated on
West Coast
• 1944: Korematsu v. U.S.: Supreme Court
upholds gov’t internment policy (1988 official
apology)
Wartime Economy
• HUGE deficit spending gets us out of
Great Depression
• $330 billion (2X all federal expenditures
since founding of nation!)
• National debt: $42 bill. --> $269 billion
• War bonds
IV. Legacy of the War
• Lessons of WWI:
– Unconditional surrender
– United Nations
• Power vacuum: US, USSR
• Total War = Civilian War
• 300,000 Americans dead, 800,000
wounded
• $330 billion (10X WWI)
• The Atomic Age begins…