Post on 19-Dec-2015
1 Visions of America, A History of the United States
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World War IIFighting the Good War, 1939–1945
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World War II
I. The Approaching War
II. On the Home Front
III. On the Front Lines
IV. Ending the Pacific War
FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT, 1939-1945
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The Approaching War
A. Fascism and Appeasement
B. The Arsenal of Democracy
C. War with Japan
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The Approaching War
Non-interventionists – Those urging the nation to stay out of overseas conflicts
Interventionists – Those advocating direct engagement in overseas conflicts
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Fascism and Appeasement
What does this map convey about the scope of World War II?
What different lessons did American and other world powers draw from World War I?
How did Hitler rapidly conquer Western and Eastern Europe?
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Fascism and Appeasement
Neutrality Acts – A series of laws from 1935 to 1939 that restricted arms sales, loans, and transport of goods with nations at war
“Cash and carry” – A policy that required belligerent nations to pay cash for goods and transport them on their own ships
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Fascism and Appeasement
Munich Conference (1938) – Hoping to avoid war, Britain and France agreed to let Germany occupy the Sudetenland, a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia.
Axis – Name for nations fighting the Allies, including Germany, Italy, and Japan
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The Arsenal of Democracy
How did the competing visions of non-interventionists and interventionists influence FDR’s rhetoric and actions?
What competing visions did these two cartoons (23.4 and 23.5) offer on the threat that Hitler posed to the United States?
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The Arsenal of Democracy
Allies (World War II) – Name for the powers fighting Germany, eventually including the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union
Lend-Lease – A policy that circumvented “cash and carry” by loaning rather than selling arms to the Allies
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War with Japan
How did the United States respond to increasing Japanese aggression?
How significant was the attack on Pearl Harbor in the short and long run?
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War with Japan
Pearl Harbor – A U.S. naval base in Hawaii that the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941
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On the Home Front
A. Images of the Enemy
B. Internment Camps
C. Prosperity, Scarcity, and Opportunities for Women
D. Racial Discord
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Images of the Enemy
What distinctions did Americans now make between the Japanese and Chinese?
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Internment Camps
What do these photos (23.8) reveal about American fears of a Japanese attack?
What competing responses did Japanese Americans have to internment?
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Internment Camps
Internment camps – Camps in the United States that held people of Japanese descent under armed guard in isolated areas
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Competing Visions
Did a legitimate military reason exist to place Japanese Americans in internment camps?
CIVIL LIBERTIES AND NATIONAL SECURITY CLASH
The majority of the Supreme Court agreed that internment of Japanese Americans was not based on hostility to their race and so was not unconstitutional.
Justice Frank Murphy argued that internment was unconstitutional because it was racially motivated.
Prosperity, Scarcity and Opportunities for Women
What competing visions of working women emerged during the war?
How did World War II affect childhood?
Why was World War II unique compared to other American wars?
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Racial Discord
How did African Americas challenge racial discrimination during the war?
How did the wartime experiences of African Americans compare to those of Latinos?
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On the Front Lines
A. Defeat, Then Victory
B. The Final Push in Europe
C. America’s Response to the Holocaust
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Defeat, Then Victory
What does this map (23.14) reveal about the military challenges facing the United States in the Pacific?
Why did the Western Allies attack the Axis powers first in Italy, rather than France?
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Defeat, Then Victory
How did the tide gradually turn in favor of the Allies in Europe and the Pacific?
What do media images of the Japanese suggest about American wartime culture?
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The Final Push in Europe
Why did the Allies prevail on D-Day?
What significant decisions were reached at the 1945 Yalta Conference?
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Images as History
How did the political and military situation influence the way Americans viewed these photographs?
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
Images as History
Military censors forbade publication of photographs containing identifiable war dead or badly mutilated corpses, worried that such pictures might depress morale on the home front.
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
Images as History
This image showed teamwork and that the struggle was not over.
Some of the marines in the photo toured the country in a successful war bond campaign.
Joe Rosenthal, the photographer, was later accused of staging this scene.
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
America’s Response to the Holocaust
How did images instruct Americans about the meaning of the Holocaust and their role as liberators?
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Envisioning EvidenceDECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
Envisioning EvidenceDECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
Envisioning Evidence
What insights do these data offer on the scope of the Holocaust and the American response?
DECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
Ending the Pacific War
A. Edging Closer to Japan
B. Dropping the Atomic Bomb
C. The Final Surrender
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Edging Closer to Japan
What new tactics raised the death toll in the Pacific war?
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Dropping the Atomic Bomb
Manhattan Project – The code name for the secret U.S. government research program to produce the atomic bomb
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The Final Surrender
How did the war against Japan finally end?
How might this distribution of wartime casualties have shaped the postwar world?
Why did this photo (23.22) become an iconic image of World War II?
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Choices and Consequences
• Following the capture of Okinawa, the U.S. military faced the formidable task of invading Japan itself.
• President Truman’s goals were to: – Secure an unconditional surrender from
Japan– Save American lives– Establish postwar supremacy over the Soviet
Union
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
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Choices and Consequences
Choices regarding the use of the atomic bomb:
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Convince Japan to
surrender by conducting a
demonstration of the bomb’s power in an uninhabited
area
Drop both atomic bombs
on Japan
Inform the Soviet Union
before dropping the
bomb
Drop one atomic bomb on Japan and
wait for its reaction
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Choices and Consequences
Decision and consequences:• Truman chose to drop both bombs separately to maximize the
shock.• On August 6, the “Little Boy” bomb destroyed three-fourths of the
city of Hiroshima and killed 80,000 people instantly.• On August 9, the “Fat Man” bomb destroyed two-fifths of the city
of Nagasaki and killed 35,000 people.• On August 14, Japan surrendered.• Soviet and American mutual distrust led to a nuclear arms race.
Why does so much controversy surround dropping the atomic bomb and not conventional weapons?
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
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Choices and Consequences
Continuing Controversies
•Should the United States have dropped the bomb?
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What conflicting visions did Americans offer in response to the expansionist drives of Germany and Japan? How did these visions influence the American path to war?
2. How did visual images shape Americans’ views of the war and their enemies?
3. How did the war affect racial, labor, and gender relations on the home front? What conflicting visions emerged?
4. What strategic challenges and battlefield conditions did the United States face in the Pacific and European theaters? How did the United States prevail against Japan and Germany?
5. Why did the United States drop the atomic bomb?
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